Getting Around

When I went in to get my vaccine shots prior to coming to Kenya, the nurse cautioned me that, "although it's important to be wary of diseases like yellow fever and hepatitis, the #1 cause of fatalities for volunteers/travelers like myself is from motor-vehicle accidents." After being in Kenya for a few weeks, I can completely understand why.

The drivers here are insane and there are extremely lax "rules" of the road. Right of way mostly depends on where your vehicle resides on the motor vehicle food chain (aka how big your vehicle is). There are no stoplights in the town that I am in; instead, they primarily use roundabouts. Most roads also don't have any lines on them so vehicles will cross lanes onto oncoming traffic fairly regularly. Many of the roads are also littered with potholes so in many cases, drivers will drive on the side of the road, where the conditions are better, than the road itself. There are also extremely few crosswalks so pedestrians cross the street wherever they please (I thought the jaywalking in NYC was bad). One thing that I keep getting confused by is where I look when crossing the street. Like Britain, people drive on the left side of the road (supposed to at least) which confuses my American sentiments.

Nonetheless, I have had to get around the city somehow and so here are the different types of ways we have been getting around.

"Boda Boda" - The main way I get around is by taking rides from people on bicycles. They have a seat in the back where you can sit and usually have some handles to hold onto and cost around 20-30 KEN per ride (~$0.25-$0.40). We probably pay more than locals since we're mzingus (foreigners).

I sometimes wish that we had our own bicycles instead of having to pay for rides but apparently, another volunteer in the past bought her own bike but it was quickly stolen. The few days that she was actually able to get around in it, all the boda boda drivers would shout at her, saying that she was "stealing food from their mouths."

group of boda boda drivers waiting for a customer

"Piki Piki" - These are motorbikes and are apparently a fairly recent introduction to Kisumu. As in the picture, the passengers do not wear helmets and have only the handle behind their seats to grab onto. Some of the piki drivers drive really recklessly, speedily weaving inbetween lanes and the rest of traffic. I personally feel the least safe on pikis and try to avoid taking them whenever possible.

hold onto that piki!

"Tuk Tuk"- These are essentially covered trikes and I guess theoretically they aren't that much safer than pikis but when you cant see everything around you that could potentially collide into you, sometimes ignorance is bliss. :)

In truth, they are larger and therefore more easy to spot by other drivers and less likely to get into the blind spots of other motorists on the road. This is the first thing that we took when we got off the Kisumu airport. These are nice to take when you have a bunch of stuff with you (ie: groceries) and can't ride on a boda boda.

tuk tuks are actually sort of cute

"Matatus" - These are minibuses that we use for longer trips. They will essentially drive around looking for passengers and then drop them off en route while looking for even more passengers. Therefore, although most matatus are technically supposed to hold maybe 12 passengers, there have been instances where I have counted up to 24. I posted a video below which shows what it looks like from the back of a matatu. It doesn't include the 5 passengers who then got onto the van at the next stop (with 3 holding onto the outside). Matatu drivers are notorious for speeding down the streets and driving extremely recklessly. Please pray that I stay safe!!!!

Land Cruiser - Finally, CHI owns a land cruiser which was donated as a gift to CHI but has been in the shop nearly half the time that we've been here. Nonetheless, when functional, it helps us go to a lot of the more rural areas outside of Kisumu. I definitely feel the safest in the land cruiser and I was able to behold the awesome power of 4-wheel driver yesterday as we plowed through crazy muddy and bumpy off-road terrain.

Nice pictureque "commercial-worthy" image of the Land Cruiser