Driving = Sensory Overload

Nairobi is a city of three and a half million. Kitale is 150,000 including the containment area. That includes the surrounding area, people that would come to town to shop. So although driving isn’t the challenge here that it would be in Nairobi, it still requires a different set of skills than driving in the US.

You can see from these photos that you are sharing the road with many different types of vehicles. The most common mode of transportation and cheapest is by foot. It is amazing to see the number of people walking. At times it almost seems as if Kenya is a huge anthill with constant movement of people from one place to another.

When you start looking at public transit you’ve got bodabodas at the first level. They are bicycles with a passenger seat on the back. (An interesting side note: the way they got their name is because people would hire them to cross the Kenya-Ugandan border. Hence the name, bodaboda (border). Not only will you see people riding on the back of the bodaboda, you will see them loaded with firewood, groceries, sorghum to feed the animals, bricks, sugarcane, water, etc.

Moving up the economic scale are pikipikis, or motorcycles. You can tell that you are nearing a major intersection along any road when you see a group of men and
pikipikis or boadbodas ready for hire. It was interesting to note that any time our bus stopped on the way to Kitale, suddenly there were several pikipikis right beside the bus door ready to take passengers anywhere they might like to go.

I’ve written about matatus before. They are similar to minivans that have seats for fourteen but often carry many more. They are considered to be public service vehicles with the right-of-way in pretty much any situation. Watch out especially for them. They might stop at a moment’s notice of pull out right in front of you.

We use the British system of driving on the left side of the road. You need to look left-right-left for oncoming traffic, not right-left-right. Most major intersections in Kitale have a roundabout. Make sure you go on the left hand side of roundabout and yield to anyone on your right. The nice thing about roundabouts is that they have signs that help to distinguish them and let you know where you are. For example, I turn to go to my school at the Eveready round about, the bookstore is by the cattle sculpture roundabout, John’s school and the cathedral is at the Lions’ Club shelter. Even though we live in a residential neighborhood, we have a roundabout at our corner. I guess it’s nice to know that if we ever have car trouble we only have to walk a few feet to hire a bodaboda or pikipiki.

Then there is the car itself. The steering wheel is on the right side of the car. You shift with your left hand. I think all vehicles here are manual transmission. You are constantly downshifting for large speed bumps, deep ruts in the road, slow moving vehicles or going uphill. The blinker is on the right side of the steering column, not on the left. Both of us keep turning on the windshield wipers rather than the blinkers! Oncoming traffic is right beside you, not across the car. You need to hug the center of the road. If you go too far to the left you will hit a large speed bump, fall off the side of the road, or hit some other slower form of traffic. Russ assures us that we will indeed get used to driving, but at this point there is so much to be thinking about. Driving isn’t natural yet.