Jammed Up and Jelly Tight

This is how I spend most of my life in Kenya. Stuck in traffic. Or, as I put it during those numerous occasions when I'm already late and some Minister of Parliament's entourage has blocked the roadway again,

"F---ed in traffic."

This morning, it took 45 minutes to get from a meeting at the Panafric Hotel to Nation Centre. On the rare occasions when there's little or no traffic, the same trip would take 10 minutes, max. On Public Holidays, or most Sunday mornings before about 10 AM, road travel in Nairobi is a breeze.

And speaking of which, it's supposed to be early Winter over here, but you can't tell it from sitting in the back of a taxi. Ain't no breeze. It's always hot and stuffy, so you roll down your window hoping for a few quick blasts of moving air. Five minutes later you're gagging on diesel fumes. Or some hawker shoves a cheap geegaw up under your nose, and that totally skeeves you out, so you roll the window back up. And you sit. And you wait.

Fortunately, since acquiring my BlackBerry Bold 9000, I can at least feel like I'm getting something accomplished while I'm sitting there. Like taking the picture up top. (DAMN, I wish I could have gotten a picture of the rampaging cow that snarled traffic on Waiyaki Way yesterday morning!! But I was in the middle of a call at the time, and just didn't think it would be professional to ask that contact if I could call her back later, so I could photograph the Hoofin' Heifer outside my window.)

I get a lot of emailing done while I'm sitting in Nairobi taxis. I send a lot of text messages. There's time to think about appointments I've made and why I forgot to put them on the phone calendar. There's time to Google information I need, or catch the latest AP and CNN headlines.

But there's also time to notice that, for some reason, no matter where you are on Nairobi roadways, there always seems to be a large fuel tanker nearby, just ripe for wide-scale immolation if nicked by an impatient matatu or a clueless Toyota driver. So I guess the bottom line is that riding in Nairobi traffic never fails to "spark" my imagination.