There are few citizens and residents in Kenya who are not happy with the removal of the curfew and there are few reasons for those who believe that a restriction in force for a year and a half has reason to continue for reasons solely related to the health emergency.
This does not detract from the fact that the cancellation of the night-time lockdown from 10 am to 4 am is causing some concern in the country.
In the face of the resumption of transportation (before the pandemic the data told of a nation of millions of commuters who travel long distances by public transport such as buses and matatu particularly at night, to maximize weekends, bridges and vacations) and the entertainment industry, we are preparing for new daily data on traffic accidents and fights by alcoholic alteration.
The economy breathes a sigh of relief, the VIPs are always pulling something else.
Restaurants and bars resume human schedules and can reintegrate employees in mobility (without any social security) or left at home. The producers of alcoholic beverages and liquors rejoice, not to mention the sex market, which here is above all the business of free professionals who also have a union, one of those most active in demanding the reopening of the night and its enticements to the public.
Tourism has an additional weapon to convince potential customers to spend a vacation in hotels, residences and other facilities, the discos of the coast can resume their beach parties, the nightclubs go on until dawn and those outdoors drill the eardrums with the "boom boom" even to neighbors, who will resume calling the police asking for respect of decibels, without being almost never heard, because most of the agents are frequent visitors of the same premises. Kenya is a young country, very young, and the night was definitely too small for all of them.
Health is definitely the least of the problems right now.
Even the Ministry in charge, the one most reluctant to reopen, had to submit to ineluctable data that speak of a week that began with an incidence of infections below 2%, in the last 48 hours even below one percent. These data are familiar to countries that have eighty percent of adults vaccinated, not 10 percent (Kenyatta yesterday said even 5 million, or 16.6%).
Ergo, Covid-19 is far less scary than banditry in Laikipia and Baringo counties, where raids were perhaps easier for armed thugs from other people's interests with no one around at night than with the reopening and a little more traffic.
It's called a curfew, but it hasn't covered all the wretchedness of this country.
So it is better to play openly, as Africa has always accustomed us to doing, and return to see the stars again.