Matatu, our way of Sociotravelling

In Kenya, we called it matatu while Tanzanians refers to theirs as daladala

Nganya

Somehow, we have figured out how to live with or without some of the basest necessities like a car. In Kenya, we called it matatu while Tanzanians refers to theirs as daladala. In the Western world, it is almost a taboo to not possess a vehicle, especially for personal use.

I don't know if the cars are expensive here, we are still stucked in an agrarian period, or we don't give a damn about other modern necessities in this century. We often use footsubishi (coupled by our thin pockets), meeting each other in valleys, ghettos, or streets with hardly any clear pathways. I know in the Western world, physical meet-ups, exercabated by emerging technological tools, have waned almost for good. Virtuality might be the major means available for you to meet your neighbour, friends, or relatives. Dating is no longer real; partners can fake their lifestyles until they trapped each other. Food, utensils, furniture, cloths,…name them. You can order anything you want without meeting anybody. As technology continues to penetrate into our personal lives for efficiency purpose, it separates us.

You are concerned with whether you are talking to a real person or a bored chatbot enjoying your company. I think for us, partly because of our historical culture of socio-gathering, we always like travelling on public means of transport. We don't mind sharing the most basic needs including living together in the same room for sometime. Friends or relatives can visit us, often even without prior notice, and stay with us for as long as they enjoy and are not engaged elsewhere. Loneliness is an unheard of.

Utamu wa feri ni kufinyana (the sweetness of a ferry is to squeeze each other). If you haven't boarded a matatu, then you should plan to do so sooner than later. The matatu is a world of its own. In my normal work of running errands here and there, I usually board public vehicles. One day, no sooner than I had settled on the back seat than I noticed small rectangular-sized posters pinned on the walls. Apart from the usual warnings of taking precautions and reporting unroadworthy vehicles, there were hilarious quotes abound to entertain us. One of them was even "if you called me a tout, my wife, at home, calls me a lover." The other funny quote was; "be tolerant like the wife of a drunkard." There was plenty of entertainment to lighten up our journey.

In front of me, there was a middle-aged man, seemingly, in a soliloquy mode, laying bare whatever was going on in his mind. Drunkards have a way of revealing the truth when they are unconsciously in a state of insobriety. There is even a general joke that apart from having a lawyer when buying a land, you must have, beside you, a drunkard to spill the beans you didn't know. He complained and scolded a tout in an insolent language for charging passengers highly yet his money ends in brothels. And, for the first time, I seemed to be in agreement with someone who had dedicated the better part of his life to the bottle and nodded secretly.

Across the street, a few of them scolded each other, reigning kicks in the air. No one bothered to separate them. I think it had become their norm to flex their muscles. After their ‘short break’, they went on gleefully with their work unbothered. Are these not normal occupational hazards? If not, I don't know how we can clarify them.

In every trip, I have had to take precautions like holding exact fare, especially coins on my hand. I don't want to bottle up the anxious thoughts of losing my hard-earned balance. Touts have a way of ‘paying’ themselves heavily when you hand over a large shilling note. Again, they can overstay with my balance and try as much as possible to avoid looking into my eyes, perhaps just to make sure I forget. This is a kind of a journey that I don't want to take a nap less the notorious touts feast on my forgetfullness. Look! I don't want to be kept waiting anxiously for what belongs to me. I want to enjoy the journey; there are a pack of problems to worry me but that of a tout shouldn't be on the list.

Stage with touts look like a jungle crowded with hyenas jostling for leftovers. Every tout marks and pulls you in different directions, like they want to cut a piece from you. My first innocent entry into the waiting way was nasty. I was tossed and tussled like a sack of potatoes. I had to struggle to pull myself from their guagmire. Nowadays, I am clever more than ever. I go into the bus stage like I am one of them; then from there, I decide with a lot of freedom, with no hawked-eyed touts putting me on their radar. If you can't beat them, join them!

Pastors who travel-preach scare the hell out of my life. They talk of the end times and how my life would be meaningless, especially if I had been doing earthly things. I have accepted the word of God, but I know my faith isn't strong enough to qualify me as among the deep state of Jesus. Matatu pastors intelligently package their sermons by referring to the book of revelation. But, what panics me most is when the pastor preaches in spiritual tongues, especially when we approach the famous Langata cemetery. Out of fear, I find myself tipping the man of God, to reconcile my deprived spiritual life with God. Poor me!

I can't forget the noisy hawkers. They eke living out of pure joy and hilarious jokes that they bring on board. They usher in a sneak peek view of window shopping, bothering you necessarily (and unnecessarily). Any eye contact you make looks like a call to close sales. There is one notorious hawker in Nairobi who sell stationeries. He understands the art of marketing and selling. He tickles passengers that he landed from abroad and that the mud on his shoes isn't the property of kenya. The items he sells are described with pure magic like certain pencils are only used in a league of schools. He makes his work appear effortless. At the end of the journey, some passengers will alight with their bags full of malimali (shoppings) they didn't need, with smiles greasing their faces.

Yet, amid the madness of the matatu, a middle-aged man with a grass cutter boarded in. He sat in the middle of the car; one of his left fingers had been chopped off, signalling the nature of his work. Lean and adorned in a dust coat, he sat unbothered by other passengers and glued his eyes on the road. When it came to paying what belongs to caeser, he didn't even utter a word to the tout; he fished out his money from the pocket, handed over and returned to his default mode. Seemingly tired, he kept calm throughout, not disturbed by other passengers laughing loudly, joking, etc. He perhaps wanted to reach home to cool off from the never-forgiving capitalistic demands. And when it came to alighting, he did it calmly, unbarbaric, and disappeared into oblivion, never to see him again for good.