It has been already 7 months since I live in Nairobi.
Although I do live kind of detached from the city, I try my best to wonder around when I have time. So, I feel like sharing with you several things about Nairobi that I think you should know, in case you have never been.
First of all, they love filling their brand new streets with bumps. And they are serious about it. The cars almost stop before the bump, because most of them are quite old and not well kept (I am referring to taxis and matatus). These quite imposing bumps are not placed in minor streets, as you might think, in the proximity of schools, parks or pedestrian areas. No, sirs and madams, some of them are on some regular streets, some others in quite wide streets, some in passages connecting highways and some of them are multiple! The best version is three small bumps all one after the other. A pleasure if you are sitting on the back of a matatu.
Indeed, another very authentic experience is the one of matatu. I haven’t explained before to what I refer with this term and some of you might not know that they are the version of buses here in Nairobi. Well, not exactly buses because they do have buses (without numbers, all colorful, from the 50s and with creative sentences painted on the sides). Matatus are 16 seated vehicles running around town like crazy. They squeeze everywhere they can, they drive everywhere they shouldn’t and they do their best to break every rule of the street and make it impossible for the other drivers to relax while going home after a tiring day in the office. We might anyway compare them to other crazy driving style around the world. What I find really peculiar is the atmosphere inside.
Most of them will have the radio on or cd with reggae music (when you are lucky) and the volume will be just below the threshold of bearable volume. This implies that no one in the matatu is talking and if someone is trying to call you at the mobile phone you do not even bother trying to answer: you won’t hear a single word.
Also the money exchange (there is one guy sitting with the passengers collecting it) happens without any verbal communication. Hands are more than enough to explain how much it is, for how many you are paying.
At least in Mombasa, on the coast, you are allowed to knock when you want to get off. I’ve tried that in Nairobi and everyone turned at me and looked at me in a way that it surely meant “what do you think you are doing?”. So, I still haven’t find out the appropriate way to communicate when you want to get off. I have never managed to spot another passenger asking the money-collector to stop the driver (by the way, the money collector knocks or hits the window with a coin when he wants the driver to stop). I personally tap on the shoulder of the guy (if I am close enough) and nod. I have to say it works pretty well.
I will be waiting comments from my Kenyan fellows, who will probably laugh at this muzungu, still struggling to interpret the secret of matatu silence.
