Dan Okwiri
Penning 🖊my journal. Every being is in search of something. In their quest must move place to seek it. Life is a segued movement. The Uber revolutionized how we bee & interact.
The Nairobi taxi driver of the 1970s till about 2000 was an aged bloke more likely 40+yrs . More likely specifically seeded from either the suburban Uthiru, Gathira, Riruta, Dagoretti, Wangige, Kee’ngeero, Kikuyu Town, Mwimuto or Kabete.
The region has a higher income than most of Kenya due to its proximity with the city, but on the flip side the highest dropout rate. Few academicians or professionals seed from that region and the average youth are lured into being a taxi driver.
Home away from home, the genre of taxi drivers of that era literary lived & dined in their taxis. Some even carried their linen in the car trunk. They would hoard parking slots in the CBD, & recline their seats & dead to sleep in broad mid daylight as the city beehived. The busy hours of taxi trade was the night, the revellers their delight.
Taxi of yesteryears were dilapidated, often needing a push to crank engine to life. The car cabin a grungy hovel that reeked of stale cigarettes and malodorous human sweat. There were no fixed rates. One used a taxi as a last resort, the driver with a saw to extort arm & leg.
The uber wafted a hurricane of fresh air into the trade. Riding on digital mobile applications, today you don’t have to look for a taxi, they buzz to your doorstep.
Uber Company wanted cars of certain uppity standards, & sleek newish cars joined the trade in spade. With it came in young trendy drivers who were savvy & stylish. Many of them not full time drivers like the taxi driver of yesteryears but university students or professionals pimping it as a side hustle for bustle. In fact, it was now possible to have an intellectual chat with the driver.
The Uber came in as Nairobi was blazing into a transformation. The economy was heating. The Kibaki administration through Japanese financial assistance was opening the Kilimani, Kileleshwa suburbia and paving the roads to international standards.
Prudently they were granting permits to allow for apartments. The Chinese trickling to pop the city with high rise apartments. A new jazzy apartment suburbia of Kilimani & Kileleshwa drizzled in, dazzling Nairobi with new giraffe swag.
Apartment-life changed our social fabric. It empowered the middle class woman. The advent of the Kilimani mamas dawned. No longer was the woman afraid of living alone in a secluded single house. Apartment provide common security & social bonds under a common corral roof.
Multitudes of single women eschewed apartment culture in droves & bought into these real estate developments.
The apartment life took to Uber bread to butter. It was easy for the Ubers drivers to identify someone’s residence as the apartments stood out, in came Google maps & WhatsApp pin to pin your location.
The single apartment woman warmed to the Uber drivers in storm & dorm. Why not? Other than just taxi services, the new boho taxi men trendy, & could provide other add-on features.
I recently spoke to Otieno my nephew a young man, who is a Uber driver. He has completed his civil engineering degree & still hooked in the Uber trade as his side show. Was piqued, wanted him to spade out what keeps him earthed in.
His sordid revelations would spook my rookie. Otieno is a attractive man, has basket ball height & well chiseled muscular frame with husky voice that spurts testosterone.
Seven years back in his early 20s’ he ubered a lady in her mid 30s to Kilimani, known as Wambui. She was monied chubby & had a daughter 5 years. He picked her up from Junction Mall, her trolly brimming in shopping.
On arrival to destination, the gentleman he is, muscled her shopping to her swanky 8th floor apartment.
It was Friday night & Wambui spilled to him she wanted to drop her a child with a friend & go out & still needed his services. The sweetener was she will pay waiting charges. In the meanwhile served him chill choice vintage wine, unbeknownst to wet him into luscious, as she took shower.
Her shower took a whacking 2 hours but he didn’t mind after all, she was paying waiting charges. What baffled him was he couldn’t hear her child speak, it was obvious she must have dozed to sleep.
To his amazement Wambui would slither into her living room in a flirty silky night gown & breast pouring out, scented in perfume. Poured wine in glass, snacked it with grapes, cashew nuts & strips of cheese nudged her way into his snuggly sofa & armed him in sweet. Before he could slow his heartbeat land him kiss pinning him in the sofa literary taking away all the breath in him as she fumbled for his tools.
A segue of one thing motioned bobbing to another. He found himself in her bedroom. Stealing young candy, she jumped on steamy pogo stick. Otieno was stuck in her apartment till Monday morning, a very tired jiggled man.
After a hearty breakfast, her house help had arrived, he dropped Wambui in Nairobi Hospital, & learnt she was a consultant doctor. Wambui gave him a whacking 30k for his Uber & extras.
Otieno though nothing of the prickly dalliance, thanked the gods for his lady good fortune. Bought himself great trendy gear that made him the darling of lassies at the university, where he was an engineering student.
Feisty, to his surprise Wambui called him the next week Friday for the same ritual. Seven years tryst down the line she remains his customer. They have birthed a child together but don’t live together, she doesn’t mind as long as she gets prime time.
Engineer Otieno now a Uber Gigolo revealed to Wuod Baba that he had 5 women clients all in the Kilimani / Klieshwa suburb that he offers such engineering services. That is how he maintains his plush lifestyle.
The apartment setting opened window to the Uber to the new flood of middle class women & their lives become intertwined with the Uber drivers. They depend on them to do their shopping, uber children to school and do everything a husband would do, & even pay for all these with no strings attached. Roles switched, the new woman predates, & pays for a man.
To my anguish, despite the fact that Engineer Otieno has a high flying corporate job, he still night owls as an Uber driver, & yet to tie the knot in fort.
In some ways Daktari Wambui got him knotted. Wuod Baba invited Otieno two weeks for the weekend in the countryside, ostensibly to hook him with a lovely young lily daisy Migori girl.
Butterfly to daisy flower, no surprises he rocked up in his Uber with Wambui. Don’t know if she was paying for it, but she wouldn’t let engineer travel anywhere out of town alone! She thinks him mollycoddle young & nappy vulnerable.
And you know what, daktari loved my roast Nile Perch. Brouhaha…
#okwiri🖊 my journal, my thoughts, my walk…
**** my book “I have cleansed my tears” is available at Nuria bookstore.
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