Internal combustion madness!

The madness that is driving in Nairobi has gotten most of us behaving like thugs and adapting to it. I doubt anyone remembers the days when you were squashed in that driver's seat with an instructor on the passenger seat shouting "kanyaga mafuta...usiachilie kiratchi namumna hiyo!". More often than not you would get bullied by other drivers in traffic when they spotted the red "L" stuck on the car windows. Man,..life was hell. Then the sweating and trembling when doing that driving test. Anyways, after a few weeks of driving you become a makmende, climbing kerbs, cutting lanes without indicating, ..the works!

Matatus, and the worst of them being the Hoppers, have this habit of bullying people off the road, scratching your paintwork, denting your bumpers, etc. So guys are scared of them. On Sunday I was very proud of myself the way I dealt with one ruffian (learnt that from my boss who has a car with like thirty dents...each with it's own story - I collect stamps,... he collects dents). Lights are red, and we all stop. Well...not all of us. The mat@2 jumps onto the kerb and tries to squeeze to the front of the queue (where I was) and jump the lights. I made sure there was hardly any space for him to squeeze through, and the bugger starts hooting. Well, I ignored him, after flipping him the bird. The guy was outraged and when the light were just turning tried to accelerate and push me off the road...Thanks to my Need for Speed skills on the playstation, I evaded the dude as he almost dislodged my side-mirror. "Hasira, hasara!"..Road rage aint a good thing, and the mat@2 met another idiot jumping lights on the other side and bazinga! collision right tharr. I braked, smiled at the frustrated conductor who had now alighted as the cops strolled towards them. Not wanting to be involved in witness statements, I slowly pulled away from the spot, very happy with the outcome. I am no masochist, but it did serve them right.

Somebody (like an old neighbour I used to have) should work with a horsewhip, to teach those guys on-the-spot for basic traffic transgressions. Fines don't work that good. Maybe flogging for traffic offences will reduce the madness.