Narco! shut it down

As soon as I saw the police, I knew we were fucked. It was a cool night--the kind where the breeze climbs off of the ocean’s crests and slaloms the alleys like an echo. The kind that slows your heart rate--softens the edges of evening shadows. It was the kind of night where you take a walk. So Sasha and I--bored, lonely, and sweating our asses off in the apartment--followed the breeze to the sea. During the day, Old Town swells with the family. My street is a collage of painted hijabs and tattered kangas. Children, too young for school, chase their mother’s calves, burning calluses into their heels, as they retrace the cracks in the gravel. Yet, at night, when the children are sleeping and the women are tending, it is the men who own the streets. With eyes filled with curiosity and skepticism, we were ushered through the back-alleys of Old Town. It was not until we reached the head of the path that curls behind Fort Jesus and ends at the brick wall overlooking the Indian Ocean that I saw the police. And it was then that I knew we were fucked.

There is, debatably, a law in Kenya that states that foreigners must carry identification at all times. I was having this particular debate with myself, while the cop, for the eighth time questioned our purpose for being out so late without a passport. My tactic was a conciliatory plea of naivety. Sasha, on the other hand, was stone quiet. Not the type to suppress basic emotion for calculated diplomacy, she had long ago reached her limit, and I was grateful that she knew to bite her tongue. It was on this eighth time, almost ten minutes into his questioning, that the cop informed us that he had the right to take us to the police station. But no one was going to jail that night. This was a mazungu shake-down, but we, both prideful and penniless, weren’t paying shit.

Kenyan police are notorious thieves. You hear the stories of foreigners stopped for visa concerns, or matatus taxed on dubious traffic violations. Here, if you have enough money, you can buy your way out of any crime. You hear these stories often and you become comfortable with it--there are some things you have to let go if you ever want to breathe normally here.

Things were going downhill. At first, I had assumed we would be able to talk our way home. Yet as the questioning drew on, and with the officer, no longer simply hinting, but outright threatening a night in jail, I was becoming increasingly concerned with the outcome of our conversation. I have seen the inside of the Central Mombasa Jailhouse. It is not a good place for two fragile and soft-spoken mazungus. So as the cop, yet again, threatened to take us to the courthouse, I became increasingly consumed with the implications of such an action for my psychological state and white blood cell count.

Luckily, the drunk man saved us.

He was a small Swahili man, with a receding hair line and a gut full of rum. You could smell him from Zanzibar. He wore a big toothy grin and a ripped, gray sleeveless T-shirt. “How is everything here? Is there a problem?” he questioned, as he approached us from behind. Unexpectedly, the cop seemed to recoil. His voice shrank--his tone, less direct. The cop, instead of shooing him away, explained the situation. Then, unexpectedly, the drunk staged a vociferous, if only moderately coherent, advocacy on our behalf. With the cop engaged in discussion, I grabbing Sasha by the arm, politely told them that “we are going to go now,” and left the two men to hash it out themselves.

Late one October evening, two officers pulled a friend of mine into an alley and tried to place two joints into his pocket. This petty abuse of power is indicative of a larger story—the crumbling institutions of governance, which not only fail to curb, but in fact promote, a culture of opportunistic corruption. It is jolting to look it in the eyes—nothing makes you feel more exposed than losing trust in something that you take for granted. Angry and bare we trudged back to our apartment. But there are some things you have to let go if ever want to breathe normally. And the monthly rent for our flat is more than a cop's starting salary.