Matatu Matata Story #2: A Tight Squeeze

The red road matatus are like cattle cars hauled on a truck bed. The driver sits up front with two or three passengers. The touts and their friends hang out the open back door. Luggage, sacks of corn and sugar, and other people ride on top. Inside, two benches face each other and everyone rides sideways. The benches are made to carry four normal sized people on each side. A small pull down seat sits between the two benches up behind the cab. You would expect to see nine passengers, or in a squeeze, one more on each side.

Not in Kenya.

Our matatu carried six people on one side, six plus a baby on the other, and then six more hunched, hanging and leaning bodies down the centre aisle. Those of us lucky enough to be seated carried their luggage on our laps.

When they squeezed in the sixth middle aisle rider, the old man directly in front of me groaned, "Wonderful."

The mother of the tiny baby kept fanning her and doing her best to protect her little head from bumps and nudges.

It was so crowded inside we couldn't see out and I almost missed my stop.

The old man who had been in every possible proximity to me from directly in front, to face to face, to leaning in the other direction with his upturned bottom inches from my face, to sitting beside me, said with typical Kenyan formality, "It is fortunate that you observed the sign."

I walked the last two kilometres up the dusty red road to Shikunga. It was Parents' Day and I was visiting "my" kids.

Afterwards, walking back along the rutted road, I felt a little choked up. You find the money and get these kids on their way to school and then it all kind of takes on the nature of a job completed. You dust off your hands and look at the next kid, the next challenge, the next problem. When you think about the ones who are now enrolled, their fees paid, and their uniforms bought, you do so in a less personal, less affected way.

Until you see them, that is. Experiencing their happiness is quite different. They felt like my kids, and I was as happy for them and as proud of their accomplishments and their diligence as if they were indeed mine. I felt a little choked up as we said our final good byes.

The euphoria lasted about to the next road where the traffic raised so much dust I had to wind my way out to the main road making side winder moves up the embankment whenever a vehicle passed in order to breathe. The sun was high in the sky now and I wished a boda boda would materialize. I walked through a shaded place where the road was lined with small dukas selling food stuffs and soft drinks, and saw a Nissan, the other kind of matatu, up ahead.

I squeezed my way in and I thought, "Good. There is no way they can try to fit in one more passenger. This trip will be quick."

How could someone who has been in Kenya for over four months be so naïve? They managed to wedge four more bodies in … well at least partway in.

I ended up with a man in a very attractive burnt orange print shirt riding my left breast for at least twenty minutes. At first his left buttock rested on my left breast and left wrist. Then when my wrist began to feel as if it might break, I wriggled it free. He attempted to support his weight in mid air but finally gave up. When he resumed his position, my left breast sagged further and further under the bouncing load.

The woman on his left noticed my grimace of pain and pinched the man's buttocks so that he suspended himself for a while by his arm which rested on the iron bar of the seat ahead.

I was surprised that she noticed my discomfort. Her own forearms and upper body were inside the matatu and her bottom was being held suspended outside by the weight of the tout. Finally a couple of people got out and the man eased himself into the seat beside me. At the next stop he ended up with a child on his knee and the child's mother draped over him.

In thirty degree temperatures such intimacy is not always pleasant. Fortunately all of us in this group embrace bathed regularly and I was able to breathe in clean clothing and bodies. I can't remember when I have been as intimately involved with anyone, let alone strangers.

Matatu manners are generally assumed to be terrible … but my experience has been that the passengers do their best to endure the discomfort quietly, and to make the ride as comfortable for their fellow passengers as they possibly can. Not an easy thing to do.

We had just about reached Sigalagala when the tout began to peer anxiously at the rear of the vehicle and to mutter, "Casa capisa," I looked at the man on my right. "Casa capisa?" I asked. You guessed it. Flat tire.

We pulled over and they attempted to jack up the overloaded vehicle. Finally they gave up and followed the advice of the passengers and disgorged us onto the roadside. After one failed attempt during which the matatu fell off the jack, the wheel was changed and we were once again on our way.

Well sort of. We had to be pushed backwards for a little while before the engine caught. Then we turned onto the tarmac and drove quickly to Kakamega. As we passed Papa's rubber stamp kiosk on the side of the road near the post office, Papa waved and smiled. Home again.

Well nearly. We pulled into the Shell Station and the driver wove his way between the pumps and vehicles at about three times the speed I would have driven. Just before he got to the road he caught the back wheel of a heavily loaded bicycle and knocked its driver to the ground. An argument broke out and the tout jumped off to settle it while the rest of us were driven to the Kenol station where we disembarked.

I was exhausted and filthy … covered in red dust … hungry and thirsty. It was one o'clock. I had spent four hours travelling for a half hour visit with the kids at Shikunga.