The pack hunters:

The hunters were out hunting early one fine morning. It was barely 7.00 am but they were already out and about on the lookout for easy prey. They were positioned strategically, ready to pounce should the victim make a move in the wrong direction. All around the well-travelled route they lay in wait knowing that it was just a matter of time before someone, something, anyone made a wrong move when the pincer movement perfected by the Germans in World War I using their Panzer tanks would encircle around making sure that there was no possible escape route and to devastating effect.

There were in all shapes and sizes the pack hunters some coming out in large numbers ready to share the spoils of a successful hunt. Then there were those that chose to hunt in pairs and trios, and then there were the lone rangers hunting alone and keeping all the spoils to themselves like the lions, hyenas, leopards and cheetahs of the wild that they were not.

These tricks had been perfected long time ago seemingly from the beginning of time itself. The positioning, the encircling, the anticipation clear on their furrowed brows and wrinkled foreheads some clearly not able to hunt effectively thanks to protuberant mid sections due to years of engorgement with scant or non-existent exercise.

This was like a well-oiled machine most able to work alone but sure that at the end of the day they would all share in the kill, each afforded a share equal to their importance within the hierarchical pecking order.

Lest you wonder why I am talking about the Masai Mara yet I haven’t been there in close to three years let me let on that this was the situation on the Thika super highway not so long ago as a proceeded towards Nanyuki. There were no less than 6 groups of traffic officers, brilliantly lit in the early morning light in their reflective luminous jackets, obnoxious beacons of corrupt practices broadcasting to the matatu drivers and lorry drivers that they were waiting for them. It seems that no matatu or lorry passes them by without being flagged down and the obvious shake down happening as they pretend to inspect new worn out tyres and expired current PSV and insurance certificates even as the rest of us ordinary motorists speed past as a sedate 100km/h.

As had clearly come out during the ongoing police vetting exercise these law enforcers gone rogue have been enriching themselves at the expense of maintaining law and order on our roads. Many of you have been victims of these extortionists masquerading as police officers even as they brazenly position themselves strategically sometimes clear entrapment on our poorly marked roads and highways.
They demand with menaces and act with wanton indiscipline always having the upper hand on the hapless motorists. The rules are clear that they are not supposed to enter your vehicle if you have committed a traffic offence but they will demand that they do so to more easier shake you down no doubt as the hijack your driver’s license and hold you to ransom in the process until you part with something.

The frustrating thing is that it is easier to pay a bribe then be dragged through the system to be charged with whatever offence you have committed something that they are very sure about and hence guide you quickly towards the bribe giving way. So there you are a law breaker yourself for giving a bribe as the lesser of the two evils and racked by guilt knowing that you have fuelled the dragon that is corruption.

Time to start vetting landlords?

Nanyuki is a dusty frontier town. It must be the volcanic dust generated by Mt. Kenya erupting millions of years ago that causes all this dust in this rain deprived side of the mountain.

As I approach Nanyuki the refrains of the opening song to the famous Western movie “The good, the bad and the ugly” reverberate in my mind as this fine dust coats everything in its path.

Recently the county government seemed to have a plan to reduce the dust levels but after the bulldozers were done the levels are now worse than ever.They just seemed to have spread the dust more equally to the whole town.

Like any frontier town it has to have its fair share of bad ass guys like in any good Western movie and I encountered one barely a month after I settled down in town and I had to move house rather abruptly as a result.

The place that I called home in Nanyuki turned out to be a tough place to reside in…..like any frontier town! For starters, water was an issue and I came to realise that the landlord for whatever reason had not seen it fit to install a storage tank to have a regular water supply so many mornings like in any town with an intermittent water supply I was forced to bathe from a basin on a slippery floor, definitely not the best way to start a morning. The last straw was when the house help that cleans and cooks for me told me that there was no water to cook a meal and I slept hungry that night!

Secondly, the young man who had been employed to look after the property and who would open the gate whatever time I arrived home upped and left one fine day supposedly (according to the landlord) because his father was threatening to sell the family land in Meru but I suspect more because of non-payment of his salary by his employer......as the young man told me later.

The difficult job of opening a locked gate, on a lonely stretch of road, in the dark of night, after a night out was taking its toll on me and I was getting more and more paranoid that I would be mugged outside my home one night.

