Random blues: We don’t have to live or love, we just pray

 A National Youth Service bulldozer at a demolition site in Area one, Mathare

The expatriate is not always an entirely practical man. After all, since moving to Kenya, he has had numerous domestic employees to cater for his every need: cooking, cleaning, Land Rover polishing...

However, he remembers ‘the old country’, where any problem that might have arisen was usually dealt with efficiently and practically, often by means of functioning institutions. When the justice system failed back home in, say, the United Kingdom, he would rely on State and civil society organisations to correct things, achieving once more that balance in society for which a lazily contented country such as Britain is famous.

The progress of matters in the UK is generally as follows: society plods along quite happily; something odd or unjust happens; practical people intervene; things seem ordinary again, and so everyone British once more gets down to the usual business of eating pies and gulping beer, certain that the world will be fine. Still, something is done to right some wrong, whether it’s police incompetence, judicial slips, problems with the National Health Service, or whatever.

The expatriate arriving in Kenya might soon find that things ‘progress’ slightly differently here at the equator. Let’s imagine, for instance (it doesn’t take much imagination) that a particular stretch of road in the country is experiencing a disproportionate number of serious road traffic accidents.

Now, in many of those countries from which the expatriate hails, such a tragic occurrence might lead to some or all of the following happening, and swiftly: intervention from the police and other relevant authorities to erect warning signs prior to the black spot; the introduction of any number of effective traffic calming or road safety features; perhaps the complete redesign of the road.

In Kenya, we pray. Read about an accident black spot in the Kenyan newspapers, and you can be guaranteed that the next day, some local pastor from an oddly-named church will have gathered all manner of villagers in order to kneel down on the road and pray. Forget that this is in itself dangerous, doubling the deaths in one day if a truck comes speeding down the road, scattering the faithful left and right; what matters is that a prayer has been said. God has been alerted and, in the absence of any effective action from the ‘responsible’ human State or county authorities, it is now ‘in His hands’. The accidents will of course continue, but the anticipation is that God, hopefully more swiftly than a speeding motorcycle driver, will intervene.

Much the same is true of other concerns. ICC people (the accused, witnesses, PEV victims, whoever) all get their separate prayers. As used to be the case in medieval European battles, whoever comes out victorious has, it is assumed, ‘God on His side’. Excellent. Gays get prayers, when they don’t get stoned. The mentally ill get prayers. The poor get prayers.

We are extremely generous in our prayers. Sadly, like politicians’ promises, they are just words. Sometimes, perhaps by chance, they come true. Often, they don’t.

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