It’s three p.m. A regular weekday, for those with the eight or nine to five job. A few glances to see whether the boss is looking, and ‘fschoop!’, the employee disappears. She disappears when the clock hits four p.m. Maybe three was too early to run. Stealing company time? How ever will you explain this when you want promotion?
The rest wait until it’s five p.m. First, there were a lot of files to catch up with, a few submissions to draft, some research that needed to be done. Secondly, yes, they want to go home and rest, watch FIFA, binge watch a certain series they discovered, mindlessly scroll on social media, and maybe others like me, want to go continue writing literary work they started.
They too, like the lady who left at four p.m., want to beat this crazy thing that’s there from four in the CBD. It’s called rush hour. From the crazy lines at Archives, to the thronging PSVs at Odeon and Koja, to the PSVs at Tea Room. You name it.
I walk like I am in a competition of jog walking. There are matatus passing the roads like crazy. They are blasting loud music like it’s a club. So do we have driving clubs now? They are following each other bumper to bumper. Any small space would mean like twenty people crossing in between. That would also mean they are getting delayed to get to where they need to, i.e., being next in line to carry passengers home.
The bumper to bumper driving means you could easily get smashed! Kind of like smashing a mosquito with the palm of your hand. It’s a rush. You need some special training to navigate Nairobi traffic. Being in school in Nairobi (campus) for the last seven years had given me this training. When you want to cross the road, and there’s this big intimidating bus in front of you, you raise your hand like afande and ask for way. It does not matter whether you’re a small girl or young man. You do it with confidence and these drivers give you way.
Other drivers don’t want to be a push over. They ignore any attempt of you wanting to cross the road civilly – the look left and look right. So you gather the confidence and just walk…or run?
Then there’s special stages of places like Westlands and Kangemi. They capitalize on the fact that it is a high end estate, and shoot their prices some four times up. “Aaah. Awa watu wako na pesa.” The conductors are probably thinking like that. They announce the prices like a rhythm. The passengers don’t have much say at this point. Whether you stand at the corner for five minutes showing defiance or pout, they are not about to drop the prices in that immediate moment.
If you want to pay roughly a considerable amount close to that which you paid from Westlands, for example, a thirty shillings fee, you will wait for three or four hours. At eight p.m., is when the price drops to forty shillings. So what do the people do? They get in. They’d rather pay the money and use their hours back home, and not in the cold.
Crazy Nairobi traffic. When it rains, ah, that’s a different ball game altogether.
