Nairobi (dpa) – Suddenly a carriageway of the urban motorway in Nairobi is enveloped in thick black and grey smoke and the only thing a driver can do is to slam on the brakes.
No, the weather has not taken a sudden turn for the worse and this is not a harbinger of eastern African climatic doom. It’s simply an ancient truck trying to overtake, its asthmatic diesel engine wheezing away for all it is worth.
It barely manages to pull alongside a minibus which is designed to carry 12 people but has 25 on board instead. Neither driver seems overly concerned at the risky manoeuvre carried out at a snail’s pace or at the acrid fumes billowing across the scene.
The Kenyans call them “mitumba cars”, which can be translated as secondhand. That’s putting it mildly, say Kenyan environmental and traffic experts.
“Our roads are being filled up with old scrap from Europe,” said university lecturer Evaristus Irandu scornfully. Cars and commercial vehicles which would never pass roadworthiness tests in Europe are finding their way to the African country in ever larger numbers.
And authorities here can only dream of impounding smokey or dilapidated vehicles. There’s no legislation that would enable them to do so. Motorists cannot even buy lead-free petrol in Kenya and the only diesel fuel on sale has a high sulphur content.
The independent Daily Nation recently trumpeted: “Mitumbas pose health danger”. Irandu says the level of emissions is endangering public health, with levels of lead in children’s blood at an alarming high.
Neither the government nor city administrators have any cash left over for improvement schemes. The last traffic infrastructure plan for Nairobi was drawn up in 1940 when Kenya was still a British colony and there were only 30,000 cars on the roads.
A vehicle census was carried out in 1994 and it counted 400,000 cars, buses and lorries plying the congested streets. Six years later that number has increased substantially.
Nairobi has a lack of traffic lights that work, of pavements and of solutions for the future.
“There’s no alternative to the numerous matutu (minibuses),” Janet Omolo told the Daily Nation. Omolo has been trying hard at the university to devise concepts which could ease the daily traffic chaos.
“Riding a bicycle here means taking your life in your hands and even walking is dangerous. Car drivers just ignore you,” said the researcher.
An “integrated” traffic concept, where mass transport would be left to proper buses instead of old cars, would be just fine except that there is no money in Kenya to pay for it.
