Day 187 - (In)security

January 14, 2013 (Sam)

      The utility of accouterments such as shirt collars, cufflinks, and neckties has always puzzled me. They exist to help us look nice, but they don’t actually make any significant different in our performance. You can put a stuffed animal in a thousand dollar suit and that doesn’t make him a hard worker. This principle also holds true when studying the role of security guards in Kenya. They are stationed to provide a sense of security and professionalism, but like a useless piece of cloth tied around a neck, they seem to make no actual difference.

      While posted at the entrance of every supermarket, bank, mall, post office, gift shop, and hospital in Kenya, I have never actually seen one of these stalwart defenders of our security prevent a single crime or thwart a single attempt to smuggle contraband into the grocery store. They are simply there, it seems, to provide us with a false sense of security.

      One of our first interactions with these “security” guards was one of them trying to extort a bribe from Christina and I for sitting outside a restaurant without purchasing anything from inside. Another time, I watched a parking lot security guard actually accept a bribe from a matatu conductor in exchange for allowing him to avoid a busy intersection. These protectors of peace seem to be doing anything and everything except actually providing security. I have seen other guards filling car tires at gas stations, pushing shopping carts at supermarkets, handing out coupons at electronics stores, helping fill out deposit slips at banks, and most reassuringly of all, napping in the grass outside their posts in the middle of the day.

      Maybe it’s just me, but something about these pictures don’t give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside when we are living in a country that is under constant threat of Al-Shabaab militants. Terrorists are throwing grenades into buses and churches here and yet the security guards at the bus terminals and church entrances are waving me through the gates after their scanner wand metal detectors sound off like an spastic car alarm. Something here just isn’t adding up.

      I usually carry a pocket knife with me, but when passing through security checkpoints, no matter how many times the scanner wand beeps, most security guards will insist that it must be my metallic cellphone causing the disturbance, and wave me right past them without a second thought.

      Thankfully, amidst these otherwise unsettling images, there is one reassurance that I can take great comfort in, and that is the deadly resistance weapons that many of these guards wield. Today, I saw a particularly intimidating guard pacing rigidly back and forth in front of a gas station brandishing a broken timing belt in his brawny fist. I know that were a petrol thief to show up, he would properly beat the perpetrator at a consistent 3000 revolutions per minute.

      But all joking aside, if you ever travel to Kenya, rest assured; your security has been contracted out to some of the most effective-looking guards in the business. Their actual functionality may be a tad questionable, but hey, at least you know that if the supermarket is under heavy guard you’ll never miss out on any super-saver deals. There’s a stuffed animal in a thousand dollar suit standing at the door. Grab a coupon.