Tom Sitati, my friend from Nairobi, is most apprehensive about driving in Kigali or anywhere in Rwanda for that matter. Not just because almost every car he gets into has a driver on the “wrong” side which is the right, or that all vehicles tend to drive on the “wrong” (that’s right, the right) side.
Despite his brilliance in giving his clients road maps in form of brand strategy, Tom has this yet-unnamed uneasiness about Kigali that keeps him totally rudderless whenever he visits, which is becoming more and more regular as more and more Rwandan companies see a need for his services. Probably because – and in case you haven’t noticed – Rwanda is really committed to the East African dream. Even without seeking official confirmation, one can discern, for instance, the whole country’s committed effort at communicating in English and Kiswahili like the rest of the region. So Tom has no trouble communicating with most people here, but still___.
“I have absolutely no idea,” he says of where his host, a marketing director of a trans-national firm, resides. “If he doesn’t pick me up, the taxi man just talks to him on the phone and a few turns later, we are at his house.”
Totally clueless, he knows where the building with Nakumatt Supermarket is but doesn’t know it’s called UTC. He knows we are at the MTN Centre but doesn’t know that’s in Nyarutarama. He doesn’t know how to get from either of these buildings to the other, but has faith in the transport system, the little he knows of it.
“For one, there are far less and far much shorter traffic jams here,” he reckons. “There is always a taxi whenever you need one and you get to places quickly.” True that - the beauty of a smaller town. Kigali with its approximately one million residents does not have enough cars to cause any traffic jams worth noticing by anyone used to spending hours in the mind-wrenchingly horrendous Nairobi traffic. Here, one encounters only very slight traffic jams in the old commercial side of the city especially near the public transport termini, some equally busy junctions in Nyamirambo and Remera commercial centres, and two of the main highways leading in and out of the city – and even those mainly at peak hours,
Tom says taxi to mean what is commonly referred to in Kigali as taxi voiture – a car taxi. He may not yet know that what he knows as a matatu in Kenya is also called taxi here, and is very well self-regulated even though it doesn’t have illegal gangs to keep it in line; and quite safe, even though, unlike in Kenya, no one ever made a lot of money selling compulsory safety belts to it. Always on his tight schedule and tidy expense account, Tom mostly knows Kigali from the comfort of a friend’s car or the front seat of a branded taxi variant called Kigali Taxis, whose metered fares are considered a tad more expensive but more certain than the arbitrarily negotiated ones of the common unmarked taxi, identifiable only by a small yellow wedge marked “TAXI”. He hasn’t yet enjoyed the unhurried, orderly ride of the Kigali matatu, nay, taxi, which is okay really, because it would drive him up the wall with impatience.
Although some have music systems that blare several high pitched decibels of hip hop or gospel or whatever’s on radio at you, they are not as much fun as Kenyan ones. None of them has the kind of booming high-fidelity bum-rattling, ear-splitting music of the Kenyan matatu; None stops or overtakes dangerously or “overlaps” (a Kenyan traffic police and matatu slang for overtaking a long queue of vehicles either by using the pavement or the wrong side of the road); they only stop at designated stops marked TAXI on the roadside, not wherever they see a passenger; and most of their conductors, even though sometimes a bit talkative, are not loud and unnecessarily aggressive. There are, of course – and increasingly so – a few exceptions to this rule.
They are boring.
And annoyingly slow.
Not just because they have to adhere to the Kigali City maximum speed limit of forty kilometres per hour; not even just because the Kigali public transport driver is too law-abiding to cut corners and the traffic policemen too hawk-eyed to let him. It is because the nice invariably polite conductor is always too busy - calling for customers and acting super courteous usher as he opens and closes doors for them – to get time to collect the fare while they are seated. So every time a passenger disembarks, everyone else has to sit and twiddle their fingers while the conductor looks for change for a 5000 Rwf note or argues over a worn 100 rwf note with a passenger.
And no one complains.
Tom would complain. But that would be only for a while – before he notices, as I once did, that his wallet disappeared as he disembarked at Kwa Rubangura, the usually crowded main terminus, where intrepid gangs of smooth criminals of the pickpocket persuasion relieve unsuspecting souls of their cash, phones and jewellery. These criminal gangs must have learned their trade in the Nairobi, Kampala or even Muqdisho backstreets because they use the same old tricks that never fail: squeezing past you as you board or disembark public transport, or bumping into you in crowded streets; or distracting drivers of cars in slow moving traffic with dubious sales pitches or vague warning signals while their accomplices grab handbags, laptops and smart phones…
Tom wouldn’t opt for the other alternative motorised transport either – the ubiquitous motor bike taxi (a.k.a. moto in Kigalispeak). He would probably find them boring too. Although quite a convenient way to get around cheaply, the moto won’t eagerly weave in and out of several lanes of traffic at crazy angles to jump the traffic queue like it would in Nairobi. The moto is also a bit dangerous in the wrong hands, and not just in the intrepid sense of the word – a fact quite a few people have confirmed only in flashback as they recover in hospital, having arrived in ambulatory states, their nostrils and mouths still full of gritty sand and/or bits of tarmac after sudden moto accidents. “It happened too fast,” is the first thing they say when you ask what happened.
“What impresses me most about them,” says Tom idly, “is how they each carry a spare helmet for the passenger.”
Of course – where he comes from, most motorbike taxis – just like the boda-boda (bicycle) taxis – never have helmets and don’t venture into policed areas as they may be charged or extorted or both.
He would be more impressed if he knew the stencilled number on the helmet and cape of each bike operator is some kind of bar code identifying the operator, his taxi, his base, and what zone he can solicit for business. Tom would also be amazed at the reasonableness of the moto’s seemingly arbitrary charges.
“Maybe it’s this hour one loses on the flight,” Tom opines, suddenly shifting perspective like a Douglas Adams storyline as he frantically fiddles with the controls of his smart little phone. “One leaves Nairobi at 6.15 Kenyan time, flies for an hour, and lands here at 6.15 Rwandan time,” he observes, still fiddling with the little phone.
“It stubbornly refuses to stick to Rwandan time,” he says of the phone clock. “Whenever I set it to GMT +2, it quickly sneaks back to GMT +3!”
The smart little phone probably feels a little rudderless too – not entirely unreasonable for one suddenly flung one hour back in the space-time continuum.
©Lloyd Igane 2009
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