Death in Embakasi

Comparing my muddy commute in Nairobi to the Somme has caused some friends to call me pretentious (moi?); after all the mud experienced by soldiers in 1914 was truly life-threatening.  I was once employed to guide school groups around the battlefields of Northern France, and I remember the testimony of Great War soldiers who stood helpless as whole carriages disappeared into the deep mud.  Unable to help, they watched the men and horses drown.

It’s been very rainy over the last week here in Nairobi, and the mud where I work in Embakasi has become even worse.  But, even I admit to being something of a drama queen when I compare it to trench warfare in the last century.  Until today.

Last night here in Embakasi, someone drove their car into one of the rain-clogged construction ditches on the side of the road, and completely disappeared.  The traffic backed up this morning, as hundreds of people gathered to watch the car being dragged from beneath the muddy water.  My colleagues were talking about the driver, was he drunk?  ‘It doesn’t matter’, says my colleague Ken, ‘that one will be dead.’

The Chinese contractors here see no need to put barriers around every ditch; the foreman I saw who was assisting the dredging process looked uncomfortable being the centre of attention, and pretty annoyed that the road building would be put behind schedule.