Isn’t it time we said no to injustice
Nairobi is a big, impersonal and sometimes indifferent city.
Initially, it was planned to smile at and beckon visitors to its greenery and open spaces, cushioning them from the indifference of concrete and a mass of humanity ever on the move.
That was then. As somebody once said, progress and decadence are interchangeable terms.
In our city rot is never far from you and so is prosperity. Thugs rob people while passers-by maintain a splendid distance in the name of minding their business.
Policemen look the other way as the most flagrant violations of traffic rules take place. Politicians maintain strange silence as public resources are converted to private use. It is a tragic culture of fatalism.
Nowhere is this acceptance of injustice more manifest than in the service sector. If you are well off, you probably think an arbitrary increase in bus fares by Sh50 is something you can live with.
It happens whenever it rains with the goons who control the matatu business smiling all the way to the hooch den or wherever it is that they part with their ill-gotten gains.
Think of the poor mother, baby strapped on her back, who has to walk for ten kilometres because of such arbitrary changes in fares just because the skies have opened.
Think of the poor hawker who, after a day selling vegetables in unforgiving sun and dust, collapses into a tired heap only for members of Nairobi