How come mitumba cars that are eight years old when they first arrive in Kenya often look and feel quite new? --Elias
Kenya is famous - world famous - for the severity of its motoring conditions. Why?
After all, there are places that are much hotter, rains that are much heavier, rocks that are just as hard, mud that is just as sticky, dust that is (almost) as choking, and we do not have a monopoly on potholes, corrugations, washaways and ruts and bumps, nor on high mountains and deep valleys.
The probable answer is that in most places very, very harsh conditions usually happen only one at a time and with such severity that they force the driver to behave with respect.
Also, roadworthiness rules are strict, demanding high levels of maintenance (In Switzerland, for example, you can be fined if your car has a dent or a scratch, and even if it is just dirty).
Consider: If you were driving across the Sahara Desert, you would probably not forget to check the temperature gauge; you are unlikely to tackle the Amazon rainforest with bald tyres; and by the fourth downhill bend on a motoring tour of the Himalayas you would start making allowances for very hot and smelly brakes.
In short, you would pay very special attention to the parts that were most vulnerable in the prevailing conditions.
In Kenya, all the damaging conditions exist simultaneously…and (here’s the rub) almost constantly! They are all imperfect, but they are very rarely bad enough to make us back-off.
We drive down any major highway between Mombasa and Kisumu as if it were an autobahn, careless of the fact that even our smoothest roads generate at least a hundred times more vibration, flex and bounce.
They are not bad enough to warrant different driving behaviour, but they are bad enough to inflict greater wear and tear.
So, too, with our dirt roads. Most of them are not so terrible that we are reduced to walking speed. We motor along them, for long distances and with no apparent drama, at quite a pace.
There is no realistic alternative. And there is no doubt that the tyres, the suspension, the bodywork and all the mechanicals are given a pummelling.
When our conditions do get really awful, we slow right down and, ironically, do no damage at all. On the next stretch, which is much, much better, we celebrate the relative smoothness. Which isn't smooth at all in real terms.
In summary, then, motoring in Kenya is a mechanical demolition derby because our conditions aren't good enough to be kind and aren't bad enough to force care. On any given trip, our cars are subjected, moderately, to not just one but dozens of automotive anathema. Unremittingly.
On top of this, we are guilty of the "English Winter" syndrome. England is located between the Tropic of Cancer and the Arctic Circle, so for several months of the year the temperature rarely rises above +5 degrees Centigrade and it sometimes snows.
Because it is also an island in the path of a relatively warm Atlantic Ocean current, the temperature rarely falls below -5 degrees Centigrade, and it doesn't snow very often or very much.
Because their winter conditions are relatively moderate, the English don't make proper provision for more extreme moments, and generally refuse to behave like a polar populace. Their houses, their clothes, their transport systems etc., are all designed to function adequately at +5 degree Celsius, and to sort-of-survive at -5 degree Celsius with a bit of frost or a sprinkling of snowflakes.
Thus, throughout the winter months, the English are almost permanently cold, and if it snows heavily the whole place comes to a grinding halt and gets in a deep-frozen muddle. Which it does once or twice most years.
In contrast, people in places like Alaska live in several metres of snow and temperatures of minus 30 degree Celsius and lower, and remain quite cosy, comfortable and organised - because their systems are properly designed for those conditions and they are well prepared.
In Anchorage, it is normal practice to go to work in a balaclava helmet, woolly earmuffs, fleece-lined waterproof boots, thermal underwear and even more thermal over-wear. In London, similar conditions are faced with an umbrella, an arctic breeze up the trouser leg, and icicles forming on the eyelashes.
So, it is with Kenyan motorists. Because we are not driving across the Sahara or through the Amazon or over the Himalayas, we refuse to behave like expeditioners, despite the fact that we commute in conditions which are - cumulatively and constantly – mechanically unkind.
For a single off-road camping trip, we will equip with spares, tools, water, blankets, medicine, and a whole cornucopia of contingency kit - even though the whole trip will last only a few days and perhaps 1,000km and, though conditions are often demanding, care will ensure they do little damage.
Yet for the mechanically demanding job of driving to work or the shops every day, or perhaps a weekend away on the tarmac, we gaily set off without even checking the jack or spare wheel.
The average motorist in the average year travels about 15,000km at this level of unprepared risk - in conditions the rest of the world would deem to be “rough”.
After all, a single trip from the suburbs to the city centre of Nairobi is a small part of a much bigger annual expedition, and although you are technically not far from help, the consequences of a breakdown are not necessarily minor.
I'd rather break down in the middle of the Chalbi Desert than in the middle of Uhuru Highway.
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Has driving become more stressful?
Road rage has manifested itself globally with axes, baseball bats, court cases and newspaper headlines, but it has been going on inside people's heads for years.
Photo credit: Shutterstock
There was a time when people “went for a drive” as a form of relaxation. Nowadays, driving causes more stress than it cures. Has anybody measured how severe this tension is, or its health consequences? -Marion
Research tells us that stress not only affects your facial expression, mood, thought processes, blood pressure and digestion but has a debilitating effect on numerous bodily functions…including those little guys that go ovum-hunting.
Zaps 'em harder than that eighth beer, or an ill-timed burp, or when the sweet nothings being whispered in your ear accidentally sound like someone else's name.
This is especially significant to motorists, because research has also shown that one of the most severe stress-inducers is traffic congestion.
So-called "road rage" has manifested itself globally with axes, baseball-bats, court-cases and newspaper headlines, but it has been going on in people's heads (and lower) for years.
Tests conducted on commuters (measuring the primary stress symptoms of heart rate, eye-flutter and sweat) have long since shown that the average businessman or housewife on the average trip into town hits higher stress levels than at any other time during the day. Or night.
At the rate our traffic levels are increasing we are well into the pounding heart, twitching eye and sweating palm syndromes, and must surely be approaching the point where people's bells ring and drivers get home with small piles of crushed teeth in their laps.
And I kid you not about the other consequences in the lap region. The facts, at least, are so firm that one British automaker used the “countdown” news to advertise the in-car comforts of its latest model - the quiet engine, the luxuriant seats, the soft music, the power steering, the air conditioning and the pure serenity of the handling and ride. Keeps stress down and other things up, the ad implied, not in the least indirectly. The ad had two pictures. One of the interior of a car and another that looked like a drawing of a tadpole.
