The Magically Expanding School Bus

Hoping to get to Ganze by 8 o’clock, we got to the stage at 7 a.m. and asked which matatu would be going in that direction. There were two sitting side by side, the sliding doors open, the attendants motioning for us to get in as they would be leaving soon. There was only one problem, and that was that both matatus were empty.

Public transportation does not operate on a schedule. It runs on a balance of incentives and disincentives. When there are enough people in the matatu, it starts to move. It also wants to pick up people on the side of the road as it goes. This poses a challenge if another matatu is going in the same direction. Both want to leave first to get the first shot at the people on the side of the road, but neither will leave without a respectable compliment of passengers to guarantee at least some coverage of the base cost of the trip. It is a risk game. Or perhaps the drivers simply leave when they finish their third cup of coffee, or when the card game ends, or whenever they damn well please.

There we were, faced with two empty matatus, both hoping to leave for Ganze. Rickety sliding door number one, or rusty sliding door number two? We picked the one closer to the exit from the stage onto the road. My two companions, taking full advantage of their feminine guile and foreignness, were allowed the front seats next to the empty driver’s seat. I sat two rows back. There is a silent awareness shared amongst all matatu passengers that if you don’t get the privilege of sitting in front, the second of the four rows in back is the best spot. You are less likely to be sat upon by someone than in the first row, and in the rows further back you are more likely to be hitting your head on the ceiling. I also believe that there might, just might, be a tiny bit more legroom in the second row. Not that my legs fit in any of the rows, but that extra millimeter, imagined or not, is a psychological salve. The first row is the worst for legroom, as the engine is directly in front of you, which also makes it the warmest place on the matatu into which you stuff your feet. Window seats are nice for the breeze, but bad for the dust and banging your head on the side beams above the glass as the matatu rolls back and forth on the arched roadway.

Shortly after we climbed in, a woman sat in the front row behind the engine, and a man in an Aloha shirt came and sat next to me. He spoke English well, but was impressed by my dozen words of Kiswahili. I practiced with him for a while. He verified the vocabulary list in my notebook, and occasionally made comments to the woman in front of us that made her laugh. After the initial conversation died out, we sat and waited. No one else boarded the matatu, least of all a driver. Looking at the van next to ours it appeared one person had gone with door number two, sat down in it and was also waiting.

The amount of activity at a matatu stage is proportional to the size of the town or city in which it is located. In Ganze, the stage is a single bench on each side of the road, and occasionally someone sits there with a basket of oranges to sell. I live in a mid-sized town, and there are never fewer than thirty matatus revving their engines, looking for passengers, rearranging their parking situations, and almost running over people. Around the matatus gather their smaller cousins, the tuk-tuks (rickshaws) and the piki-pikis (motorcycles), serving as taxis. There are peanut vendors, watch vendors, soda vendors, and people selling all manner of useless colorful plastic items pegged to a board that they carry with them. Want a hair band? No? How about a battery case? Child’s scissors? Giant paper clip? Three inches of flexible tubing? It is possible that I am exaggerating the scope of these vendors’ wares. I cannot report the items with total accuracy because to inspect the assortment is to make it impossible to convince the vendor that you really don’t want any of it.

It was close to an hour after we boarded and our matatu had not moved. The man in the Aloha shirt next to me disappeared. I tried to see if he had gotten on another matatu, thinking there may be better odds of leaving if we all stuck together in a sort of passengers’ union. He was gone. Then he was in the driver’s seat, revving the engine. We inched forward, then rolled back, trying several different gears as if to figure out which would get us out of the parking lot best. After a few moments it became apparent that he was not our driver who had decided to be social with the back seat passengers. He was just as anxious to get going as the rest of us. Another man came to the driver’s window, shoed him out and climbed in. This guy, it appeared, must be our driver. He revved the engine, rolled us a few feet forward and back, and then got out after a few minutes. Neither of them got back in our matatu.

Another forty-five minutes later my companions looked to me for an opinion on whether we should give up on Ganze and try again another day. Phone calls were made, and we were on the verge of bailing out, when the attendant from our matatu apparently poached customers from the neighboring matatu, causing their attendant to storm to our sliding door and slam it shut before the mutineers could board. Strong words were spoken, placating intermediaries showed up, vendors watched in anticipation, and after our attendant fixed the door which the other attendant had broken, the pirated passengers piled in, along with the real driver, who we had never seen before.

In the U.S, with its notions of cargo space and safety, no more than 8 or 10 people would be allowed in a vehicle of this size. Actually, in the U.S, a vehicle of this size usually holds five, and many vehicles considerably larger hold fewer, but whoever makes the little vans that are turned into matatus managed to fit 15 seats into the boxy frame.

At its most cozy, there were 26 people in our matatu. Children are hauled by a free arm and passed to mothers or crammed into slivers of space like bags of grain. Old women are told that there is plenty of room inside, and once they are in, they can’t turn around because someone else has gotten in behind them. The attendants hang out the side door, arms spread wide to keep anyone from falling out. Somehow the attendants always manage to collect fares as they do this. There can be 25 people packed like sardines between you and the attendant, and somehow their hand, grasping an assortment of bills, will find you. Then they will give you the incorrect change, and smile when you correct them, as if their mistake was not intentional. It’s not so much a dishonest grab at money, because he never told you the price to begin with. It’s more a test to see how much you, the ignorant outsider, will pay. These are individuals of particular talents.

After a long day visiting farms in Ganze, I was not particularly looking forward to the ride back to the coast. I had walked several miles up and down hills, had run out of water, and had not had enough to eat, starting with my skipping breakfast in order to be at the matatu stage by 7 a.m. for a ride that did not leave until 8:45. When the matatu pulled in front of the bench that is the stage in Ganze, I recognized the driver and attendant as the same who had brought my companions and me that morning. My coworkers and I had split up after the morning’s ride, and they had headed back an hour or so earlier. I smiled to the attendant as if we both knew something, and climbed in, hoping that we could at least keep the passenger level below the teens.

To my surprise, the van was almost empty. In addition to the driver and the attendant there was only one other man on board, and I stretched out in luxurious fashion, until it became apparent that that is incredibly uncomfortable in a matatu. We cruised slowly, stopping at junctions for a few moments longer than normal to see if any more passengers would appear. None did. The attendant seemed disappointed. Perhaps he remembered that I knew the actual price of the trip back. More likely he was thinking that someone else, probably the matatu that had taken my coworkers home, had caught all the fares along the roadside. We passed a school, and a crowd of children in threadbare uniforms chased us yelling, ”Taxi! Taxi!” The attendant and the driver mumbled some words between themselves, and we pulled over. Twenty-some school children got on board, giggled, marveled at the white man, and were given a free ride. The attendant, who did not make eye contact with any of the children as he gave them gruff instructions to pile into the back, gazed out the window of the sliding door and smiled. It was a good ride.