Matatu Saga

Thursday, 14 January 2010 03:00

Written by Lulu

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If you use have used a matatu then you must know what am about to rant about, if you haven’t then there is a lot of anguish, anger and probable grounds for a defence of provocation (you would use that after murdering a conductor or matatu driver) that you are missing out on. There’s just enough madness in town, if you think about the matatus you might either go mad or be shot dead trying to steal to afford your own car and using it for your daily locomotion.

For some of us, who have not yet considered owning cars (let me not say that we are not yet in a position to afford our own) we go through this madness each and every day. And the conductors aren’t any better because they tell you on the face, ‘if you can’t cope buy your own’, so you choose to live under their idiotic dictatorship until you consider buying one and then not ever using matatus.

Today I boarded a matatu to Buruburu and next to me was a woman who to my rarely wrong estimation had been to her sixtieth birthday and looked forward to celebrating her seventieth in the near or far off future.  As usual the music was seriously loud. I personally do not mind loud music in matatus but I could notice that we were not on the same side of the coin in that aspect – the music was disturbing her.

Adjacent to our seat was a sticker with some red, big and loud writings on it; I looked at it, read it and continued reading my novel. Then my seat-mate’s phone rang, she removed it, called one of the many conductors hanging at the door and asked him to reduce the volume so she could pick the call. The young man didn’t even bother looking at old mama twice. He removed a small hard board, showed it to her and stuck it back at the side of the door. It was well printed. It was to the point. And itsaid: ‘NO CALLS SMS ONLY’. The poor woman took her phone back in her bag and did not say a word to conductor. She was hurt and so was I, for considering her age, that was downright rude. The board drove my eyes back to the first message placed adjacent to us. With all the arrogance of youth, it proclaimed: ‘IF THE MUSIC IS TOO LOUD THEN YOU ARE TOO OLD’.

All these transpired when the music that was playing was Tupac’s song that went something like…‘you said that you are player but I f**ked your wife’. With that song playing plus the crazy messages I could barely look at my seat-mate.

I could really go on and on but that is just about enough rant for a day…

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