But the raison d’etre for my leaving was something more serious, career limiting serious for that matter. It was serious enough to warrant me reporting the incident to my security colleagues at Head Office.

I had no inkling when I moved into that house that the owner of the property was a bad man.....like found in any frontier town anywhere in the world. After all I had dealt with the wife when I negotiated for the place and he only happened on the scene a week or so after I had moved in supposedly after a business trip to Nairobi.

He did not strike one as being a villain and he was friendly and well-spoken his half-finished houses notwithstanding. Seeing possible business for the bank I had struck up a conversation with him once asking him why his 6 houses were still incomplete despite substantial progress on the same – about 85% - and he had shrugged off the question and told me that he would complete them at his own pace.

Apparently this bad ass of a man had a history of crime and more specifically handling stolen goods as the person that crooks took their loot to for sale after committing their dastardly deeds. Depending on who you spoke to, the story goes that he had also been involved in fraud to the tune of hundreds of millions of shillings which as a visitor to Nanyuki I had no idea about but which was however common knowledge in the town.

A person who I can only describe as a good Samaritan and intent on looking out for my welfare is the one that visited me at work and hinted to me that I needed to look for another place to live after giving me a summary of the ills of my landlord but she added that I was free to get independent confirmation from anyone else whom I was close to. I was confused because usually it is the landlord that investigates the tenant and not the other way round.

Armed with this snippet I went looking for confirmation that I was being housed by a delinquent. The information was confirmed through a very reliable source and I immediately began house hunting for alternative accommodation which I was fortunate to get the same day……..on the 3rd floor of an apartment complex in Muthaiga, Nanyuki! It also came out that his trips out of town were court dates in Nairobi.

When I informed him that I intended to move out for the reasons of water scarcity and my own safety……there was no way I was going to tell him that I knew he was a thug lest he shoots me dead……the promises came thick and fast of how he would install a water tank for me and hire someone to open the gate for my safety but I told him that it was too late and I had already paid for the new digs.

I feel sorry for his young wife with her two young kids who has to live in constant fear of her husband being jailed (again) and she having to look after the kids herself. The compound was in a veritable state of permanent lockdown with the gate always padlocked, with signs of CCTV surveillance (though I never saw a camera) and razor wire atop the gate….and a posse of very noisy geese to warn of any intrusion into the compound.

My biggest fear was that my landlord would convince the house help in my absence that I had agreed to keep something for him which I would eventually be found with only to be accused of handling stolen goods and I had to do what I had to do for my own security.

Now I know that in future you need to vet your landlord lest you find yourself caught up in stuff you had no idea about!

I am on a self-imposed travel advisory:

There is no other way to describe the shooting dead of someone other than to say that the movies glamorize the act of dying through a gunshot. Usually the person who is shot in the movies goes down and is dead before his body hits the ground, or else is able to make a last minute dying confession as his life’s blood ebbs away. But this was no movie that was being shot - pun intended- this is the real deal and real people has been fatally shot before our eyes and shocked the whole world.

But let me start from the beginning by firstly stating that I am neither a bigot nor a racist. What I am about to state is from the bottom of the heart of a peace loving and non-confrontational individual who is also a peace maker at heart and who loves humanity.

Like many of you I have watched the viral footage of those African Americans that were shot by white police officers leading to their eventual deaths in Minnesota and Louisiana whose only crime it would seem was being black American and male and who seemingly posed no threat to the armed police officers involved in the shooting incidents. This has traumatized me immensely for reason that I shall reveal.

This appears to the untrained eye to be the use of unjustifiable and excessive force in a situation which could have been easily resolved without the use of firearms. There is also no gainsaying that the work of law enforcement officers anywhere in the world is dangerous at best and risky at worst and that a split second decision when caught up in a confrontation with someone who could be hiding a concealed weapon and be liable to use it at the slightest dropping of the guard by the police officer is all it takes between life and death. The question on everyone’s lips now is would the same threat level have been perceived should the suspect been a white male American or conversely would the same level of deadly force have been used towards a white male suspect?

The resultant and unjustified sniper attacks on police officers in Miami in what was dubbed as a peaceful anti police rally that has led to the deaths of several police officers has also taken the world by surprise and now threatens to rock to the core the bastion of freedom known the world over amid loud calls to action for stricter control of gun laws in the United States. That action was totally uncalled for despite the levels of provocation that the black community felt in regards to seemingly unprovoked attacks on their community over the years. Is this the start of a civil war of epic proportions?

