The man was not a driver. He could not be a driver. Even if he were in a place so deficient of drivers that anybody could be called upon to move a vehicle, he could not be called a driver. He was not a driver but he was now sitting in the driver’s seat. And the vehicle was moving because of the things he did while in that seat. As Beni struggled to promise himself that he was not going to hate him, he wondered whether he could be called a passenger or an occupant of the vehicle. He thought that one can only be a passenger if the vehicle one was traveling in was being operated by a driver. The absence of a driver turns you into a mere occupant of a moving vehicle however fast such a vehicle moves.
This thought led Beni to yet another thought. He had listened and heard news announcements of traffic accidents with wonderment. “A man has been charged in court with careless driving.” Such announcements always astonished Beni. The news would only make sense if the words CARELESS and DRIVER did not occur in the same sentence. As long as there was the aspect of being careless, then there could be no driving. A driver cannot and should not be careless. Only movers of vehicles are careless. Another intriguing piece of news: “a middle aged man was yesterday taken to court and accused of over speeding.”
Such statements intrigued Beni because of the reason that his mind created every time he thought about it. Anybody who engaged in over-speeding was unfit to bear the title, DRIVER. In his own considered opinion, Beni thought that such a statement should be replaced by another that is truthful and meaningful: Yesterday, a man was taken to court and accused of moving a vehicle on the ground quickly and recklessly. He again imagined that the words “OVER-SPEEDING and DRIVER were mutually exclusive and should not occur anywhere in the neighbourhood of each other. Anybody who over-speeds cannot be a driver! Maybe such a person should be called something new: a fast and reckless mover of a vehicle on a road.
Even as his mind raced on, condemning and uncondemning people and physical things, he spared room for going back and saying sorry should his ideas be found wrong. Maybe the thing Beni was traveling in could not qualify to be called a vehicle, and therefore, whoever moved it was under license to treat it as such; license to treat it as it deserved.
The vehicle was not actually a vehicle. In fact, the only thing that made it come to life and be meaningful equipment was the aspect of speed. The mover of this metallic implement might have noticed that people were too willing to write off something he had bought with his hard-earned cash. As a consequence, he resorted to moving it so quickly and so recklessly. As if to spite contemptuous observers. As if to astonish those who doubted that it was a vehicle.
As this absurdity of a vehicle rattled on, Beni once more promised himself that he was not going to hate one who was moving it. The very affair of moving on the road inside this metallic entrapment afforded him various insights into the nature of Samburu and its people. These people included, but were not limited to the natives. Apart from the natives, these people consisted of the workers who had traveled from far and wide to live and work in Samburu. Depending upon the lengths of time that they had lived in samburu, some of them indeed qualified to be termed natives of this beautiful countryside.
Traveling on the roads within Samburu was to Beni an attempt at description. It was a chance for one to see both the self, and others unfold before the eyes. As the vehicle you are in rocks you and bumps you from side to side, you see a description of negligence. It is a description of how a region could be so disregarded and left to lie in waste as other regions make huge strides in development. It makes you wonder why people went to the ballot every five years to elect leaders.
For the first few months of his coming to Samburu, Beni entertained the thought that the people of Samburu did not take part in voting. That was until he saw a man mount to the podium and promise unusually patient residents that the road would soon be made. Beni was later told by his friend that the promise of the road being made had been made for fifteen years with very little success in the offing. So, as occupants in the vehicle swayed their heads aimlessly and knocked their heads with each other because of potholes, Beni saw something else. He witnessed a region and a people so needlessly neglected.
The roads and the drivers of Samburu also allowed workers who lived there to observe their own dreadful condition. These were men and women who mostly were not natives of this land. They had arrived in Maralal with various dreams. Settled and more aware of where they were, they had now to sit back and sometimes watch their dreams fade as they were turned into nightmares. The hardy nature of the vehicle as it was forced to rattle on the rugged road in essence represented the resilient spirit of these men and women who had refused to give up, their degraded circumstances notwithstanding.
The vehicle was now at Baawa junction and Kisima centre was now visible at a distance. It was a small centre, a collection of shops and non-shops; houses and non-houses. It nestled on a gentle slope. Even now, should you pass by, you will notice the gentle slope slowly giving way to the small Kisima Lake. You will see this just as you pass the gate of Kisima Health Centre, heading for Kisima Girls’ High School. As the buildings at Kisima centre came closer, Beni formed a thought he was going to alight with. In Samburu, the situation forces you to find something to think about as you disembark from a vehicle. This day being Sunday, he recalled an entry in his diary.
Sunday 21st April, 1995
Today I giggled in church. It wasn’t funny what amused me. Maybe just a little puzzling. Jesus was not originally the son of Herod after all. That is what my older brother once told me. Worse, last Sunday evening my brother told me that the story of Jesus is in the book of Goliath. Well, I will have to find a more intelligent way of expressing my amusement. My father has this evening promised to break my neck should I ever laugh in church. Still, I will advise my brother to stop carrying the small Gideon’s International Pocket Bible. He simply does not read it. If he ever reads, he has no intention of remembering what he reads. Gotta sleep early tonight. School opens tomorrow. Lugulu A.C. Mixed Secondary School. We call it LACSS.
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