Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen's response to the Utumishi Girls tragedy drew attention not just for the speed with which he arrived at the scene but for what, or rather who, he brought with him on the helicopter that carried him to Gilgil.
When Murkomen's chopper touched down at the school where 16 young girls had just lost their lives in a fire, sharp eyed observers noticed that among the first people to step off the aircraft were not investigators, medical personnel, or crisis response officials.
They were cameramen, and they hit the ground before Murkomen did, positioning themselves to photograph and film his arrival before he had even set foot on the scene.
The images and footage of the cameramen alighting ahead of the CS and immediately training their equipment on him as he stepped out have since circulated widely online and generated a reaction that the Interior ministry was probably not hoping for.
Kenyans watching the footage asked an uncomfortable but entirely reasonable question.
When you are responding to a school fire that has killed 16 children, in a helicopter with limited space, what calculation leads you to bring cameramen along for the journey?
For a government already under scrutiny over how it handles public relations versus genuine service delivery, the optics landed poorly. Sixteen families were trying to identify their children.
Parents were being held back by police at the school gates. A father had broken down during a DIG's address because he could not find his daughter.
And the CS arrived with people whose job was to make sure he looked good doing it. Sometimes the most telling detail is not what happened, but who got off the helicopter first.
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