However that is not the point of this post despicable as the action by all those involved is, my point is to register the reason for my trauma ever since I watched one of the videos. This is the one of the man being subdued by two burly police officers one of who then draws his firearm and then appears to shoot the man at close range in the chest area then rolling off as the man now in his death throes makes feeble attempts to do something, anything as his life slowly ebbs away and all in the full glare of the public who were recording the whole incident. My trauma is probably being replicated manifold across the African continent where many have relatives and friends who are based in the United States.

It is one thing to hear of police officers fatally shooting a suspect but it is quite another to see this replayed in real life and it frightens and traumatizes those who are by nature squeamish and repelled by the sight of blood as I am. Those young men had families just like me, they had dreams and aspirations to see their children grow up into productive members of the communities and their society, they had dreams of being responsible fathers and parents and making a difference in the lives of their families but this was not to be as they have been felled by a policeman’s bullet at the prime of their lives.

I now wonder if I’d be safe as a visitor in the United States and if my African American and Kenyan brothers in law are safe in that country that they call home or if they might also suffer the same fate as has befallen their community member’s victims of tragic shooting incidents through no fault of their own other than supposedly being black.

I also wonder if my nephew who has recently joined college in that country is safe as he makes his way to and from school and his job with his car that may have him pulled over for having a busted tail light. What of my old high school friends who chose to make a livelihood in the United States many years ago and whom we regularly communicate with on social media and meet up with when they are visiting Kenya? Are they safe presently and will their safety continue to be assured?

I can only hope that reason prevails and that these incidences do not provoke an overzealous reaction by the police force intent on stamping their power and authority over a community that has seemingly had enough of their excesses over the years. If 9/11 is anything to go by it is likely that the authorities will want to tame what they fear may be a hot topic for years to come with some sweeping Senate legislation to back up any actions that they might take.

As things stand we had a planned visit to the USA next year with my wife which she is free to go for but which I shall have to put on hold for my own safety until someone, somewhere can guarantee me that I shall be safe in that country because a black man seems to be a walking and legitimate target for overzealous and mostly white police officers.

Accordingly and even as I mourn the senseless shooting deaths of the latest victims of police excesses in the United States I have put a self-imposed travel advisory on myself until further notice to the United States.

For now let me wallow in the difficulties of my own country anonymous amongst millions of other Kenyan males and unlikely to be stopped by police officers for the crime of being a man of African extraction. As for my male family and friends in the United States you need to remain safe as you move and travel around making sure that you do not fall foul of the law for the sake of the sanity of all of us back here not only in Kenya but across the African continent.

Even if I did not know any of the victims over the years I mourn with their families for the senselessness of it all and may God rest their souls in eternal peace!!

Was I a victim of a conman?

An old guy walks into the newest bank in town, he wants to open an account and it’s only the Manager that can assist him. So I see him.

He is one of these talkative types that can spend a whole morning shooting the breeze and says he is a big shot owning properties in various towns and cities across Kenya though his weathered looks, nondescript dressing and bad teeth don’t indicate it. I have dealt with enough old men over the years who have made heaps of money through their various business ventures at the expense of crooked or non-existent teeth. If you have so much money the least you should do is fix your teeth for crying out loud! He wants to open an account for a group of which he is the Treasurer.

He walks with a limp and has a fascinating story…………..why do guys with bad teeth have so much to say…………….. and why to me? He walks with a limp because he was involved in a serious accident on Mombasa Road a few year back as he rushed to his hotel somewhere in Machakos County where a deal worth millions was stewing awaiting his signature. This is where it gets interesting because the accident was a head on collision with a trailer and he was doing 190 km/hr!

I am no expert at these things but surviving a head on collision at 190 km/hr with a possible closing speed of over 220 km/hr between the two vehicles.....a trailer being one of them is fatal from whatever angle you call this one but I am just narrating what he told me. He gets comfortable; after all he has a rapt bank manager that wants his account and continues with his story...and by the way I didn’t bother to ask him what type of car he was driving.

