After attending a meeting that ended at 6pm on Sunday I assumed I would be home in about an hour. When the vehicle I was in joined Jogoo Road that had a Jam, I thought it was a normal traffic Jam caused by the heavy downpour. It is a common occurrence for heavy traffic in Nairobi when it rains so I assumed it will rain a bit then the police will open up the roads. However things turned out to be worse than I expected, when we got near Donholm roundabout, there was no alternative road to follow, the road was jammed on both sides with vehicles from town using the wrong side of the road making the situation worse.
The roundabout was clogged up with vehicles and at the beginning it seemed there were no police because of the heavy downpour. So people just sat in vehicles hoping something will happen. Those who lived nearby alighted and walked but they had to walk in the middle of the roads because the roadsides were flooded, some used motorbikes but it was a rough ride because of the mud and water. Because of the distance I was going I had no alternative but to sit in the vehicle and wait. I tried to sleep, I counted hours while waiting and believe it or not we were stuck for around 8hrs. I started my Monday in the traffic and got home nearly 4am.
We saw police come after many hours, when we finally passed Donholm roundabout there was a lot of water on the road and we realized many small cars got stuck in the water causing the terrible jam, many of them were pushed aside to make the jam move. My evening and night was wasted because of poor infrastructure, I imagined there was no politician, a senior Government official or an important member of the society in the jam who would have called the Traffic boss to tell his people to clear the mess faster. I used to hear stories about people spending the night on Outering road and Jogoo Road jam before they expanded the road years back and could not imagine this could still be happening. I believe other roads also had problems but I think this was the worst. It was a day I wished I could fly or had a helicopter to lift me out of the mess.
Current weather in Kenya
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