Dear Uhuru Kenyatta, Most of this week i have been seeing you on TV and hearing your voice. I am not writing to ask for dialogue or nusu mkate so give me a few minutes to indulge you. I am writing to say i like your advert on security. You have a very strong and beautiful voice for commercials. The first time i watched the TVC I followed the commercial to the end and your voice stood out. The national anthem in the background is soothing to my ears and i want the song to keep playing longer. We indeed have an awesome national anthem. However, i wish whoever wrote that script put you in the shoes of ordinary Kenyans who feel vulnerable and frustrated. We are crippled by fear when those SMS and email alerts warn us that we will be attacked in traffic or when we are in church. We feel helpless when we think of our children in a school bus or playing in a school field. We are anxious when we have to work late and take a matatu home past 10 pm. The hijacking episodes give us sleepless nights. In that TVC, I really wanted to see you in our shoes - living our lives, living our fears. We ride to work in matatus, i would have wished to see you sitting in a PSV riding from Umoja to town or in a Orokise matatu from Rongai to Community. How about queuing for a bus home in a crowded street? or at Kencom? I wanted to see you getting into a shopping mall to do your banking, send MPesa, buy bread and milk from the supermarket or meet a high school friend for coffee. That is what ordinary Kenyans do. I wanted to see you walking through a busy street in Kisumu, Eldoret, Kisii, Nyeri or Mombasa. Normal Kenyan streets are where you brush shoulders with petty thieves, preachers, students, druggies, cops, terrorists, which-doctors, hustlers... Those are places the paranoid Kenyan upper and middle-class never go because they fear for their security. I wanted to see you walking through an open air market and feeling exposed as you shop for a track suit or a school bag for your 10 year old niece. You must admire the resilience of those entrepreneurs who shout their voices hoarse to attract customers or lure you with a KSh 50 discount! I also wanted to see you going into a police station to report a crime. Not the Diplomatic Police desk but a normal police station where the stench is enough to send you into a coma. A police station where officers dont smile and instead give you cold stares, where officers work from stuffy rooms with old files, store dirty exhibits, keep plastic bags (to collect bribes), compete for space with scattered mobile chargers and stinking clothes that need to be incinerated in a lab! When you say the CCTV images will be monitored from a central place, I honestly wondered if you were talking about a CSI lab. Are you atlking about the same officer who manually book crimes in an OB book? The same ones who cant type? Really? The Police Chiefs who cant make head or tail of a crime? I found it very difficult to reconcile the two. I know you are a very busy man. I will end by thanking you for making security an agenda. It should and must be a TOP agenda. However, that TVC needed to capture the reality on the ground. Meanwhile, I will keep enjoying your voice and the national anthem. My dreams are still valid Mr. President!
Posted on: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 06:40:34 +0000
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