Bizarre Rides On The Mat Side

The other day I took a matatu home that had this playlist that reminded me why I love hip hop. Am used to getting into some that play music that really annoys me like binti kiziwi, wezere and others I dont want to mention. It is very rare to come across one that plays Chino XL, Canibus, Mobb Deep (old tracks like shook ones), Pharcyde, M.O.P, Kool G Rap, ATCQ, AZ & Nas, Gangstarr, EPMD Tech9,  & Keith Murray! I mean, all this were into play! For the first time like in the old days when I was younger and had the right to be stupid, I didnt feel like alighting despite the fact that I have all that in my computer. It made me think of a post I can put up on matatus.

Bizarre Side

I dont know what it is with matatu drivers & crew that make them think they own the roads. They will hoot at you and hull insults when you stop to give way or stop at a red light. Citi Hoppa & KBS are also notorious for this especially along Kenyatta Avenue. At one time a driver told me that those in personal cars have made it already and are never in a hurry & are clumsy drivers and thats what makes them furious.  Their failure to give way leads to many small accidents which turn out to be very expensive for the insurance companies.

Chicken Drama

Where I reside, I have two routes to get me to the office or back. One that is more civilized but take me through town then I take another to either home or to the office. This is longer, then I have to bum in the morning (evening is never a problem because I dont get home early) traffic and for me to get to work in time, I have to be awake by 6.30. The second route gets me to the office in 15-20 minutes if I have a ride and 30 minutes if I am taking a matatu. However the route has not police crack downs and it therefore has the most uncouth, archaic and moronic matatu crew I have ever come across. To this day, 5 years after Michuki rules, they carry four passengers per seat. Every time a conductor instructs, “wanne wanne kama orbit” I feel like punching the phuk of the foul mouth.  This route also happens to have lots of mama mbogas and baba maziwa coming from the market with fresh produce. Woe unto you if you have to sit next to one. The other day I had to suspend my legs in the air so I wouldn’t step on  chicken. One lady got in and I asked her if she had colored nail polish on her toe nails otherwise the chicken were going to have a fiesta. I couldn’t help laughing because she had to alight after afew meters, horrified. I had to look for a shoe shiner fast to clean the white, brown & green mavi ya kuku after getting to work. Afew days later we shared a seat. “I have closed shoes today”, she said as I cursed the missed opportunity to be wooed by the said toes that the chicken had fallen for. I had a picture of the chicken ride but cant trace it in my computer. I should put it up when I find it.

Driven a Matatu?

Another thing with this route is, the matatus can stay in one stage for sometime waiting for passengers. Its the kind that one can pack bags in it then rush back to the house for a shower and still get it there at the stage. One evening when heading home, the driver gets off and goes to have a smoke while the conductor got into a mutura joint as we waited. I was itching to get home to watch churchill live but they didnt seem to be in a hurry or bothered by our impatience. I got so infuriated, jumped into the driver’s seat and sped off to the amazement and shock of other passengers. Not to mention I didn’t pay for the ride even though it was a meagre KES3o. It just felt so good. I got off the next stage (about 500 meters or so) and got home just in time. I dont know whether they got their matatu back but am sure none of them is pulling that stunt again on passengers.

Gossip Folks

I hate it when someone asks the driver to lower the volume so he/she can make or pick up an important call. Then proceed to talk loudly like no one else is around. The other day I had a chuckle when a lady picked up a call and couldnt help overhearing the guy on the other end tell her how ‘game’ she was. At times those NOKlAs can be that embarrassing.  Dont pick up a call in matatu. Politely tell the other party you are not in a position to talk.

Insecurity

The said bizarre route is a haven of muggers. So I don’t use it if its very late. It is the same route that this happened. I hear lots of tales of muggings and pick pocketing. There is this notorious group on Ngong Road that gets into a matatu (either route 111, 102, 103, 135, 4, 2) with brown envelopes. Once inside, one of them exclaims “kuna polisi fungeni mishipi” in the mad rush, your pockets are emptied or your handbag cut up and fleeced off your valuables. I hear route 16 to Highrise has weekly reports of hijacks. There is this story of a Thika bound matatu that was hijacked and driven to a coffee plantation where the passengers were stripped naked and each one of them tied to a coffee bush.

The Bright Side

Did I mentioned I got a phone number from the chicken drama lady? Ooh I did. She is a fiiinee one. I call her Chicken Head (tongue in cheek). Some may take it as cheap game but matatus are a fertile ground for pick-ups.

Sometimes back I met this lady with a clothing shop in town. Convincing me a pink shirt will look good took a while but it did work. I have little trouble now looking for good ties & quality socks. I should be getting some good business too from her soon.

I get to talk to alot to matatu drivers to try find out what it is with them and the viability of having your own on the road. Through this I have come to learn alot about the business. If you get a good route you could make good chums. In some other routes, chaos and an endless list of ‘eaters‘ exist.

When I had the K750, it is in matatus that I read most of the blogs. You take a good seat and have a good laugh at the amazing posts that people put up. Cant wait to get back online on mobile.

