There are nights when a gentleman leaves his social club, drives home peacefully, retires to bed and awakens the following morning with nothing more remarkable to report than that the Almighty has graciously preserved his life for another twenty-four hours. And then there are nights when an otherwise uneventful journey develops complications of such unexpected character that the traveller discovers, almost against his will, that he has participated in a drama whose principal actors were assembled without rehearsal, whose proceedings unfolded without a script, and whose conclusion would have delighted even the most accomplished practitioner of judicial comedy. Such was my experience in the early hours of Saturday, 31st October 2026, when, having unwound rather longer than usual at Mombasa Sports Club, I found myself approaching Makupa Bridge at approximately 12:40 a.m., entirely unaware that the Kenya Police Service was about to undertake an investigation into the chemical composition of my breath, apparently prompted, at least in part, by a circumstance I had never imagined could excite official suspicion: the extraordinary impropriety of greeting a police officer with excessive friendliness!
Mombasa Sports Club has long provided me with something more valuable than the ordinary pleasures of social recreation. It is one of those agreeable places where the day’s exertions gradually loosen their grip upon the mind, conversation flows without the tyranny of official schedules, and thoughts quietly gathering in the recesses of one’s being begin to assume the first indistinct outlines of literary expression. My favourite beverage is sugarless lemon tea, sometimes accompanied by a single samosa and sometimes by none, but invariably attended by a one-litre bottle of Keringet water. On this particular evening, I had taken my customary tea, partaken of precisely one samosa and maintained the faithful companionship of my bottled water. While the world pursued its various forms of exhilaration, I was content to contemplate the affairs of men, the contradictions of society, the follies of government, the mysteries of Scripture and the inexhaustible comedy of human behaviour. It is often there that an article first announces its coming, not as a fully formed composition, but as a faint gathering in the distance, like the little cloud which Elijah’s servant saw rising out of the sea, “like a man’s hand,” in 1 Kings 18:44. At first there is scarcely anything to see: an observation, a contradiction, a curious turn of phrase, an incident whose significance has not yet disclosed itself. Then the cloud begins to gather substance. Letters answer an unseen summons and assemble into words; words find their companions and coalesce into sentences; sentences gather momentum and compound into paragraphs; and paragraphs, acquiring coherence, inevitability and cumulative force, advance across the landscape of the mind until the little cloud has become a great rainstorm of thought, ready to descend upon the republic of letters as another article! Thus do some of my literary excursions begin, not in the solemn confinement of a study, but in the relaxed company of lemon tea, an occasional samosa and a faithful bottle of Keringet water. Little did I know that on this particular night, the Republic itself was preparing to contribute the next cloud, complete with four police officers, a reluctant interior roof light and an instrument that would eventually be called upon to distinguish between alcoholic intoxication and the exhilaration of a cheerful Christian!
Having finally taken my leave of the club, I proceeded homewards and negotiated Makupa Roundabout, whereupon the darkness ahead suddenly dissolved into an unusual concentration of crimson brake lights. Vehicles were slowing, gathering and coming to a halt in a manner suggesting some obstruction farther along the road. My first thought was that an accident had occurred, and I began reducing speed accordingly. But as I drew nearer, the explanation became apparent. The police had established a checkpoint, and motorists were being subjected to inspection. It was at that precise moment, as my foot descended upon the brake pedal, that an earlier encounter with the police flashed across my mind, accompanied by a small but unmistakable pang of regret. The Christian music! Good heavens, why had I not switched on the Christian music? For on a previous occasion, at another roadblock, the presence of Christian music inside my vehicle had produced a result so agreeable that I had departed not merely as a motorist permitted to continue his journey, but almost as a man entrusted with an ecclesiastical commission!
On that earlier occasion, I had approached a police checkpoint with Christian music playing inside the vehicle, and one of the officers, having heard it, engaged me in conversation. Whatever impression the music created in his mind, it was evidently favourable, for instead of pursuing an elaborate examination of my person or vehicle, he asked me to pray for the police and for the country. He then instructed his colleague to allow me through. Imagine the delightful transformation! A gentleman had approached a roadblock expecting the ordinary formalities of traffic inspection, only to discover that the officer was more interested in securing intercession for the nation than in prolonging his journey! The policeman had apparently concluded that the burdens of law enforcement and national affairs were sufficiently formidable to warrant reinforcement from heaven, and I had been invited to contribute through prayer. I drove away touched by the request and amused by the circumstances in which it had arisen, remembering the apostolic exhortation in 1 Timothy 2:1–2 that supplications, prayers and intercessions be made for all men, including those in authority. The officer had asked for something Scripture expressly commends, and I had been happy to oblige.
