The expatriate: Why Michuki Rules punish the poor

 [Photo: Courtesy]

The expatriate comes from a country that prides itself on its transport system.

If the expatriate is British, he’ll happily tell everybody how transport, from old canals to trains, were (he’ll exaggerate) ‘British inventions’ that spread from there to Europe and then to the wider world due to the bullying Age of Empire.

He’ll also stress how modern systems of transport that enable commuters to reach work in, say, London, are flawless; how trams, trains, the underground, taxis, buses and the like are so efficient that everyone gets to work on time, and happily so.

He will, of course, be lying: not everyone gets to work on time, and not everyone finds the fares to be pocket-friendly. Indeed, London and its environs have frequent jams, delays and overcrowding of a sort that means that congested London only ‘just about’ functions as a modern, moving city.

Still, the prideful expatriate always feels the need to brag about his home country at the expense of his weary host country, Kenya, and will happily sing England’s or America’s praises, especially when he watches the news and sees that, due to the latest imposition of the so-called Michuki Rules, Kenya’s capital is failing to cope.

The Michuki Rules are perhaps the most visible manifestation of Kenyan authorities’ habit of governing in this manner: impose some draconian rules for a week or two, to superficially ‘impose order’; let these rules backslide over subsequent years; re-impose some draconian rules; let these slip; and so on. 

Still, when the rules are imposed, they’re imposed with gusto for a couple of weeks, and all those matatus that in the intervening years have become nothing more than rusty, automated coffins of murder, extract themselves from the system for a short while, in order to fix brakes, speed governors, seatbelts and holes in the floor.

And this absence of matatus causes tremendous chaos, not only because the drivers sometimes block the roads for an hour or two, but because they really do perform an essential service for countless thousands and thousands of commuters, every day.

In a privileged country, such as that which gave birth to the expatriate, a strike in one area of the transport system (the underground, for example) would see commuters migrate for a while to other areas, such as the public buses or even private cars – parking costs for a single car in British cities are more expensive per day than the entire cost of Kenya’s new SGR, and yet commuters would grin and bear the inconvenience for a few days.

In Kenya, where can we turn, especially when parking and fuel costs have been hiked, and where the roads are inadequate? 

Public buses? Where are they? Commuter trains? Where do they go, and how many do they seat?

No, Kenyans have to take to their feet and walk, and this during the onset of the rainy season. And of course, it’s the poor who suffer, again.

The expatriate, meanwhile, hires a helicopter for the day.

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