Strange ways of night watchmen

By John Kariuki

A joke is told about a dim-witted night guard at an apartment block who obeyed his boss’ instructions to the letter.

"Do not ever allow anybody in after nine," the boss reminded him repeatedly. And so one day the same boss came past nine. He hooted and demanded the gate to be opened. "I cannot allow anybody in here at this time!" his watchman responded, peering at his watch.

The boss raved and ranted, incredulously asking whose property it was. The watchman hefted his rungu, ready to do battle. Well, the watchman wouldn’t budge, and the boss had to go back whence had had come from. And then there is Papa Shirandula, the amiable buffoon who does everything wrong in the role of a watchman in a popular local television soap opera.

incidents galore

Never mind that he is perennially in debt and never tells anybody what he does for a living! Often he changes from his street clothes into his watchman’s tunic only a short distance from the gate to the premises he guards!

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Joy, a schoolteacher, regrets her association with one night guard at the institution where she works due to his nosiness.

Their friendship began with this man running petty errands for her. "He would rush to the shops and buy me matchboxes, candles and such small things," she says. But with time, the man’s behaviour began to get obnoxious. When her kin came visiting, the guard would drop in at the most inappropriate times to "greet and know them better". Joy says that she suspected the guy would come and wait outside and just knock at the door when supper was about to be served!

When her fiancÈ visited, the watchman came demanded to be introduced. "He told my fiancÈ about all the people who had set foot in my house in the whole year!"

She adds: "After he left I could not sleep. Several times I had a feeling that the watchman was around my house stealthily listening to what my fiancÈ and I were up to!" Joy says. "I knew it was time to kick him out of my life and I sent a delegation of wazee to warn him off the following morning."

Mitch lives in a city tenement block where they have guards manning the common entrance 24 hours. A particularly nasty guard would freely offer gossip to his female visitors until he tried this trick on Mitch’s sister. "I had been getting puzzled by the fact that all my female guests including my workmates only visited my residence once and were reluctant to come back," Mitch says.

Guard changed

Then one day his sister came visiting. Upon hearing that she was Mitch’s guest, the watchman went into overdrive with lies and innuendos unaware that they were related related. "He told her that I was a possible HIV/Aids sufferer going by the number of my female callers," Mitch says.

The watchman lied that Mitch often moved around with older married women. With his CV in tatters, Mitch approached the tenement’s management and had the guard changed.

He now traces his woes to the fact that he had refused to tip the guard ostensibly to keep an eye on his car in the parking lot.

Incidentally these ‘parking fees’ demanded by night watchmen are widespread in many social places. I have asked around and many revellers admit to parting with anything between Sh20 and Sh50 so that their cars don’t lose side mirrors and wheel hubcaps.

Kim, a regular customer at an upmarket joint in Westlands, gives the resident ‘soldier’ tips every day. "The guard knows this ‘beat’ well and the tips could mean the difference between me getting home or getting carjacked," he says.

A night guard in Nyahururu popularly known as ‘British’ says that silence often pays when doing guard duties. "I once guarded a building that housed an evangelist’s office," he recalls. "Every Sunday night, I would earn Sh500 by simply being at the right place at the right time!" he says. "The evangelist would bring a woman to his offices secretly. When the two left, I would be at the base of the staircase to bid the man of God a good night and he would reward me handsomely."

And while not waiting for clients’ tips to make ends meet, some night guards are quick to exploit some nocturnal entrepreneurial openings

Osama, a guard at the book ing office of a bus company plying the Nairobi-Mombasa route, thanks his stars for his job. "These buses deposit hungry customers between midnight and five in the morning and I daily set up a kiosk to sell them tea and bread," he says.

The business is certainly thriving for he has employed three people full time. "Besides travellers, we serve taxi drivers, twilight girls and pimps and other night watchmen from adjacent streets," Osama reveals.

Omwami, who guards an office block in Nairobi’s CBD, runs a different kind of enterprise, strictly after hours. He ‘rents out’ the corridors and staircase of the building as a part-time lodging to eager blokes and their street women.

"For Sh200 I open the building for them," he says. Omwami is however careful to vet his clients lest they jeopardise his guarding job. The street women visit him first and negotiate before bringing along their catches. And even then it is not every new woman on the street he will do business with: "I must know her well," he says.

Omwami also stocks condoms and on a good night he can make an extra Sh1,000.

Large family

On lean days he also opens his doors to twilight girls on the run from the police and council askaris — at a fee of course. Asked if he ever feels guilty for what he does, Omwami says he does not. He has a large family to feed, he says, and a watchman’s salary of Sh3,000 does not stretch far.

Kamau, formerly a guard at a girls’ a hostel in Nakuru, made his money in contraband. The hostel’s management run the place on strong Christian principles and was clear on what could and could not be brought in. But from day one, Kamau easily accepted to be used as the conduit for bringing in banned items like beer and cigarettes. He would add a mark-up on the prices of beer and cigarettes as his commission. "Many are the times I facilitated girls to sneak out and join waiting men for a fee," he says. But when his daughter joined Form One, his conscience started bothering him. "I got saved and left that job and have since started my own small business," he says.

Kashumeno, a guard I knew in a boarding school at the coast, used to steal time to attend matanga vigils for the dead. He would hang his overcoat on a tree and suspend a lighted torch in the arm. Next he would set his radio, tuned to an FM station, on the ground and leave. He would be back before anybody had woken up.

This went on for some time until the head teacher noted from his house that the night watchman never left his position even when it rained! One night he came out to check and discovered the truth. The chap was fired!

Absalom, a manager with a firm that hires out guards, agrees that watchmen’s salaries are so low the job is unattractive and hence the little commitment by those in it.

But he also points out that many people who employ watch men don’t brief them on their expected duties. "This lack of instructions creates a vacuum in which such fellows can fill in with mischief!" he says.

Besides, many people take up a guarding job as a last resort having failed elsewhere. "Certainly, their minds cannot be in that kind of work and they can easily be compromised."