Polluting the Peace in a Beloved Town
“When growth’s
time has come,it
rolls over
stragglers without
compromise.”
By George Ngugi King’ara
A
while ago, a Swedish friend
of mine visited Ruiru, my
town, and took pictures
of the main business square. She
captured the square’s unique
essence: the collage of colours
that ‘decorate’ buildings such as
Biashara and Wakulima, and the
antiquity in the Peugeot station
wagon matatus that serviced the
town. When she brought these
images to me in London, I had
been away from home for two
years. The pictures captivated
me as they portrayed the town’s
unique character, its tranquil life
in time—a caption: Peaceful Ruiru
Town Centre, Around Mid-day,
2004. A perfect harmony.
In 2010 however, an
‘ultra’ modern matatu park
sits in the town’s main square.
A commuters’ delight, the
park recently opened amidst
controversy. According to
rumours floating around at the
time of its launch, the park had
been illegally built—thanks
to a legal technicality. For this
reason, Ruiru Municipal Council
is alleged to be at loggerheads
with the company that won the
tender to build and manage the
park through the ‘Private Public
Partnership’ (PPP) programme.
For its investment, the company
will run the park, charging a fee to
all public transport vehicles that
use it for a stated period—the time
it needs to recoup its investment
and perhaps make a profit from
the project. Ruiru Municipal
Council, rumors suggest, raised
a lot of ‘noise’ against the PPP
arrangement, citing corruption.
If you lived in Ruiru like me, you
would know that the public had for
a long time waited for this matatu
park. Since the County Council
of Ruiru had been unable to build
one for the needy commuters, it
appears the noisy protestation
from Ruiru Municipal Council was
not loud enough to stop the new
park’s launch. Like my brother
says, “when growth’s time has
come, it rolls over stragglers
without compromise.” Of course,
the same stragglers become the
problem when they cannot keep
An ‘ultra’ modern matatu park sits in the
town’s main square. Inset: Some of the
business premises in Ruiru town
Photos by Alex Mwingira and Ylva Ekstrom
pace with progressive change.
Thus, the growth of
Ruiru town has resulted in a
number of ‘pollutions’. These,
like the retrogressive politics of
our new municipal council, are
a pain in the neck that can no
longer be ignored. I could talk
about the unpaved town streets
that present dust storms during
the dry season. The problem of
open, foul smelling sewerage
tunnels, which I suggest cause
the mosquito infestation in the
town. Or the numerous mounds
of rotting garbage strewed behind
buildings or in front of shops and
homes. I could also complain
about some of the unlit streets
and squares within the town
where numerous homeless boys
‘waste away’ sniffing glue, while
gawking at wary passers by. All
these are nagging problems, but I
will address what I feel is currently
a serious pollution—because it is
driving me mad! So, back to the
heart of the town, to the gleaming
ultra modern matatu park.
If you lived upstairs in
one of the buildings in the vicinity
of Ruiru’s main square, you slept
and woke up to noise day in day
out. Actually, you would never
sleep. Here is why:
At 4 AM, early matatus arrive at
the square blowing incessant loud
horns, thundering music spewing
from their powerful speakers.
Lying in bed, tossing and turning, I
contemplate the noisy racket and
think: ‘such freedom
these violators have!’ Then my
mind adjusts, and fury rides me,
because I have learned there is
nothing I can do to stop the noise.
I am in bed, it’s cold, I can’t go
out and yell at them to stop. I
hate to think that come morning,
the municipal council could do
something about this noise but it
won’t. So I close my eyes, muster
an offensive of silent, venomous
thoughts that allow me to let
the hooting boys ‘off the hook’.
I conclude that these young men
cannot help themselves. They
must blow their horns. Why?
My mind tells me that
they are grown-up-men-children-
drivers enjoying the sound of
hooting, just like children love
jingling keys for the sound of it—
for sheer excitement. Sometimes
I conclude, “they have got to
wake themselves somehow, given
how they drink”. So I forgive them
and try to fall back to sleep. But
the hooting and noisy touting
carries on. I settle on the notion
that all these young drivers and
their touts must be suffering from
‘acute low self-esteem’, that they
need the hooting to call attention
to themselves. Something perhaps
the Ministry of Health should look
into. Really, what is it with all this
noise?
From 8 AM, the numerous music
stores within the square begin
advertising their wares via loud
speakers strategically placed
outside their doors facing into the
square. They do so from morning
until 8 o’clock in the night. You
can imagine the chaos when all of
them, closely located within a few
metres of each other as they are,
blare out different tunes at the
same time.
At 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the
Mobile Music CD Vendors arrive,
gospel music blaring from mighty
speakers mounted atop the roof
of a mini van beside a puttering
electrical generator—the source
of power for the ‘musoise’ (my
term for overly loud music). I
always feel that these vendors
only play gospel music as a ploy
to justify why they need to break
the Noise Pollution Law. Counting
on the public’s reverence for God,
the vendors know their noisy
racket would be accepted as
‘worship’—that they have a right
to be a nuisance.
By 8 PM the music vendors’ van
has disappeared, but only after
passing the noise-baton to the
local restaurant-cum-night clubs
located around the main town
square. They have names like
Palm Shade Palace, Visitors Pub,
Tetu Bar, Swallow Two Bar, etc.
At any given night, one of them
features a live band which may
begin performing as early as 9 PM.
The band loudly plays throughout
the night till 3 AM. Then patrons
from the said night clubs leave
for home—or work. For the
next hour, the drunken
patrons stroll about the
matatu park, singing, noisily
hurling curses at each other,
their women counterparts
screaming ‘help!’ for all sorts
of suffering.
What to do then?
Noise pollution levels in Ruiru
town are so bad that they
obstruct the normal running
of businesses, especially ones
related to learning. Once I
asked the principal of Ruiru
Secondary School, located
just a few metres north of
the town’s main square, what
were his pressing concerns
regarding the success of
the secondary school. He
mentioned noise pollution,
particularly matatu hooting
and the grinding noise from
local ‘cottage’ factories, as
the key problem. I am sure
personnel from the computer
colleges, cyber café clients
and bankers who work near
the square complain about
this same problem.
Noise pollution is not
unique to Ruiru town; it is a
deep-seated Kenyan problem.
Therefore, the public should be
educated to understand that
noise-making not only reflects
poor social etiquette, but it
also violates the rights of every
citizen. Each one of us has the
right to live comfortably without
noise, and therefore must assert
that right. This article is my way
of demanding the right to live a
QUIET life in Ruiru town. But it also
indicts Ruiru Municipal Council
for neglecting to protect me from
noise pollution. “The council is
to blame for not arresting [noise
makers], because the directive
was given that people should
be arrested for noise pollution”,
a prominent business person in
Ruiru recently told me. I concur.
The law against noise pollution
should be better enforced across
the country, particularly through
local government.
George Ngugi King’ara teaches
Broadcast Journalism and
Screenwriting in Daystar University.
He is also a PhD candidate in
Media Studies at CCMS, University
of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa
researching how television
producers imagine audiences and
related TV production practices.
A filmmaker, he released Gari Letu
Manyanga-- Our Hip Bus (2007) on
public transport in Kenya.