Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Nairobi Traffic - Let's Do Our Bit To Make It Worse

We are currently in the middle of the rainy season. This automatically means that traffic has become a nightmare in Nairobi. The truth is, this need not be the case. It is all avoidable. But for now, I say: Good! Let the mayhem continue, in fact, let it get much worse. Let it get such that nobody can move anywhere.

Why? Well, here is the tragic truth. The bigwigs, the 'wakubwas', those who should be looking at this situation and doing something to ensure sanity prevails on the roads simply do not give a hoot about the situation. Because they use their flags, sirens and outriders to insulate them from the true magnitude of the insanity that our traffic has become.

So what we need is the president to get stuck in traffic; or the PM to get stuck in traffic, or a cabinet meeting to be called off because all the ministers were stuck in traffic. If this happens two or three times, we will quickly see a "presidential directive" or a "prime ministers directive" that sanity must prevail on our roads and police must take charge.

This is the sad truth. As long as a few outriders and a flag mean 'Mheshimiwa' can simply overlap and bypass the mayhem (in the process leaving the situation worse than s/he found it), Mheshimiwa will not give a damn about ensuring that we all get to our destination on time.

So we must all do our part. Every one of us must suspend logic, adopt insanity, overlap for all we are worth, block those junctions like doing so is a competitive sport, take our jalopies out and make sure they break down at key road points. Don't give way, don't be courteous. We need it to be a Mad Max movie out there people: Don your studded leather jackets, tie your ties round your heads, go forth and be cretins!