He explains how after the accident his legs were badly damaged on impact but he somehow survived but was confined to a wheelchair. The experts and hospitals he visits in Kenya are not mincing their words and tell him that they need to amputate and he shall never walk again. One of the hospitals however offers him a second opinion of referring him to an Indian Hospital so long as he pays the full fee in Kenya of Kshs. 3.6 Million. By now he claims to have spent in excess of Kshs. 3 Million without any positive developments including specialists, operations and weeks in hospital recuperating from his injuries.

Long story short he finally chooses to go to India after talks with a friend and after sending his X-rays to one of the leading hospitals there for a second opinion and the Indian doctors tell him that they don’t need to amputate. They can instead do hip replacement surgery and after 4 weeks he should be able to walk again all this at a total cost of Kshs. 860K. I wish they had also told him that they could fix his teeth too for 10K. After a few months of recuperation back home in Kenya he is able to walk with the aid of a cane and now no longer requires it but the limp is permanent.

Then he gets into the reason why they need to open an account. It’s a safety net for him and 29 of his elderly friends many of whom don’t have the resources to manage a huge medical bill. They shall be contributing Kshs. 500.00 per person per day a cool Kshs. 15K for the group and need an account where they can bank this money and why not the newest bank in town. In fact, he goes on, they recently held a successful fund raiser for one of their group members who required Kshs.1.9 Million to offset medical bills after an illness and he is rushing to Nairobi for another fundraiser to try and raise the difference and, without batting an eyelid, asks me to chip in something!

That was 7 days ago, and they guy hasn’t shown up. I am not sure if he was a con man or not. I had thrown in some names of some people I know in Machakos and he had given me an elaborate history of one of them so maybe he does have a hotel in that county and he does know the people that I mentioned. My Kshs. 500.00 contribution to his harambee may have been in vain and may have gone towards buying a drink for his friends…..while laughing at the gullible bank manager, but I’d recognize him from his bad teeth any day and if he is a resident of Nanyuki our paths shall surely cross.

And that folks was my baptism as we opened for business in Nanyuki and I am now Kshs.500.00 (if truth be told it was a whooping Kshs. 1,000.00) poorer!

I am now resident in Nanyuki:

I’ve finally moved to Nanyuki. It was a journey that began almost 4 years ago with a sojourn through Nyeri for two and a half years.

It is a very cosmopolitan town much like Nairobi. The town has restaurants and hotels galore to cater for any ‘kabila’ under the sun. There are the places catering to the mzungu crowd at 350 bob a beer and those catering to the wazee at 160 bob a beer…..just like Nairobi. They have Indian and Chinese restaurants selling almost authentic cuisine…..just like Nairobi. All the mzungu joints sell pizza…….just like Nairobi. This is a town with a heartbeat, a pulse and always on the move despite the dust, clouds and clouds of the stuff.

In retrospect the Nyeri County government got it right with tarmacking the footpaths in Nyeri town because that is one dust free town when compared to Nanyuki……..even if, as it was widely rumored, someone made a killing in the process.

So back to Nanyuki. It took me some time to get a house that I felt mirrored my stature in society. After all a bank manager has to live in a half decent house in the better part of any town and by Nanyuki standards I think I nailed it. The house however is nowhere near the class of my abode in Nyeri which is a revelation given that this town is home to BATUK, the Laikipia Air Base and more high class tourist lodges and game ranches than anywhere else in Kenya and I had assumed would have better quality of residential facilities. At one place that I visited while house hunting, I was told that the entire structure 12 to 15 apartment units had been booked and paid for by the British Army and the developers were now redesigning the place to suit the needs of the soldiers soon moving in!

Put it this way, those who can afford a ton of cash for a house are well catered for as are those who just need a humble abode for amounts upto 12K in rent so long as you are not very particular with the surroundings. The rest of us in the middle are another thing altogether, we don’t have a very big pool to search from though that seems to be changing with a lot of residential construction that appears to cater for this missing middle about to be delivered to the market in the next few months.

The other day I met up with a potential client. After we had had our discussion it inevitably went around to the night life in the town and he wondered why he hadn’t seen me in the joints preferred by my age mates. He then went on to give me a list of the places that he thought I should frequent and mix with people of my ‘riika’, with an even longer list of places where I would be bombarded with loud music and youngsters and therefore should keep off!

