Bus Trip Nairobi to Mombasa: Part 1 of 2

Experience some Kenyan culture as you join me on my bus trip from Nairobi to Mombasa, Kenya. “Take a bus trip, they said. It will be fun, they said.” Ha, said no one ever!!
The spoiler is that the Tahmeed bus broke down. Twice. For a total of eleven-and-one-half hours. An anticipated eight-hour journey quickly (or slowly) morphed into exactly 24-hours spent aboard buses and roadsides. This included a five-hour followed by a six-and-one-half hour road-side breakdown, a mechanic both “in” and under the bus, and so much more you would find it incredible.
I got to experience some Kenyan culture in the small town of Emali which is about equidistant from the larger centres of Nairobi and Mombasa-but it’s truly the middle of nowhere. That aside, the town was bustling and it was almost more than I could take in. This statement might be a truism that applies to all of Africa-it is sensory overload, see for yourself.
I shot two very interesting stories in Emali. Featured here are locals fetching water from a “fresh” water source-but, you can judge that for yourself. (In my next video you will see how the highway vendors make their living, the lengths they go to, and the distances they sprint after transport trucks to make a sale).
Here’s a snapshot of the difference between western and African cultures. Over the course of 11.5 hours of a broken-down bus, not one of the 38 African passengers complained. Nobody yelled. Nobody swore. Nobody threw a tantrum. And nobody threw around their “Karen-” weight demanding, “do you know who I am?”
I did say to my Kenyan companion that were I in the west and speaking my mother tongue, I would have laid out my argument, “we have been waiting five hours (at that time), what are you doing to resolve this, this is completely untenable, we ought to be compensated, I have a car and lodging rented, we haven’t been fed, blah, blah, blah.” But, I kept “mum”. You know, “when in Rome”, and “when in Africa”…
A UK-national I met while travelling through African who originally hails from Jamaica, explained to me, “Africa will pace you”.
“Pole, pole”, which means “slowly, slowly” in Swahili might just as well be the national slogans of both Tanzania and Kenya. It is everybody’s answer for everything and I’ve certainly heard it said at least one thousand times over a few months, by a conservative estimate…
Karen’s are neither allowed or welcomed. Here, you accept. My friend told me that Africans don’t complain because they know nothing will happen anyway. Meanwhile, in the west, complaining is a national pastime…