The Matatu Conversation

Matatus are the mainstay of public transportation in Kenya. The characteristic reckless driving, know-it-all touts with attitude, graffiti laden body works, blasting stereophonic sounds of trending music and whistling of their muzzled exhaust pipes remains the unmistakable hallmark of Matatus. It is a thriving indispensable mode of public transport or that is how most Kenyans have been brainwashed to believe. They are the untouchable empire of corrupt cartels.
Swvl, Little Shuttle, Uber bus are new premium public transport service providers. These new competitors are anticipated to revolutionalize public transport industry leveraging on the potential of technology. In January 2019, these companies began piloting their services on various routes in Nairobi. Matatus have successfully remained in business mainly because of either charging competitively low prices or providing service with higher frequency in comparison to alternative modes of transport or emerging competitors in the industry. Moreover, political bigwigs have a large stake in the business. Word has it that, train transport in the country was sabotaged to enable Matatu business to thrive. This is the core of most challenges facing developing countries like Kenya. The problem stems from poor leadership as a consequence of poor choice of leaders. The government of Kenya failed Kenyans by absconding the role of providing reliable and affordable public transport and masquerading to regulate the Matatu cartels. However, Kenyans are optimistic of the Bus Rapid Transport(BRT) system that has hit multiple false starts in the implementation phase.
We cannot purport to have a quick fix to the public transport system in Nairobi because of the complexity of the challenge. However, it is evident that the solution to moving masses in a populous city such as Nairobi is a reliable, intermittent and affordable commuter train system.
A few days ago, I boarded a 33-seater Matatu plying route 105, on my way home after a tedious day. I chose to sit beside a casually dressed old bird seemingly in his 60's with a hoary head. He was patiently seated waiting for the remaining Matatu seats to be sold out. As usual, the overzealous touts kept calling out earnestly for potential clients to hurry and occupy the remaining 'four' seats. In my estimation, twelve seats remained unoccupied. It was about quarter to five, outbound traffic was rapidly building up and fares were almost at peak. Despite the building’s shield against the scorching sun, the sweltering heat trapped in the concrete jungle remained unbearable at this time of the day. Global warming you may say!
I live in a satellite town approximately nineteen kilometers from the Nairobi's CBD. I spend about two hours each day commuting to and from the CBD. Notwithstanding being seated side by side, rarely do I converse with other passengers in a PSV, a habit you effortlessly acquire given all the tell tell signs and warnings of being conned should you mistakenly ignore your guard. However, it is acceptable in PSVs to occasionally draw the attention of other passengers to complain, complement or observe an unusual occurrence that warrants distracting them from reading a newspaper/book, fumbling with their smartphones, taking a nap or just gazing and being lost in own thoughts. I prefer reading in the quiescence and lull of vehicle motion. Today, I chose to catch up with Barack Obama’s encounters in Indonesia with his step-father Lolo, on iBooks app. A reader lives a thousand lives you know.
A lad in his mid-twenties hopped into the PSV and took a window-seat three rows in front of where we were seated. The lad’s lack of phone etiquette must’ve driven the old man to spontaneously lecture me about people of my generation. Of course, the old man irately expressing displeasure on the generation’s lack of decorum in how young people nowadays handle themselves in public. I could tell he was definitely irked. I bookmarked the page I was reading and shifted my attention to the whippersnapper's phone conversation; who by now was blabbing to the person at the other end of the phone call about the recent terror attack that occurred in Nairobi, with a seemingly Samsung Galaxy Note 9. The old man pointed out our lack of privacy and aimless boast of IT-savvy character. He argued that the young man’s phone call was ‘pointless’ but sheer attention seeking behavior towards his seemingly expensive phone. Flossing, millennials would call it, I thought. I smiled, observing the Mzee roll his eyeballs 🙄 whereas innocently comparing the size of the iPad in my palms with the young man’s phone. He rhetorically questioned why the young man couldn't silently operate his phone just like others with similar-sized devices who kept quiet. He recommended that that the young man would have respectfully chosen to return the call as soon as he alights. Don’t misjudge me, I like the listening role in a conversation. In fact, only when I feel a response is truly justifiable do I spit it out. I scanned through the bookmarked page to indulge on a conversation worlds apart as the old man’s voice waned in my mind. He grudgingly digressed into times when a powerful politician (now deceased) in Moi’s government, with similar sense of pride would have changed into more than three vehicles, for security reasons, just to move from one point to another within Nairobi. It then occurred to me that the old man’s conversational persistence and calculated change of topic seemed a strategy to get me talking or perhaps listen to him instead of reading. If you understand talkative persons who can’t just be simply shrugged off with mere silence of their listener.

We were approaching Kangemi, everyone felt like the sweltering heat roasted us from inside out in the stuffy Matatu, stuck in a traffic snarl up. Women fanned their make-up clogged faces, scratched and massaged their scalp, men eased their ties, others unbuttoned their shirts to the chest level, and windows were drawn to let in even the most subtle breeze from outside. Caught in the predicament, children wailed wildly. The uneasiness in the PSV was palpable. The ice cream hawker made a kill. We had reached at a traffic gridlock due to narrowing of two lanes into a winding single lane diversion to facilitate the ongoing roadwork 🚧 by Chinese contractors. The undesignated bus stop, worsened the situation. The traffic police helplessly observed motorists exchange traffic rage, throwing arms out of rolled down vehicle windows and shouting at the top of their voices. Men trapped in their machines.
The old man began relating the happenings to the vicious cycle of corruption in Kenya. He was chiding the political class and the learned individuals for taking advantage of mwanainchi but was interrupted by a brief scuffle. In a blink of an eye, the young man's phone had been snatched by a thief who approached from the rear outside of the vehicle, and scampered off with the gadget into the encroaching makeshift traders' stalls. "Thief, thief, my phone," the young man yelled helplessly as he fidgeted on his seat almost jumping out of the vehicle, pointing in the direction the thief had disappeared to like mist . The old man beside me wore a 'I-told-you-so' kind of face. There wasn't much we could do but pity the dismayed young man and either pocket our devices or tightly hold on to them with hawk-eyed observation of possible intruders. Traffic began to ease, we hit the road. The old man sat quietly as though contemplating what had occurred until he alighted at the next bus stop about a kilometer ahead.