Nipe Nyahunyo!

We are at it again folks! My pet peeve, the topic that's always sure to get me worked up and spewing vitriol... Our lovely Kenyan roads with their 'well diciplined' and 'courteous' drivers, quite a peachy lot they are -NOT! What comes to mind is the old Kiswahili saying "Akili Nyingi huondoa maarifa" loosely translated as if you try to be too clever you end up becoming foolish. Let me explain vis a vis this  'overlapping' disease that has reached epidemic proportions on our roads. first a couple of examples.


This past weekend I was on Thika road( should be called Thicker road) on both Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. On Saturday night was around the old Castle brewery heading towards Nairobiand had the pleasure of spending almost an hour there. It got so bad that I turned off the engine stepped out and started calling people and one of them told me that people stay there till 11 on average. . Only one side of the road is open and they've put stones to separate Nairobi bound and Thika bound traffic. However there's no red ribbon or signage to help people. During the day there are workers but at night there's nobody with a clue. Now this clueless state is probably what led to the following events.


The two lanes on either side should have been been sufficient but some geniuses on either side decided to occupy all four lanes and a gridlock ensued with nobody moving. What made matters worse is others who perceived that they had even greater intellectual capacity i.e  overlappers came into play with no less than four lanes of traffic on the side of the road.I decided I was not laughing with people and did not yield an inch to them, was basically on the bumper of the car ahead of me. If  I hadn't done that would have spent way more time on that road.


Similar story on Sunday afternoon. The good students at Kenyatta University decided to unleash their fury on unsuspecting motorists and the road was blocked. Lucky for me I was given advance warning and used the bypass. However I was not the only one and near Thome estate there was a big build up thanks to people avoiding Thika road trying to get on the road. nobody was willing to give way and yet again both sides of the road were blocked. Same script different cast and MENSA Kenya chapter were on the sides of the road as usual. Wasted an extra 30 mins trying to get out of it.


While sitting there I was really thinking if somebody would give me a whip I'd go out there and administer some corporal punishment on people. There are these ads that they show on TV about 'Ushenzi' i.e foolishness and that's exactly what such behaviour is. Blocking traffic moving in the other direction or trying to come in from outside the road only makes things worse, you won't get where you're going any faster just be patient and stay in line and eventually things will move albeit slowly which is better than a complete standstill! So please if you're reading this and get tempted to so something silly out there don't. If you're overlapping as Francis Atwoli would say "wewe ni Mshenzi!" " yes!"


Now where's that whip...