Sunday, December 30, 2012

Off to Explore...

Wow! That's all I have to say about today.

Mostly because of the trip home on our little adventure. I saw a lot of diversity today from the Maasai Market on the third floor outdoor balcony of a mall in Nairobi, to a very nice large American-style mall, to an outdoor market spanning a few kilometers mired in mud and trash with wandering goats, chickens, donkeys, dogs and even cows! (I'll try to get some photos of the place later.)

What really struck me today though was the driving! Oh the driving! Here in Kenya they have a form of transportation called a Matatu. They are privately owned mini buses crowded to the extreme and driven by crazy people! The Matatus do not follow any road rules and will drive wherever they please, playing chicken, pushing people into the ditches, they don't care.

On the way back to Maxwell we became stopped in traffic and started seeing vehicles turning around in front of us. When we got to the top of the hill we could see the accident below and the ensuing traffic jam. - And I do mean JAM! The accident was a 5 vehicle accident. Two cars, two mini buses and a large truck and they blocked most of the road.

There was no police on site and people would hop out to direct traffic and then when their vehicle got to the passing point they would hop in and leave everyone else to fend for themselves.

We crept along and soon the Matatus behind and in front of us started jumping out of line and into the other lane, eventually creating another two lanes around us.- One in the oncoming lane and one in the ditch on the other side of us! The problem was that the closer we got to the one-vehicle passing point they all had to merge again and no one wanted to allow another to get in front of them! It was a mess! Jeremy and I got some good photos. They are posted below.

We did finally get back though and we still have two hours before the van has to leave once again to go get Josh and Aprille. Hopefully the accident will be cleaned up!














1 comment:

  1. Wow! I see what you meant about the driving habits there when you mentioned it on FB.

    ReplyDelete