Now, approaching Makupa Bridge, I remembered that earlier encounter with the regret of a man who has inadvertently left his most persuasive character witness behind. The music system was available, and I could presumably have summoned the familiar sounds of worship within seconds, but the opportunity for a natural introduction had passed. I was already approaching the checkpoint, and to switch on gospel music at that precise moment might have suggested a sudden outbreak of religious enthusiasm occasioned less by the spontaneous movement of the Spirit than by the unexpected appearance of the traffic police! One could scarcely blame an observant officer for wondering why a motorist who had approached in silence should suddenly discover the necessity of broadcasting heavenly melodies upon sighting a police barrier. I therefore continued without musical accompaniment, trusting that my ordinary manners and the peaceful condition of my conscience would be sufficient for whatever enquiries lay ahead. Little did I know that those very manners were shortly to become an object of investigative curiosity!
The officer who stopped me was a relatively short, plump, brown-complexioned policewoman whose commanding manner suggested that the affairs of the highway were, for the moment, firmly within her jurisdiction. I had just observed her instructing the driver of the vehicle immediately ahead of mine to step out, and I was therefore under no illusion that the inspection would necessarily consist of a casual greeting followed by immediate release. She signalled that I should stop, approached my window and requested my driving licence, which I promptly retrieved from my wallet in card form. Having received the document, she proceeded, circumnavigating the front of the car, towards the opposite side and instructed me to switch on the interior roof light, evidently to enable her to see more clearly inside the vehicle. I turned on the switch. Nothing happened. I tried again, with the same discouraging result. Of all the moments in its otherwise unremarkable existence, the little bulb had chosen an official police inspection to demonstrate that its willingness to illuminate could not be taken for granted! There I was, a Christian familiar with the injunction in Matthew 5:16 to let one’s light shine before men, confronted by an interior lamp that had evidently decided the command did not extend to automotive electrical installations. The policewoman, mercifully, did not undertake a theological enquiry into the bulb’s disobedience. She simply directed me to pull over and handed my driving licence to a male colleague.
I parked as instructed, and presently the male officer approached my driver’s window. Being naturally disposed towards courtesy, and seeing no reason why an encounter with the police should require the temporary suspension of civilised manners, I greeted him with the cheerful spontaneity of a gentleman addressing another human being. “Afande, how are you?” It was an innocent enquiry, entirely free from calculation and offered without the slightest suspicion that its warmth might be considered worthy of further investigation. Yet something in my manner appeared to attract the officer’s attention. I could not know precisely what passed through his mind, but his subsequent actions, together with what I overheard him communicate to his colleagues, suggested that my friendliness had struck him as unusual. In the circumstances of a police checkpoint shortly after midnight, he apparently considered the matter sufficiently interesting to warrant further examination. And there, to my considerable amusement, I began to suspect that I had inadvertently presented the Republic with a behavioural puzzle for which its ordinary expectations of motorists had made inadequate provision!
What, I wondered, had I done? Had I greeted the officer with too much enthusiasm? Had my voice conveyed an excess of cheerfulness inconsistent with the solemnity expected of a motorist intercepted at that hour? Was there an unwritten convention requiring citizens to approach police checkpoints wearing expressions of carefully moderated apprehension, lest ordinary friendliness be mistaken for the exhilaration induced by intoxicating beverages? I had said nothing more remarkable than “Afande, how are you?”, yet the greeting appeared to have acquired a significance altogether disproportionate to its modest linguistic content. Perhaps I should have approached with a countenance borrowed from the Book of Lamentations, sighed deeply, and informed the officer that the sorrows of existence had rendered all ordinary greetings inappropriate! But even that might have introduced fresh complications, for a motorist displaying excessive melancholy could conceivably excite as much professional curiosity as one displaying excessive joy. I began to appreciate the difficulty of presenting oneself at a midnight roadblock in precisely the emotional condition that would satisfy every possible interpretation of human behaviour!
