Road scenes

Helen here.  Regular readers may now have gathered that my commute is usually the most interesting thing I do on a working day.  So, while I could enthrall you all with work tales of power cuts, idle web searching and the day the toilet cleaner salesman came to call, I will instead tell you about a few more scenes of life on the road in South Nairobi, if you'll allow me.  For those of you worried that I'm not contributing to the growth of this fine nation, I can assure you I'm actively seeking out a purpose here.  The minute it bears fruit, you'll be the first to know.

The stories that follow are not extraordinary in Kenya, and my fellow volunteers will be nodding sagely in recognition, but I wanted to write them down before this all becomes too normal to share.

The Mud

I think in the year I'm here, I will see this area transform. There is massive road construction here by Jomo Kenyatta International Airport as the Chinese contractors replace Roundabout with a flyover.   In the meantime, however, it looks like I'd imagine hell, because life continues around the construction.  Concrete blocks, huge ditches, trucks, belching fumes, hungry looking cattle picking through the large piles of rubbish, hawkers selling barbecued corn, warning triangles, belts; buses ploughing onto the pavement and scattering the pedestrians to create a hole in the standing traffic, the air thick with dust and me, walking through it all in my Topshop trousers. I thought this dust-bole was inhospitable before the rain.

The rain when it comes sometimes has an awesome power.  In the UK when it reaches itspeak of velocity you shelter for a moment until it eases off.  Here, it cranks up to top gear and stays.  All night.

By the next morning, Roundabout was the Somme, the ever-present dust now lay firmly on the ground, mixed into a deep, sticky paste. And I was unprepared, arriving into the office with mud-coated trousers and shoes that no longer look like shoes.  This is the end of the long rains, they tell me but it will get worse next year.  Sometimes the office vehicle has to pick up my colleagues from the end of the road in the mornings and drive them through the worst of the mud (lest they drown?). I'm going to need welly boots to survive, this much is certain.

The spin

To alleviate the dust in the dry periods (and you'd hope, to improve the respiratory health of the residents of Embakasi all year round), there are trucks which trickle water out the back, onto the wide, dusty roads.  My matatu was keeping a safe distance behind a weeing truck, but a saloon car only sees the gap in the traffic and accelerates fast around the matatu and into the freshly sprinkled road in front.  As I watch, it hits the slick and immediately slides sideways across the road, before breaking into the first of several, elegant, full spins.  It revolves in front of us, and again, as the matatu stops and we all look on in silence. The car comes to a stop.  Then it gingerly moves off and rights its direction and continues onwards, almost sheepishly.  The matatu moves off along the road once more, and no one says a word.

The Diversion

I've never before chosen my route to work based on the maximum available tarmac, but this was one of my learning experiences.  My normal morning matatu chugs along the highway and as it sometimes does, turns left into the area known as Imara.  I'm not sure if it's grown out from the city or existed before the city spread, but it has the feel of being it's own place, it's own industry, own high street.  The tarmac road runs through Imara and back out onto North Airport Road where my journey continues.  Except as we round the corner to join this road the matatu comes to a sudden stop.  We peer out of the grimy windows to see an enormous pile of earth blocking the way.  We watch as a large China Road and Bridge Corp truck scoops even more earth out of the ground to further the progress of the new North Airport Road.  The pile has appeared since the matatu crew worked this route earlier today, and it now completely blocks our way.  So what to do?  My matatu backs up, along the road, very fast. Then it launches off the tarmac and into Imara's side streets in search of a diversion.  We trundle past shops, stalls, a brightly painted primary school and tall blocks of flats including 'Sweet Apartments'.  The hard, packed earth road has given way to deeply rutted pathways but the Matatu doesn't slow.  This has the affect of swinging its passengers roughly from side to side, and I'm now I'm gripping the seat in front to brace myself and blessing the foresight of those who have padded the roof inside the vehicle.  The only thing in the western world that has prepared me for off-roading in a speeding minibus, is one of those simulator rides at a theme park -launch to the left - then to the right - up - down - swerve.  Luckily the Kenyan woman next to me is equally unimpressed and rolls her eyes to demonstrate this happens all the time.  But I'm really not enjoying this new leap into danger, as the matatu squeezes between two buildings and approaches a waterlogged ditch that looks to my eyes like a pond.  We're heading straight for it.  He wouldn't!  Would he?  As we get closer and closer it seems more likely he's just going to go for it.  With the confidence of a guy driving a monster-truck, we tip over the edge of the ditch and bounce through.  I open my eyes, I hadn't realised I'd closed them.  Surely it's over now?  No, there's 5 more full minutes of grinding on and on through the broken, jagged road before we come to a standstill.  I hadn't realised I'd tensed every muscle in my body.   I relax.  There's a proper pond in front of us this time and the matatu tout leaps out and starts shouting and pointing to a few people standing close by.  Recognising that a) the driver is lost and b) shouting at the pond will not make it move, a smartly dresed guy near the door sighs heavily and gets out.  Are we near Roundabout? I ask him and he cheerfully invites me to walk there, he's going that way.  So now on foot we weave our way through a back alley and out onto the main road, which was very close after all. His name is Elliot and he works at the airport, in ticketing.  Where are you from?  He's never been to the UK, but his father spent some years in Birmingham and he mentions Worcester and Stratford-upon-Avon like he's reminiscing about his own past.  A cheery goodbye at Roundabout and he is gone, leaving my faith restored in the good day/bad day balance of Nairobi life.

The crossing

Mombasa Road, south of town, 5.30pm on a Tuesday.  Matatus and side streets spit out scores of people onto the dirt edges along this long stretch of highway.  People on foot are everywhere, trying to get home, or get to work, or meet friends, or sell phone credit, or tout for business or deliver sacks of potatoes.  It's pretty busy, and as normal as I stand here, I'm 6 lanes away from the street that gets me home.  Crossing the first 3 lanes was easy today, a stalled truck and a matatu suddenly changing lanes has slowed the traffic right down, allowing me to trot across to the central reservation.  Where I wait.  I'm standing on a rutted piece of land, between screaming traffic charging in both directions, waiting for a gap in the southbound traffic so I can cross to my neighbourhood.  Waiting with me are a few commuters, a guy on a motorbike and a cow.  A few minutes pass, with no let-up in the waves of cars, trucks, buses, matatus and bikes.  I notice a man holding the hand of his small daughter.  Her face is inches from the traffic, but she knows not to move.  They wait, I wait, and we are joined by others in a long line waiting to cross.  More and more passengers alight from vehicles behind me and as the traffic slows southbound a massive influx of about 50 pedestrians join our ranks.  Followed by another.  Men in suits, women with heavy bags, a grandmother with a baby slung across her back.  Young men in boxy caps and trousers that hang low; young women with salon-fresh hair and almost unbelievably high heels.  I've been waiting for ten minutes now and the central reservation is getting really full now.  There are maybe 150 people standing with me, staring at the traffic whizzing by.  Slowly, slowly, a few bolder men towards the front start chancing a few steps out as the nearside traffic thins.  Which emboldens a few more and then it's a phenomenon - 150 people stepping into the oncoming traffic.  With no signal, we all walk together, allowing the weight of our numbers to create an organic zebra crossing.  All the traffic stops and watches us, and waits.  We spill into Kapiti road and along the other edge of the highway and disperse.  I walk for a while with the strangers who were part of the same rush.  We don't speak.  Everything finds a way here.