Everything about this place is wonderful and different and exciting to me. The food, the people, the animals... But nothing has thrilled or, at times, terrified me nearly as much as travelling by road here in Kenya.
First of all, everything you think you know about traffic laws can be completely thrown out the window. Hello, British Colonization! Let's drive on the left side of the road, shall we? Red lights? They don't mean "stop" in the strictest sense; I would say they are open for dramatic interpretation at the whim of the driver. No passing zone? Never heard of it.
The public transportation, called "Matatus", are an endless fleet of vans, privately owned and operated, that drive at breakneck speeds up and down their routes, swerving in and out of traffic and stopping for nothing, filled beyond capacity, often with passengers hanging out of the sliding door.
And forget about pavement. Even the (very few) roads that are paved are so pocked with potholes, you can't get up to 30mph (or is that 60kph?) before slamming on the breaks to avoid a gut wrenching bounce. There is a saying in East Africa that you can tell if a driver is sober if he is weaving and winding all over the road; only a drunk driver would try to drive in a straight line.
Oh, the potholes. On the dirt roads we've taken to places like Ongata Rongai and Kiserian in Rift Valley, we seem to spend more time driving on the shoulder to avoid the dips and divots than on the road itself. And we're not talking little chunks taken out of the road. We're talking craters. I keep channeling Crocodile Dundee: "That's not a pothole. This is a pothole." I keep thinking we've seen the worst, then we'll be bouncing along a glorified cowpath and I'll realize it's only the beginning.
I keep hearing that Tanzania is even worse. I'll have to let you know.
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