It’s Safer in Nairobi at Night than in Chicago

By Fionn mac Cumhaill

A young man of Kenyan descent and his family were seen dragging all their worldly belongings through Chicago O’Hare International Airport. We caught up with him.

“Hello, sir, what is your name, may we speak to you for a second?”

“My name is Juma. And only for a second.”

“Juma, what is happening.”

“I’m taking my family out of here. This godforsaken place. We going back to Nairobi where it is safe to walk the dog at night or even during the day without worrying about being shot or robed, or stabbed, or choked, or beaten, or having your daughters raped in an alley, or hacked with a machete, or drowned in a puddle, or run over by an electric scooter, what the hell? Go down to the market for some milk and find yourself accosted, beaten, tied up and cooked over a garbage fire in a homeless encampment by drug-addled cannibals. When we arrived here, we had no idea it was such a dump.”

“Who do you blame for this?”

“Who do you think? Come on guy. 41 people shot over the weekend. Like it was nothing. Like going out for a bagel with lox. It means nothing to these animals. It is not what I signed up for.”

“When did it start going bad?”

“It’s always been this way! Don’t let them fool you. My advice, leave and never come back. It’s over. Rome is going the way of the dodo. Mark my words. The good times are over. 41 this weekend. 51 next weekend. Well, they won’t gun Juma down in the street like a llama. No! No! I need four fingers of Chang’aa. Look at me, I am a wreck, perspiring like a fountain. I need to get out of here! Let me out of here!” He shrieked and then hurried away.

It is like the exodus from Saigon as the communists breach city limits.

“These are dark times,” a woman says to me. “I’m leaving and I am never coming back. If ever an asteroid is going to strike this planet as it did to the dinosaurs, it should land right here, in this rotten city.”

“That’s apocalyptic,” I said.

“You want apocalyptic, head on over to East 37th and Michigan, or South Cotton Grove, or West Chicago Ave. It’s a zombie apocalypse and it starts in the mayor and governors offices, or should I say, their Jacuzzis.”

You heard it first here. It’s a mass exodus from one of the world’s most dangerous cities.