Kind-a Traffic Updates By Karambu Luruti

Written in a May 2017 Facebook post;edited in June 2020

OTC.
The first time I saw this word I was seated in Pangani Girls High School. Form three, 2005.
I am 28,stop trying to calculate my age.
It was courtesy of one Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, in the book Coming to Birth.
I never struggled with English Literature and Fasihi, got A's in both English and Swahili. But this book, this book by Marjorie, I remember struggling with it, falling half asleep for the first few months it was in my face.


OTC.
I kept wondering where this place was.

For you kids from the leafy suburbs, OTC is part of the heart of Nairobi downtown. For the days I don't drive to work, I pass by there. The javs from work will drop me there or in Bus Station, the other part of the heart of Nairobi downtown then I can catch the next jav home.At this point it would be safe to say I am a jav-a..no?I digress.

About two months ago, one evening, I was seated at the back bench in a matatu.

Guy is seated next to me and he is next to the window. He's busy on his phone.
This one must have been plying this route for the first time. Must have been a leafy surbub-a.
You never flash your phone when in OTC-because OTC equals Githurai.
The obvious happens. His phone magically disappears from his hands-someone grabbed it through the window.
He starts shouting.
Perpetrator drops the phone as he's running.
A good samaritan picks it up and jumps into our matatu.
He hands it back to the owner.
The guy is extremely grateful. What happens next has to be one of the strangest things I have witnessed this year.
I see a hand go through the window and wait for it, the good samaritan is slapped, smack across the face. Who by? The perpetrator.
I'm not playing guys. This kleptomaniac had the guts to come back and slap this good guy.

Which world is this we are living in??? Where a thief feels he has the right to slap the good guy? Somebody explain.Explain to me like I am your girlfriend, and I've caught you cheating, and you are trying to justify it. Explain.

I questioned this good Samaritan all the way up until we alighted. "Kwani ulikua unamjua?''
Think I asked this question like 5times.And the way I'm set up, I can dwell on stuff. He told me he was just standing there waiting for a matatu home. He picked the phone when he saw it fall and figured he had to enter the matatu to protect himself. Hmmm?!

To date I am not sure what to believe, maybe he was also a crook and had fallen out with his fellow crook and decided to sabotage the business for the day. Or maybe, just maybe he was indeed a good samaritan, and Nairobi downtown is full of mad people, mad mad people. Mad thieves. I mean, it's enough that you are a thief, must you be mad too?

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