I was sixteen when I first visited Kenya. It was the first of many visits to Africa and one that started a long-term relationship with the east coast for both me and my family. We had gone to visit friends who were thinking of settling down by the coast, an hour north of Mombasa, in a small fishing village called Watamu. I’m not sure of the reason for the move and I’ve never asked either, but it was a trip that opened up my eyes for the first time to the wider world and led to a deeper understanding for the rules of the game in Africa. A set of rules that is unique in this world.

Kenya is – to all intents and purposes – a work in progress. Infrastructure is non-existent in places and hospitals and schools remain infrequent and incapable of servicing the demands of a burgeoning population of 44 million, the median age for which is a shade under nineteen. Government interaction with the population is inadequate for the requirements of a country like Kenya. It has some of the most diverse wildlife and sea life on the planet, the beaches along the coast surpass that of many European destinations and the essence of the people, or what many would term the ‘vibe’ of the country, is wholly unique. Despite these things, there has always been a low-lying tension bubbling just beneath the surface in Kenya; something that friends tell me is pervasive across the continent. It is this intangible aspect – security, or the failure of it - which has proved to be the biggest concern for many of my Kenyan-domiciled friends, and often discussed at the bar after a few Tuskers.

For this reason, the people that I have grown to know in Kenya live in houses complete with Masai watchmen, guard dogs and padlocks on every door. The development of a number of nigh-on exclusively white communities throughout the coast in Kenya is a driver for the need to provide round the clock security. In Watamu, the Watamu Residents Association provides local private security and a hotline for all residents in this exclusive enclave and has regular meetings to discuss security issues and efforts to provide residents with the best possible assistance. These security teams are a regular sight up and down the main stretch along the Watamu coastal road.

South Africans, white Kenyans, the over 60s and, in occasional cases, people who move here looking to escape a dreary rain-soaked England form the major constituents of Watamu. A plot of land is comparably cheap for Europeans and the chance to build a dream house minutes from the beach is too good to pass up, particularly given the added extras that every resident enjoys: a pool, plenty of beer, good food and year round perfect weather. Many move on those pretenses, based on a holiday some years before and stemming from an astonishing lack of understanding about the ground rules in Africa.

My interactions and experiences with these people have provided me with an insight not into the joys of living here, but into their concerns and doubts; manifested from a fear of failing to provide safekeeping and sanctuary for their families in this isolated beach resort. This is in extremis of the broader context of ‘national security’ stemming from the government or municipal bodies, which is rarely raised as an issue for consideration at Watamu dinner tables, but comes from an implicit realisation of the modus operandi of Africa and the discovery of the low-lying tension that pervades the continent. This is particularly felt – and understandably so – due to the fact that local Kenyans are unhappy at the slow encroachment of white people into their land.

The concept of failure is usually subjective in nature, but specifically in this context it is the worry that, despite all the watchmen, the walls and the guard dogs, security is never fait accompli. An example of this occurred in 2008 when a Watamu resident, Graham Warren, was shot and killed in a botched robbery by a group of armed men. According to media reports, Warren had disturbed a burglary at his coastal home upon returning from dinner with his family. They had been ordered to lie on the ground and remain still until the assailants had finished taking what they could find. At that point Warren was fatally shot by one of the men, dying in his house an hour later. What wasn’t said – and is not made clear from the media - was that Warren had decided to halt the burglary himself, confronting the assailants and attempting to stop the burglary of his dream coastal home. There are varying stories as to why he did this and what exactly happened – some say he was drunk and aggressive (and also possibly aggressive with his house workers, which prompted discussions over whether it was an inside job), others that he was naïve to the situation. This does not detract from the notion that Warren was desperate to defend his family and arrest the possibility that he had failed to provide security for them. Irrational or not, the primordial need to demonstrate the capability to succeed over failure was the likely catalyst that night, leading to Warren’s fatal and untimely death.

