View from the Sikir Kilan

He said the conference would address “issues that have been bedevilling this journey since it started at the motor park.” What? A passengers’ conference in the middle of a journey when the lorry has an elected driver, a conductor, a mechanic, a fare collector and several motor boys hanging on the tail board? Our lorry […]

He said the conference would address “issues that have been bedevilling this journey since it started at the motor park.” What? A passengers’ conference in the middle of a journey when the lorry has an elected driver, a conductor, a mechanic, a fare collector and several motor boys hanging on the tail board?
Our lorry is a 1950s model Austin with three compartments. There is the front passenger seat which is occupied by the richest passengers, usually the merchants who own the goods piled up at the back of the lorry. These passengers sit closest to the Driver, so he worries about their complaints more than those of other passengers. The largest section is the back of the lorry which is piled high with goods and live animals. On top of the goods are arranged several planks of wood on which most of the passengers sit in precarious balance. Then there is another compartment in-between those two. It was cheaper than the front seat but more expensive than the back seat. It was known to all travellers in those days as the Sikir Kilan. One day when I was in Class Five, I accompanied our teacher Mr Obinwe to the motor park and I heard him call that compartment “Second Class.”
Why should a Driver convene a passengers’ conference rather than keep his hands firmly gripping the steering wheel and the gear, his eyes firmly fixed on the road and his feet firmly in contact with the throttle, the clutch and the brakes? Sure there have been loud complaints throughout this journey. The complaints actually ebbed and flowed. Every passenger in the lorry has one complain or another, but some passengers are more vocal than others. The nature of the complaints also varies with the compartment in which the passenger is sitting.
The passengers in the back complain that they are whipped by the elements. They are baked by the sun, lashed by the wind, drenched by the rain, coated by the dust, scratched by protruding tree branches and also hit by pebbles thrown off by the screeching tyres of other vehicles. The passengers sitting in front see what the driver sees in terms of sharp bends, narrow bridges, stray goats and on-coming vehicles. The passengers in the Sikir Kilan however have the most measured view; they see some of what the front passengers see and also feel a little of what the passengers in the back feel.
The Driver is worried because the passengers in front are saying that at the next lorry stop, when an election is due, he should not contest again for the post of Driver. They are saying that he should be replaced because he is a poor driver, that he does not know the road and has been stopping at every turn to ask for directions. They say he is fond of appointing committees, that he appointed a committee to decide how to arrange bags in the lorry and that he appointed another committee to determine whether a burst tyre should undergo a quick patch or a normal patch. They said when he drove the lorry into a deep pothole and had a burst tyre, he appointed a committee to determine what happened. Some of the passengers in the front seat want to replace the Driver and he is not happy about it. One of them has even designated himself as the New Driver and this worries the Driver very much.  
The passengers in Sikir Kalan have a more detached view. They complain that this Driver does not know how to negotiate a bend. They say that he cannot negotiate a roundabout without throwing off some passengers. They say that he does not know how to dodge potholes and he does not know how to overtake other vehicles without brushing their sides. They say that the Driver stops too often to ease himself. They say he often falls asleep at the wheels and on several occasions he drove the lorry into the bush.
The most vocal passengers are happy that the Driver has answered their call and convened an All Passengers’ Conference. They are however saying that the conference must be sovereign, i.e. that the delegates must take over driving the lorry while the conference lasts. How can a lorry be driven by a committee? Does that mean a committee of passengers would sit in the driver’s seat and democratically decide when to start the ignition, when to turn the steering wheel, when to engage the gear, when to apply the brakes, whether to use the windscreen wiper when it is raining and whether to put on the headlights when night falls?  
Some passengers are saying there should be no “no-go areas,” that we must renegotiate the terms of our continuing to sit together in this lorry and continuing with the journey. I was just wondering; how many times does a traveller get to choose the fellow passengers that he must travel with? You no more get to chose fellow passengers on a bus, train or plane journey than you get to choose your school classmates or your colleagues at work. In all cases you try to make the best of the situation. If you must renegotiate the terms of your sitting in the same class or in the same plane whenever there is a problem, you may never undertake any journey in this life.
The question to ask is, since the Driver insists on convening it, will this conference address some of the biggest problems bedevilling the passengers in the back of the lorry and the Sikir Kilan or will it merely afford the privileged passengers in the front seat another opportunity to grandstand? Will the conference solve the issue of insurgent passengers that have been hurling stones through the window and have already bloodied the heads and noses of other passengers? The insurgent passengers will not come to the conference and if they send any memorandum at all, it is likely to be a rough-edged stone.
Will the conference solve the issue of striking conductors? The conductors who are responsible for teaching the next generation of lorry drivers have been on strike for most of the journey. They complain that the lorry’s training compartment is poorly equipped and that they have not been paid their overtime allowances. We all pleaded with them to end the strike because even half-baked drivers are better than having no drivers at all. At least if our young lads get their drivers’ licenses they will later make up with on-the-job experience.
The best that the conference will achieve is to produce some good ideas for inclusion into the Code of Driving, Vehicle Maintenance, Goods Arrangement and Passenger Behaviour [CDGMPB], the supreme law of this our journey. But is that the most important thing? Is it the lack of guidelines and rules that is making our journey very bumpy? All the rules of driving that are currently in the code, how many of them is our Driver following? All the rules of vehicle maintenance that we borrowed from UTC, John Holt, J Allen, SCOA, Mandilas and R T Briscoe, how many of them are our lorry’s mechanic following? Even if the Code of Goods Arrangement carefully states how goods should be arranged in the lorry, is it the code that will come and arrange goods? If the conductor and the lorry boy decide to throw the goods anyhow and the Driver says nothing, what can the code do?