Thief! Thief!

Ha! I just left the office and I paid Sh100 for the ride home. Yes, that’s a 100 per cent increase on the normal fare. Am I angry? Yes! This is the third day I am paying twice the amount yet some idiots have cancelled a tender for a second railway…even if it was going to Uganda (the Westlands jam would have been averted, and thus Forest Road opened up.)

I don’t know why people don’t insist that the matatu phase-out be fast-tracked. They only leave that to Kwendo Opanga to speak about when we are being overcharged because it has rained, or there is a traffic jam, or there’s a police crackdown. I think the crème de la crème would have had a taste had the airlines increased their fares because of the ash cloud. Too bad they just stayed around choking our roads with their CLXs,VXs, 320is, SL 500s, X6s and, of course, the 1.8T VW Passat. Ha!

The matatu (public minivan) I was in had nice reggae music. The kind of music that DJ Kalonje plays…and he was the one on the mix with a ‘Dancehall Jamdown II’ edition.

I enjoyed the dancehall, but then out of the blue, I saw national cohesion popping up on the Matatu TV.

The guy has shocking, really bloody, clips of the post-election violence. Then a police officer dismisses some guy shooting the documentary (of course a crazy baldhead—hehe—whiteman) saying “this is an internal matter, why are you interfering?”

The background music playing on ‘Trumpet Rhythm’ is the one that goes something like “father, Jamaica need you now, father if we ever need you it’s surely now”.

So, I am playing it back as I bang “my day with you” and I can confirm that that song is ‘wicked!’ The choice of the frames was apt. Can Dr Mzalendo Kibunjia, he of the National Cohesion and Integration Commission pick this song as the ‘cohesion anthem’ in the slums? I’d love to hear it!