The careless driver never dies in an accident; the silent Kenyan does. And I witnessed it firsthand two days ago.
Picture this;
Its 9pm and I get on board a mat to Karura. Some kilometers out of town, where there are no street lights, we realize that the driver is driving blind. No head lights, no indicators at least- just BLIND!
And the irony is that from the furthest back seat, the chic to my right and I, are the first to speak up about our state of blindness. The people at the front seats merely spare the black windscreen a concerned glance then sit right back. And no one else seems concerned at all, leaving the two of us to raise hell; the conductor ignoring our complaints the whole time. A woman in front of us catches on and joins the case. She calls the police on her phone but I don’t have much faith they’ll do anything; just like the people who are not touched at all by our predicament. Some people are quiet the whole time!
Am like “what the fuck is wrong with you people”! We’ve paid fare; we are driving past several petrol stations and the three of us are the only ones pestering driver to stop at one and get his lights fixed?!
The man to my left – drunk and chewing miraa – voices his concerns to me but then looks the other way maybe hoping for divine intervention like the others.
The further we go the more convinced that we are going to get an accident and with time, I can’t take it. The chic to my right feels it too and both of us alight once we see boda boda operators on the side of the road.
And thank God I have extra cash!
Thank goodness my home isn’t too far and I got there thinking ; what about the people who are going all the way to Karura? Were they not concerned enough to zusha and make the driver get his car fixed at a petrol station? Are they just okay gambling their lives like that?
I have a great anger towards careless drivers but I am contemptuous and pitiless for people who don’t ever speak up against anything. Whether it’s that driver who uses his phone when driving; or that driver who’s too fast and you know it or someone who drives blind or drunk or careless. If you never speak up, your life can’t be that important.
And the government can halt as many buses as they want but Kenyans will still die from their silence. Because we’d rather sit back and think, “If it’s meant to happen, it will happen. It could be cancer or malaria or AIDS- an accident is just another way to go.”
