"The Light Side of Matatu Travel"
(Certainly every VW bus you ever saw in America is now in use in Kenya!)
A matatu is like a traveling melting pot of smells.
From the drivers cheap cigarette to the "conductor" who looks and effuses an air of
being up all night, to the occasional weird fellow who wants to let his feet breathe, all made worse by the cologne wafting through from the smartly dressed guy in the corner seat. Yet Kenyans must travel with all the windows broken shut, irrespective of how hot or "close" the matatu is.
It’s no wonder that nowadays some of the driers who have had enough of this torture employ an oversized sticker, usually in bright red, announcing "tafadhali, usitoe viatu ndani ya gari" (keep you shoes on). Not all stickers are eco friendly though. Some are calculated to frighten the life out of you! (The driver is insane! Don't bring stress here!) They are not joking because they carry enough crude weapons to mount a credible assault on the Al Shabaab militia.
At 60mph with every sharp bend he leans hard on you. With every pothole the vehicle hits, he generally smears you with some of the perspiration. But until you hire a private driver one has to put up with the very public nature of the matatu. These include the endless chatterboxes who try to interest you in stories you care nothing about --like Mr. Preacherman on how the devil personally invented computers to spread his influence on earth. Why can't they just listen to the blaring radio and let me look out with every lurch or jolt - in peace.
Speaking of radios -and let’s not get into the fact that you could be perched on the top of a refrigerator sized speaker and each thunderous decibel scatters your innards -- you can be minding your own business, or next to an elderly person, when the FM radio launches into a raunchy bedroom story, told by a female caller in shrieking voice, "I'm cheating on my husband because he's useless! He finishes in three minutes she shamelessly rants to the radio hosts raucous laughter/ You can't laugh and squirm at the same time.
Every ones praying the darn thing shuts off. The mobile phone is another thing altogether in close proximity. Ironically, its those who hold the loud conversations in matatus, quoting astronomical figures, say, I'm selling the plot next to the petrol station for ks9 million!, are usually the shabbiest and smell of old banana skins. Then there are the femmes fatales who plot office coups on the phone. But then you realize the gossip was an angel when you have on the other side a passenger who chats loudly for a mind boggling 45 minutes in their mother tongue!
What of the wide loaded passenger consuming 80%of the seat and leave me to perch on an eighth of my cheek on the remaining space -- considering we're both paying the same fare! Others are known to travel with their entire family yet they only want to pay for two seats, because the kids and luggage pieces are too small to be charged.
Woe is me if I end up there. And not a good plan for long journeys.
A few kilometres down the road one of the children will start wailing endlessly, waking up another toddler. Without consultation I am asked to take the baby dumped in my lap for me to rock gently. A few minutes later the child may go thankfully quiet and reward me with a warm liquid trickling down.
But what can we say about the farmer Joe, the hardworking small scale shamba guy from out of town? He will have a dirty raffia bag in his lap caked with red earth at the bottom.
Mindful of every available space, there will be several jerry cans of fresh mild, easily discernible by the rich scent, packed protectively around his feet. To complete the diet, an assortment of vegetables will be spread liberally around him, not to mention the squealing piglet propped up between his legs.
If the condition of the road or the excessive swerving of the driver makes him lean a bit, his gumboots will re-dye your shoes or hem as the sap seeping slowly from the bananas in his sack stains whatever you're wearing.
But at least you will have learned that he hails from Kitale, has six acres of maize ready for harvest and his brothers’ eldest daughter, who is a single mother of three, is about to wed a church elder is a widower whose wife died "just like that."
Next time, the big bus ride with nine goats to Kaoleni!
