Saturday, July 23, 2011

Paul's Daily Trip from Ngumo to Kasarani and Back

I am off to work as a painter at Kasarani, the Maji Mazuri orphange.It is about 20 miles or 2 ½ hours away. You ask, “How can that be?” I will explain.

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I walk out of our ”estate”, protected by high walls and guards, and enter the real world of Kenya. I am looking for matatu 33 to take me to downtown Nairobi. The number “33” is on the front of the matatu so it should be easy. However, there are some 33s that go to Nairobi and some that only God knows where so one needs to be careful to ask the “conductor”. Although we are both speaking English, it is sometimes hard to communicate. I climb into the matatu.

A matatu is the size of a large golf cart. It could probably seat 4 to 6 people comfortably. However, a matatu is designed to hold 15 people: 13 passengers, a driver, and a conductor – 5 rows of 3 people each. You climb in all bent over and squeeze into your seat. We are packed like sardines. If one person moves a muscle, we all move several muscles.

There is a good seating strategy but it is difficult to implement. If you sit in the front seat with the driver, you have to look at all the near accidents as you are being approached, sometimes in your lane, by speeding cars, matatus, and busses. If you sit in the second row, you are sitting over the motor and your knees touch your chin. If you choose the back row, the seats are elevated so you need to ride bent over with your head touching the roof. I have decided there is only one good seat – the single seat on the left hand side in row three. I have a one in thirteen chance of getting that seat. Actually, the odds are not that good because everyone else in Kenya has figured out that this seat is the best one and you always find it filled.

The driver sits in the front row on the right hand side. (We are in Kenya). The conducter sits in the third row on the left hand side. His job is to shout out for new customers, bang on the side of the matatu to tell the driver when to stop and when to go, open the sliding door to let people in or out, and collect the fares. The “fares” are very “fair” - not more than 50 shillings (about 50 cents) and usually 20 or 30 shillings to go anywhere in the greater Nairobi area.

We are off and running! No, off and “walking”, no, off and “crawling”, no, off and stopped. The traffic is horrendous – worse than we experienced in Nigeria, Ghana, or India. We are in “stopped” mode a great deal – which partially explains the 2 and ½ hour trip. Every once in a while, we “break out”, when there is a stretch of clear highway. At this point, the driver attempts to “make up” for lost time by driving as fast as the matatu will go, scaring the hell out of everyone, only to come to a grinding halt in a very short distance, and another period of standing still.

And the music! Half the matatus play ear splitting Kenyan and American music and, of course, the speakers are right next to your ears – as is everything else in the matatu. You cannot choose a seat based on speaker location – they are located in different spots on different matatus I have bought ear plugs, which I pull out periodically.

Anyway, we make it to downtown Nairobi. It is time to switch to the 17B bus to Kasarani. The 17B bus is only about a block away and although there are a lot of other busses going other directions, it is not too difficult to find the 17B once shown the routine. The busses are a step up from the matatus but are still well short of busses to which we are accustomed. Once you get on the bus, you think the hard part of the journey is over. Not true. The 17B bus does not start until all 55 seats are filled! I once sat for over one hour waiting for the seats to fill – the last four seats took almost 20 minutes. I almost paid for the empty seats but that would have been in bad taste, to say the least.

We are off and running – no, not really – same traffic problems. Other than the traffic, you think the trip is going to be relatively peaceful. Not true. Most of the busses to Kasarani have self-appointed (not legal) preachers. When you get on the bus, you never really know which person is going to turn out to be a preacher. On one occasion, a nice lady sat down next to me. When the bus started, she also started. She stood up, faced her empty seat and right over my head, preachedfor 35 minutes, yelling at the top of lungs in Swahili! Time to pull out the earplugs.

The Chinese are funding and supervising the construction of a 6 to 8 lane super highway which will replace the road to Kasarani, on which we are traveling. However, at the present time, it could not be worse for travelers because you not only have to travel over the current pot hole filled, highly congested road, you need to travel immediately adjacent to all the earth moving equipment being used to build the new road. The dust is so heavy that.... We reach Kasarani, a fifteen mile trip in 45 minutes to an hour.

I paint all day. (A different story) I walk down the dirt road to the highway. I flag down a 17B bus. I decide to sit in the front seat where I can see everything out the front window. Then, I look down. The floor board is missing. I am sitting right over the engine, or the drive shaft, or whatever. No matter what it is, it looks like it could grind me up if I fell in the hole. I move to the next row back. Bad mistake. This is where the bus conducter hits the side of the bus to signal the driver to stop or go. Some of the busses are all contained in one unit. The driver can hear the conducter's signals with a relatively modest slam on the side of the bus. On other busses, the driver is an a separate cab from the passengers. In this case, the conducter has to hit the side of the bus right at seat two with what sounds like a sledge hammer.

As a side issue, sometimes the busses and matatus do not come to a complete halt when you want to get on or off so one always needs to be alert.

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We return to Nairobi. I transfer from the 17B bus to the 33 matatu and repeat the matatu experience on the way back to Ngumo. I got up at 6, left for work at 8, arrived at Kasarani at 10:30, left Kasaranit at 3, and got back to Ngumo at 5:30. Can't wait until tomorrow!