"THE WORLD IS FULL OF ‘EM"

My taxi guy Lenny is a nice young Rwandan.

Beside his tendency to play loud music and to talk too much and much too loudly over it, and to occasionally take too much liberty with the exactness of time (he once called me to inform me he was at my place to take me to the airport long after I had called the bluff on his “I’m almost there” mantra, taken another cab and had just made check-in by a whisker!), he is, in fact, a really nice guy. And I mean this in exactly the same way it would elicit the leering rejoinder “The world is full of them” from Vernon Ayton, if he, instead of you, were reading this.

Always eager to please (Lenny, not Vernon), he will, if you complain, lower the volume on the car stereo and apologise profusely for it. He will even ask you what kind of music you like and put it on at a friendly decibel level whenever you enter his always neat, sweet-smelling vehicle. His eagerness to please is, as a matter of fact, a character flaw of sorts. Why, just the other evening, in a classic case of how low the service standards have to be raised from in the city of Kigali, he lost my fare again - and not because he is a bad guy.

After I’ve been waiting outside the Nakumatt where he usually parks for almost a quarter an hour on a rather cold Kigali evening that threatens to burst into spontaneous showers, he saunters up to me with another man in tow and tells me what’s on his mind.

“This is mkubwa wangu (my big brother),” he explains with a wild wave in the direction of the goateed middle-weight guy who smiles eagerly at me and makes as if to board with me but stops when he sees the sura ya kazi look on my face. ‘Can he,” Lenny continues, “come with us as I take you home? Ako pia na mke wake hapa (he’s with his wife),” my cabbie adds with a respectful leer.

“But Lenny … ,” I grumble, pointing at the cigarette I have immediately lit as I settle comfortably in the front seat of the taxi voiture, “how do you expect me to enjoy my ride if you take your passengers?”

“It’s okay, they are smokers too,” he explains, missing the point entirely.

Now one of the good points for Lenny's cab is that I can always smoke in it without the guilt that comes with smoking in someone else’s car. He himself smokes some brand of Rwandan cigar that smells suspiciously like burnt grass and immediately after sprays the car with a sweet smelling perfume which he hides under his seat. But what he is proposing is different. Unless we are splitting the fare, I don’t see myself sharing the ride with these guys whether they smoke or not.

“Okay, let’s make a deal,” I say to Lenny reasonably, “you just take them first, then pick me up right here… No, it’s okay,” I insist when he offers -  rather late in the game I must add – to take me first then come back for his big brother and rastafarian girlfriend/wife. “I will go into Nakumatt and buy something I forgot,” I lie with a straight face.

As Lenny and his non-paying passengers pile into their nice-guy-mobile and take off in a direction, I take off in another and get into another cab belonging to another nice guy who quickly takes me home without much ado. An hour later, while relaxed in my dwelling, my feet up and a specially selected comedy DVD blaring away for my entertainment after a long day’s work, the phone rings and it’s Lenny.

“Hello my boss,” he yells above decibels in his car when I pick up. “I’m now outside Nakumatt.”

“Really?” I ask, thinking of a gentle way to let him know I had lied about waiting till he got back to the city centre …

Surely the world, Vernon was right, is full of nice guys.

©Lloyd Igane, Kigali, 30/10/10

kreative@ earthling.net