From the pulpit to beer halls, it's a crisis of faith as graft takes firm root

I digress. Before I narrate the visanga at the pub, where someone tried to scam me by tripling my bill, even with the full sobriety of a single malt beer, we had trouble locating not just the place where we planned to retreat for the night, but also opening the pad that we had booked online.

Here’s the thing: Kenyans like to complicate simple things, like using keys to open door locks. And what we encountered at a lofty pad facing the Big Mountain was a set of digital commands that we couldn’t master—until the door’s lock jammed and the cockney voice on the recording urged us to wait for 15 minutes before trying again.

I called the landlady—the real human who owns the place and told her in plain language that I didn’t drive four hours to get hassled by an AI voice about when I’d access a room I had paid for. If I couldn’t get into the room immediately…

I left the threat hanging and the landlady got the message. She offered me a different room, four floors up, and she promised there was a key there—inside a safe at the door.

So, I went through the motions afresh, using the phone’s torch to illuminate the safe and punching in the code.

The safe opened but there was no key inside. Instead, the door to the house opened, and a real human being emerged, drawn outside by the commotion.

“Ala, that house is occupied,” the landlady said on the phone. At this point, my patience was running out and I was about to summon the landlady from wherever she was to come and open the door before I tore it down.

Thankfully, 15 minutes were over—it may well have been a ploy to distract me—and the code at the first pad opened at first attempt. And it proved to be such a nice pad, I have since called the landlady to thank her and ask her to book me again.

Back to the pub, where the young man of the house sat, sipping water to the blasting sounds of music that rocked the airwaves before he was born.

The waitress presented the bill almost surreptitiously, stuffed with serviettes in a glass. I pulled it out.

The bill showed an extra charge for a soda and a Viceroy in addition to the beers and water. The latter two items cost three times more than our original order.

I looked inside the glass. There was another bill with the correct items. Both bills were printed simultaneously, so it was a stunt. Pick the wrong tab and you are doomed; pick the right one and you save your cash.

This is what they call “systemic corruption.” It means a parallel system is in place—one for the business owner and another for the jambazi running the establishment. Hapa wizi tu.