Observations from EasyCoach

Monday, January 29th, 2007 at 10:41 AM

This past weekend I had to make a quick trip to Kakamega and back to Nairobi, a round trip of 800 kilometres. Another way to think about it is 10 hours each way. That is a lot of time to sit and think. This is what kept me occupied:

1. Thank God 2007 is an election year. The amount of resentment there is at the comical state of the road network in the country is about to explode. Being an election year I hope it will explode at the ballot box driving people to vote. The road that leads from Nairobi through Naivasha, Nakuru, Kericho, Kisumu, Kakamega to the border with Uganda at Busia is a major and vital road to the country and to the economy. Some parts of that road are so bad that the local county councils employ road gangs to fill holes with sand to enable cars to pass. You drive your own car you will spend thousands servicing and repairing it. Meanwhile if you take a slight detour through Eldama Ravine going past the former president’s constituency you are treated to the luxury of well maintained roads. Like the political commenter/satirist/cartoonist Madd complained in his Madd Madd World last week, this government is mad in that it lets routes that are vital to the people and the economy such as the roads that lead to game reserves deteriorate so badly while it concentrates on building extensive networks to political chiefdoms. Meanwhile they use snails to repair the Nairobi – Nakuru highway. A friend and I did some calculations and concluded it would probably take around 200 months for the dual carriage to Nakuru to be finished at the current rate of progress. 200 months = over 16 years.
2. There is money to made creating an extensive clean public toilet system. People would be grateful and especially women. The stop EasyCoach use in Nakuru is used exclusively by that company yet the toilets are always messy, dirty and the women’s toilets always have long queues. If someone (heck maybe I’ll do it) formed a company that built public toilets around the country and charged maybe KSH 20.00 per usage people would pay. You could probably even push it up to KSH 40.00 before you started pushing people away. There is money to be made there. Not to mention all the advertising space you could sell. Bling bling. One of the best adverts I have ever encountered was for an insurance company that was selling family life insurance. It was placed over a urinal and read, “Your life is in your hands”.
3. Why the heck do Kenyans treat seatbelts the same way the treat taxes? That is to be avoided at all costs unless the authorities come looking. Many people do not put on their seat belts, which on these Kenyan roads is madness. But the minute you stop at a police check you hear all the seatbelts clipping as people slide them on afraid of the fine they will have to pay if the police catch them without a belt on. You are more worried about a police fine than your life? Madness.
4. There are business opportunities everywhere. Who would have known that popcorn would be popular with country bus travellers at 3am? The guy at the popcorn stand was the most popular vendor in the bus stop by far both times I passed through. Popcorn to bus travellers at 3am, I would have never thought of that.
5. WordPress are messing around with me on purpose. They release 2.0.6 saying it has a major security fix, I rush and upgrade about 10 blogs (which on these slow internet connections means sitting around going slowly mad) then a few days later they release 2.0.7 saying, yes you guessed it – it fixes a major security vulnerability in your blog, so I spend hours upgrading everything again. 7 DAYS later, yeah, WordPress 2.1 is released. “A major development”. Bollox. I am not upgrading again for a month. Especially since I hear 2.1.1 is en route.
6. Taking pictures of buses at night will earn you strange looks. Very strange and suspicious looks. Everyone thinks you are either a cop or a journalist. Or perhaps a terrorist.
7. The only times I think about Man Utd is to wonder how it is for their fans to feel constantly inferior to Liverpool fans. (At least Arsenal fans on the whole have no delusions of grandeur – celebrating a Carling Cup semi final spot like they’ve won the world knowing that that will be the highlight of their season). There was has only ever been one time when I got a little worried about Man Utd and that was around three years ago when they nearly bought Shevchenko. Shevchenko, The Tsar as they call him, was a ruthless goal machine and would have taken some much need quality to Old Trafford. However Man Utd, as usual, choked and ended up with Floran instead. Now Chelski went and bought The Tsar and Maureen has managed to turn a ruthless goal machine into a FA Cup and Carling Cup super sub. LOL. What a muppet that manager of Chelsea is. You get the best finisher in the game and just to piss off your boss you refuse to play him until you realise that all your other players are crap and to win games you actually need to score some goals. Someone should give him the Harambee Stars manager job, he seems at home in chaos and will relish have useless fights with KFF officials.

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