^TM

Beware the Matatus

By Cindy-Lou Dale

At Dar Es Salaam I travelled north to Kenya’s main port, Mombassa. The roads were pitted with ruts and potholes, littered with dead animals and washed out in places. On the outskirts of the city, pedestrians would cross the highway from one slum to another, wildly inebriated.

Finally, I was on the last leg of my journey to Nairobi, Kenya’s modern capital city. On route, I encountered salesmen touting for business at the roadside and was somewhat bemused at the sight of a man selling second hand toilets.

Following four days driving from Cape Town, I was desperate to stop but had one more challenge to face before arriving at my hotel.

Nairobi’s traffic was insane - thousands of people milling about, goats herded across busy roads, yapping dogs wandering the streets, chickens darting here and there and the world’s most aggressive, selfish drivers who clearly considered being overtaken by another vehicle as a personal humiliation and would not stop to let other vehicle pass as this undoubtedly would constitute lack of resolve.  They were oblivious to the world around them and no doubt considered their vehicles as their own "private" territory - a sort of mobile plot of land. Some motorists had farm animals as passengers inside the vehicle, whilst the human passengers were forced to partially sit inside opened windows, holding on to roof racks, where more people were sitting.

One old African man that stopped next to me, on the wrong side of the road, was arguing with his pig, who sat on the passenger seat.

I soon learnt that if an oncoming driver sees you indicating to turn into a side road and flashes his lights at you, it does not necessarily mean he was giving you way to make the turn as evidently, in Nairobi speak, it translate to, “I'm coming to kill you!"

When relaying some of these driving experiences with the hotel’s check in clerk I soon realized he was not joking when he boasted that his son who was a matatu (taxi) driver. I had been warned about them at the border post. The check in clerk took great pride in telling me that for his son, a successful day's work was measured not merely by the amount of money made but also by the number of laws he broke without getting caught.

The following day I took great pride in summoning up the steely nerve necessary to ensure that a hovering matatu did not squeeze into the space in front of me, which in Nairobi’s terms, would be tantamount to failure. I drove away childishly triumphant.

http://www.travellady.com/destinations/africa.htm  - Kenya

Back to TravelLady Magazine