Log into your member account to listen to this article. Not a member? Join the herd.

“Jamaa, si hukubali vitu nyingi sana sababu yaani society inatuforce tukubali.” – Nonini

Once, not long ago, I was sitting on a bench in Central Park. It was the end of Ramadan and there was a certain feeling in the air; The weather was crisp, the grass was green, and the ice cream sellers were happy. The Park was full, crowds of Muslims breathing in the celebration of the end of the fast. A group of young Muslim men were sitting on the grass, drinking soda, talking to each other, being. Two men approached them, leaning down to talk to them. Friends of theirs, also revelling in the joy of Eid al-Fitr, I thought. The man seated on the bench next to me corrected me. Kanjo, he offered.

I looked at him.

He continued. “Ona wamekuja wawili. Mmoja wa kuongea, mwingine wa support. Watauilizia ID. Lakini si ID wanataka.”

My face was blank.

The man, my bench buddy, spoke again. “Watu huweka ID wapi? Kwa wallet.”

Shit.

At that point I realized what he was saying. Rule Number One of being a young man in Nairobi: Don’t keep your ID where your money is. Because you don’t want to ever lose both at the same time. Of course, the shadow rule is, Don’t question this colonial mentality of having to walk around with identification documents. Kipande.

Another time, a friend and I are talking about running. This particular friend is an athletic type, obsessed with split times and running regimens and Eliud Kipchoge. He says, “Do you ever, when you are in the CBD, wish that you could run? Just put your bag on the shoulder and pound the pavement up Kimathi Street?” He smiles at the excitement of this thought. I wonder how that would look like, a male six-footer with long shaggy hair, dressed in shorts and sneakers and a hoodie, running up, or down, any street in Nairobi, with a bag on his shoulder. All that needs to happen is for someone, one person, to shout, and that’s the last time one ever runs in the city.

Rule Number Two of being a young man in Nairobi: Never, ever, ever, run in the city. It doesn’t matter how late you are, how much you need to meet Mr or Ms. So-and-So at what time, whether your cardiologist told you running will be good for your heart. To run as a young man on the streets of Nairobi is to confess to a crime, and to be a running criminal on the streets of Nairobi is to run for your life. Caveat: Even brisk walks are suspicious, unless performed while wearing a suit.

Yet another time I am walking in town, heading to meet a friend. It is a Sunday morning, and the streets are void of the usual weekday foot traffic. Walking past Koja Mosque, I walk past a group of police officers and they call me back.

“Kijana, uko na nini kwa bag?”

This is not the first time I have been stopped by police officers on the streets asking about my bag. “Ni vitabu tu.” I open my bag, or they open my bag, and indeed niko na vitabu tu kwa bag. When I was new to the city, I used to walk around with a laptop, or an iPad, or something. This is a rookie mistake of course, because any veteran of the streets of Nairobi will know not to walk with a laptop or an iPad or something in their bag, because doing that leads to another conversation. Kijana uko na nini kwa bag becomes kijana hizi umetoa wapi which becomes tutembee tuongee kidogo.

Another rule of navigating the streets of Nairobi as a young man: Expect that police officers will randomly, or not-so-randomly request for you to open your bag, and you will, despite any inclination to point out that the Constitution does not allow for such impromptu searches of one’s person, open your bag to be searched. Unless you are in a suit. A caveat: Pointing out that such impromptu searches are illegal is a moot point because, “Ati una rights? Me naona una wrongs.”

And so walking the streets of Nairobi becomes an exercise in navigating unspoken rules and nuances that no one ever warned you about. You discover that, suddenly, when you read about two young men, University of Nairobi students on their way to the HELB offices, were shot by the police at Globe roundabout. You realize that on another day, walking down Globe from Ngara that could have been you.

When you hear about young men shot dead by state machinery in Mathare, young men who look like you, and probably dress like you and sound like you, who but for the fate of class could be you, you sit and wonder whether that could have been you. And you decide, because you have the choice, that you will not venture into Mathare. When, some time after the elections, the governor of Nairobi announces a plan to weed out muggers from the city, you realize that, because of how the profiling system of the security machinery of the country works, because of your height and your build and your hair and how you dress, you are seen as a mugger. And so, as long as the security operation to weed out muggers from the city is ongoing, you wear a tie and official shoes and limit the occasions when you walk in the city. You take cabs more than you usually do, because you can. Your friends will comment on the sudden change on your fashion style, and you will say, vaguely, “Ni manguo ndio chafu. So ilibidi.”

Being a young man in Nairobi is the realization that you now have stories you can beat with your young male friends about how people like you were profiled in the city. A friend tells you that, because of his dreadlocks, when he walks down Moi Avenue or Tom Mboya Street or Ronald Ngala or any of the other alleyways and vichochoro that litter the city, cops accuse him of being a Mungiki.