It was only as the proceedings developed that another possibility entered my mind, and with it came an entirely new dimension of biblical and forensic amusement. Could the policewoman have been the Republic’s first witness? As I conversed with her, perhaps she had detected, unbeknownst to me, something in my utterances, my manner of expression or the general cheerfulness of my disposition that suggested a gentleman whose acquaintance with intoxicating beverages had become rather too intimate for the requirements of safe driving. Perhaps, while I imagined myself merely answering her questions and cooperating with her instructions, she was silently entertaining a hypothesis concerning the condition of my faculties. She had handed me over to her male colleague, and he, upon receiving my unusually cordial greeting, appeared to find something sufficiently remarkable to justify referring me onwards. Thus, without any conscious participation in the construction of the case against me, I might have passed from one officer entertaining a possible suspicion to another whose observations seemed to lend that suspicion further encouragement. And suddenly I remembered Deuteronomy 19:15, reiterated in 2 Corinthians 13:1, that “in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.” Good heavens! Was the Republic assembling its witnesses in accordance with a principle of evidentiary corroboration whose pedigree stretched all the way back to Moses?
The resemblance, of course, was entirely fanciful. I had no evidence that the policewoman suspected drunkenness, and neither officer had offered sworn testimony concerning my condition. But the succession was irresistible. The first officer might have noticed something unusual about my speech; the second had apparently noticed something unusual about my friendliness; and now the matter was being referred to two additional officers, one of whom possessed an electronic instrument capable of interrogating the very air emerging from my lungs! Four police officers had become involved in the examination of one gentleman whose principal distinguishing characteristic, so far as I could establish, was an apparently excessive willingness to exchange pleasantries. Yet even amid the amusement, one important distinction remained unmistakable: two suspicions do not become a fact merely because they have found one another agreeable. An officer may observe, suspect and investigate, but the explanation attached to an observation is not thereby transformed into established truth. If the first officer had suspected intoxication from my speech and the second from my friendliness, the question still remained whether either suspicion could survive an encounter with evidence specifically capable of addressing it.
I was accordingly directed towards two policemen stationed farther along the checkpoint. One was a tall gentleman holding a breathalyser, while the other, judging from his bearing and uniform, appeared to occupy a more senior position, possibly that of Chief Inspector. As I approached, I heard the officer who had referred me communicating to his colleagues something concerning my unusual friendliness. There it was again! My greeting had survived its journey from the driver’s window to the testing point and was now being presented for further official consideration. Nevertheless, the officers were performing a legitimate duty. Intoxicated driving endangers lives, devastates families and turns ordinary journeys into tragedies from which entire households may never recover. No responsible citizen, least of all one professing Christian faith, should object to lawful measures intended to protect the public from such danger. My amusement concerned not the necessity of sobriety or the propriety of investigation, but the extraordinary possibility that ordinary friendliness had contributed to the suspicion that made the investigation necessary.
The tall officer prepared the breathalyser, fitted a mouthpiece and instructed me to blow. I complied, supplying what I considered a perfectly respectable contribution of respiratory effort, but the instrument returned an error. For a moment, I wondered what had gone wrong. I had followed the instruction as I understood it, yet the machine had declined to produce a usable reading. The officer showed no particular concern and simply prepared me for another attempt, this time directing me to blow continuously until he instructed me to stop. I obeyed with renewed determination, maintaining a steady stream of air while he watched the instrument and his colleague observed the proceedings. The exercise continued long enough for me to become unusually conscious of the volume of air a human being may be required to surrender in the service of forensic science. Having already encountered an interior roof light that refused to illuminate, I was beginning to wonder whether the electrical devices assembled around me had developed a common reluctance to discharge their appointed duties. Fortunately, the breathalyser proved more cooperative on the second attempt. It eventually indicated that the required sample had been obtained, and the officers bent towards its display.
I watched them examine the reading. The moment possessed a quiet suspense entirely disproportionate to the simplicity of the question being investigated. Whatever impressions had accompanied me from the policewoman’s inspection to the male officer’s suspicion, the matter had now been placed before an instrument designed to examine the presence of alcohol in human breath. I did not record the numerical reading, but the officers’ interpretation was immediate and unmistakable. They looked at the display, and then came the words that would remain with me long after the encounter had ended: “Si mlevi!” Not drunk! The declaration was so concise, so decisive and so gloriously economical that I could scarcely suppress my amusement. After the initial inspection, the apparent concern about my friendliness, the referral to two additional officers, the unsuccessful first attempt and the prolonged second examination, the Republic had arrived at a conclusion which might have been expressed in three English words but required only two in Kiswahili. “Si mlevi!” I thought I detected surprise in the officers’ reactions, perhaps even a faint suggestion of disappointment, although fairness obliges me to acknowledge that I could not possibly know what they had privately expected the instrument to reveal. Their thoughts were their own. Their verdict, however, was public, audible and wonderfully clear.