Several years later, I was told of a similar – but fortunately non-fatal – event by my dad when I was in the UK. This time it was closer to home in a very literal sense, happening to our neighbour in Watamu; a British-American couple who had been living along the coast for around a decade. On that night Susan, the wife, who slept on the top floor of the house, was awoken by noises from downstairs. She initially believed it to be her husband Michael, who slept downstairs. As she lay there, waiting to hear Michael call out her name, she heard footsteps on the stairs and a strong rattle at her bedroom door. Within seconds a group of men armed with machetes and guns were in her bedroom dragging her from her bed. They were looking for cash and demanding that she hand over the money or be killed. Susan rarely kept cash in the house and in a bid to stay alive mentioned that her neighbour Chris had cash that he could give them. Chris – a white Kenyan and incredibly security conscious – heard the men coming and initially refused to come out from his heavily padlocked house. He was eventually forced to come down when the men threatened to kill Susan on his doorstep, and handed over little more than GBP 300, taking a beating for his troubles.

It later transpired that the armed gang was tipped off by one of Susan’s house workers. Aggrieved at not receiving a pay rise earlier in the month, he conspired to leave the front door unlocked and take the guard dogs away in order to facilitate the robbery. The issue, as Susan relayed to me, was ultimately her steadily increasing laissez faire attitude to her own safety and security; something which cannot be lightly forgotten in Africa. More than that however was the failure to protect her home; a violation on a very personal level to which victims in these cases would often conduct a lengthy introspection, long after the event.

Other examples of grievance-related violence litter the Kenyan coast. The most widely known is that of David and Judith Tebbutt, a British couple who were holidaying in 2011 in the resort of Lamu, a few hours north of Watamu, along the northern stretch of Kenyan coast. Somali militants, reportedly following a tip-off, entered the isolated resort and kidnapped the couple. David was shot and killed while Judith was taken to Somalia and held hostage for six months before being released following an alleged ransom payment. Later reports confirmed that David had died following a struggle to protect his wife, in much the same way as Warren had done in 2008, and likely with the same thoughts, namely that a failure to protect his family had become a mortal struggle and paramount in his thinking. It was also suggested, but never substantiated, that the kidnap was an inside job, stemming from one of the locals or resort workers looking to make a quick buck.

Africa is, through all of this, a continent of contradictions. Treacherous but beautiful, alluringly laid back but deadly for those who momentarily forget the rules of the game. It should not be forgotten that Lamu, for all its charm and acclaim as a holiday destination, is only 25 miles from the Somali border. The Tebbutts, for their part, were no strangers to Africa and had been to Kenya previously, and although Judith later noted how quiet the resort was - they were the only guests - and how isolated their room was from the main resort, they were lured by the charm of Africa, only to misconstrue the rules.

Watamu is a microcosm of this wider phenomenon; a sleepy fishing village catering for package holiday tourists, game fishermen and safari aficionados, with an underlying tension that can often explode violently to the surface. For Warren, Susan and the Tebbutts, it was the erroneous belief of safety which preceded their gruesome events and in some sense it was a failure to assess the situation correctly. For the residents of Watamu however, and for Chris and Susan, life moves on. They do not dwell on that night a great deal and when they do, the response, in typically pragmatic fashion, is that ‘this is how Africa works’ and those are the rules of the game.

During my last visit to Kenya in March, in between meetings of the Watamu Residents Association, Chris turned to me and questioned whether it was possible to avoid the next eruption of violence in a community that is so delicately poised on a knife edge. He summed it up by saying that we will always fail to stop a random event. I sat back and mulled this over and realized that rationalizing one’s own safety in this part of the world lay in a great unknown. That is the beauty of Africa, treacherous as it is, and alluring as it can be; the great game of living on the east coast of Kenya.

*some names have been changed to protect the identity of the people mentioned in this article.

Henry Burrows has lived in Mumbai since 2011 working for a specialist consultancy. When he's not investigating corporations, he's usually hunting down rare food stuffs or playing speed scrabble.

Cover image by Pavel Yudaev, licensed under Creative Commons.