ARUNGA: The terrorist looks just like you

Mohammed Abdirahim Abdullahi is an ordinary-looking guy.

He smiles easily. He seems assured. He cuts a sharp figure in a suit. He is indistinguishable, really, from any other man on any street in Nairobi.

The only difference between him and the next guy is that he is a terrorist, and the other guy — maybe — isn't.

The Garissa attack has shocked the entire nation.

What was most shocking for me was that, for the first time, there was a name and a face to a terrorist — and not just that — this terrorist was someone just like me.

Mohammed Abdirahim Abdullahi was a law student.

I could have done law, if I had felt like reading those tomes. I could have been at the University of Nairobi. I could have passed him in the hallways as he went for daily prayers, as many did.

He was almost my age. We could have shared classes. We could have shared friends. We probably could have hung out at the same spots.

Can you believe it?

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NO LABELS

Killers do not have labels, as we have come to expect monsters to.

We think they are easily identifiable and creepy, as in the movies.

But that is obviously not the case. Sometimes, they don't look like killers. They like playing pool and wear well-cut suits. They have accredited degrees.

There is a common misconception that terrorists will look the way Osama bin Laden or the Taliban do in all those video clips — wearing a weathered kanzu, with an arafat wrapped around his head, in a desert, yelling threats and waving a gun about.

That is no longer Kenya's truth.

Now, a Kenyan terrorist looks like a typical Kenyan.

People have been asking how someone with a degree could ever be radicalized in such a way.

Perhaps you can tell when someone is going off the deep end, but generally, you can't, can you?

Unless you're part of a trained group of professionals, can you really see a terrorist in the making?

Having a degree doesn't mean you don't want money, or you don't believe in a cause — whatever reason it is one chooses to do something so heinous.

Many say that people become radicalized because the "cause" gives them hope, or gives their lives direction, where previously, it had none.

They are promised wealth, or wives, or a family where there was nothing before.

Though all this can also be seen as speculation. Anyone we could ask about why people do terrible things is dead.

I'm also sure some villains are evil, but others are just misguided.

Maybe Ababmo, as they called him, was misguided. Maybe he knew what he was doing.

But the fact remains — he killed many people, second-class honours notwithstanding. And he looked just like me.

NATIONWIDE OUTRAGE

Kenyans have been getting together, holding vigils and generally being outraged, online and offline at the fact that this happened.

It is not a small thing, to kill 148 people in one day at a university for no good reason.

And it is no small thing that Kenya has been, in the past few years, repeatedly subjected to debilitating attacks on our home ground.

Mandera.

Mpeketoni.

Westgate.

Kapedo.

We attack each other, or someone else attacks us. And hundreds of Kenyans die. Teachers. Students. Police officers.

There is a lot to be done in this country where security is concerned. But everyone knows that.

We all know police aren't paid enough. We all know our borders are porous.

We all feel unsafe, except for those with the benefit of armoured cars.

We all know that the rot in our system is so deeply entrenched that sometimes it feels like it would be impossible to rid ourselves of the "inherent" demon of corruption that is practically in our blood.

Will a wall on our borders help? Or bombing Al-Shabaab bases? Locking up people in modern-day concentration camps?

I don't have the answer. But something has to give.