Matatus and dancing in the rain!!!

Lete liyo bill tafadhali? (Can I please have the bill?) This morning after jumping through half a dozen bureaucratic hoops Jammies and I finally convinced the profs to let us take two of our TAs out to lunch in downtown Nairobi without a fully organized escort. Thus, after filling out a series of forms and a promise not to die, get mugged or hit by a car, we were allowed to exit the safety of the ICIPE compound. As ICIPE is ridiculously far from downtown, we got the opportunity to ride a matatu. The matatu is an interesting phenomenon in itself. These converted mini-vans are organized to hold 14 passengers AND the driver, making legroom quite scarce. Many of these are called “moving discos”, and are pimped out on the exterior with decals ranging from religious messages to tributes to hip-hop artists to sexually suggestive phrases. The drivers pump out deafening reggae and hip-hip as they weave through dense, fast-moving traffic, often missing each other by centimeters. And quite frequently (almost too frequently) they fail to miss each other by these precarious margins- the sides of the road are usually lined with crushed cars and matatus with drivers wildly arguing outside. I have come to the conclusion that the loud music and flashy decals are to direct the passenger’s attention away from the craziness of the ride.

Interestingly, both matatus we ended up riding were tame, generic ones (soft music and no decals) but the drivers were equally wild. These rides revealed to me something that I had been suspecting for a while about Kenya- that EVERYTHING is negotiable here, from the matatu fare [depending on the time of the day (rush hour fares tend to be higher) and your degree of mzungu-ness also affects the rate] to the actual drivable width of the road. During rush hour, a 2-lane highway becomes a disorganized array of cars just trying to get by- often 5 cars wide as the dirt sidewalk becomes an unofficial alternative to on-road driving. As much as most matatus are the epitome of all things flamboyant and loud, the communications inside are all based on subtle, non-verbal signals between the passengers, fare collector, and driver. Silvanos negotiated and paid for the entire trip without me noticing, despite the fact that I had turned myself onto a hyper-alert mode, trying to take everything in. Upon realizing that I had missed this crucial piece of knowledge (I won’t always have someone with me on a matatu to negotiate for me), I focused keenly on the interactions within the vehicle. Only when there were disagreements over the negotiated fare that words were used, but usually, even these conversations are kept to a minimum. When a passenger wants to get off, a light tap on the shoulder of the conductor (or a slight gesture if he is looking at you) suffices, and he simply raps on a window or the door a couple times to let the driver know to pull over. It amazes me that such subtlety can communicate so much information. Then again, it makes sense that talking is kept to a minimum. Imagine if everyone in the vehicle was talking to each other or the conductor, it would be so loud and chaotic that the right message would probably never get through to the person you were speaking to. Perhaps the anonymity of the big city also contributes to the lack of talking, or the lack of desire to attract attention to oneself due to susceptibility of robbery. Then again, you don’t see many people talking on the metro or bus back home eh? Wow I never thought that a mode of transportation would compel me so much that I would write a quasi-essay on it!

These rides revealed to me something that I had been suspecting for a while about Kenya- that EVERYTHING is negotiable here, from the matatu fare [depending on the time of the day (rush hour fares tend to be higher) and your degree of mzungu-ness also affects the rate] to the actual drivable width of the road.

Anyways, back to downtown. Once off the crazy matatu, we started walking around downtown with Silvanos showing us how to orient ourselves. We called Yussuf who was enjoying a day off and asked him to join us for lunch at a local popular restaurant called Simmers. To many Kenyans, a lunch here is a luxury, but when we saw the prices, Jammies and I were astounded. A large T-bone steak meal was merely 350 Ksh ($6 Cdn). But it wasn’t the amazing food that was the highlight. It was getting a chance to sit with two of our TAs, who we now consider to be our friends, in a non-academic setting and get to know them as people. As funny as it sounds, I find it always amazing to find out that teachers have lives outside of the classroom, and are often very different people than the façade they put on for the academic setting. Also, getting the chance to go out and explore without a 40-person co-escort was an amazingly real feeling, which has made me even more anxious to set out on my own. However, the dangers of Nairobi are very real. One of the students had her backpack (with all of her important documents) stolen today. While the Land Rover she was traveling in was stuck in traffic, a guy came to the window and started hammering on it with a coin. Distracted, everyone in the car turned to face him. Meanwhile, 5 other guys forced open a window and grabbed her bag. Apparently, the whole process took less than 3 seconds. Luckily she has the infrastructure here with the group and through ICIPE to help her gather new documents- but it just goes to show that even traveling with a professor who knows how to navigate Nairobi, one is still vulnerable.

The rest of the time downtown, we hit up an internet café and checked out some local shops. I ended up getting a really comfortable shirt made out of something called batik (?). I swear I could have gotten a lower price if I had been bargaining though- Yussuf, despite being a savvy local is a bit of a pushover when it comes to negotiating – he’s too nice!!!

Upon returning to ICIPE , we learned that the evening’s plan to go to the famous carnivore restaurant had been postponed to Saturday, and thus we all decided to have our own impromptu dance party with the ICIPE staff. Antoine, Raymond and Curtis showed us some crazy reggae dance moves and after a few rum n’ cokes we convinced ourselves that we were good enough to give it a try.

Oh and I have a self-imposed new rule that every time it rains hard- I MUST go and dance or run in the rain. (Yes, I pulled out “the sprinkler” in tribute the boys back home!) There is no greater feeling than to go for a hard jog while a veritable deluge falls, weighing your shorts down and then soaking through your boxers. I ended up convincing Charles and Mau of the merits of such an excursion and we went jogging while security guards huddling under overhangs looked at us incredulously. The funny thing is, earlier in the day, the song Cool Runnings had been playing on the radio and stuck in my head at that point. I thought it was quite a fitting end to an unreal day!

-Amani my friends

P.S. The word unreal is now omnipresent in my vocabulary as everything I have experienced in the past months has a surreal quality to it. It is my perpetually irrational fear that I will wake up in my Montreal bed and realize it was all a dream.