I've watched a pothole on Lamu Road in Malindi grow over the past year from a tiny crack into a massive, suspension-destroying crater.
Officially, Lamu Road in Malindi is part of Kenya's national trunk road network, specifically functioning as the local urban stretch of the B8 Highway. In simple terms, it is an important road used by everyone: the wannabe high and mighty in their luxury SUVs, and the rest of us on our bicycles, motorbikes and tuk-tuks.
As the crack slowly but surely grew into a pothole and then developed into a crater, those in charge seemed to ignore it completely.
Suddenly and suspiciously, one evening recently, a roadworks crew was dispatched to fill the pothole hurriedly. The rush job is clear to anyone who knows the road, and I am certain some are taking bets on how long it will take before the patch-up job disintegrates and we are back to the crater.
Away from this sudden roadworks, signs in other parts of town showed Malindi was getting a hurried, not particularly well-coordinated sprucing up. An overgrown court in the Buntwani recreational waterfront park was cleared of grass and weeds, though with the recent rains, they are growing back at an alarming rate. A pathway blocked by rocks was cleared, and the traffic police were studiously not harassing public transport as usual.
If you've lived in Kenya long enough, you're likely aware that an imminent VIP visit is driving this sudden, frenetic urban beautification. Sure enough, on the day the Lamu Road crater was hurriedly filled in and smoothed over, I learned that the Senate Mashinani roadshow was in Malindi.
This rush to clean up, hide messy items or upgrade house decor just before visitors arrive is known in Kenya as the ‘wageni are coming syndrome’. In other parts of the world, they have quite descriptive-sounding words for it, including the delicious ‘scurryfunging’, an old English word. The French say it all with the phrase ‘visite-stress’.
This panic clean is basically the rush to tidy up, hide messy items or upgrade house decor just before visitors arrive.
In our homes, we tend to move shoes, jackets and bags out of sight so the entrance looks neat. We might also fluff the sofa cushions, wipe down the coffee table and hide random clutter in a basket, preferably in what some homes term the ‘Forbidden Room’. In my experience, this usually means closing the door to a messy bedroom or office and declaring it completely off-limits to guests.
We will almost certainly put out a clean hand towel, ensure there is enough hand soap and toilet paper, and wipe down the mirror and sink.
Finally, of course, there's ‘vyombo vya wageni’, that special set of crockery and cutlery that only leaves the kitchen cupboards when visitors arrive.
This panic-induced deep cleaning right before guests arrive is a universal human experience. Across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Europe, people share the same unwritten rules when visitors are coming.
The thing is, all this last-minute rushing to impress people who will only be around for a few minutes, hours or even days fools nobody.
Because the ‘panic clean’ is a universal human experience, your guests have likely done the same thing in their own homes. For our visiting senators, I am certain the same happens in their home counties during such visits.
The Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman described this concept as Dramaturgy, the art, study and practice of dramatic composition and how stories are structured, interpreted and staged for an audience as a theatrical performance.
He spoke of ‘the Front Stage’. Your living room, dining area and guest bathroom are the stage. This is the area where you want to present the ‘ideal’ version of yourself: organised, clean and capable.
Then there was ‘the Back Stage’. The messy bedrooms, bathrooms or cupboards, where the real, unpolished life happens.
Panic-cleaning is simply a frantic effort to make sure your guests never accidentally wander into the backstage.
In the case of the pothole on Lamu Road, Kilifi county was probably driven by fear of senatorial judgment, just as a messy house can trigger vulnerability and shame because we fear guests will judge our clutter as a sign of laziness.
In Malindi’s case, the county probably feared that disintegrated roads might signal the truth of its tardiness.
