While on leave I had the opportunity to go on a short holiday to Mombasa with my family for some rest and relaxation but also to attend a wedding. For me the best way to travel to the Coast is to drive down so that you get the freedom of having your own set of wheels to see the sights and sounds along the way as well as to commute at the Coast. Admittedly, the drive down can be rather stressful given the large volume of long distance trucks and trailers on the road as they lumber and crawl across East Africa delivering their varied commodities that oil the economies of countries as far away as Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. The numerous rest stops and weighbridge stations obviously don’t help particularly on heavy traffic days when delays to the truckers are inevitable leading to impatience and queue jumping which results in almighty gridlocks.
But I digress because a gridlock is what we found ourselves in at 8.30 pm as we completed the Miritini section of the Nairobi-Mombasa highway a few kilometers to Mombasa Island caused by a road crew obviously struggling to complete an allotted road section before they called it a night. Frenetic activity with the heavy machinery had led them to partially close off the road and traffic was now forced to use one section of the road at a time for east bound and west bound traffic alternatingly. Clearly frustration had been mounting among the drivers of the various vehicles this evening because once our side was opened up we were struck after barely 100 meters or so possibly due to an errant driver from the opposite side blocking us from moving. So there we were in a gridlock 30 cars deep unable to make head or tail of what was causing the tailback. Suddenly from out of the blue one of those reflective jacketed fellows carrying red and green flags began beckoning me to squeeze myself in through the smallest of spaces between two behemoths presumably guiding me towards freedom and a chance to unlock the gridlock no doubt caused by his poor management of the situation.
So born of the foolhardiness of the impatient and with the prospect of freeing myself from this entanglement before anyone else, I obeyed the animated instructions of this overzealous individual unaware that I was but a pawn in his dastardly plot! Inch by agonizing inch I maneuvered my way between the trucks only to find that once clear, I was confronted by a mess of impatient drivers in a long line of oncoming traffic angrily hooting at me. With a “haya mzee, sasa jipange!” (Now old man, sort yourself out!) he disappeared from sight the tailback in the section where he had extricated me from now miraculously moving.
What to do now? A steep slope on the left and traffic on the right and a mob of impatient, angry drivers facing me……..and a carload full of a laughing wife and children, clearly the joke was on me! Within a short time I was able to extricate myself marveling at the evil genius who had landed me squarely into the face of oncoming traffic and out foxed me in the process!!
Many years earlier I was caught up in similar mischief on another trip to Mombasa after arriving at the Mwembe Tayari bus stage at the ungodly hour of 5.00 am. Still too dark to trust going anywhere on foot (as many of us mistrusting Nairobians are wont to be) I stepped into a nearby restaurant with my luggage for an early breakfast. This is one of those restaurants which being located close to the main bus terminal in Mombasa is open 24 hours a day to cater to the hungry arriving and departing passengers to and from destinations across East Africa thus guaranteeing freshness and a fair price. The restaurant was not busy and hence the waiter quickly took my breakfast order and went off to have it prepared. The only other people in the restaurant were a sleepy cashier nodding off at his counter and a cleaner who was busy mopping the floor.
Anyone who has travelled on the night bus knows that the first thing you look for when you disembark is a loo for a welcome toilet break. Not wanting to disturb the cashier from his torpor, I approached the cleaner to ask him where the loo was. For a moment he went about his business ignoring me altogether before he retorted in rapid fire Kiswahili “Huoni mimi ni na kazi? Hiyo siyo kazi yangu. Nenda kamulize yule!” (Can’t you see I am busy? That is not my work. Go and ask that guy!) as he pointed at the still drowsy cashier with his mouth and resumed his mopping. Somewhat taken aback and unable to formulate a response quickly enough, I sheepishly went to the cashier as I noisily cleared my throat to wake him up which he gratefully did to enquire where the ablution facility was. Would you believe it, the door to the toilet happened to be just behind where the cleaner was mopping?
A friend of mine also narrated to me a story of how on a visit to Mombasa’s Mama Ngina Drive one evening a few years ago he stopped to buy madafu for his family from one of the numerous sellers that line up along that stretch at dusk. He intentionally chose a seller who appeared as if he was the most hard up so as to ensure his money would be well appreciated. As he chose his coconuts and waited for them to be split open, he casually began chatting with the seller, after all the process was going to take a few minutes to complete. The madafu seller was obviously reluctant to talk more so as he realized my friend was obviously not from Mombasa due to his Kiswahili accent, but he had little choice given that my friend had probably uplifted his sales that evening substantially. They made casual chit chat and then my friend asked him the question of how much money he had made selling his coconuts, to which after a short silence he replied “ Milioni si kitu” (“A million is nothing”). My friend almost died of laughter as he remembered the look of complete seriousness on the madafu sellers face as he proclaimed that he was a rich man!
So while at the coast expect anything from our ‘pwani’ brothers and sisters and don’t take it to heart! It seems that they have this uncanny ability to recognize a person from ‘bara’ from miles away and want to make a complete fool of them.
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