Like the proverbial naughty boy who does the opposite of what he is told not to do I prefer to be a non-conformist and so last Saturday I visited the joint that was top on the list of places NOT to visit…….and I must say that I had a great time thanks to the funky music playing with a young hip hop crowd in a very well appointed setting. Granted I left fairly early by 10.00 am before the real noise started. It’s a place I’ll definitely want to visit again. On Sunday I visited the other place I was told not to frequent and I was also pleasantly surprised as it is somewhere I shall most definitely visit in future.

So I have my two bedroom house in a fairly upmarket location. Access is through a locked gate where the landlady also lives guarded by a posse of a duck and drake fearlessly unleashing a cacophony of sounds guaranteed to scare away even the most deviant of thugs should they decide to intrude on our little paradise. I have wonderful view of Mount Kenya most mornings as I make my way to work and I am still searching for that elusive barber shop who shall cater to my every whim.

Within the same compound albeit separate from the unit that I live in is an upcoming complex of 6 two bedroom apartment units marked with the ominous red “X” of the National Construction Authority supposedly for the developers not adhering to the authorities requirement of having a construction signage on site giving all the required details. Whether this is the truth or a cock and bull story, I’ll know soon enough when I get home and the complex has been demolished!!

And before I forget the bank has opened for business in Nanyuki. I’ll miss my work colleagues in Nyeri who threw a surprise breakfast bash in Nyeri last week where they gave me some parting gifts spiced with some equally kind words for being the absolute best boss that they have ever worked with……..or so they told me!

I’ll also miss my Rotary Club of Nyeri group that has been all the family that I needed when I was in Nyeri……..May you all live long and happy lives while keeping the Rotary fire burning.

I survived a dance with disaster:

Several years ago a local MP’s car somewhere in Yatta in current day Machakos County was swept away by a raging river as he attempted to make his way home one stormy and tempestuous night. All the occupants of the vehicle perished in that unfortunate incident with the mangled wreckage of the car being discovered several kilometers downstream the next morning.

Recently a similar calamity almost befell me and my wife one stormy night as we struggled to get home in Nairobi. Apparently due to a three hour continual and heavy downpour and with the storm water drainage unable to cope with the barrage of rain water and the culverts blocking due to the debris floated by the rains had caused the drainage to burst its banks and the resultant flooding covered the entire road. This has happened many times in the past with the water on the same road barely being 4 inches or so at the worst time that I remember.

Today however it was worse, far worse than I would have imagined. Having committed to crossing that flood that had inundated the road I ventured on into the darkness sure that it could not be more than 6 inches deep and therefore an easy crossing for a 4 wheel drive Subaru Forester vehicle!

I soon realized that the water was getting deeper and deeper with every forward motion of the vehicle. Soon it was almost covering the headlights of the vehicle at least a foot of flood water a bow wave preceding our forward momentum and the lights flickering with what I was sure was an electrical fault though it turned out to be the water lapping at the bottom of the headlights effectively blocking some of its glow. Almost in a panic I thought of all the social media articles on how to react in such a situation and the options available to me which were:

1. Stop and reverse and look for an alternative route home a sure way to stall the engine.
2. Charge the engine and gain speed to exit as quickly as possible another sure way to stall the engine due to the large bow wave and water getting into the engine compartment rapidly or
3. Continue at the same pace and hopefully cross that section of the road without stalling the engine but with a constant prayer on your lips looking to the almighty for his mercies.

I chose the final option and soon we were safely but barely out of the flooded section and home nervously laughing about our narrow escape and possible disastrous consequences.

I learnt several things that day that thankfully the water was partially stagnant and not rapidly flowing ensuring that the current did not float the vehicle and force it to veer off course and into the ditch. The other fear was that the flood waters may have cut of a part of the road which we could not see in the flood and darkness and hence we would be stuck on the road should this be the case.

Would I ever assume for a moment in future about the depth of a flooded section of the road in pitch darkness? I am not sure for now because ones instinct to get home is often so strong that you conveniently ignore any signs that there may be trouble lurking on the way more so when you are so close to your goal as we were that rainy night.

Even more intriguing was the fact that the door seals of the vehicle held firmly and no water seeped into the passenger compartment of the vehicle and importantly there appeared to be no engine damage either given that the engine turned over easily the next morning. That's kudos to Subaru's sturdy and well built vehicles.

