Everybody waits.
Overcoming my entrancement at the rivulets of perspiration breaking ground from my hand at the ceiling bar, down my forearm, through hairs and eons and off the precipice of an elbow below, I dropped out two kilometres early one morning and walked. Indeed, the sidewalk is the fast lane.
At the head of the queue is the traffic: a nonplussed policeman waving directions. His raised right hand tells one lane to stop while the metronomic waving of his left initiates and sustains the flow of one of the four crowds of cars that face him. For ten minutes he'll maintain this motion, perhaps pacing, never acknowledging a driver; then he'll switch hands and rotate to signal the next incoming lane to pass.
Like a toilet flush, that queue's movement past the traffic begins slow and ends with satisfying speed. Wheels roll and all is forgiven. Soon, as with a failed flush, the glee turns to despair at another intersection, where the process begins anew. The only difference is that more passengers have hurried into the dala-dala.
The downtown core is forsaken by traffics. Only lights endure the embarrassment. At a red light, everybody stops, edging into any crevice in the queue. At a green light, the story is the same. To make myself visible to a friend, I weaved into the middle of one such intersection and waved my arms. It's perfectly safe: the clutter of vehicles has no moving parts.
According to every resident I've asked, compared to two years ago "it is even worse," and I hasten to agree. It's simple: there are more cars now than ever before.
The queue can last until 10 p.m. and there are no shortcuts. When faced with a ten-minute distance, passengers can merely guess: will this take one hour, or three?