On a loose end month

Yesterday evening I was sitting on the balcony of a pub on Koinange Street a victim of my own idiocy and foolhardiness nursing a cold White Cap Lager, the best beer in the world!

Working in the suburbs as I do you tend to forget the ridiculous traffic jams in downtown Nairobi....particulary at the end of the month that everybody else that works in the downtown area either takes for granted or has learnt to live with.

What was supposed to have been a straight forward run from my office to Waiyaki Way and then on to Thika Road then home after a meeting that ended just after 6.00 pm turned into a never ending game of a dog chasing its tail as I took corner after corner in a desperate attempt to avoid or is it evade traffic. I eventually found myself near Nairobi Serena Hotel and  I tried to get to Tom Mboya Street to get onto the Globe overpass only to find the mother of all gridlocks at the entrance to the overpass no doubt caused by some daredevil of a matatu driver somewhere in Ngara! So much for our newest highway if stupidity sits firmly in the driving seat and decides to invent its own highway code!

So there I was stuck fast so what next but to look for a trendy pub and wait out the traffic which as at 8.00 pm was still chock-a-block along K Street. My well laid plans to avoid drinking alcohol during the week for the period of Lent preceding Easter are in shambles as my 'fast' for the season expected of any good Catholic. Incredibly all the parkings were full and the watchmen would make a killing that evening on account of tips from tipsy Kenyans high on booze and a full wallet! Good for them as they will carouse with the rest of Kenya high on the euphoria of recently discovered oil in far away Turkana County.

The ebb and flow of human and vehicular traffic on this famous strip of Nairobi is mesmerising with pretty girls sashaying across the road, the occasional wannabe rally driver zooming along the road, the young couple across from me engrossed in whatever conversation the youth engage in, the bouncers at the entrances to various joints keeping a stern eye out for trouble, the plain clothes police men trying hard to blend into the surroundings etc.

I eventually left the City Centre at 9.00 pm with some suprisingly heavy traffic in the Old Nation House vicinity and was home in 30 minutes flat, glad to have been a part of the Nairobi ebb and flow for a few hours.