Tom Sitati, my friend from Nairobi, is apprehensive about driving in Kigali — or anywhere in Rwanda for that matter. This isn’t just because every car he gets into has a driver on the ‘wrong†side.
It’s more that he experiences an uneasiness about Kigali that keeps him rudderless whenever he visits. That’s happening more frequently; Tom is a branding expert and Rwandan companies increasingly need his services.
In case you hadn’t noticed Rwanda really is committed to the dream of an East African community — note the whole country’s committed effort to switch from French to the English and Kiswahili spoken in the rest of the region. So Tom has no trouble talking to most people here, but he struggles to make sense of the city itself.
‘I have absolutely no idea where I stay,†he says, referring to the residence of his host, the marketing director of a transnational firm. ‘If he doesn’t pick me up himself, my taxi driver just talks to him on the phone and, a few turns later, we are at his house.â€
He knows by sight the building with the Nakumatt Supermarket, but he doesn’t know it’s called UTC. He knows we are at the MTN Centre but he doesn’t know that’s in Nyarutarama and he also doesn’t know how to get from either of these buildings to the other.
But he has faith in the transport system, the little he knows of it. ‘There are far fewer traffic jams here and they’re much shorter. There is always a taxi when you need one and you get to places quickly.†This is true and it is the beauty of a small city. Kigali, with roughly one million residents, does not have enough cars to cause traffic jams worth noticing by anyone used to spending hours in the mind-wrenchingly horrendous Nairobi traffic.
Kigali has only slight traffic jams on the old commercial side of the city, especially near the public transport terminals, at the busy junctions in Nyamirambo and Remera commercial centres and on two of the main highways leading in and out of the city. But even these minor jams are mostly at rush hour.
Tom says ‘taxi†to mean what he knows as a matatu in Kenya and a taxi voiture in Kigali — a car taxi. This local version of cheap transport is very well self-regulated; it’s not run by illegal gangs and is considered safe, even though it must be said that in Rwanda, unlike in Kenya, no one ever made a lot of money selling compulsory seatbelts to the industry.
Always on his tight schedule and tidy expense account, Tom mostly knows Kigali from the comfort of a friend’s car or the front seat of a branded taxi variant called Kigali taxis. Their metered fares are a tad more expensive, but they’re more reliable than the arbitrarily negotiated cars of the common unmarked taxi, identifiable only by a small yellow wedge marked ‘TAXIâ€.
He hasn’t yet enjoyed the unhurried, orderly ride of the Kigali matatu — it would drive him up the wall with impatience. Although some have music systems blaring out hip-hop or gospel or whatever’s on the radio, they are not as much fun as the Kenyan version.
None of them has the kind of high-fidelity, bum-rattling, ear-splitting music of the Kenyan matatu. None stops or overtakes dangerously or ‘overlaps†(Kenyan traffic police and matatu slang for overtaking a long queue of vehicles either by using the pavement or the wrong side of the road).
They stop only at designated roadside points; most of their conductors, though sometimes a bit talkative, are not loud and aggressive. There are, of course — and increasingly so — a few exceptions to this rule, even in gentle Kigali, but our Mr Sitati, who in Nairobi would only choose this mode of transport as an emergency last resort, would find them annoyingly slow and even boring.
Not just because they actually adhere to the Kigali city speed limit of 40km/h; not even just because the Kigali public transport driver is too law-abiding to cut corners and the traffic policemen too hawk-eyed to let him.
It is because the invariably polite conductor is always too busy — calling for customers and acting as a super-courteous usher as he opens and closes doors for passengers — to get time to collect the fare while they are seated.
So every time a passenger disembarks, everyone else has to sit and twiddle his or her fingers while the conductor looks for change for a 5 000 Rwandan Franc (RWF) note or argues — politely — over a worn or torn 100 RWF bill. And no one complains.
Tom Sitati, like me, would complain. But that would be only for a while before he notices, as I once did, that his wallet had disappeared as he disembarked at Kwa Rubangura, the usually crowded main terminus, where gangs of smooth pickpockets relieve unsuspecting souls of their cash, phones and jewellery.
These criminal gangs must have learned their trade in the backstreets of Nairobi, Kampala or even Muqdisho because they use the same old tricks that never fail: squeezing past you as you board or disembark public transport, bumping into you in crowded streets, or distracting drivers of cars in slow-moving traffic with dubious sales pitches or vague warning signals while their accomplices grab handbags, laptops and smart phones.
Unlike me though, Tom wouldn’t opt for the alternative form of motorised transport — the ubiquitous motorbike taxi (aka moto in Kigali-speak). Although quite a convenient way to get around cheaply, the moto drivers won’t eagerly weave in and out of several lanes of traffic at crazy angles to jump the jam as they would in Nairobi.
Of course the moto can prove dangerous in the wrong hands, a fact quite a few people have confirmed in flashbacks as they recover in hospital, having arrived with their nostrils and mouths still full of gritty bits of tarmac after sudden moto accidents.
‘It happened too fast†is the first thing another Kenyan, also called Tom, said to me when I saw him at the King Faisal Hospital after such an accident on a hillside in Kimihurura, a Kigali suburb. ‘What impresses me most about them,†says Tom Sitati, ‘is how they all carry a spare helmet for the passenger.â€
Of course, where he comes from, most motorbike taxis — just like the boda-boda (bicycle) taxis — never have helmets and don’t venture into policed areas as they may be charged or extorted or both. He would be even more impressed if he knew that the stencilled number on the helmet and cape of each bike operator is a kind of barcode identifying the operator, his taxi, his base and the zone where he may solicit for business.
Tom would also be amazed at the reasonableness of the moto’s seemingly arbitrary charges. ‘Maybe it’s this hour one loses on the flight,†Tom muses, shifting perspective suddenly like a Douglas Adams plot as he ponders his perpetual cluelessness in Kigali and fiddles frantically with his smart little phone.
‘One leaves Nairobi at 6.15 Kenyan time, flies for an hour, and lands here at 6.15 Rwandan time,†he says, still fiddling with the little phone. ‘It stubbornly refuses to stick to Rwandan time,†he says of the phone clock. ‘Whenever I set it to GMT +2, it quickly sneaks back to GMT +3!†The smart little phone probably feels rudderless too.
Lloyd Igane has been a goatherd, untrained teacher, feature writer, cowshed cleaner, rabbit contraceptive peddler, accountant and husband. He divides his time between Nairobi, Kenya and Kigali, Rwanda
