Sakaja, please give us dignity and a place to go whenever we’re pushed to the wall 

A few days ago, an outraged citizen posted on social media an image of a man who was standing beside the road. Understandably, one might ask, “What is outrageous about a man standing beside the road?”

But the man in this image wasn’t quite just standing, nor was he merely beside the road. Indeed, his stand was extraordinary, one may say. For he was a bit far off, across the storm drain that runs beside many thoroughfares, beyond the narrow patch of refuse-laden grass and over the scrawny, hopeful, determined hedge that announces the beginning of private property on the other side.

Our man’s bodily orientation indicated resolve to ignore the road and its bustle of sundry standers, sitters, walkers, marchers, joggers, riders and drivers. He stood facing away, with his visage in sniffing proximity of a rough concrete wall before him. His shoulders hunched forwards, and his arms reverentially before him as though attending to precious or delicate presents of tremendous import. I use the term presents in the technical sense of instruments duly signed, sealed and delivered.

Muscular austerity

In fact, we could only tell from the image that the subject was a man, or a male figure, on account of attire and physique from the rear elevation. His chassis was notable for sparseness in the domains where the female form might be more abundant, and general muscular austerity.

Additional clues to aid this inference were obviously the attire on the figure: typical urban workman’s every day. Finally, although the figure’s hands were hidden from view, their putative positioning suggested that the figure was, prima facie, attending to equipment affixed at a certain portion of its frame, pointing to the possession of a specific set of instruments which, once upon a time in a maternity ward, might have compelled a medic to announce, “It’s a boy!”

In other words, the only way that the picture could make any sense at all was if we assumed the subject to be a man, who had taken an extraordinary stand, facing away from the public and in abnormal proximity to the wall, in order to perform a natural function that could be executed by a male thus arranged. The image was consistent with a man who had taken a break from his cross-city trek to relieve his bursting bladder by urinating on a wall beside the road.

Obviously, the person who shared the image had determined for us that this was indeed the situation. Furthermore, he had also declared that this unacceptable practice was commonplace and habitual in Kenyan male folk.

Beyond signalling his profound outrage, disgust and dismay, the person had proceeded to conclude that the inexplicably savage reflexes that impelled our males to resort to such brazen crudity are a tremendous impediment to the nation’s hope of modernising adequately to join the community of civilised societies.

To the officious observer, the figure facing the wall was another local brute, utterly incapable of mastering basic urges, and therefore prone to offensive bouts of preventable incontinence. 

A self-righteous commentator could hardly resist generalising the incident, and stereotyping Kenyan men, or even Kenyans generally by a proclivity to empty their bowels whenever and wherever the urge found them.

All our urban areas comprise private property and public facilities that are invariably inaccessible to the public. The rest of the space comprises roads. Spaces, where travellers can access lavatory facilities fall, are only accessible to a select cohort. 

Socioeconomic class is a key determinant of eligibility to access elementary human dignity. In public buildings, I have always seen toilet facilities marked “For Job Group P and Above” and wondered what happens to everyone else, let alone visitors. Private establishments forbid “idling”, or the enjoyment of utilities by non-paying guests, who are therefore deemed inadmissible.

A man walking from the Industrial Area to Riruta has only the road as the only space that accepts his existence. Whether he has enjoyed a meal or not, he must, at some point, answer the call of nature that none of us can for long resist. Whenever we cannot bear it anymore, we have to go. And there must be somewhere to go.

Voice of order 

The voice of order dictates that regardless of your physiological emergency, we must keep it all together until we find appropriate sanitary spaces. In taking that extraordinary stand, which elicited self-righteous pandemonium, the man in the image expressed, in his basic way, the fact that for him and his type, there is nowhere to go, when the call comes. That image, therefore, exposes the urban planning crisis that adamantly refuses to take human dignity into account.

I am happy that Johnson Sakaja pledged to give Nairobians “A City of Order and Dignity”.In such a city, it is not necessary for a citizen to take an extraordinary stand to salvage his dignity. Hon. Sakaja: give us somewhere to go, everywhere we go.

Mr Ng’eno is an advocate of the High Court.