Bandit Cops Of Nairobi

I have an unhealthy dislike for the police. It grates my heart and mind in a weird sort of way because I can’t turn this dislike into something useful. I am pretty sure scientists would have found a way to harness my hatred and turn it into electricity. Unfortunately, they are busy with important things such as searching for pictures of naked wires on the internet. It isn’t even a marketable 21st-century skill. 

I have been kidnapped (I can’t call it an arrest) several times by police. As per their usual MO (modus operandi), they ask you to pay ransom for you to secure your freedom. If you have never thought deeply as I have, freedom is the second fastest-selling product in the world after Jesus. And if you give a gun and uniform to a person to a person who uses his brains purely for aesthetic purposes, people will get arrested for peculiar reasons. For instance, a friend of mine was once arrested for allegedly walking like a Chinese. 

The reason for my last kidnapping incident is even weirder than fiction. I was kidnapped in connection with J.P. Magufuli’s death. I am not making this up. I am also not abusing any mind-altering substances. My conscience is crystal clear as I type this. The boys in blue appeared without warning, proudly donning their ugly uniforms and armed as though we were hardcore criminals. Thinking about it now, we actually were. Imagine a whole head of state lying in state. 

They began joking with us, pretending that they were humans. How they fooled us!!! A police officer can go from human to a police officer in approximately 3.59 seconds. You barely even notice it. All you notice is you being hounded into the back of a police pickup, escorted with the vilest insults ever known to man. It seems they teach it in their curriculum assuming they have one. 

The police are also taught one very important slogan: gari ya polisi haijai. We were forced to stack ourselves like crates every time they kidnapped more people. When they were satisfied, the police pick-up made its way to the station. It was then that we knew why we were being kidnapped. 

“Don’t you know Magufuli is dead!!?” One of them kept saying. We all kept quiet since we could hardly breathe. 

It was during the Covid period with the curfews and the social distancing nonsense. It beat logic that we were crammed in a police pick-up when we were required to keep social distance. But then policemen and women aren’t known for logic. It just isn’t their strongest suit, which probably makes them more qualified.

I do not dispute the fact that there are good cops. However, you will never meet them because they give the rest a bad reputation.