Let’s not gloat about building great roads until we venture out of Kenya
Our people say that he who has never ventured out thinks that his mother is the best cook in the world.
That might be a lesson for Eng (Ughh, the titles all professionals carry these days!) Meshack Kidenda, the director-general of the Kenya National Highways Authority.
I recently read, on an online discussion forum, Mr Kidenda’s passionate defence of the “world class’ quality of Kenya roads.
My conclusion was that either he had never tasted anything other than mummy’s cooking, or he had never been to my neighbourhood.
The simple fact is that even allowing for that Nairobi-Thika “superhighway” we are all going gaga about, our roads are abysmal.
They were an insult to the science of highway engineering during the period of the cowboy contractors, and they still are an insult today when we are supposed to have kicked out all incompetent and corrupt gluttons.
Nobody who have ever been to South Africa, China, Japan, North America, Europe and other parts of the world will ever suffer any illusions that we build world-class roads.
The Thika Road project may amaze those who have never stopped out of mummy’s kitchen, but there is nothing really spectacular about the series of flyovers and intersections.
If anything, a close look from my jaundiced eye reveals a number of lines that are not as straight as they should be, joints that do not quite meet, squares that are not quite square, and circles and ellipses that do not pass the test.
Mr Kidenda did his Masters in engineering in the UK, and should be the first to tell you that the roads we now crow about simply do not match what he might have seen in Birmingham.
If anything, they still come with designs that make a mockery of traffic engineering. An example that comes easily to mind is the Museum Hill-Ojijo Road intersection.
Nowhere else in the world would you have a flyover with a crossroad directly below it. The gridlock that crazy design causes in the rush hour is something else.
I have always assumed that this was a temporary fix, but now I’m convinced the designer was inspired by some prohibited substance.
Of course, there is also the possibility that in defending the quality of our roads, Mr Kidenda is looking only at the major Kibaki legacy projects and forgetting about the abortions that litter the rest of the country.
I can appreciate that the Kenya Urban Roads Authority and the Kenya Rural Roads Authority fall below Mr Kidenda’s radar, being preoccupied as he is with bigger things.
But if he has ever driven off the national highways, he knows the kinds of roads being constructed all over the place are designed to fail.
While we can all acknowledge that this government has done a great job building new roads all over the country and reconstructing the ones destroyed by the previous regime, we would be in dereliction of our responsibilities if we refused to point out the failings.
All over Nairobi right now are new roads that are purposely designed to collapse once the contractor gets his money. They are no more solid than pouring a thin layer of tar on loose soil.
The situation is replicated countrywide; and an urgent investigation is required to check whether the contractors are back to the same old “eating” in league with government supervising engineers.
There’s nothing really fancy about building good roads. Highway engineers – unlike architects who may be allowed flights of fancy as is evident when one inspects all those new office blocks at Upper Hill – should focus first on how solid, stable and utilitarian their creations are.
As a forward with the fabled University of Nairobi’s Mean Machine rugby team of the late 1970s, ‘Shak Shak’ Kidenda was solid, rigid and dependable; not flashy like ‘Speedy’ John Akatsa, ‘Bimbo’ Mutere, Cliff Mukulu, and other backs who had licence to show off their nimble footwork.
That’s what building roads is all about. Nothing fancy and nothing too complicated. We must sample the dishes outside mummy’s kitchen.
