MY KENYAN CUMMUTER TRAIN.

There are different types of addiction and I guess that I have established mine.

I am addicted to the commuter train.

I reside in Kasarani that is about 35 kilometers from the Nairobi city centre and since I am currently taking public transportation, I can get home by using a bus (Matatu), take the bike ride (boda boda) or go by the commuter train.

The train has very few regulations and the cars fill to the brim, what is purposed to carry thirty nine passengers may as well fit a hundred on a good day but on other days I have lost count.

What is the beauty that I have found in this mode of transportation?

The People, different kinds of people. Every day offers a different kind. Happy people, people with long faces, children and the elderly. I will never forget this particular older gentleman who sat opposite me. As we waited for the train to leave the station he sat quietly and got out a bottle containing a herbal mixture and sipped on it as we proceeded, he would on occasion shake his head, when he had drunk the whole bottle he removed a smaller bottle with water like fluid and continued to sip.

The unexpected happened I saw him smile and talk to the man sited next to him and then it clicked, he needed to borrow courage from the bottle, what he was consuming was actually alcohol.

By the end of my journey, he had made us laugh so hard by the tales that he shared with us about his youth.

Do you take the train home and what is your story?

Fear Of The Dark.

The absence of light can create its own imaginings, it doesn't matter how many people are in the room since the eye cannot see.

Does the age of the person reduce the fear?

I sat next to this lady in her 50’s on my way home on the commuter train and we got to chatting on our day and the topic suddenly changed when the train came to a stop for no explained reason from the train engineer, she quickly looked for her cellular phone and called her husband and requested him to meet her at the destination stage where she would alight. Since we had broken the ice and were talking before the incident I asked her why she needed company yet the night was still young.

She explained to me that when she was a child she lived with her mother and her three siblings and at one particular night thugs broke into their house and demanded for money and since the mother did not have any, they put her in a sack and tied it up and since she was only eight years old there was nothing that she could do and managed to escape outside the house and two of the thugs saw her and chased her through the maize plantation  and since it was dark, they were not able to find her and she was lucky to find  a way to their neighbors house where they called the police. No one was hurt physically but that began her journey of the fear of the dark.

At the end of every day darkness must come in to mark the end of the day so how do you handle this?

As I watched her leave, I saw her wave to a man who waited patiently at the platform and then it occurred to me. He was not afraid of the dark but he had to live with it for the sake of his loved one.

So how do you handle your fear?