Don't become indifferent.

Westgate was an anomaly, like 9/11. Terrorists rarely take down the places where millionaires and their sprogs have fun. Even the Bali, Indonesia, attacks in 2002 did not target rich people; Bali is known as a budget holiday destination for Australians. Westgate was an anomaly. Gikomba, Mpeketoni, Kapedo and Mandera are not. The softest targets in Kenya are the targets that the Government of Kenya deems expendable.

Since the Gikomba market bombing in May, it has been engulfed by fire twice. Evans Kidero and Uhuru Kenyatta have done little in the way of investment to make Gikomba market safer. Its roads are still muddy and potholed. Its lanes are narrow and crowded. The market stalls remain tinder boxes awaiting a spark. Gikomba market is not where Evans Kidero, Uhuru Kenyatta and their flunkies buy their veggies. It is where the expendables of Nairobi find food for their families, and serviceable, second-hand clothes for their children's Christmas-best outfits.

This is Mr Kidero's and Mr Kenyatta's approach to public safety, in a nutshell. Keep State officers safe, because State officers run the government and make important decisions. Keep them safe by providing them with armed guards and armed drivers. Keep them safe by surrounding them with steel fences and razor wire wherever they are likely to be. Keep them safe by keeping them as isolated from the expendables as possible. Do that and they will find solutions for the "rising cases of insecurity" in Kenya. Eventually. We hope.

Gikomba. Wakulima. Kariokor. Burma. Jericho. Umoja I. All these are venerable names of markets that have played a vital role in feeding the peoples of Nairobi, rich and poor alike. But because the rich now have places like the Westgate and are building bigger and grander edifices of their egos such as The Two Rivers, these old markets are about to discover the true meaning of trickle-down economics. It will not be pretty. These markets have become dens of vice already; their abandonment by their government will guarantee that eventually every dastardly plot against the poor will be traced to them.

And yet it is not so difficult to secure the safety of all Kenyans. Mr Kidero and Mr Kenyatta, and their friends too, can have their Westgates and Two Rivers; that is their reward for their immense wealth. But what little their government collects from the Gikombas of Kenya should go towards the things that made the Gikombas vibrant and priceless: clean running water, proper sewers and drains, uninterrupted electricity and street lights, safety officers. The Westgate and the Two Rivers can afford to engage the services of G4S, KK Security and the other half-dozen private armies in Nairobi without compromising the safety of their wealthy patrons. Transfer the bulk of our official security services to the restive areas with dollops of money to ensure children attend class, parents immunise their children, markets are clean and accessible, murram roads are not mud tracks, and tarmac roads are not more pothole than road.

Mr Kidero and Mr Kenyatta see public safety in the rubric of national security. So they will secure their safety with armed bodyguards, thirteen-car motorcades and a casual disregard for civil liberties and due process for the poor. They will engender resentment. All the rosy statistics in the world will not stop the poor from resenting the tweeting government. That resentment will turn to frustration, the frustration will turn into anger, the anger will turn into rage, and the rage will turn to indifference. Once that indifference sets in, we won't care which new bits of the country are being set on fire and if that happens, our enemies will prevail against us.