And there, I reflected, was the delicious culmination of my imaginary biblical succession of witnesses. If the policewoman had been the first possible witness, and the male officer the second, the matter had now reached two further officers whose examination had produced a result that furnished no support for the suspicion under investigation. The electronic instrument had entered the proceedings without any apparent interest in the friendliness of the motorist, the warmth of his greeting, the condition of his interior roof light or the lateness of the hour. It had examined his breath, and the officers had announced their conclusion. The machine was not interested in whether I had greeted the policeman with a smile or a frown, whether I had been listening to Christian music or sitting in contemplative silence, or whether my ordinary disposition appeared excessively cheerful for the hour. It had been designed to answer a chemical question, and that was the question it had answered. Suspicion had initiated the enquiry, but evidence had brought it to an end. One could hardly ask for a more satisfactory demonstration of the distinction between an investigative hypothesis and an established finding!
My driving licence was returned, and I was instructed to go back to my vehicle. There was no further interrogation, no additional difficulty and no suggestion that my friendliness required a separate examination now that the question of alcohol had been resolved. I returned to the driver’s seat, prepared to resume my journey, and was allowed through the checkpoint. Yet as I drove towards Makupa Bridge, the entire episode began rearranging itself in my mind with a clarity that made its humour increasingly irresistible. I thought of the policewoman who had stopped me, the little roof light that had declined to cooperate, the male officer whose curiosity appeared to have been awakened by my greeting, and the two policemen who had finally established, to their satisfaction, that I was not drunk. And then I remembered the earlier officer who had heard Christian music and asked me to pray for the police and the country. The contrast was extraordinary. The same motorist had encountered the same police service on two different occasions, yet the circumstances had invited interpretations so different that they might almost have concerned two entirely separate individuals. One officer had heard Christian music and apparently discerned a man capable of interceding for the nation; another had encountered unusual friendliness and apparently considered the possibility of intoxication. One had responded to the sound emerging from my speakers; the other was interested in the chemical composition of the air emerging from my lungs!
What a curious business human judgement can be! The first officer had no means of establishing the spiritual condition of my heart merely by hearing Christian music, just as the second could not establish the presence of alcohol merely by observing my friendliness. A man may fill his vehicle with gospel music without possessing the character of Christ, and another may display remarkable cheerfulness without having consumed a single drop of intoxicating liquor. The outward appearance supplies information, but the interpretation of that information depends upon assumptions which may or may not correspond with reality. The essential discipline of sound investigation is to distinguish what has actually been observed from what the investigator has merely inferred. Proverbs 18:13 warns against answering a matter before hearing it, while John 7:24 exhorts us to judge not according to appearance, but to judge righteous judgement. These principles are no less relevant to the conduct of a roadside investigation than they are to scholarship, judicial proceedings, professional practice and the countless ordinary circumstances in which one human being must form a judgement concerning another.
But while these reflections occupied my mind, a still more delightful biblical association began to emerge. The second chapter of Acts records the extraordinary events of Pentecost, when the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking as the Spirit gave them utterance. The multitude was astonished, and the remarkable spectacle invited competing explanations. Some marvelled at what they witnessed, while others, unable to account for it, dismissed the disciples as men who had consumed intoxicating wine. “These men are full of new wine,” they declared. Peter, standing with the eleven, answered with that magnificent apostolic composure recorded in Acts 2:15: “For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day.” There it was! Nearly two thousand years before the modern electronic breathalyser, human beings had already demonstrated a willingness to interpret unusual manifestations of exhilaration through the familiar category of alcoholic intoxication. The circumstances at Pentecost were, of course, profoundly different from my modest roadside encounter, and I would not presume to place an ordinary greeting alongside the extraordinary manifestations accompanying the descent of the Holy Spirit. But the resemblance in the suspicion was sufficiently amusing to invite comparison. Peter had answered the allegation of drunkenness by pointing, among other things, to the hour of the day; I had answered mine by submitting my breath to an electronic instrument shortly after midnight. Peter had declared that the men were not drunk as supposed; the officers at Makupa had delivered their own concise declaration: “Si mlevi!”
