Driving in Nairobi

The UN had blessedly given me two days to acclimatize to my new environment before reporting to the office, so I decided to rent a car and drive around Nairobi to acquaint myself with some of the key cultural sites, such as the location of the UN complex, the grocery store, the video store and the pub. One of my new colleagues agreed to rent me a 25 year-old piece of junk Toyota with lousy brakes and very dim lights that he kept for visitors and new arrivals. It was the perfect car to initiate myself to the driving in Nairobi, assuming it didn’t break down. I figured nobody would want to hijack this car. This proved to be the first of thousands of naïve assumptions I made about Nairobi. Carjackers preferred two types of vehicles; either a four-wheel drive vehicle that could handle the sand, mud, rocks and holes of the roads outside Nairobi or a Toyota Corolla of almost any age, since half the vehicles in the city were Corollas and these were always in need of spare parts. The likelihood of getting carjacked in a Mercedes or BMW was minimal, although it did distinguish you as one of the rich folks and therefore a target for robbery. More importantly, fancy cars would get destroyed, simply by driving on what passed for roads in Nairobi. Although, as I soon found out, one didn’t actually drive in Nairobi. It was more a case of trying to survive on the roads.

Driving in Nairobi was, is and probably will forever be a harrowing, memorable, stressful and thoroughly un-enjoyable experience. Actually, it was worse than that. It was un-fun. To make things difficult for North Americans and many Europeans, Kenyans, like their former colonial masters, drive on the left. Or at least they were supposed to drive on the left. In truth, they drove on the left, on the right, on the shoulder, on the sidewalk and in the middle of the road. Cars whizzed by on both sides and from all directions. The strange thing about this was that most Kenyans did not own a car. I can’t imagine the traffic problems if all Kenyans started to drive. Instead, most of them walked—on the left, on the right, and in the middle of the road. Before and after work, the streets and road shoulders were clogged with pedestrians. And at night, well… one saw images of people walking along and across the road through the dust and dim car lights, much like shadows or shapes behind a screen. Those who could afford it paid a small fee and rode in mini-vans or matatus, which played a dual role of death trap for the passengers and death weapons directed towards pedestrians and other drivers. Matatus were built to hold eight to ten people, but the drivers and their touts, who both assailed potential passengers and shoved them into the van, crammed 16—20 passengers in at one time. There were few buses, and these were dedicated to long distance travel, so matatus were the only form of public transit available. The vans carried no seat belts, and one had to hold onto other passengers or get thrown out of the side door as the matatu screeched around corners. Matatus typically played loud music, either reggae or rap, to attract passengers and then the touts leaned out the side of the vehicle and grabbed people as the vans rolled by, never quite stopping. It was a total zoo, and I stood at one popular stop and watched them in amazement for a good twenty minutes. The touts kept yelling, “Mzungu! Mzungu!” while trying to attract me into a passing van, but I was having nothing to do with this. Matatu drivers were responsible for—the government says involved in, but from what I saw, they were definitely responsible for—70% of all traffic accidents in Kenya, and there were one heck of a lot of accidents. Crime might have been high in Nairobi, but one was far more likely to get injured in a traffic accident than get robbed or mugged. Matatu drivers got paid per trip, and they were the most maniacal drivers I had ever seen. New York City taxi drivers had nothing on them. Matatus were usually painted wild, bright colours and often sported colourful names like Death Machine; P-Daddy; Flying Angel; Splattered; Total Chaos; Devil’s Warrior; and so on, none of which evoked much confidence.

