Horrifying as it was, I wasn’t surprised to read about the Kenyan carjackers who tossed passengers out of a fast-moving Githurai bus in Nairobi last week, killing two people and injuring 20 others in one fell swoop.
From
media reports and anecdotal evidence, it is clear that Kenya has
descended into a kill-and-take-the-head jungle, the ultimate heart of
postcolonial darkness, where you can’t always be certain that gangsters
haven’t beheaded you to get some Sh500 and a Nokia 110 from your
blood-soaked pockets.
During my recent stay in Nairobi,
I almost got myself mugged around the Kencom bus stage in broad
daylight. A group of young men in fashionable pencil trousers and
colour-treated hair seemed to suddenly change their mind about where
they were going and started walking towards me as if they wanted to say
hello.
Being not a very brave man when I have some
money on me (I had just withdrawn cash from an ATM), I sensed immediate
danger, and the little hair on my head literally stood on end like the
quills of a porcupine.
SPRINTED BACK
To
call what I felt “terror” would be an understatement. These are people
who can break your medulla oblongata just to take your Sh200 bus fare.
Although my legs are no longer what they used to be, I sprinted back towards Mama Ngina Street, shouting both for help in several languages and praying in tongues that God would rest my soul in peace.
Although my legs are no longer what they used to be, I sprinted back towards Mama Ngina Street, shouting both for help in several languages and praying in tongues that God would rest my soul in peace.
I
wasn’t wrong about these apparently rich young men’s mission. At the
same spot the following day, as I was about to cross the City Hall Way ,
I found one of them lying in a pool of blood, probably only a few
minutes dead.
I gathered from people at the scene that a
group of youths had just mugged a woman, but this bloke wasn’t lucky
enough to flee with the rest of the gang. He had sacrificed his life for
a laptop.
Part of international cheap labour in the
US, I’d only be lying to tell you that I’m a man of means. But I stopped
taking matatus home for the rest of the few days I was in town.
USING A CAB
There
were horror stories of carjackings, in which bus crews were suspected
to work in cahoots with gun-totting criminals who commandeered vehicles
to Ngong Forest to rob and terrorise passengers.
I
chose the extreme luxury of using a cab every time I came to town to
have a drink with my friend and prospective investor, Jay Chege.
I don’t have enough brains to claim to be a theorist, except as a stale joke in my undergraduate classes. But I had for a long time been all sold out for a hypothesis circulating in Nairobi that Kenyan leaders are so cynical that they only think about their safety and their bellies. The hypothesis is half-true and half-false. Like me, Kenyan leaders are not terribly intelligent.
I don’t have enough brains to claim to be a theorist, except as a stale joke in my undergraduate classes. But I had for a long time been all sold out for a hypothesis circulating in Nairobi that Kenyan leaders are so cynical that they only think about their safety and their bellies. The hypothesis is half-true and half-false. Like me, Kenyan leaders are not terribly intelligent.
I asked one driver why he was
so fond of driving me past State House all the time. (Might he have
noticed my presidential eyelashes?) He said that, no “sir” (sic), he was
only evading potholes on Route 46, especially after the upscale Yaya
Centre, beyond which the elites rarely venture.
All the Nairobi cab drivers I took loved their government to bits, but one of them was sometimes going too far in his tenderness for the presidency. I reprimanded him several times because he was putting my life at risk by stopping in the vicinity of State House to gaze through the windows of what he told me was the private home of the President.
All the Nairobi cab drivers I took loved their government to bits, but one of them was sometimes going too far in his tenderness for the presidency. I reprimanded him several times because he was putting my life at risk by stopping in the vicinity of State House to gaze through the windows of what he told me was the private home of the President.
THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE
I
didn’t check when he excitedly asked me to, but the voyeur cried out
that he could see from where he sat in the car someone inside the house
ironing clothes (maybe the President’s daughter, he said). He said he
was hoping to see through the windows “Uhulu (sic) himself”, the man he
voted for. Of course he saw nothing, but he imagined he did.
I can’t remember what reason he gave me about how the President’s family acquired land next to State House (willing buyer, willing seller, maybe?).
But the fact that the man could see through the windows of the President’s house from the road, as he said he did, revealed to me how the ruling elites take casually not only our security, but their own as well.
There is this lie that elites in government circulate in the media, that the kind of violence witnessed in Nairobi results from poverty.
I can’t remember what reason he gave me about how the President’s family acquired land next to State House (willing buyer, willing seller, maybe?).
But the fact that the man could see through the windows of the President’s house from the road, as he said he did, revealed to me how the ruling elites take casually not only our security, but their own as well.
There is this lie that elites in government circulate in the media, that the kind of violence witnessed in Nairobi results from poverty.
Yes, poverty is rampant. Youth have no jobs,
and those who have do menial work for less than two dollars a day. But
you would be forgiven for thinking that the elites are not the cause of
that poverty they blame us for every time they visit violence on us.
I suspect that most of the criminals terrorising us come from well-off families. Only rich people can be this inhuman.
A QUICK BUCK
Like
their parents who have made their money on our bent backs, the rich
young men, who can’t catch up with an old man on Mama Ngina Street, want
to make a quick buck by playing dice with our lives, flinging us out of
moving vehicles like a discus.
In the Kawangware slums
of Amboseli, Musalaba, and Congo, young people have never tried to mug
me. I walk there in the dead of the night — tall like Cain himself! —
and all I meet are friendly people. The majority of Kenyans live
honestly below the poverty line — no stealing of public land, no railway
tender scandals!
Over a bowl of uji, my Kawangware neighbours have often asked me for a solution to the problem of rich kids from Lavington and other affluent neighbourhoods coming to steal our plastic cups and plates, driving their Benzes and wearing pencil trousers. I tell them (jokingly, of course): There’s no difference between rich Kenyans and terrorists. Probably it’s time we drove both groups to Kisimayu.
Over a bowl of uji, my Kawangware neighbours have often asked me for a solution to the problem of rich kids from Lavington and other affluent neighbourhoods coming to steal our plastic cups and plates, driving their Benzes and wearing pencil trousers. I tell them (jokingly, of course): There’s no difference between rich Kenyans and terrorists. Probably it’s time we drove both groups to Kisimayu.
Prof
Evan Mwangi teaches at Northwestern University, USA, and divides his
time between Evanston and Kawangware in Nairobi. evanmwangi@gmail.com
http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Kenya-has-become-a-kill-and-take-the-head-jungle-/-/440808/2197044/-/72ff1sz/-/index.html
http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Kenya-has-become-a-kill-and-take-the-head-jungle-/-/440808/2197044/-/72ff1sz/-/index.html
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