There are all kinds of horrific headlining causes of death in
Kenya, but one of them, the 9th leading cause of death, isn't quite sexy enough
to get the response it deserves. There will never be a 'Eureka!' moment in
which the cure is discovered, there will never be an overnight solution to this
problem and most upsetting: nobody, including myself, can do
much to protect themselves from it. The cause of death: road
accidents.
In Kenya everybody is subject to all the disastrous outcomes
pretty much no matter what. If you ever want to leave your house, cross the
street, trust a bus driver to get you somewhere, even drive yourself somewhere,
you are
putting your life at risk.
I became convinced recently that the road accident deaths are
significantly higher than the amount reported by the Kenyan government when
Sheila Atieno from Youths for Road Safety - Kenya showed me the official report
released and the numbers seemed laughably small just
pulling from my own experiences.
It's easy to explain when many accidents go unreported,
leaving the scene of the crime is nowhere near uncommon, police officers are
easily bribed, and when people die later of complications, I can't imagine that
is recorded very often.
The craziest thing to me is how well the 'cure' is
understood. Fix the car-size potholes. Put in street lights. Create more lanes
on the highways to make passing cars at 80 miles an hour around blind corners a
thing of the past. Implement emissions testing so that the
trucks/lorries people are forced to pass are not
these dinosaurs creeping at 4 miles an hour while spewing exhaust.
Institute quotas for traffic cops, affordable traffic
violation tickets for drivers and a navigable court system so that
speeding isn't so accessible and bribing isn't so necessary for all parties.
But this is not a 'Eureka!' cure. This is bottlenecks wrapped in lobbyists
covered in committees all inside an oven of party politics. It would require so
much good-will, cross-party handshaking, statistical reporting and
follow-up
that when I envision how difficult it would be in America's
cluster-Congress, I don't even know how to realistically imagine this
campaign's success in Kenya.
That is not to say things aren't slowly getting better. They
are. Better roads are a quick, tangible way to appease a constituency for a
politician trying to get re-elected. So at least I can say that's happening...
All I keep coming back to is: if these things cured HIV/AIDS,
you couldn't stop activist groups from implementing them. But for some reason
road accidents aren't at the forefront of the development conversation. I could
explore how or why, but the truth is, it's just not.
One organization who is taking on this topic. Youths
for Road Safety - Kenya (YOURS-K). YOURS-K came down to Hamomi a couple weeks
ago and put on an educational workshop for Hamomi's students - who are just as
at risk as anybody else every time they walk to and from school. I couldn't be
there, but all parties reported a great success. YOURS-K posted an album on their Facebook page which you can find here. These
pictures are all ones I've pulled from that album.
Not only is the content of this workshop incredibly
important, I was so impressed with what you can see in the pictures: they know
how to talk about this to kids. Classroom portion, outdoor portion, activity
portion, food. I'm sure the Hamomi students loved it, but beyond that I feel
certain it will lead to at least one student taking smart, preventative
measures against road hazards, and that makes me feel like Superwoman.
Thank you to YOURS-K. You can find out more about them here. Thanks to Keats Landis for connecting
Hamomi and YOURS-K and getting me to take on this issue more proactively. You
are an inspiration.
All my best,
Susie