When driving, if you could have kept one eye on the traffic (read: matatus) and one eye on the pedestrians, things wouldn’t have been so bad. But you actually had to look at the road as well. Not that it mattered where you were going, since you basically went where the traffic lead you. The roads in and around Nairobi were not up to North American or European standards, or Chinese, Indian, Russian or the standards of any other country I had ever visited. I would have to say that the paved roads were in the worst shape of any roads I had ever driven on. There were potholes, ruts, bumps, broken pavement, holes that were bigger than pots, and a shoulder that dropped about a foot from the broken up pavement. And that’s not all. The Kenyans—or the British who designed the road system, complete with roundabouts scattered everywhere—at some point developed a love for silent policemen, the bumps on the road that are added in an attempt to reduce vehicle speed. On the eight-kilometre (5-mile) ride to my office from the hotel I counted 35 speed bumps. Big bumps. Maybe a foot in height and across the entire road. You either slowed to a crawl, got air flying over them, or generated a beautiful array of sparks while scraping the bottom of your vehicle—or all three. And just to add a little excitement, most of the speed bumps weren’t labeled, signed, striped or coloured. If you saw a car in front of you bouncing up and down, it was relatively easy to slow down, but if you were merrily driving along, swerving to avoid the ruts, potholes and pedestrians, singing a 1960s folk song like “Times They Are a’ Changin’,” and you hit one of these bumps… well… the friggin’ car would fly up in the air, your head would bang against the roof, your testicles—if you were male, of course—sort of whacked you by the side of the ear, the bottom of the car crashed against the road, and one or two teeth got chipped. It certainly woke me up, I’ll say that much.

I found the Kenyans to be wonderful people, truly. That is, as long as they were not behind the wheel. I did discover the key to driving during rush hour in Nairobi: avoid making a right turn across traffic at all costs. Making a right turn in the city was like crossing six lanes of commuting traffic on a Los Angeles freeway. By my calculations, it was worth about eight kilometres of driving for each right turn. On my second day of driving, it took me 15 minutes to make a right turn across a busy road. Horns beeped, people screamed, and brakes screeched as I finally closed my eyes and said the heck with it and edged across. By the time I got back to my hotel, which necessitated another right turn, I was shaking uncontrollably and drenched in sweat. The following morning, I drove in a big circle to and from work. Only left turns to get there, and only left turns to get home. That night, it took me 10 minutes to stop shaking once I returned to the hotel; the previous night had been more like an hour and a half.

Soon after this, I decided to get rid of the beater rental and order the biggest damn 4-wheel drive vehicle I could afford. When I called the dealer, he asked me whether I wanted bull bars on the front. Bull bars are steel bars—called roo or nudge bars in Australia—put on the front of a vehicle to protect passengers in case of an accident with an animal. They also make airbags useless because the front airbag won’t deploy in an accident. Bull bars are so dangerous to pedestrians that they are now banned in the European Union. When I queried the dealer as to whether I could knock over a matatu if I had them on the front, he replied, “Definitely.” Ninatake hii, I responded. “I’ll take them!”

I wish I could say that this was the extent of the problems driving in Nairobi, but no such luck. Pertinent to what happened to Acting Director Dan, carjacking seemed to be quite the rage in the city. Since they may be able to rob you of money, credit cards, clothes and jewelry and steal the car as well, thieves rather liked to steal your car when you were in it. The Security Division at the UN posted warnings to staff about driving around Nairobi. The warnings included:

Watch for cars following you with two to four males
Keep your windows rolled up and your doors locked
Don’t drive at night without one or two other vehicles driving in a convoy
Don’t stop at stop signs or stop lights at night
Watch for cars coming up behind you as you enter security gates
Don’t get out of your vehicle if a car rams you

Whew. I was having trouble just avoiding pedestrians and matatus, let alone worrying about gangs of thugs who might be interested in robbing me!

Hmm…was there anything else? Well, yes, to add an extra sensory pleasure, the many diesel-powered vehicles belched black smoke clouds that not only stank, but also severely limited your visibility if you were driving close behind them. Of course, if you were not driving close behind, another vehicle would cut in front of you, so you were always driving close behind someone. And the dust kicked up from cars riding on the shoulder covered your windows, creating a nice film on the windshield that wiper blades barely made a dent in. If it all sounds chaotic, frightening and downright overwhelming, well, it was. Collectively, the sights, sounds, smell, and feel (particularly on the speed bumps) of driving in Nairobi made for a dizzying experience. Good thing I had a large stock of valium, because my back was in knots when I got home from work, and my brain was fried. I was almost ready to quit the UN and become a matatu driver. Looked like fun.