The Great Mystery of Nairobi

I grew up knowing that red is red, meaning stop, and green is green, meaning go. However, in Nairobi, red could mean stop and it could mean go. And the converse applies equally well – green could mean go, but it could equally mean stop. Such is the mystery of approaching a traffic light here.

When I first came to Nairobi in February ’03, I’m not sure that there were traffic lights, or if there were, they were few and far between. I remember seeing a public service announcement on local television around 2004 advising pedestrians what to do following the installation of pedestrian crossing in central Nairobi. That must have been the start of the growth of the phenomenon of traffic lights. It was never clear what to do when you approached a red light. Any sign of stopping at them might lead to the cars behind you either driving around you, or alternatively hooting impatiently. I did hear of people occasionally being fined (or threatened with fines) by policemen at roundabouts with traffic lights.

In August 2013, things reached new heights when many of the roundabouts and junctions in the central part of Nairobi were adorned with new traffic lights with countdown mechanisms telling you how many more seconds you had to wait until the light turned green or red. And with cameras at all the junctions to catch those who weren’t abiding by the traffic lights. This led to some observance of whether the light was red or green. However, for some reason, it was still seen as necessary to have policemen at these particular roundabouts, who nine times out of ten themselves seemed to take no heed of the lights. I dreaded approaching a red light. All of my instincts told me to stop, yet the general flow was to go. What a dilemma! I’d choose routes to avoid the lights, rather than face the unknown meaning of a red light. And be thankful whenever a light was green.

When I headed out of town this afternoon, I approached a green light at a roundabout. Yet traffic was flowing around it from the entry points that must surely have been red. When it turned red, that was when the cars in front of me started creeping out onto the roundabout. It really is a mystery. I hope one day to understand what to do. Or maybe I've missed something altogether, and the lights and the numbers counting down, and the cameras flashing, are in fact merely a rather expensive decorative feature?