Why the 'face me by force' matatus used to rock

Years back, way before Tunoi allegedly grew a cool Ksh 200m richer, we had the ‘face me by force’ matatus. There was no specification on the number of passengers they could carry. It depended on the size of the passengers and how far back the vehicle could lean without pulling off a ‘wheelie’. I tend to think the kondas preferred lean people, because you could stack them like wood.

Those pieces of work (the mats) encouraged conversations between travelers since you would be seated facing each other. If you were Team Mafisi back then, hitting gold was easy- slip a few ndururus to the conductor to be placed across from the beauty who just had a swim in Lake Vaseline.

No ‘thirsty’ man would want to be seated across a shosho with a bewildered hen clasped tightly to her armpit. Then you would have to hear about her son who’s in ‘Naropi’, the number of chicken she has- the modern day version of listening to Jimy Gait’s Hello cover.

There were no sambazas.  Between the two rows of seated people (mostly the elderly), we had the Yegos (javelin throwers). They stood at a half-bent position while grabbing onto the rusty metal rod on the roof, giving the impression that they are throwing a javelin.

The front seats next to the dere would be reserved for the high and mighty: the retired civil servant with the beat up Peugeot 504 mounted on rocks at his front door, the headmaster to the local school with a protruding kitambi from Mama Khalituma’s busaa den, the man from the city with a copy of The East African Standard in hand whistling to the late Pepe Kalle’s Roger Milla to the amusement of the villagers.

If measured in decibels, the ruckus caused by the lose body panels once the vehicle was in motion would give the sound systems in present day matatus a run for their money. In case your vehicle plied a route similar to the Khwisero- Malinya road, then you were in for a baptismal by dust. Later on when alighting from the vehicle, you would easily pass for a miner from the numerous quarries around Bushiangala.

Once the journey began, snacks (nduma, sweet potatoes, boiled corn on the cob, githeri) wrapped in clear polythene bags would be extracted from pockets and sisal bags. Even if you carried nothing, be sure you would get unlimited offers to dig into the sweet, boiled githeri with no speck of Kimbo in it. It was the ultimate endurance test for the selfish since they had to stare into the pleading eyes of hungry, pot-bellied children whose eyes shifted at the slightest shuffling sound by a polythene bag- an indication of someone’s snack time.

By the end of your odyssey, you would have made news acquaintances and even a muhogo funga( modern name is chipsfunga) for the fisi.  

Talk of nostalgia.