Edit on 8th May

This was not part of the original post but I had to add this after taking another crazy ride. Was going to work this morning and I got that seat next to the driver. It was raining, the visibility was poor and the driver slowed. I wondered why he was not using the wipers. When it became too much, I turned on the wipers. Instead  of them moving, there came those loud and noisy horns we call parariraz.  The driver told me they dont work any more and he came to a stop. The conductor came out and moved the wipers himself. The demister does not work too and driver asked me to wipe the windscreen for him. In place of the demister, was the loud speaker!

Playlist

The Score (Album)- The Fugees

A Red Carpet Moment: Honest Scrap Award

The Red Carpet &The Ovation

Pink & KK thank you for the award, thank you, thank you. I wasnt about to put up a post yet but I had to come out for this one. While reading some blogs, I find great writings that I at times wonder why I write and make feel like I should quit and just become a reader. But with awards like this, I think am not about to quit. I got mad respect for you all and am really humbled to get this one. You can sit ya behinds down and lets save the claps for my next award.

The Ten

1. I am soft spoken and contrary to what this blog may have portrayed,   I dont talk much. I however thaw with time and could discuss anything.
2. I listen to people. I listen to everyone. Not matter how obnoxious, boring, or… others find you, I listen.  I have had late night conversations that last even two hours on phone as ‘they’ cried a I listened. When it gets worse (unwanted attachement) I loose the Zain line.
3. I have mentioned this before, not in my blog but in comments in other blogs. I got my national ID by hooks and crooks. My driving license, birth certificate & passport. I had to and by all means necessary. ooh, am helping my brother acquire his too.
4. Am the last born in our family. I have two sisters and a brother. Mum passed when I was in class 2. My ‘dad‘ passed 5 years before I was born. My older siblings have however never looked at me or ever treated me as a step brother. I have never counted them as step. They are my sisters, he is my brother and we dont discuss it. I do not know who fathered me & I dont think I’d want to.
5. No one else besides older relatives and now you, know this. Not even the guys who are going to have me as their best man later this year. Its the first time I have ever mentioned it to anyone.
6. I am more attracted to older women than the young. They are less a hustle and abit of a challenge. I have however never entered into a relationship (like, “Meet Chéri, my girlfriend” kind of thing) with any.
7. I made some serious money in Feb and put it into an ‘investment’. A get rich quick kind of thing. I walk out of this one unscathed and I will finally believe I have 9 lives. Dont ask which because am not telling. And its not a pyramid scheme.
8. My nightmares until this post, have something to do with my religious background. I was an alter boy for years and most people believed I would end up being a priest.
9. I  probably should have put some ‘clauses’ in this post before others in a ‘whats important’ kind of order but it was very intentional, just incase you dont read the entire post.
10. I skipped two different coffee dates with amazingly amazing (borrowed from Pink in twitter) women to do this post. It felt good to stand them up because they too have pulled similar and worse stunts on me

The Catch

I would wish to extend the award to the below with the following instructions.

1.You must brag about the award – tick
2.You must include the name of the blogger who bestowed the award on you and link back to the blogger – tick
3.You must choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design.

4.Show their names and links and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog.

5.List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on with the instructions!

The list

P4wn3d (my favourite {4mb0nd14n blogger & a deep brother)

Boyfulani (This one got mad skill)

Savvy (campus tales dont come better than this)

CB (got a writing style that leaves me mystified)

Nakeel (because u aint done a post since like forever)

Bomseh (even though the same has been extended by Archer)

Mboizmnoma (Spill the beans on the eastlando)

I would have tagged more but lets leave it at that for now.

Playing

Chuck Berry - You never can tell  (C’est la vie)

I linked the Pulp Fiction scene because I would love to dance like the two did and I have this movie on top of my favorite movies of all times. I cant also deny that I love the story to the song. Chuck Berry, before Mike Rua, (check this one out (am not saying our local fella is in the same class though)) Jimi Hendrix & others there was him.

First Encounter

The Mourn

I know the header sounds like one of those tales of first timers in matters coital. This is a different encounter. Its been two weeks now since I lost my reliable K750.  I am on what a friend of mine called kamulika mwizi. I feel Severely deprived. Everytime I want to check some soccer result or wikipedia what I have seen or heard about, I fish it out only to realize the best I can do with this one is to mulika other than communicate! Incase I have been missing at yours, its because I heavily relied on that phone to get there. I had the phone for exactly two years. Its the longest I have ever held on to a handset. It has miraculously survived two major muggings!

The Denial?

Got mugged, and I didn’t feel much if anything. It was the third time in a space of one year! Last time a BB pearl & most important, a laptop went. I just let it go and consoled myself that I was planning to retire it anyway. I am looking for the best bargain I can get on this one. I have drooled for it for a year or so.

The encounter with the muggers didn’t scare me. I had a do as you wish feeling. Nonchalant, no fear, no tears, no nothing. I remember wearing no expression on my face. It reminded me of my first encounter (in memory) with muggers. The encounter that is this post’s tale.

