As the Chairperson of Alego Boda Boda Members Welfare Association, I have a story for you.
Mukhwana dropped out of Standard 6 at fifteen. Too big for school he said. Time to build a simba as custom demanded. He found work as a house manager on a farm. Did it so well that Naliaka, another house help on the same farm, noticed him. Till death do them part followed shortly after.
Now a man needs an income for a family. Mukhwana decided on boda boda.
His training was the street way. Find a rider already on the road. Pay him two hundred shillings. He takes you out for a few hours. Shows you the clutch, the brake, how to balance with a passenger. At the end he tells you that you are ready.
No NTSA. No certificate. No test. Just two hundred shillings and a verbal blessing from a man who himself learned the same way three years earlier.
Mukhwana is not unique. He is the norm.
Thousands of riders on Kenyan roads today learned exactly this way. Two hundred shillings and a few hours with someone who is themselves not formally licensed teaching skills they themselves were never formally taught.
This is why the industry behaves the way it does. Not because the riders are reckless by nature. But because the entire foundation was built on shortcuts passed down from one untrained rider to the next.
Until licensing becomes the actual entry point rather than the exception, Mukhwana's story will keep repeating itself on every road in this country.
Dismas wa Tabu. Dreaming in installments. Billed in full.