My day fighting corruption and incarceration

Lydia and I found ourselves emotionally drained this evening. Our day consisted of mob justice, holding cells, and corrupt officers.

Today's craziness has its roots in my commute two Friday's ago. I was headed to work and came to a particularly challenging intersection where cars have to fight their way through the cross-traffic. As I inched my way forward, looking back and forth at the oncoming traffic, I was startled by a police officer tapping on my window. Conversations with police officers are very common in Kenya. I am pulled over at checkpoints two to three times in an average week. But this had me a little worried because he pulled me out of traffic so he must have noticed an offense he could trouble me with. Apparently one of my brake lights wasn't working. He asked me to give him my license and pull to the side of the road.

Unfortunately, the back and forth that ensued is all too common. It had little to do with the offense and how it may endanger the public. It had everything to do with whether or not I had money to “make this problem go away.” I told him that I was grateful that he pointed out the faulty light and that it would be impossible for me to know its failure without someone like him showing me. He tried to intimidate me with warnings of impounding the car and putting me in jail until court on Monday. I told him I am happy to take care of this, but that I will be traveling an unable to make it to court. This got him all excited..."oh so you have money to travel, well you have enough money to get this problem to go away." I told him, "No, I have enough money to get the brake light fixed and I don't have money to give you." In the past, I have often been let go after standing firm against bribe requests, but today they were “cracking down on offenses like this.” I so badly wanted to ask why they weren’t cracking down on the rape, murders and corruption so prevalent in this city.

My unwillingness to pay the bribe got me taken to the police station where I experienced more threats of jail and impounding the car. After the third officer made the same “threats” I realized they were serious. Come to find out even minor offenses require you to post bail or wait till the court can take up your case. It is becoming clearer why corruption is such a problem – if you want to go the legitimate route it is going to cost you much, much more and take significantly longer. Why apply for your product to be certified by the Bureau of Standards and wait the six months to one year when you can pay a little something on the side? Why take a ticket and go through all the trouble and pay 2,000 shillings to the government when you can pay 200 shillings to the officer on the spot?

After agreeing on a 2,000 shilling bail I was let go. My court date was scheduled for this morning…in the Kibera slum. I was pulled over on the other side of town and I know the officer thought he would “stick it to me” by sending me to the court in the slum. It would have been intimidating if I hadn’t spent a lot of time there because of Lydia’s work and if several of my friends didn’t live there.

A wonderful Easter holiday on the coast had me thinking of anything but facing the Kenyan court system, but after our morning language lesson I went to face the music. Lydia went along because we anticipated it being a quick pay the fine and leave type of deal. Right along the main road near our home we hit traffic in an usual spot. A huge crowd was gathered off to the right. Then I saw it. A bat or stick swinging up into the air and back down. Over and over. Later, we found out a man had been robbed of a couple thousand dollars. The thief had been caught and he had been killed by a mob… that then ran off with the stolen money.

When we arrived at the court I remembered the police officer’s warning “If you don’t show up on Tuesday, a warrant will be issued for your arrest.” This got me moving quickly to find where I was supposed to be. After asking around, I found the right courtroom. I joined a crowd trying to push its way within hearing distance of the judge. Lydia waited outside and answered a fateful phone call. Being in the middle of a bunch of people I didn’t notice Lydia talking on the phone rescheduling a meeting. I sure noticed when two officers pushed through crowd out of the court and grabbed my wife by the arm and started dragging her through the courtroom and through a back door where all the scary looking defendants were coming from.

We both had no idea what was going on. Why were they taking her? What was going to happen to her? I didn’t notice myself yelling “kwa nini!” (why) in the middle of the courtroom. The officers tried pushing me back. I think they noticed pretty quickly that they were either getting both of us or neither of us. Lydia was taken back to the quintessential foreign prison/holding cell you see in the movies. Remember we are in a slum so the characters in there seemed pretty threatening. That’s when we both let them have it. We dug in our heels and said “No! We aren’t going in there. We are here because of a faulty brake light and this is ridiculous.” So instead we got to stand among all the criminals in handcuffs waiting in line to be called into see the magistrate.

And so began five and a half hours of not knowing what was going on and what was going to happen. Come to find out a little “Quiet” sign in one area of the giant court lobby meant that no cell phones were allowed and that using one was grounds for arresting someone. Which they tried to do to Lydia. After a call to the embassy that was comforting but not too helpful, we began asking every prison guard and police officer what was happening. Nobody was any help. The only help or reassurance we got was from those awaiting trial. Funny that we were bullied more by the justice system than by the offenders of it.

Slowly we began moving through the system. After a couple hours in the dark, smelly and crowded holding area, we were allowed to sit in the courtroom to wait to see the magistrate. His morning tea ran into lunch time. So after two hours of us sitting on a hard word bench he returned. My name was called. I was asked whether my brake light was faulty. I said yes. Paid a $25 fine. Waited an hour for a receipt. And then we were free.

We were grateful that Lydia was let go without charge for her supposed offense. Somehow though we felt offended and couldn’t shake the foul feelings of the place. It didn’t help when we saw a dead body on the side of the road on the way home. It was far from where the mob had been so I imagine it was from a separate incident.

I have lots of thoughts about justice hanging around. Like why would such a minor offense be taken so seriously while such suffering is taking place? What can be done in the justice system so that people don’t feel like they have to take matters into their own hands? As powerless as we felt in “prison” how must these others feel who have no advocate, no voice? We saw our day in court, but the thief’s case was decided by boiling blood. Will the other man’s death be investigated? His body wasn’t even picked up.

Please pray for the families of the thief and man on the side of the road. Also, I am praising God for getting us out of there safely.