A Brother’s debut to GH

My brother and I are waiting for whatever means of transport. We are a place known as Samson Corner. The place is a Y junction of sorts that has two roads that can take you to Nairobi (One via the rice fields in Mwea, the second one via Kutus/ Sagana) and a third that take you to Embu. It was about 2130hr, pitch dark. Dogs barking from afar. No sign of a village nearby. It was a dreaded place. We had however come from afar to get there. We sat on our bags and wondered why it was called Samson Corner in the first place yet there as no corner.

……..rewind rewind rewind.

Meet Shaggy

Its 0700hrs and we are seated outside a building called Mangu House in Thika. We are listening to the new Shaggy album Boombastic from a boom box of  shoe shiner cum pirated music dealer while wait for our uncle to report to his office. It got to 8am and he hadn’t showed up. Several hours after, I could sing to every word in the song Summertime and Boombastic, the first two singles on the album. We were headed to school and this fella called uncle was do shopping for us, give alittle pocket money and bus fare to Mwea where the school was.

The Economikriser(Borrowed from Asterix Comic Book)

He finally showed up at 6.30pm! Took us to a mini shop, bought for us one tiny kiwi, one small Colgate, one roll of tissue, one bar soap, one rexona(I preferred lux back then), one small bottle of ink, one 100g box omo, small tin(I don’t remember the grams on this one) of blue band, then one oval tin of Yolanda jelly(this one used to be yellow in color, you use that thing you shine like forever and attract buzzing bees). All this was one one! Not one one each. It was one each item for us to share! Yet this fella, and other related ones, never showed up for the one and the only visiting day per term! How do you share that tiny kiwi and that tiny tiny Colgate for a term!

The ‘unfantastic’ Voyage

He took us to the bus stop and put us in a Nissan Matatu (I wonder why they called (still do) them Nissan yet they are Toyota Hiace). “This one will get you to school fast.” He told us as we got in.  Those days the matatu’s were few and the route was mainly plied by buses called Sunbird, Marula, Overland, Kensilver and the infamous Riakanau. By then it was afew minutes to 7pm yet we were supposed to have reported to school by 5pm! The journey from Thika to Mwea takes about one and a half hours. He paid our fare left us a hundred shillings each (atleast we were not to share this one) and waved goodbye. This fella was not even accompanying us after delaying us for that long and doing some shitty shopping! So were supposed to go explain why we hadn’t reported to school the previous day, and again explain why we getting to school at 9!

The Truant Deviates

As we traveled, we decided not to go to school at that hour. One, the distance between the bus stage we were to be dropped at and the school was 1km walking distance. Two, the shitty shopping. Three, you had to be out of your mind to report that late. We decided to go to our grandpaz home somewhere near a place called Kutus in Kirinyaga. We had not been there in several years but it was the best option. The matatu got to Mwea and we told the conductor we had decided to go elsewhere and since they headed to Embu they drop us at Samson corner. You should have heard the mussitations from the adults on how kids had become bad (direct translation) and how truancy was on the rise! “And what classes are you in, again?” One of them asked. Me feeling like punching the fnck out of anyone of them who opened his/her mouth to talk about us. Why didnt they mind their own sh1t.

Of  Samson Corner

Finally, Samson corner. Here we were! It was there that we were waiting for whatever transport….Getting a matatu at that hour, at that perilous place back then was unheard off as we got to learn. It was so dark that you could not even see a person in a white shirt approaching. The only sounds we could hear were dogs barking from afar, crickets with their piercing wails, frog croaks, humming mosquitoes and the dreaded cry of an owl. This combined with the Shaggy songs that were on constant play in mind, as I sat on my bag, my wrists on the lower jaw, palms on my cheeks, with elbows poked to my knees, the freezing temperatures biting like it was its duty.  The orchestra was then brought to an end by voices of  approaching guys (soon to be goons). I could count there were about 5 to 6 and they sounded drunk. “Should we run or what?” Asked my brother who was in class 8 while I was in 6. I didn’t really care what was to happen. My heart rate never changed. I felt nothing. What I feared most was getting to school two days late, with uncompleted holiday assignments (sounds like Mourihno on bird flu pressure right?) The shity shopping, the books, the 280 (or so) shillings, and other effects went.

The End

That was the same feeling I had when the K750i went. What occupied my mind was waking up the following day and facing a couple of some corporate fat cats justifying why the company I work for should have the tender.

The Classifieds

Watched the play Dare Kenyans to Love by Churchill. For the first time in a long time! I should get my theater love back! An extremely satirical play. Stars, Larry Asego who plays a large large part depicting booze loving Kenyans and Jalang’o. The play is nonlinear, me felt like I was watching a Tarantino. Get a chance, catch it.

If you love cars, there is a magazine in a duka near you called AUTOZINE. Grab a copy……

China Mini Rant

…… and see how China has perfected the act of copycating even cars! Not just NOKIA to NOKlA! They now do Humvee too!! How fake can they get? Behind me overlooking the window, they are on the fourth floor of an apartment they started in January!

Playlist

Rock me – Freddie Jackson (I really need to get rocked!)

Love Zone - Billy Oc(hieng’)ean

Candy Rain – Immature

Trouble Sleeping – Corrine Bailey Rae