bad commute
on Kenya VSO (Kenya), 30/Jul/2009 07:26, 34 days ago
Well I have been in Nairobi for over three weeks now and it is taking some getting used to. This is not so much because of the differences in Kenyan culture, although that is certainly part of it, I have not done any travelling yet and capital cities are rarely typical of any country, it is more because at heart I am not a big city boy. One day last week it took me more than two and a half hours to get home. Leaving work I gave up waiting for a matatu and walked to the main road and after crossing a busy highway, a good way to raise your stress levels, caught a matatu into town. Despite the late afternoon traffic jams my matatu finally made it close enough that I could hop off and walk to my next stop for a number 30 at the back of the National Archives. This evening there were very few matatu, even fewer going my way and many of those were already full and not stopping. The few that were picking up passengers were instantly mobbed and on top of that it started to rain, the only rain that I have seen since coming to Kenya. The first two or three matatu I left to others quicker on their feet and with sharper elbows than me before finally getting my ride home, which I spent intently staring through the grimy rain streaked window in case I missed my stop.Tales of trying journeys into or from work are common in cities across the world but this one happened here, it happened to me and on that evening I was not happy. However, on the plus side we certainly could do with the rain and some more too. Parts of Kenya are suffering a serious drought and the output from the hydro power schemes has been cut back, there is also water rationing in some parts of Nairobi. The general consensus puts the rationing as much down to mismanagement by the water company as to the drought.Back home in Scotland my friends complain regularly to me that I have a mobile phone but that I usually forget to take it with me, or if I do remember then it is not turned on. In Nairobi a mobile phone is close to essential, most people have one or maybe two phones that are signed up with each of the main networks here Zain and Safaricom. Here in Nairobi I do have a mobile phone, I do remember to carry it with me (most of the time) and I do keep it switched on (most of the time). Having said that I still do not make many calls, mostly responding to calls or text messages sent to me, perhaps this is a man thing, perhaps in time I will start to use it more often.