Kenyans behave like Nairobi traffic, What a country, what a life!

Motorists sail patiently through a traffic jam along the Jommo Kenyatta Avenue in Mombasa island on Tuesday,019th August 2014. This follows an increase of up Country visitors coming to Mombasa County and its environs on holiday especially in the current School holiday after security has been normalized and the area is now experiencing peace.PHOTO BY MAARUFU MOHAMED/STANDARD

It’s not easy being Kenyan. In the good old days the country still functioned – the British had just left, the civil service was not a corrupt monstrosity intent only on self-preservation, and things seemed to work if you were loaded. If you weren’t loaded, of course, you didn’t exist.  But even for the nobodies among us, services did trickle over, and life wasn’t too bad.

And then we lost the plot. Kenyan politicians today, surveying the nation’s development and citizen landscape will be faced with a country that doesn’t quite seem to know what to make of itself. We don’t seem to know whether we are coming or going, poor or middle-income, Kenya or something else. But this confusion need not be. When our leaders survey the mess that is the country and its citizens, they need to remember that even the biggest countries can be summed up in one national microcosm or other. In our case, the closest summary of what we are is that ubiquitous Nairobi annoyance – the traffic jam.

 Chaos in the city

The chaos of the traffic jam is a reflection of the chaos that is Kenya. It reflects the utter refusal - or complete inability – of the people to follow a few simple rules that would ensure everyone got a reasonable commuting experience. But to blame the people, one must first blame the conditions under which they attempt to commute. And these are, even at best, absolutely atrocious.

First are the roads. Commuting in Nairobi is like negotiating a cross-country course designed for horses – with giant potholes thrown in to spice things up. The disaster that is Nairobi’s road network best represents the shocking madness that masquerades as the Kenyan political scene. With this as a backdrop, various characters step up to play their parts in the deadly dash to the bottom that is the morning commute – or the exasperating exercise that is the evening commute.

 Niceness gets you nowhere

In any decent traffic jam in Nairobi, there will be the nice guys. They don’t break any rules on the road, their seat-belts are fastened and they will happily allow merging motorists in. These are the nice guys, and in Kenya’s political scene they represent the average citizen. Just like the citizen, though, these nice drivers get nowhere.

They are taken advantage of, shoved around, barged into, and sometimes arrested for no particular reason. The motorist of this sort is either a coward, or imagines that her – it’s usually a lady – good driving will make a difference to the overall traffic situation. This is a wasted hope, because the bad guys outnumber the good ones on the roads. Like the average citizen, niceness gets you nowhere on Nairobi’s roads.

The opposite of the nice guys are the bad boys. These guys are legends, and are led by our matatu drivers. They are excellent drivers, but they thrive in cocking a snook at the rules of the road. These nasty individuals represent our politicians, who break every single rule that they expect the rest of us to obey. From cutting rudely into the traffic oblivious of where they are, to stopping bang in the middle of the road to pick up passengers, in the process blocking every other motorist, our matatu drivers are beyond help. Just like at our politicians, who will go to any lengths to get their way.

Overseeing this chaos rather indifferently are the traffic policemen on Nairobi’s roads, who represent the Government at national level. Just like the Government, the traffic police are more concerned with matters such as extorting bribes – revenue at national level – from the law-abiding drivers, who of course represent the average citizen. The traffic cops are in an unholy alliance with the matatu drivers, just like the Government panders to politicians of various stripes to grab every last penny that the average citizen has. As the traffic of Nairobi goes, so does Kenya. What a country, what a life!