Nairobians Are Good People, Actually

It’s your typical weekday evening in Nairobi. People are, as usual, walking fast towards their respective bus stops; With the exception of the ten percent who drive and the other thirty percent who simply can’t afford the inflated fares and opt to walk the sometimes treacherously long way home. The hustle and bustle is at its peak; the queues at the matatu termini at their longest.  You can see it in the people’s faces. They are tired! They just want to get home.

A bus park in Nairobi

Yours truly is among those walking towards the matatu termini. I walk down Kimathi Street past Nation Centre then left to Odeon.  Why is it that Nairobi folk rarely smile? I can’t help wondering as I make my way and I find myself smiling to myself as I watch faces in half and full frowns walk past. Seems like almost everyone has a bad day, every day!

Anyway, like everyone else I choose to mind my own business until I finally get to my stage. The place is noisy of course. Touts shouting their voices hoarse trying to lure the stranded commuters into their over-priced music-blaring contraptions, heavy music systems, hawkers, idle chatter… couldn’t help wondering how I don’t suffer a headache every day.

I reluctantly get into a matatu after waiting  twenty minutes for the fare to drop to no avail Frankly; I have never understood why I have to pay 60 Shillings every morning and evening for a ten-minute journey. Does anyone in government know what we have to go through?? We need some regulation here!

The matatu fills up pretty fast. I sit next to a talksome old man in a dark suit and a tie with a big smile who asks me why we are switching to digital TV. “Who wants to watch seventy channels? I find one channel to be too much already. Can you watch seventy channels?” he asks, rhetorically of course. I had to agree with that. We don’t need seventy channels!! I couldn’t help admiring the old man’s cheerfulness at that age. He should teach Nairobians a few lessons on the need to be cheerful!

We are somewhere in Ngara when one passenger in the fourteen-sitter notices that the conductor had been left behind and notifies the driver. Why do they get out of the matatu whenever the driver wants to take a U-Turn? The vehicle has side mirrors I mean, or is it to reduce the weight? So the driver decides to stop and wait. Five long minutes pass and there is no sign of the conductor. Passengers start getting restless.

Then old man comes up with a suggestion. He offers to collect the fare on behalf of the conductor and hand it to the driver. How could the rest of our younger brains fail to think about that? Maybe we think about ourselves too much at times. We all agree with old man’s proposal. The driver too. We are soon moving again. The collection goes on without incident and the money is handed to the driver.

So these are tired people crammed into a noisy van, whose crew’s only intention is to extort them of as much of their hard-earned cash as possible, every morning and evening. And instead of grabbing the once-in-a-longtime opportunity of a free ride home, we diligently give the crew what belongs to them; To the last cent.

So many scenarios would have happened here. The most natural would have been not to raise the red flag at all for the ride home. The other would have been to give out less money since we would easily have overpowered the driver. But no, old man collects all the money and hands it all over!

Nairobians are said to be bad people. Not friendly, not helpful, you know the type that stands at an accident scene to watch instead of help the victims? But every single day, simple acts done by these same people make me believe that there’s a lot of good deep down them. Simple acts of care that are often overlooked, but they are there.

Now if that isn’t good, I don’t know what is!