How I lost my first car to a mechanic

I never thought I would live to see the day when traffic congestion would be a problem not just for the large Kenyan cities like Nairobi and Mombasa, but even for relatively small towns like Embu and Meru.

Not too long ago we only used to read about them happening in far off cities like London, New York and Tokyo and exotic terms like “gridlock” and “tailback” were as foreign to many Kenyans as the Russian winter.

Indeed, so light was traffic in Nairobi that in the late 1970s we used to sit at the verandah bar of Cameo Cinema on Kenyatta Avenue on Saturday afternoons to watch an informal motor cycle race with virtuosos of the day such as Vic Preston performing incredible riding feats up one side of the street and down the other.

To salaried people, car ownership was a status symbol limited to top public servants such as Permanent Secretaries and in the private sector, the top cream of management.

Access to a company-owned and maintained car was a statement that to your employer, you were worth more than your weight in gold.

Getting a company car loan was no less an accomplishment and served to establish your position and worth in the organisation’s pecking order.

This vehicle ownership aristocracy was enforced by the fact that until around 2003 when policies of the new Narc government made it possible for the average Kenyan to access cheap car loans from banks, the second-hand car market was virtually non-existent.

You either bought a car new from the dealers or took your chances with the “junks on jacks” in the informal garages.

It was to one of these garages that I headed when in 1986 I felt sufficiently liquid to own a junk of my own.

The machine that caught my fancy was a Fiat 850 Special that I found at a petrol station-cum-garage next to State House on Dennis Pritt Road.

The tiny thing cost me all of Sh15,000 and had its engine at the rear which made a noise like a poorly serviced lawn mower.

But what are minor details like these when you were joining the select club of car owners?

I planned to drive the car my birthplace on December 20 in time for the Christmas festivities of 1986.

The car therefore needed to be serviced, and the mechanic I picked informed me that all that was needed were new spark plugs, air filters and a change of oil and the car would be good to go.

I bought all these items, delivered them to his garage at Kariobangi South and waited. Days came and went and the mechanic was always busy working on other cars.

On December 25 he still had not touched it and I went to a nearby bar to drown my disappointment.

To cut a long story short, five months later the car was still at the garage — but with the tool box and spare wheel missing.

When I confronted the mechanic, he handed me the backdated copy of an invoice he claimed to have sent me three months earlier.

When a week later I got together a few of my friends and we went to demand for the car, we were repulsed by armed guards.

“You see that car over there,” the mechanic told me pointing to a rusty Mercedes Benz resting on stones. “It belongs to Jackson Angaine, the king of Meru. He will never get it back, so who are you to think that you are ever going to get yours?”

I was soon to learn that this was no idle boast — appeals to the police did not help and I later learnt that the garage was co-owned by the local OCS.

For some years thereafter, I continued seeing the shell of what used to be my Fiat 850 Special from afar until it too was covered in grass.

Recently I passed by the area and found that a residential house has been built where the garage used to be.