Road Rage

It never ceases to amaze me how Kenyans are deeply religious when they are in Church, bashing their bible and spewing quotes from the Good Book as if there will be a "Who wants to be a Millionaire" show based on the Book of Apostles or Phillipians. However the minute they step out of the Church and into their cars, they will overlap the traffic, cut across three lanes on the new Mombasa road and abuse anyone who dares to cross their path. Wait a minute, didn't we just hold hands a minute ago when praying for peace, love, spirituality and whatever 100+ petitions our pastor had in the service a few minutes ago? But Christianity aside, what I find most unusual is those drivers that will not give you one inch of space to enter a slow moving trail of traffic, even if you are clearly indicating that you are going in the opposite direction. Or better still, those that refuse to make eye contact with you when you are begging to be let into their lane, they adopt a stiff neck, sura ya kazi and eyes dead ahead as if looking out for dreaded Pirates off the Gulf of Aden. The absolute worst are the ones who cut you off very badly in traffic and then it is the passenger....yes the passenger, not the driver who gives you very bad eyes!! Kwani? Chinua Achebe put it very aptly in Things Fall Apart, the outsider who weeps louder than the bereaved! Our driving habits are surely very peculiarly Kenyan!