By Tony Ngare

Earlier in the year, my friends and I decided that we needed to remember the less fortunate in our society. And not just during Christmas when people and many corporate organisations run over each other in their eagerness to show their compassionate sides.

My cousin Bena, pals Betty, Brayo, Timo and I decided to engage in special kind of motor rally for a charitable mission. We all pool resources together and each nominates a charity organisation to benefit if he or she wins the rally.

Our kind of rally is pretty simple. It involves cruising along highways with heavy traffic. Did I say cruising? It is more like crawling in Nairobi’s Saturday afternoon traffic jams.

The rules are also simple. We only have a few checkpoints, with one usually at the farthest corner from the finishing line — usually a parking lot.

Our inaugural contest was in April but as you would expect it was primarily a learning experience with Timo taking full advantage of the organisational disarray to claim undeserved victory.

So when we held another contest earlier this month on a rainy Saturday afternoon, we had ironed out all the details and enforced rules for fairness. Or so we thought.

We even had some of our nieces and nephews as volunteers to ensure the exercise was flawless.

On the race day we usually congregate at the venue one hour before takeoff. This ensures that we are able to iron any last minute problems among the contestants. This time we were meeting just outside the Nyayo National Stadium.

Betty drives a Toyota Vitz. But on the day of the race she turned up with a menacing black Subaru. This obviously sent shivers down our spines as we had less powerful Japanese cousins to the Subaru.

In all the stringent preparations that we had made for the race we had made one major assumption — that each person would be driving his or her car. As if bringing a Subaru was not bad enough, Betty brought along a female workmate willing to participate in the rally. But the problem is that the woman had a strong four wheel drive Sports Utility Vehicle.

A decision needed to be made on these two curious cases before the race could commence. Since all the contestants are usually members of the organising committee (it’s cumbersome, like a coalition government), it takes a bit of negotiation and sometimes coercion. Some felt that Betty had bent the rules for changing her car precisely for the rally, while others argued it is for fun and a charity mission.

After a couple of accusations and counter accusations we finally brokered a truce and allowed both Betty and her pal to participate with their monsters. In our rally we normally separate rally drivers with a three-minute interval. This time the rally route would take the drivers to Buru Buru in Eastlands, then into town, on to a checkpoint on Thika Road then into Ngong Township where the race would end.

At each checkpoint one had to pick up a signed form to be presented at the end to prove one had been to each and every checkpoint.

Yours truly was third to take off precisely at 1.05 pm. After nearly two hours of smooth driving, traffic police on Ngong Road suddenly flagged me down. They took what felt like an eternity to inspect my driving license. Just as I was preparing to rejoin the road, Brayo sped past like a bullet.

Ten minutes later, I came to the realisation that the traffic policewoman unknowingly cost me the win and much needed foodstuffs and other items I had planned to donate to a children’s home.