Ciku

Let’s criticize us as Kenyan. Why? You may have missed the 36 dead in Mandera and the statement from the government on how we need to take care of us. That practically summarizes security in Kenya currently and in many resent years. But let’s focus on just Nairobi.

It’s the one place to get mugged and everyone asks where you were passing as if it’s your duty to send forth a few detectives before you take any turn. This is not a queer issue let us ignore the danger of walking around town looking anything that doesn’t seem sexual or gender conforming. First you will be allowed access to only 1 out of every 2 bars you attempt to enter with a look of disgust on the bouncers face as she or he quickly points out “Haturuhusu watu kama wewe hapa.” 

For it is their prerogative to please their homophobic customers who might strip you in the lavatories if there is a confirmation necessary,  if the crew has a few too many questions of what you are.  If the confirmation doesn’t give them peace a fight shall be laid on you in amounts that exceed the amount of sex they assume you are using to send curses along their righteous way. 

Ignore all that and let us look at it from a purely ‘right’ Kenyan perspective. Where insecurity wakes up with you in the house as you wonder if the few things you own are in the other room or they drugged you and cleared everything up in your visit to slumber.

Then you have to look through the outfit to ensure you don’t offer an alternate reaction from my-work-clothes to come-get-it-outfit. Then turn to that partner you build your life around and wonder if you they’re going to send the thugs with the usual KES 5,000 payment to take you out for they sensed your fidelity is in question. 

Get to the Matatu (which are the common medium of transport), the conductor pushes you towards the entrance with the dirtiest hands straight from the garage. After grabbing your bag and enjoying for a second a sense of importance as they send fight for your coins.

Get to your sit and check out the guy next to you hoping he doesn’t resemble the arrested carjackers who you saw on the News last night. Realize its morning hours and feel a slight sense of comfort. 

A beep on your phone, as you reach out you notice you are the window seat and check the screen between your thighs hoping it doesn’t give the neighbor other suggestions either.

Get to town and time as the matatu slows down for a place to alight on the traffic jam to avoid the commotion at the stage that could have you missing your wallet which might even be zipped up on the bag by now depending on how the number of security issues announced on the radio News bulletins on your way to there. 

Take a walk that resembles a Japanese game show as you escape a coalition with a matatu, mkokoteni, boda and tuku tuku in that order. Hope the weather isn’t wet and your outfit will make it in one color. Hope to all you know the City council isn’t at war with hawkers at the CBD and you’re the proud winner of a teargas canister that will have you crying worse than a child’s on their first contact with chilly. 

Cross the road if you have to but risk a driver on their own drugs who would entertain tourists in a cultural showcase of Kenyan driving. Hold each pocket simultaneously judging by the gender of those who pass you and physical indicators of their speed if there is a need to chase. 

Get to work and check the duties of the day and plan them on their influence to you losing your livelihood and not the company or business needs, unless it’s your own job and have the reports of the competitors or their newest plan to run you out.

Get tired of negativity and log on to your social media of choice and hope the media did not aim to distract your followers with another cultural fight that will have you listening to the difference between me and you come lunch with the colleagues. 

Get a call from your most hardworking relatives in the country who cannot remember ever holding a thousand shillings note in the past month due to monetary circulations rationing by the government. 

Get back to your desk and remember your ambitions in teenage and think of what success really means to you. Then brush it off with excuses of the necessary capital to meet your goals.

Get of work and join your buddies for a drink that you do not really need but that being the only way to socialize in this diverse country and the slight blur from who you want to be win the day. Then comes another group on the next table and the conversations start flowing.

First we start with the usual “I think I know your pal from somewhere.” You find you have shared a table before on an out of town road trip and all over sudden you open up all about your life necessary to stalk you including: occupation, residence, interests and contacts. 

Realize half way that one person considered you sexually interested and advances start, regardless of your availability or mutual interest. Testosterone rises with the alcohol and the music’s tempo and there is a blow received by one or the willing or a pass-by who had no idea who wants who. 

Escape with your pals to a cab that you hope to your gods doesn’t take you to Karura forest and pockets and your dignity regardless of your gender.

Get home and find the evening threat (Read News) still being highlighted by stations that find the messages to important for you to miss. Not a bad day only 7 dead.

Get to bed and finally breathe to the successful day in your maneuver. 

Security in Kenya has been on self for a while and it’s not only condescending to ask Wanjiku to start now. But Wanjiku continues with her forgiving and forgetting to a time when our children shall need guards to play outside which should have started as soon as we got tallies of the child abuse cases in our country that we have also, forgotten as soon as the next social light attends a derby or bleaches her skin.  

Let’s hope one day she realizes she actually deserves if not pays for a right to live, make a livelihood, move, interact and gather as a citizen. That each of the citizens should be allocated an equal chance to do all the above in a society that realizes the system it adheres to. That it’s not her obligation to arrest, chase and persecute thieves in the streets or fuel the arresting vehicle. That the system is meant for her and not those elected to guard it.

Let’s hope the power within to change and create this system shall be seen, that there will once be a 24 hour economy that would be literally burglarized by the insecurity. 

But with only 12 years in ‘democracy’ what more can we ask of her? Lol.