THE COST OF TRAVEL

A Kenyan friend told me today how he was robbed the other evening as he headed home from work. It's not breaking news...this happens all the time, but it's the first time since I've been here that I've heard it firsthand and I thought it worth sharing. Impunity is a big, ponderous word. This is its day-to-day face.
Our friend took a matatu as usual to get home, but unbeknownst to him and the other passengers, three "gangsters" were already on board. When they had gone a little way down Lower Kabete Road, the gangsters basically hijacked the bus and forced it to make a detour towards a forest on a road that leads to Loresho. They stopped the bus and forced everyone to hand over their money and valuables. Our friend lost his mobile phone and some cash. I asked him how come the gangsters were able to board the bus undetected. "They only had little pistols .... They were young boys like me (he is about 34) ... They ask you for your money and then check your pockets but if they find some and you have not said it, then you have problems." This time nobody was beaten up and our friend made his way home on foot. "They always do it at the end of the month." He said it with resignation, no anger. I found that particularly shocking. If it happened to me, I would be livid, and dining out on the tale for month, embroidering it with each telling (that's probably the Irish in me). But he told the story in a flat voice, matter-of-factly. I asked him about going to the police, but he said there was no point. What could the police do? And you might get into more trouble as the police might actually tell the gangsters that you fingered them. "And then they would come after you. A lot of these gangsters are the sons of rich people."
I'm not trying to be falsely naive here, a wide-eyed new arrival with little nous. But what struck me is that things have come to a sad state of affairs when you can reasonably expect to be robbed at gunpoint when taking the bus home with your wages at the end of the month, and then have absolutely no recourse to justice in case the criminals find out from the police that you have had the temerity to report a robbery.
In other news, we have had rain which has brought some truly splendiferous creepy-crawlies out of the woodwork but appears not to have dampened Kenyan politicians' appetite for party politics. Fiddling while Rome burns? Another warning this week from Kofi Annan, the father of the Grand Coalition: "Kenya is at a crossroads. The time to act is now," he told a conference marking the first anniversary of the power-sharing agreement. He said Kenyans were disillusioned. "They are equally angry at widespread corruption and the lack of action to root it out ... But the situation is not hopeless ... The government can turn things around by acting swiftly and effectively on the agreed constitutional, parliamentary, judicial, police and land reforms."
But in the past week to 10 days, we have seen instead: talk of a censure motion against Justice Minister Martha Karua; rumours of a cabinet reshuffle that never happened; more press reports about possible alliances between the ODM and the PNU in the Rift Valley; President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga snubbing the Annan-led talks in Geneva.; and reports that human rights activists have gone into hiding, or even left the country, because of death threats after they cooperated with U.N. special rapporteur Philip Alston on his report into extrajudicial killings.
And while rain falls on Nairobi, what is happening in the rest of the country? This from the Daily Nation shows that Kenyans realise that famine should not be inevitable -- the solutions are clear -- but again where is the political appetite to tackle reform in the agricultural sector? Will it bring votes in 2012 or indeed before?
On a lighter note, I thought the Kenyan papers' April Fool articles were very good. The Nation told of how a forgotten Old Master painting had been found in State House. The "quote" from Amos Kimunya about unveiling it at a "cheese and wine party and some bitings with cocktail sausages and things" was hilarious, as was the idea that the police commissioner was sleeping in a room with the painting, Ceska pistol at the ready on the direct orders of Kibaki. Byline: Mutuma Mathiu and Ramatol Van Uppabut... The Standard ran with a piece on how Kenya had bought a Cold War sub to defend Migingo island -- the purchase carried out through an intermediary involved in Anglo-Leasing. Nice, though that particular saga does seem to be simmering away nicely despite several efforts to get Ugandan soldiers off the pile of rocks in Lake Victoria. A bizarre story but one of those ones that it might be worth keeping an eye on.