Traveling Kenya

I was doing the final touches of packing for my trip to In Service Training (IST) in Limuru for two weeks. I looked out my windows and happened to see groups of people (mostly men) walking around with spears, sticks (that look like clubs), and pangas (a machete type knife). I didn’t think much of it because there had been a group of men with dogs that had been wandering around my village hunting with their dogs earlier in the week. I assumed it was just a BIG hunting party. I was finally packed up and on my way out of the village when I came to the junction that is one kilometer from the dispensary to see a large mob. This mob consisted of men and women of all ages with their hands full of spears, sticks, and pangas forming a circle around a few individuals. There were so many people it was impossible for me to pass and I had to wait for the mob to die down to continue on my way. My co-worker explained to me that there had been a few robberies in my village that night and all of the villagers had come together to hunt down and capture the people responsible. Those guilty thieves were now in the center of this angry mob and tensions were high. There is a way of handling such situations in Kenya called mob justice. Mob justice is where a group of people severely beat or kill a guilty party for whatever reason and there are no repercussions for their actions. If a mob kills someone, the police simply pick up the body and the mob goes on with their day. Now I am standing at the junction with no way of passing and wondering if I am going to see some people beat to death in front of my very eyes. Luckily the police arrived, nobody died (that I know of) and I was able to pass and continue on my way.

The junction in my village

The next leg of my journey I am traveling on a matatu. A matatu is Kenya’s form of public transportation in which they pack 14 to 24 people into a 11 seater van. There are typically people hanging out the doors and it feels like a rollercoaster as the driver speeds down an unpaved dirt road littered with pot-holes. This drive normally takes 2 hours, but today it was took me almost 4 hours due to bad road conditions, and the frequent stops to pack more people in. I had almost reached my destination for the first leg of my trip when the matatu was stopped by a piece of rope stretched across the road. This is a common way to stop traffic for police to check vehicles for correct registration or to charge a fare to continue down the road. Our matatu was stopped because we had an illegal amount of people inside and I could hear the police officer yelling in Swahili for the driver to pay him a bribe in order to let us pass. “Leta Pesa!! Leta Pesa!” The man working the door and the driver both jumped out of the car and started yelling back in the police officers face. Some passengers jumped ship and disappeared into the woodworks. Then to top it all off, the entire side door to the matatu fell off. I eventually made it to my destination after the door was put back on the vehicle. It was just a reminder that you should never be in a hurry to get anywhere in Kenya. I am getting a lot of practice in patience and no day goes by without a little cultural experience.