And then came the Apostle Paul’s great distinction in Ephesians 5:18: “And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.” What a magnificent separation of two conditions which may occasionally be confused in the superficial interpretation of outward behaviour but are fundamentally different in their nature and consequences! Alcoholic intoxication may impair judgement, diminish self-control and render a motorist dangerous to himself and others. The filling of the Holy Spirit, by contrast, belongs to an altogether different moral and spiritual order, associated with the fruit described in Galatians 5:22–23: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance. Indeed, the inclusion of temperance, or self-control, makes the distinction especially important. No Christian may invoke spiritual exhilaration as an excuse for irresponsible driving, nor should anyone mistake a cheerful disposition for proof of spiritual maturity. But joy remains among the fruit of the Spirit, and kindness and gentleness are not offences against the laws of the Republic. If a gentleman is cheerful, courteous and peacefully disposed towards his fellow human beings, those qualities ought not, without further evidence, to be treated as conclusive indications that he has been drinking!
And what instrument, I wondered, has humanity devised to measure the joy of the Lord? A breathalyser may examine the concentration of alcohol in human breath, but it cannot determine the abundance of gratitude in a human heart. It may register a chemical quantity, but it cannot quantify the peace of God which, according to Philippians 4:7, passeth all understanding. It cannot establish whether a man is rejoicing in the Lord, as Philippians 4:4 exhorts believers to do, nor can it distinguish between ordinary good humour and the deeper gladness of a soul at peace with its Maker. Its manufacturers have provided it with the means to answer a specific scientific question, and there is no reason to fault them for failing to equip it for a theological enquiry. Indeed, one shudders to imagine the complications that would arise if traffic officers were required to assess the fruit of the Spirit alongside the concentration of alcohol, or if motorists were instructed to blow into a machine until it had established whether their joy exceeded the prescribed statutory limit! The instrument at Makupa had been given a far more modest assignment. It had examined my breath, and the officers had declared that I was not drunk. Whatever else might have accounted for my cheerfulness remained beyond the jurisdiction of the apparatus.
By the time I arrived home, it was approximately 1:23 a.m., and the incident had already acquired the proportions of a story I knew I would not easily forget. I thought again of the red brake lights beyond Makupa Roundabout, the policewoman whose commanding presence had initiated the proceedings, the interior roof light that had chosen an inconvenient moment to withdraw its cooperation, the male officer whose suspicions had apparently been stirred by an innocent greeting, and the two policemen whose examination had finally settled the question. I remembered the earlier officer who had asked me to pray for the police and the country, and I smiled at the extraordinary difference between the two encounters. One had sent me away with a request for intercession; the other had sent me away after a scientific examination of my breath. Both had discharged their duties according to their understanding of the circumstances, and I bore neither any ill will. The officers at Makupa had investigated a suspicion and accepted the result of their investigation. I had cooperated, recovered my licence and continued home. There was no quarrel to pursue, no grievance to nurse and certainly no reason to abandon the ordinary courtesies of civilisation merely because one policeman had apparently found them rather more remarkable than I intended.
Yet one thought lingered, and the more I entertained it, the more deliciously amusing it became. Perhaps the policewoman had indeed detected something unusual in my utterances. Perhaps her male colleague had found my friendliness suspiciously exuberant. Perhaps, from their perspective, I had appeared to be a gentleman whose cheerful disposition required an explanation beyond the ordinary. I could not know, and it would be unfair to pretend otherwise. But I remembered the words of the officers examining the breathalyser, their verdict delivered with unmistakable clarity after the second attempt: “Si mlevi!” Not drunk! The instrument had settled the question of alcohol to their satisfaction, and I had been permitted to proceed. Yet as I recalled my own cheerful greeting and the possibility that it had contributed to the suspicion, I found myself entertaining one final, gloriously mischievous thought. Perhaps, after all, I had looked a little drunk!
Drunk? Yes, perhaps! But in the Spirit!
And there lay the magnificent limitation of the entire midnight investigation: the Kenya Police Service had brought a breathalyser to Makupa Bridge, but the manufacturer had neglected to install the Holy Spirit detection software!