Taxi motors come equipped with a protective head piece strangely named a helmet, where one would have expected a straight forward name like head-met or head-mate, which I find to make more sense.

Calling it a helmet makes it sound like something –an express passport to that place that nobody ever wishes to end up in upon death. Which is an irony considering the helmet’s known function.

As experience has taught me, this otherwise protective gear is not for everybody’s protection in the strictest sense of the word. For instance, if you have a fat neck, chances are that the two ends of the neck strap won’t be able to click, meaning you’ll have to endure travel with loose straps dangling violently in the taxi motor breeze as you whiz through Nyarutarama’s tree-lined boulevards.

Luckily there are hardly any potholes to worry about for the regular routes, otherwise there would be a real danger of the head-met popping off your head as you navigate that raggy road.

Before we wander off to other aspects of the taxi motor ride, it’s important to poke some fun at all those people who still can’t click the whole idea behind the two telephone numbers engraved at the rear of the helmet.

Definitely those numbers can’t be the telephone contacts of the taxi motor chap, and it’s daft to just even think so. Those hotlines instead belong to no-nonsense taxi motor disciplinary committee.

And have you noticed, that some of these motors have their passenger seats slanting inwards, in that once an unfortunate passenger joins the chauffeur on the two-legged ride, one must be prepared to literally sink behind the guy, to be locked in an extremely tight and dangerous and shameful tango with your rider.

Some of them have faulty peddles, so don’t you wear plastic shoes and sandals while on a motor, as one may have to rest one unfortunate foot on the heated exhaust pipe.

Like elsewhere in society, hygiene standards vary from one taxi motor chap to the other. But if we must travel while locked in such an extremely tight posture with the motor chap, then a measure of caution has to be exercised before one zeroes in on the right one. How do you ensure that you avoid hopping behind a motor that will challenge the patience and endurance of your smell senses?

The easy way out is to travel with a few grains of millet and sprinkle them on the collar of the motor chap’s thick, faded jacket. Once the grains start to swell and threaten to germinate, pick the cue and move on to a safer option.