Over the last three days, I have been in Nairobi attending to some professional matters.
As I moved in and around the city undertaking my business, I could not help but make the following observations:
- Every single road that I used or saw had a good asphaltic surface. I did not see a single pothole in Nairobi during my rounds of almost all the suburbs. If a road was bad, it was one with some asphaltic cracks and depressions. Clearly, these were not new roads.
- From my observation, there were very few traffic signal intersections in place, most of which were not in working condition. The good thing, however, was that they had very active traffic police officers who always turned out in their blue uniforms, ensuring the smooth movement of traffic. The good thing for them also is that they all have communication equipment, which they use to ensure that the flow of vehicular traffic is orderly.
- Most of the city’s drains were slabbed or covered. The few open drains I saw were clean and not silted.
- All the neighbourhoods including the central business district, were generally clean and devoid of any refuse. As for plastic waste, I saw practically none. In all the public places I visited, they had three separate bins for organic waste, plastic waste, and others.
- The people of Kenya practice a system of intra-city transportation that caught my attention. Private individuals are not permitted to operate public transport. Anyone who purchases a bus(es) is required to register it with cooperative transport companies, who then manage the bus for and account to them. I found that very interesting, as it made public transport very organized. In addition, all school buses are painted yellow, in order to enable them enjoy specific privileges on the fast lane, etc.
- The people of Kenya are extremely proud of their Swahili language. Even though both Swahili and English are official languages, Swahili comes first, and this was evident everywhere we went. How I wish we had one in Ghana, but that is only if wishes were horses!
- One area that really caught my attention was the seriousness with which the Kenyan government and its people take the issue of security, law, and order. You cannot gain access into any public facility without declaring everything on you and your vehicle as well as your body being thoroughly searched. By this, every facility has had installed at its entry and exit baggage and body scanners with security personnel manning them. Whether they are shopping centers, hotels, public parks, government offices, municipal offices, utility providers, etc., they were all ready to search without any form of compromise. There were even some facilities, such as the Westgate Shopping Mall, that had about ten sniffer dogs in addition to the use of body scanners. Again, all the public facilities listed above had e-gates installed to check access in and out.
- The security situation at the airport was top-notch. At the only entrance gate to the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, every single passenger was made to alight from his or her vehicle for body searches before rejoining the vehicle in the airport car park to begin departure formalities. During that process, your passport, visas, and boarding passes are checked less than four times before boarding. I remember that when I got to the immigration checkpoint, the officer (in his late fifties) told me in plain language that there was a problem with my documents. He did not understand why I had entered the country on Tuesday and was leaving in two days. As though it was a joke, he referred me to his superiors (two ladies) for interrogation. Fortunately for me, I had arrived at the airport very early, and so I was not in a hurry. I took them through the various stamps in my passport to let them appreciate that I had never stayed in any country for more than a week. We then engaged in some niceties, after which I was released to proceed for the other formalities. Even then, this officer who reported me asked whether I had confused the superiors, convinced them, or corrupted them (three Cs he called them). When I told him that I had convinced them, he said that in his case, I had to corrupt him and actually went ahead to repeat it while still holding the stamp to endorse my passport. I pretended that I did not understand a word of what he said till he had stamped it. I collected my passport and moved on.
- In as much as I encountered some street hawking, this was only limited to the CBD area and even here, the prevalence of it was almost insignificant when compared with the situation in Accra.
- The Kenyan people are pretty much proud of their Kenyan shillings. You will ordinarily not be able to openly exchange your foreign currency, nor can you openly trade in it. One of the rare situations in which you can trade in foreign currency is if you did not have the local currency and needed to undertake a transaction. Here, you would have to use the POS device to have the payment directly deducted from your home bank account. I guess, however, that there may be a couple of underhand forex traders, though certainly not as openly as we do in Accra.
- One downside of Nairobi that I witnessed was that, as much as the people tried to be nice, their hospitality was nowhere near that of the average Ghanaian. They had this attitude of communicating as though to tell you that they were minding their own business.
- A second downside that I noticed yesterday morning was the theft of my only phone charger (for my iPad, iPhone, and Samsung phone) as I departed Nairobi. It was the last thing I packed on my way out of the hotel, so I was 100% certain that I had placed it in my hand luggage. As part of the routine security checks we had been subjected to, the car boot where my bags were had been searched thrice while we were seated inside. At the departure gate ahead of boarding, I decided to charge my iPhone. To my shock, I opened my hand luggage, only to realize that only the charger head was in the corner of the bag. Someone, in trying to pull the charger out, had taken the cable, leaving the head. Where and how this happened, only God knows. In my interactions with Ekow Koomson (a previous resident of the city) ahead of this travel, he had warned me that the city was very fast and swift, but I never imagined that it could be like this. Ekow, this thing really hit me hard, errrr! Come for your stone, wai!
In my engagements with Philip, my assigned driver, I got to understand that in as much as Kenya had endemic issues such as corruption, they were really thankful to God for the way their country was currently being managed. The night before, on the Kenyan Television Network, I had watched President William Ruto at the Devolution Conference at Homabay chastise governors and members of parliament for demanding bribes before passing bills, among others.
My dear friend, Ghana has many things to thank God for, and I pray that these good things listed above will, in the not too distant future, come to add to our blessings as a people.
May God continue to bless our homeland, Ghana, and make it great and strong indeed!
Engr. Eric Atta-Sonno
