Fuel Economy

There’s a weekly email called ‘Nairobi News’ that is sent to everyone in my organisation who’s based in Nairobi. The main content is normally of items for sale, either by missionaries leaving the field, or simply replacing things, or of general information. However, the distributor has recently starting including tips on vehicle useage, be that safety or, as in the case this week, fuel economy. Petrol has gone up 30% here over the last year (as it has in many parts of the world), a litre now selling at just over 100KES (about 80pence). For those in the UK, this will seem quite cheap, but considering that 50% of the population here has less than 50p a day to live on, that’s a lot of money. Anyway, the tip this week was that driving at 90km/h instead of 110km/h will save 25% of fuel. It did make me laugh! Whilst a good tip in and of itself, in this context, it’s completely useless! My usual average speed over a month, in and around Nairobi (and this includes trips out to Karen when I’m not (well, at least, not always) in nose to tail traffic) is 25 km/h!!! My new car has a screen which tells me so! Even more depressing was the trip I made to Kimilili when I thought that I’d get a better idea of things. The road was so bad in parts that I averaged a staggering 46 km/h!!! (Hence why I was driving for 10 hours.) My car cleverly tells me how many km I’m averaging per litre of fuel – that’s pretty depressing too!