How big of a sin is it to give out a bribe on a Sunday?
I understand there’s legally or morally no good or bad day to bribe but, this thing is so deeply rooted in our DNA that’s it has become the new normal.
It’s a beautiful Sunday morning, some minutes to midday, and the church service at Karen has just ended and I’m feeling like, something’s still missing. I kind of haven’t really found what I was looking for. Then, I remember of a church near Ngong Racecourse that starts at 11:30 and it being an African church, I bet its yet to start, or just did.
How about I check it out?
Sunday traffic is the best. What would usually take 30+ minutes takes less than 10.
Using a matatu would have been so much easier b’cos I would have alighted at Showground and crossed the street.
But, I’m not. So I have to go way past The Junction and to the Kibera roundabout to make a U-turn and drive back. Such an inconvenience right?
Thankfully, there’s this weird turn right before The Junction that’s poorly designed so everybody, on either side of the street, uses it. Going by its curviness you can tell someone from my side shouldn’t use it but, who cares, we all do it. As a matter of fact, I’ve seen much worse turns where matatus and big vehicles turn over the curb.
Barely a minute after I too had succumbed to the pressure of disobeying the traffic rule, some guy clad in khaki pants, black boots, luminous green reflective jacket and white helmet pops from nowhere into the middle of the road, flagging me down. Ladies, is it just me or is this not one of the sexiest uniforms ever?
I could have driven past him but I’ve heard stories of how good of racers they are with their motorbikes…and that, could be added on the offense sheet.
Right there, him and I, wasted a loadful of time conversing back and forth over nothing. Him threatening me with charges and court appearance or a simple kitu kidogo, I profusely refusing cos’ there’s no way on earth I was going to bribe someone on a Sunday. Right before I headed to church. Which was barely a minute away.
Our convo could surely make a great script and short.
I’ve witnessed many alike conversations. They tend to start with one party kujipiga kifua and the other mang’aa.
Alike Kübler Ross model, I denied the offence (there’s no way he has such an awesome eyesight that he saw me turn over such a distance – he must have seen me on the opposite side and Abracadabra, here I was), his anger when I denied the crime and refused to make his day or follow him to the traffic post, him bargaining for less chai, each dealing with a mild depression and taking a break from the other to think things over and finally his accepting and pitying me for being single, family-less and friendless that I had no one to bail me out.
It ended with him asking me to proceed to church and pray for a husband who can be bailing me out and I advising that he picks a bigger and newer vehicle ideally one driven by a man.
I’m not going to lie, had it come to the worst, I would have bribed, but I wouldn’t have proceeded to church.
As I think of how every Kenyan leader promises to fight corruption and we all cheer them on, I feel that we are all hypocrites. B’cos, when we think of corruption, we think of the big looters who siphon billions of Kenyan money into offshore accounts. But, doesn’t it all begin small?
Parents bribe head teachers to get their kids enrolled, upcoming politicians bribe their way into nominations, we bribe our way to get passports, traffic cops get bribed by drunk drivers and those with expired licenses and insurance, parents bribe their kids’ way to government jobs, businesses bribe their way to tenders, witnesses are bribed into changing their accounts, the media is bribed into keeping mum about real issues, siblings bribe each other into hiding stuff from parents, teachers are bribed into not disclosing the traumatic situations in boarding schools, leaders are bribed by the west into selling their country and her people, motorists bribe security guards so their cars don’t get checked, village criminals bribes chief’s into not administering justice,
In a nutshell, corruption, bribery, chai or whatever you call it has become so prevalent that it no longer seems like a crime, maybe on a Sunday.
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