Still in the dark over Westgate

"There’s a robbery going on at Westgate,” my WhatsApp messaging service buzzed on Saturday, September 21, 2013, shortly before 1pm.

I was on my way to Nation Centre. Within a short time, however, it became increasingly obvious that something much bigger and terrifying was afoot at Westgate.

By the time I got to the office, my “partner in crime”, Victoria Rubadiri, had turned her routine Saturday 1pm newscast into a breaking news operation. The editor, Emmanuel Juma, scrambled a satellite news truck and crew together and sent them off to Westgate.

I cancelled my afternoon and dived headlong into the unfolding news event, initially helping produce and then eventually relocating from the gallery into the studio to anchor our coverage.

NTV Uganda cut its programming to simulcast our coverage, while CNN and Al-Jazeera were intermittently picking our feed as the world’s attention shifted to a hostage situation straight out of the movies.

I considered dedicating most of this column to the 67 people who died in the terrorist attack. It would be a symbolic undertaking, naming each of them, attempting to escape the journalistic practice of reducing individual stories to statistics.

A year later, we’re not any closer to knowing with any degree of certainty what exactly happened at Westgate from midday that Saturday to the middle of the following week.

Will we ever know? Probably not. Do Kenyans, and the citizens of at least 10 nationalities who were killed, deserve a full account? Absolutely.

I’m a natural sceptic, mostly as an occupational hazard, but this is the time for everyone else to doubt. That is the only way to make sure this doesn’t happen again, by pressuring authorities to come clean and declassify those “top secret” and “confidential” files.

It is also the best we can do for the memories of those who died at Westgate.

For America, 9/11 was a turning point in how it relates with the world, with itself and with those that would do it harm. Through deliberate action, it has forced the world to broadly categorise the terror narrative in two periods: pre-9/11 and post 9/11.

Ironically, Kenya’s police, based at Nairobi’s aptly named Vigilance House, couldn’t be further from their building’s intended purpose.

From where I sit, they could be playing games on their computers all day (if they have computers) and counting down to going home. Or running their matatu businesses, it’s all the same thing.

President Kenyatta has said all the right things about hunting down those behind the cocktail of attacks we’ve had since Westgate.

What he needs to do now is talk less and act more to assure Kenyans that we are safe from those who plan to take us down and send a message to those plotting against us that we are strong and secure, as we claim to be.

I don’t want to spend another whole night in the studio counting as bodies are pulled out of anything in Kenya. I want to sleep easy, confident that I am protected. We can’t continue treating Westgate as an “ordinary” robbery.

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WILL 'DEAD BEAT' THRASH THE MONEY OUT OF DADS?

What does a man who shirks his responsibility as a father fear most? Public shaming, apparently. Just look at the rise and rise of the Dead Beat Kenya Facebook page, with nearly 200,000 likes in just a few weeks.

It is a closed group in which the administrator, Jackson Njeru, posts texts and pictures submitted by mothers about fathers who refuse to support their children.

They are mostly everyday people with everyday jobs, with a few “prominent” people thrown in for flavour. Once one is exposed on the page, the members chime in with their razor-edged comments and advice for the women.

It is hard to tell how effective this is, considering how hard it is to vouch for the authenticity of the stories (comedian Sleepy David says he doesn’t even know a woman who accused him on the page), and whether the deadbeat fathers are shamed into paying child support after appearing on the page.

But there’s no shortage of snark either, with a deadbeat dad warning a woman about to mulika him on the page that she should go ahead and then she can find out if their child will eat the likes and comments. It’s a joke, of course, but you get the idea.

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WELCOME TO KENYA, CHINA'S NEWEST PROVINCE

There are some shiny new buses shuttling passengers from planes to the temporary international arrivals terminal at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

I had just got off a long-haul flight last week and walked into one of those, partly absent-minded and fully grateful for the privilege of coming home, when I was shocked back to reality by a female voice in the deepest Chinese accent you’ll ever hear announcing that the bus was now moving.

My face made contact with my palm and I shook my head in amusement and embarrassment. When we arrived at the terminal, the voice had more instructions, giving us time to appreciate its Chinglish.

Everybody burst out laughing, a rare moment of mirth in the dull arena of international travel. Inside, the immigration queues were separated by colourful banner ads for a Chinese mobile phone manufacturer. Welcome to Kenya.

Madowo is the Online and Technology Editor at NTV. He is also a weekend news anchor and host of the Friday night chat show #TheTrend, as well as a radio show on Nation FM on Sundays from 2pm. Email him on [email protected], or blog feedback at www.nation.co.ke.