A Bitter Taste of Corruption

These last few weeks I have had the blessing of being taken under-wing by the Head Chief of the Ngorika area. This has been awesome for many reasons:

Firstly, he is an amazing leader. He refuses to use a pikipiki (motorbike) or take a car when visiting any part of his constituency. His reasons are that by walking he is able to greet and have conversations with individuals as he heads to his destination. People feel more comfortable coming up to him and discussing policies and issues.

This leads to the second reason—he knows EVERYONE. I have met many leaders within the community and he is always explaining to people why they are seeing a White guy walking around their town. This gets my name and purpose out into the community which will be so valuable later on.

Lastly, he is constantly looking out for me and is just fun to be around. He always has a story for something that has happened and is an amazing source of cultural and social information for this area. Anyway, all this to lead into a story about one of my outings with him.

Last week he had obligation at the District headquarters in Nyahururu (yeah, say that 10x slow… nyah-who-rue-rue) and asked me to accompany him so he could show me some of the surrounding area. Along the way we were stopped at a Police Check-Point. There was some discussion and then I catch the stopping police officer rubbing his fingers and thumb together and gesture in my direction then hear; “He is with me and I am the Chief of Ngorika!... yeah, that is what I thought” and then we take off again. Then he turns to me and says “You know there are many, many bad police officers here in Kenya, that isn’t the last time you’ll see something like that.” Apparently the officer who stopped us saw me (as a Mazungu) and thought I had perhaps was paying them to transport me. As such, he was trying to black mail them into giving him something or else he would cite them for some made-up reason. Crazy. I could not possibly fathom what would have happened if I had not been with the Chief.

Since then I have been keeping my eyes out for other such instances of corruption. Many times I have seen the Matatu Touts placing money under the driver’s side door handle, under their ID, or in various other places when they are stopped at Police Checks so as to pay off the police officers to avoid fines for real or imagined law abuses.

It’s one of the many injustices that take place that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I hope that the case never occurs again where I may have to face it first-hand and not have the Chief with me…