The Crazy TukTuk

This is The Crazy TukTuk.

Have you ever seen the movie, "The God's Must be Crazy"? Remember the Land Rover from that movie which they called "The Anti-Christ"? Yeah, our tuktuk is a little like that Land Rover. It has a personality all its own. It doesn't like the cold, and despite all of Ishmael's best efforts to rectify the ignition system, it still has to be push-started first thing in the morning. I thank God that aside from being an awesome driver, Ishmael also has mad skills as a mechanic, because The Crazy Tuktuk has required (and continues to require!) a lot of tinkering under the hood. (Actually, the engine is under the boot!)  As I type this, he's out there re-assembling the gear box.

Prior to coming to Kenya in 2011, I had never heard of a "tuktuk". A tuktuk is a 3-wheeled vehicle. It has a seat for the driver in front, a bench seat for three passengers in the rear, and a surprisingly spacious trunk. It runs on a small, but powerful diesel engine, and has a top speed of about 35 mph. (The name, I'm pretty sure, comes from the cadence of the engine, which sounds exactly like that: tuku-tuku-tuku) The steering and control mechanisms are a little like a motorcycle, with handle-bar type steering, the accelerator in your right hand, the clutch and gear shift in your left, and a brake on the floor. Here in Kenya it is popularly used as a taxi vehicle, especially on the coast and some of the bigger interior cities. Although technically its a "3 passenger" service vehicle, it often carries as many as 9 people (more if you pile on babies and small children.) You can seat a person on either side of the driver, four on the rear bench, and two people can sit in the boot. It is also versatile for carrying all kinds of cargo. Our tuktuk has carried lumber, bricks, sacks of maize, potatoes, furniture, and even goats. In general, if you could carry it in a pick-up truck, you can carry it on the tuktuk.

Here in our rural area, bad roads are a particular problem. After a rain (and we have frequent, heavy rains) the clay-dirt roads become slick and dangerous. Trust me that ice and snow have nothing on wet clay! They also become badly rutted and washed out, and if the sugar-cane tractors start passing, they stir up the mud until it is two feet deep. Most of the time the roads are impassible for ordinary cars (that is, if you want to keep your undercarriage intact!) so the main means of transportation into these rural areas is the motorcycle or the bicycle. If the roads are muddy, motorcycles become an unsafe option, and most drivers flat out refuse to take passengers to the interior. The tuktuk, with its 3-wheel base, is more manueverable than a car, has a higher clearance, is more stable than a motorcycle, and is able to pass, even during the rains. (And its light enough so that if it does become stuck, its fairly easy work to push it back out!)

My husband is a driver. He likes to remind me that he is NOT a farmer (although we are doing a lot of farming.) He was born to drive, he loves to drive, and driving remains his ambition in life. He told me that if I gave him an office and a computer to work on, he'd sit down and ask, "Now where is the steering wheel?" I love that he knows exactly what he wants to do, and I envy him that! Dealing with vehicles is his business, and right now he is operating The Crazy Tuktuk.

But, operating a business in his home town has proved to be something of a frustration. Nearly everyone in this village is some kind of a relative, no matter how distant. Therefore neighbours often refuse to pay the full fare (or to pay at all) saying, "But I'm your auntie!" (Or uncle, or grandmother, or cousin, or whatever!) Everyone believes that their relational status entitles them to a free ride. Aside from relatives, people are not familiar with tuktuks, and are rather ignorant to the fact that it is a motor vehicle which requires fuel and maintenance to run. They want to pay the same amount of fare which they pay for a BICYCLE taxi (which incidentally isn't enough to cover the cost of fuel.) The struggle to find paying customers is further aggravated by the damage, wear and tear from the bad roads. We tried our best, but now it seems the best option is to relocate the tuktuk business into a bigger town, complete with paved roads, educated citizens, and established routes. As soon as he finishes this latest round of repairs, Ishmael intends to take the tuktuk to Kakamega and start work there. Please keep us in prayer, that the vehicle will run, and also that the business will be successful in it's new location.