Getting It Coming and Going

Recently, my Kenyan father was unfortunate enough to get a real-life demonstration of the axiom that “no good deed goes unpunished.” Philip Ochieng:

We were crawling towards home when a man — who turned out to be totally drunk — suddenly zoomed into the street and knocked himself against my car. I do not say this to cast the first stone. Alcohol incapacitates even the most aristocratic of us.

So my first impulse was to rush him to a hospital. While he was being dressed (at my expense), I sent for my own crutches — we had obtained a pair when one of us fractured a leg a few years ago — and gave them to him.

Made a damning report

The next day I insisted that he be X-rayed and again paid for it. A bone was found broken. Meanwhile, we drove to the police station to record the problem — only to find that our friend’s relatives had already been there and made a damning report against us.

Their story to the police was that we had been driving carelessly and caused the accident. I don’t drive and, at least while I am around, my driver knows better than to speed, especially in the middle of a busy town like Kikuyu.

But when we rolled into the police station, my car was immediately impounded, making me immobile for three days. Why? Because, said the police, they needed to inspect the contraption — presumably because they had swallowed the yarn spun by our friend’s family.

Eventually the inspection yielded a puny little fault around a front light. Although the possibility of a faulty light causing an accident at noon seemed to me remote, I knew that it was impolite to pose such a question at a police station.

So when an officer informed me that I must “deposit” Sh3,000 [KES; roughly equivalent to $45 USD, but remember we’re talking about a different standard of living] in “bond” pending a court case, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to contest it either.

Why should I? Being a law-abiding citizen, I know the law like the back of my hand.

And I didn’t need to be Habakkuk or Amos to know that the magistrate would find my driver guilty of something and fine him.

Spending it on a good cause

I didn’t need to be Isaiah or Malachi to know the exact the figure — the very same Sh3,000 I had deposited.
But parting with Sh3,000 for a crime you did not commit is not the thing about it. For — from the theory book — I knew that the money would end up in the Treasury, where [Kenyan MP] Amos Kimunya would give it (legal) tender care before spending it on a good public cause.

Much more interesting was that our friend of the “accident” was not finished with us. We have since received a phone call from him demanding Sh30,000 from us to defray the costs of his hospitalisation and treatment.
In Kenya, when you voluntarily help a man out of a situation of his own making, what you get for it is not a “thank you” but a bid, by trickery, to turn your help into a fountain of cash.

And you thought we were saddled with a “Culture of Corruption!” Normally, I would have judged the drunkard to be a victim of misfortune also in that he and his family attempted to blackmail someone possessing such a public platform. But, of course, it matters not one little bit; the family in question probably can't read anyway and the essay reads as though all--great and small--are required to grease palms when caught in the type of trap which my father found himself in.

Though my father frames this series of incidents in the backdrop of a general perception of Kenyan societal perfidy, Kenyans, of course, are no more crooked than those of any other nationality. Certainly, the US has a large number of free-enterprise criminals and lawsuit-happy swindlers looking for the big payoff; and, of course, it has had its share of shamelessly corrupt law enforcement agencies. Unlike Americans, however, Kenyans can’t simply move to another city; they exist under a singular system which promotes the type of behavior demonstrated here. As my father portrays his country’s government, it is a classic African kleptocracy--affecting everyone from the top official down to the poorest citizen, seemingly with no escape, as demonstrated here. (The Kenyan government is far from the continent’s worst in this regard.) Therefore, the poorest citizen reasons “if the police/politicians can freely shake me down, why can’t I shake down the next guy?”

(Also, these poor see little of the international aid monies/materiels which flow into the continent. Everyone knows that almost all of the aid serves to line the pockets of the various groups of elites. Everyone except Bono, that is.)

Apparently it was the old man's turn to get caught in the crossfire.

Economic activists like James Shikwati are engaged in attempting to break this cycle. But, in the meantime, I’m guessing that Kenyans who aren’t poor keep a graft fund—just in case; while those who are poor look for ways to get their hands on those funds.

It’s got to be a tough way to live.