By the time I was passing through the same section the next morning, the waters still had not receded and looking at the lake of water it was sobering that we had made it home in one piece and with the vehicles engine intact. I had dodged that bullet and there was there was no way I was going to subject myself to the same stress as the previous night so I used a different route to get to my destination.

With the ongoing rains and the possibility of running into a flooded section of the road here is a link to guide you on what to do in such an emergency.

http://smartdriving.co.uk/Driving/Driving_emergencies/Floods.htm

Be safe and vigilant.

The angry voices:

The angry voices startled me out of my reverie as I read my newspaper. It was the two ‘mzungu’ ladies that I had passed by, sticking out like sore thumbs in the gloom of the restaurant if for nothing else the bottles of Smirnoff Black Ice in front of them. They could have been students, tourists or missionaries in town for whatever reason but Smirnoff Black Ice at 1.30 pm just didn’t look right.

The reason for my piqued interest was simple. They were arguing with a waiter that it had taken two hours since ordering their lunch and there was still no sign of it. The waiter was imploring them to stay a few minutes longer and that the pizza oven was broken hence the reason for the delay. Their logical argument which I assume holds water in whatever country they come from was that if they were to wait any longer they were not going to pay full price for a meal that had taken two hours! They went on to argue that had someone taken the trouble to inform them beforehand that the pizza oven was broken they would have weighed their options and made an informed decision.

Now my interest was really piqued. They had mentioned pizza and I had ordered mine 20 minutes earlier and by my calculation it should have been ready by now. The waiter having seemingly exhausted his English vocabulary silently slunk away from the scene to be replaced a few minutes later by a chef in all his glory – top hat, rolled up sleeves and a towel tucked into his waist and all - who began a conversation with the ladies intent on convincing them to stay for lunch.

By now I was worried. How long would my pizza take I wondered silently and miserably. Was I going to be treated to one of those lousy services offered in many established restaurants in Nyeri town yet again? This after all was not just any restaurant but one of the better ones in town but with an unfortunate reputation for having very poor waiter service whether you are alone or in a group. It was also buy one get on free day on pizza but the crush of people you would expect on such an auspicious occasion was lacking thanks mightily and no doubt to the deplorable service levels at this hotel.

One thing I never understand is how a hotel can invest so much money in the CAPEX required to construct a hotel then fail spectacularly to offer services to the patrons of the hotel who meet the costs of managing and running the establishment. What loss of value to shareholders does such shoddy service do and importantly what does it say about the owners and managers of such a hotel?

How much does it cost to simply tell a customer that you expect some delay due to circumstances beyond your control and if they’d mind waiting? As a customer I believe that I am a rational and sane guy who just wants to be served professionally and with some decorum and basic decency. While I am not the yard stick by which tolerance can be measured as I tend to get quite antsy when forced to wait for a decent meal, it costs the establishment nothing by informing the client about any possible delays.

This reminds me of an episode a few years back where one of the leading Pizza eateries in Nairobi promised a free pizza if the delivery time from ordering your food to it being placed on the table took longer than 15 minutes. There was definitely something wrong on this particular day because my order took almost 20 minutes to be delivered. When I demanded a refund of my money based on the service promises, excuses became the order of the day that their pizza oven had broken down and hence the reason for the delay in service. I looked at the fine print in their info graphic and nowhere did it say “unless the pizza oven is broken” or any such disclaimer to deny me my rights. They even went to the extent of telling me that one of them would have to meet the cost of the pizza if I chose not to pay whereupon I retorted that it was not me choosing whether to pay or not but I was simply holding them to account for the delivery promise that THEY had made. I eventually got a refund but after all kinds of smiley faces came to my table to implore me to do the right thing and just pay for my pizza!

This time around there was no word on the delivery time for my pizza but it took almost 45 minutes to deliver to me by which time I had even stood up and was demanding to pay for the soft drink that I had consumed and forgetting about the food which had been preceded by my waiter approaching me to change my pizza order to one that was already ready – that the ‘mzungus’ had abandoned no doubt – which I flatly refused to accept. Mine had to be meaty and hot and the ‘mzungus’ pizza did not have any such meaty ingredients!!

My final plea to hoteliers is that a hungry man is an angry man particularly around lunch time so don’t keep them waiting longer than necessary!!