Part 1. Matatus …
Matatus are small microbuses that go pretty much everywhere, and do everything that you might want to do on the road, and I am not joking. If you’ve ever been in a third world country – and I speak from my experience of being in Bangladesh, India and now Kenya – you’ll know that small, white, Toyota Hiace/Liteace microbuses are the saviours of the masses! There is always space for one more inside … it can cut off any other vehicle thanks to its relative size … and it can navigate speed-bumps and potholes without changing speed! Once you’ve gone matatu, there’s no going back!
My first matatu ride was unintentional – as I stepped outside the gates of UNHCR Nairobi on Wednesday and asked a guard about eateries, she pointed me down the highway towards “Westlands Mall”. I asked about public transport (I must preface this with the fact that just a couple of hours ago I’d arrived at this office after two taxi rides, costing me a total of 800 Kenyan shillings/$13). Calmly nodding, she said “you khyan thayke thaa matta-too” and pointed to the street corner where an overstuffed microbus was oozing out passengers. We ran towards it, she indicated to me to keep my money ready in the palm of my hands, she yelled to the conductor “Westlands!!”, and before I knew it, I had hopped on (after hitting head on doorway), plopped down on a cracked rexin seat and was immediately lurching ahead like the Harry Potter nightbus, shaking to Shaggy’s ‘It Wasn’t Me!’. I was so much in shock that I handed over my fare without ado, and when Westlands came around, I gracefully projected out of the moving matatu onto the mud that had appeared after two rainy days.
I walked back to the office after lunch unsure of whether to flag down these zipping devils.
No comments:
Post a Comment