This archive report was first published on 3 January 2020.
As the world welcomed a new decade, Nairobi residents were dealing with a different kind of reckoning. For John Muniu, it was a Christmas Day car rental scam that left him reeling. He had called a firm, sent the money via M-Pesa, but the woman on the other end switched off her phone, leaving him with nothing.
‘Please don’t trust some of the car rental firms advertising heavily in the newspapers,’ John advises. He has the woman’s details and is willing to share them with the police, Safaricom, or anyone who can help.
But John’s story is just one of many troubling tales from Nairobi. Jimmy Thumbi, a concerned citizen, has been tracking a rise in police violence, including officers shooting people at will and a recent case of women locked up in a shop and burnt.
‘The many homicide cases involving police officers tend to show a force full of persons whose mental status is suspect,’ Jimmy says. ‘Do the recruiters ever evaluate the mental status of those wanting to join the armed forces?’
Meanwhile, in the quiet neighborhood of Mirema Drive, northwest of Nairobi, residents are being kept awake by noise pollution from bars. The liquor licensing authority’s decision to allow the proliferation of bars in the area has left homeowners, landlords, and tenants at their wit’s end.
‘We hardly get much sleep and we fear for our children, who’ll go back to school next week and will require some peace and quiet to do their homework,’ says a resident who wishes to remain anonymous.
And if all this wasn’t enough, Kisumu resident Opiyo Oduwo has been pointing out that we may be celebrating the end of the second decade of the 21st Century prematurely. ‘The second decade of the 21st Century ends on December 31, 2020, and not on December 31, 2019,’ he says.
