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Sewer bubbles its way at a domestic road ,Sunday June 9th 2014, at the New Donholm estate in Nairobi's Eastlands area. Photo: Jacob Otieno
Develoment in Kenya hardly happen quickly, in most cases, it never happens! Especially when it is something politicians have promised wananchi.
Constructing a kilometer of road in Kenya takes decades. Some road constructions only seem to happen faster when they are far way, like Alfred Mutua’s instant road.
Take the one at my doorstep, Outer Ring Road, for instance. It looks like an abandoned cattle track. No repairs. No maintenance. No nothing. In fact, a few patches here and there, done decades ago, make it look like a badly sewn pair of shorts.
Scream out
When driving along outer Ring Road, one must exercise self-control. Self-control is needed to help one stop themselves from screaming out loud every time they find themselves in a crater in the middle of the road. This is even worse when you are in a bus and the driver has ideas and maneuverings that would put a F1 driver to shame.
Bullet-proof tank
The good old government, or whoever decides where roads should be probably have good reason for putting the road here, but it might actually be put to better use.
Along the road are ‘farmers’ who plant all manner of crops, and occasionally nurse vegetables to maturity beside the smoke-belching trucks with heaving engines that use the road on a regular basis.
These roadside farmers are the chaps who might benefit from a little more land to plant Sukuma wiki. That is, if they get creative and permission to plant crops in some of those potholes.
It wouldn’t even be a lot of work, for the road is ready for planting, no ploughing required. Allowing those farmers to get creative and enterprising is something Kamwana might start considering soon.
Anyway, in the age of roadside declarations, all Kamwana would need while passing by such roads is to pop his head out of the tinted, bulletproof tank I saw a while back on display at Nyayo Stadium.
He would then look at the eager faces peering at him from the roadsides.
The faces would be begging but happy to see the tank visit their humble, eer, farms.
He would then proceed to give an order to the local chief to immediately allow the roadside farmers expand their farms onto the dusty, muddy roads. And by so doing solve two problems at once, that of a poor road and even poorer farmers.
