Mama Grace (not her real name) is a parking attendant in Woodvale Grove in Westlands. To supplement her monthly wage from the City Council of Nairobi (CCN), she offers taxi drivers a discount of KES 40 to 80 off the parking fee, and then pockets the cash. She is unapologetic about this (if a bit circumspect about any inquiry), because she has three children, a nephew and a husband to take care of.

Mama Grace is quick to point out that several other parking attendants do the same and that her supervisor takes a cut of all of what they bring in. “Everyone eats a little something,” she says in Kiswahili, “even the bigwigs in City Hall. But them, they don’t eat a little, they eat everything.” This is a sentiment shared by most Nairobians. Ask anybody. Paying the kanjo a little something to get your car unclamped is an everyday experience. But motorists blame the supervisors and administrators in City Hall, not the little guy on the ground.

Philip Kisia, the outgoing town clerk, made a big show of cleaning up the streets when he assumed office, both literally and metaphorically. His predecessor, John Gakuo, left office due to a corruption scandal, which involved illegal payments of up to KES 283 million to purchase land for a cemetery in Mavoko municipality. So the new town clerk’s position was certainly well motivated. Despite the big promises, things seem to have taken a turn for the worse. Roads are poorly maintained, Wangari Mathai’s precious Uhuru Park is turning to dust, and there is more garbage on the streets and more street families than there were during the reign of Mr. Kisia’s corrupt predecessor.

Last year, Mr. Kisia was prosecuted by the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) for failing to collect garbage on Enterprise and Lunga Lunga roads, and for non-compliance with a lawful order by NEMA to stop dumping garbage on city sites. However, the high courts suspended this prosecution and, instead, the politicians are pointing fingers and slinging mud. Mr. Kisia complained that NEMA’s purported case was an attempt to sully his reputation, now that he’d decided to vie for the governor of Nairobi seat.

He also claimed that the acting director-general was seeking to “prove that he is effective and competent to fill the vacant post.” The former town clerk claimed that he lacked the funds to be effective. The main sources of local revenue, evidenced in the 2010’s CCN budget, are land rates, business permits and parking fees. All of these areas are dogged with corruption problems. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating, on an ongoing basis, several CCN employees. “Just this year we prevented a loss of about KES 800 million through irregular issuance of single-business permits by Nairobi City Council guys,” says an EACC agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Corruption is entrenched in City Hall, and perhaps always will be, but the first step to tackling this problem is transparency. A request for public records filed last month has yet to be met. I have been bounced from one department to another without any real success, and been greeted with wary looks and one menacing sneer—this last from the corruption report centre next to the entrance at the intersecting corner of Muindi Mbingu and Mama Ngina streets. “Reports filed here are taken to the Town Clerk’s office,” the lady at the desk said, before dismissing me to deal with “actual complaints”.

The Town Clerk’s office was the first place I had gone looking for the public records. Bureaucracy of this kind—circular, exhausting, forbidding—is often designed to shield the actions and transactions of those who operate within it. It sanctions corruption, seeds it and allows it to flower. Meanwhile, the money keeps flowing through a broken system. “I share my earnings with my supervisor,” Mama Grace says, “and him with his. Ni biashara tu.” Just business.