The Matatu Ride

This adventure took place on the third day of being in Kenya. I had heard of these infamously crowded, privately owned, public modes of transportation from my sister and dad had decided, along with my prompting, that we should ride one before he left for home. So asking Flora our maid (yes, a maid is a luxury for any one and seems a strange thing for missionaries to have a maid but in hiring a maid my aunt and uncle have created a job and a relationship) how much she paid for a Matatu which turned out to be 20 shillings. So we gathered our coins and headed out to the red, dusty side of the road to wait for our Matatu. After about five minutes I saw the dusty trail of the speeding Matatu. It screeched its breaks for a looming speed bump and then sped towards us like we were some kind of prey that was likely to disappear any moment. I jumped out of the way to avoid being run over then caught a glimpse of the interior of the twelve seater van. There were three people in the very front, most likely the driver’s family since the front seats were portioned off from the rest of the van, then the rest of the seats in the van were full except for two and there was four of us waiting to get on. I smiled and was just about to comment on how this was going to be crazy but before the van even stopped the side door slid open and a eager looking Kenyan jumped out and ushered us quickly in. And so, squishing and crawling in not at all an eloquant manner, we made our way to the one available seat in the back row and then Nicole and I squeezed into it. Once the other two were in the door remained open for the “spotter”, the Kenyan who made the driver aware of where to stop and also collected the money, hung out of the open door beside another misplaced passenger. It was truly invigorating! We counted 18 people the way there and 19 the way back. When the Matatu stopped at the Nakumatt (Kenya’s equivalent to Wal-Mart) I saw the spotter engaged in conversation with dad: “ahh, this one’s very nice too. How much to let me have them?” Nicole and I chuckled the comment off, our first marriage proposal!