Another friend talks about how he has spent time in the back of Rashid’s Probox. Yule yule Rashid wa vigilante pale Eastleigh. Another friend tells you, how when he was arrested for walking home, a crime also known as loitering, he stayed in the cells for the entire weekend because he didn’t have money on him. You will laugh at this story, at the ridiculousness of it all, because that is the only way to make light of these situations. You laugh, and make memes and share funny tweets and tell yourself, bora uhai. But then what happens when this profiling threatens your uhai?

And so you walk the city. Dusman Gozanga walked the city in Meja Mwangi’s The Cockroach Dance and you wonder how different the city’s moods are from the city you walk in. Down Moi Avenue, up Muindu Mbingu, across Ronald Ngala. You experience Nairobbery in the ways everyone does. You learn not to carry heavy bags. You discover that, when, at midnight you are walking from one of the numerous chips dens that litter the city, a street boy will warn you not to venture down a particular street because kuna makarao huko, you will trust this stranger more than the police officers who are supposed to ensure your safety. Utumishi kwa wote is not utumishi to you.

It is important to note, however, that profiling is an important tool in police work. Whenever a crime is committed, police officers will actively take part in both Be On The Lookout (BOLO) profiling and psychological profiling. BOLO profiling is the act of providing a specific description of the suspect of a crime based on eyewitness accounts. For instance, after a robbery, police officers may review CCTV footage and release the following description:

Suspect, a young man, was last seen running away, with brown bag on his back. He was wearing a green hoodie, a black pair of shorts and white sneakers. He has an afro and walks with a slight limp.

Thus, from this description, the police officers will be on the lookout for people who fit this description and seek to bring them in for questioning. On the other hand, because the police officers lack eyewitness accounts and have no idea how the suspect looks like, they will try to construct an image of the suspect from their behaviour during when committing the crime. For instance, if the robbery took place in a store with female employees, and the female employees were sexually assaulted, the conclusion might be that the primary suspect of the robbery is male.

Still, police work is not merely considered with solving crime; it is also concerned with crime prevention. Ergo, predictive profiling. According to Chameleon Associates, a security firm which trains security personnel in various areas of police work, their course in predictive profiling “provides security and law enforcement officers with the tools and skills to effectively assess threats in their operational environments. Trainees come out with the ability to articulate “gut feeling” into clear definitions of Suspicion Indicators and Adversary’s Methods of Operations allowing the organization to avoid liability issues and increase overall threat mitigation capabilities.” For example, a police officer may be aware that drug peddlers in Nairobi are usually young men who dress in loose-fitting hoodies, jackets and jeans, who walk around with bags, have shaggy hair, and walk down Ronald Ngala Street at three in the afternoon. Thus, the police officer will position himself on one end of Ronald Ngala Street and watch out for a young man who fits this description. In most countries, predictive profiling is not frowned upon. Rather, it is considered excellent police work. At the same time, in most countries, such impromptu stop-searches are only legal if the police officer has a search warrant, or they can prove probable cause. Trying telling this to Nairobi security officers. Kijana unaniongelesha ni ka wewe ni nyanyangu, nitakuingisha kwa Mariamu.

When the British colonial government was in power, one of the things that were criminalized was the act of Africans being poor. Thus, loitering and vagrancy became punishable offences as they indicated that the person in question lacked a fixed abode and was therefore a nuisance to the peace. Successive national and local governments inherited these laws and people were profiled on the basis of their class, where indicators of upper classness (the right clothes, the right English, working in an office, etc etc) became the desired while indicators of poverty (loitering, the shabbiness of one’s dressing, the wrong language, etc etc) became the undesirables. Into this reality of their poverty being a crime, young men from Mathare and Kibera and Kawangware and Dandora enter, unaware that their very being, their youngman-ness is a second, bigger crime. You could be unaware of the rules of existing in Nairobi, and you go about your business, and in the evening we hear reports of a young man, a suspected gangster, shot while fleeing arrest.

Still, I walk the city. Homo Nairobi Mobilae. Route 11. I walk the city because I am aware of the biggest rule of being a young man in Nairobi: Thou shall know your Englishes. I walk because, after the initial search in my bag, my English projects that I am not a danger, that despite my bag and my hair and my age and my complexion and my height, my English communicates that I belong in this world, that while I am guilty of being a young man on the streets on Nairobi, at least I am not a poor young man. And I think of the fresh stories I will have to beat to my friends, all the while asking, when I will ever stand up for myself against endless waves of profiling and kijana, uko na nini kwa bag?, When I will ever kataa hiyo, and what does standing up for myself, kukataa hiyo, looks like.