DAGORETTI, KENYA—The day began with a national downpour that turned the clay roads of Kenya into red rivers of mud. One could almost believe the party bosses when they claimed it was the water that caused the ballots to show up late at polling stations from Mombasa to Mount Elgon. The federal election was still more than a month away, but the parties had waited until now to hold their nominations.
By the time my bus escaped Nairobi’s traffic and made it out to Dagoretti, hundreds — if not thousands — of confused voters were milling between the tall hedges that lined the village roads. The rain had stopped and they’d emerged from the schools and churches where the ballots were meant to be, wondering what had gone wrong. I had hardly arrived when Daniel Nduati, twenty-six years old and vying for a seat on city council, drove past; he stopped and let a bodyguard out to make room for me in his car.
We splashed and spun down the country lanes of Dagoretti. Daniel explained that the delay was due to one Mr. Karanja, chairman of Daniel’s Democratic Party, who was holding on to the ballots until Daniel and the other two civic aspirants paid him three thousand shillings. Strangely — the day’s first unsolved mystery – the man would not show up even after they’d agreed to pay the bribe. “We’ve been waiting since seven,” Daniel said in his usual calm voice, almost too quiet to be heard. “He keeps calling, but we don’t know where he is. Now he’s told us to meet him at headquarters.”
We proceeded at a snail’s pace. Dagoretti is a poor constituency, almost a slum, and Daniel’s car was easy to recognize; every few meters a small mob would engulf us and several hands would reach through the windows in search of a handshake, a shoulder to grab, a few shillings. “Just give us a little to eat,” they insisted, “we’re voting for you, councillor!”
Daniel shook their hands and gave them nothing. “They say that to everyone,” he told me in between mobs, smiling.
Kenyan voters are a hungry lot. The day before, I’d joined Daniel on a last-minute registration drive. We huddled in the rural backyards of Dagoretti, surrounded by scores of women (the only men were ancients or toddlers), all of whom were demanding hamsa in exchange for their support: “Money! Give us money!”
I tried, unsuccessfully, to change the subject until finally they gave up on me and focused on Daniel. He soothed them in Swahili, wrote down their identity numbers, and handed them the membership card they would need in order to vote for him.
“God, those women harassed me,” he told me afterwards. “I gave them two thousand shillings, and all they could say was we know you have more.” All told, the ladies got about seventy-five cents each.
At length we came to the Democratic Party’s regional headquarters, a miserable adobe shack painted with fading soft drink advertisements. Daniel’s competitors stood before it, two elderly men in leather jackets and felt hats surrounded by their supporters, but the chairman hadn’t arrived yet. Daniel and I waited across the road.
“Politicians refuse to spend money on infrastructure here,” he told me, as we both looked at the mud caking our shoes and pant cuffs. “The roads need to be paved, there’s no running water, power is unreliable. People know this, and they want a new councillor.”
The incumbent happened to be Daniel’s uncle. I asked Daniel how much of Dagoretti’s infrastructural woes could be attributed to the councillor rather than MPs or simply red tape.
“Sure it’s the councillor,” he said. “He’s in direct control of the funds the city gives the district for exactly this kind of thing. We haven’t seen any improvements at all in Dagoretti — my uncle is just putting the money in his pocket.”
Eventually the chairman showed up in a Mercedes. He was a small, crisp man, maybe forty, with a full head of tight black curls, and he carried himself impatiently despite the fact that we were the ones who had been waiting for him. He berated Daniel and the other two aspirants.
“You all knew about this days before,” he said as they reluctantly handed over their “facilitation fee.” Then Mr. Karanja took Daniel aside, put his arm around his shoulder and whispered dramatically into his ear.
“Listen, you know I’m on your side,” he told Daniel. “These guys tried to convince me to pull your name off the ballot, but I made sure you got on.”
At last, the voting could begin.
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