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A true story of secret love affairs between
Kenyan gals and shabby-dressed touts

I

t’s a little past 5 in the evening. A horde of wathii (Commuters) hovers around the ever-busy Westlands bus-stage not far from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) offices. A music-blaring mathree plying the No.30 route comes up from the direction of town and screeches to a halt. All the seats are taken except for the one next to the driver. The driver is Dave, a slim fellow in his late twenties. He impatiently honks twice, his eyes searching the assembled commuters. Almost immediately, Shiku, an 18-year-old college student in a short skirt and an overkill of makeup, materializes from the crowd. She climbs into the mathree with practiced ease and sits in the unoccupied chair. The mathree swings back into traffic and drives off, Shiku and Dave talking animatedly…

This is a scenario that is repeated many times every day. There exists, in our society, a category of girls for whom the matatu industry is a godsend. Not only do they enjoy free rides aboard their favourite matatus but some have seats reserved for them and are therefore assured of a free ride every day. They are universally young and often very attractive. It is in this category that Shiku belongs.

Her relationship with driver Dave began one crisp morning about a month ago when she was standing at the bus stage with her friend, Susan. Shiku was running late but Susan told her not to worry because she (Susan) had friend who was a driver and they was therefore assured of a ride no matter how crowded the stage was.

Sure enough, Dave rolled in with his music-blaring mathree (more a mobile disco than a public transport vehicle) and greeted Susan with evident familiarity. Shiku and Susan boarded the vehicle and, to Shiku’s surprise, none of the girls was asked to pay for the ride to Westlands where Shiku had landed a part-time job. In the evening, Dave recognized Shiku in the middle of a home-bound crowd at the Westlands stage and beckoned her over. She didn’t pay for that ride either and since then, she and Dave have been getting on like a house on fire.

He picks her up and drops her off as if the mathree were a personal vehicle and she is so important to him that when young man made the mistake of entering the mathree when it stopped to pick Shiku up was rudely told to alight by the conductor! The man protested, saying, ‘Kwani pesa zake ni nzuri kuliko zangu?’ (‘Is her money better than mine?’) to which the conductor barked, ‘Wee shukaaa!’ (‘You just alight!’). The man alighted in a huff and Shiku took her now-customary position next to the driver. More recently, Dave surprised Shiku with a music CD with her name written on the back. It was a compilation of love songs.

Meet Elizabeth. She’s another one of the ‘mathree girls’. Vivacious, talkative and built on a small scale, Elizabeth is in her early twenties but looks much younger. She is currently ‘between jobs’ but previously worked as a trainer with a ‘kid’s club’ on Ngong Rd.

On any given day, the most likely place you’ll find her is the front of a route No.34b matatu driven by her boyfriend, Kimani. She lives in Donholm but she and her boyfriend pass her house several times as matatu shuttles back and forth. She loves music and will often be bobbing her head to beats emanating from the matatu’s powerful music system. Incidentally, Kimani’s father owns the matatu he drives.

I remember seeing a sticker in a worn-out matatu that read: ‘DON’T LAUGH AT MY VEHICLE – YOUR DAUGHTER MIGHT BE INSIDE.’ This message may be amusing to most people, but the young girls/matatu drivers’ relationship is no laughing matter.

School girls have discovered the convenience and adventure of free city tours and it’s an open secret that some of them don’t even reach school, choosing instead to go for endless ‘rounds’ in matatus. Still in their school uniforms, they can be seen listening to music and conversing with the drivers and conductors during school hours.

This kind of truancy must surely be affecting their school grades, not to mention opening them up to sexual promiscuity and abuse. And of course the unholy alliance between schoolgirls and young matatu drivers takes place behind the backs of parents who think that their daughters are busy at school, laying the foundation for a productive future!

It’s pretty clear what the girls get out of the deal – free rides. But what does the matatu guy get? It appears that some of these types use the matatu as a courting tool. They exercise the little power they have by exploiting it – waiving fees, reserving seats, terrorizing other road users and so on. Shiku confessed to me that the reason she likes Dave for is his adventurism.

‘There’s always (a sense of) action around him! One day he hit a muhindi’s car, another time the cops were looking for him and another time he kept changing the route number because he wanted to take me to a place past Hurlingham. He is full of action and I like action!’ she crooned.

Shiku and Dave’s relationship has even progressed from the roads to real life and they have had a couple of dates outside working hours. She however insists that she has never slept with him although he once kissed her in public: ‘He just crossed the road and kissed me! He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t care what other people think.’ Nancy, the girl who introduced Shiku to Dave, has also dated him outside the mathree circuit. As for Elizabeth and Kimani, Elizabeth says that the matatu rides are incidental to their relationship because they were dating even before Kimani started working for his father.

For the most part, the matatu boys seem content to just enjoy the company of the girls. Like the snazzy music systems in the vehicles, the joyriding girls brighten the working days of the young drivers/conductors. If they’re close enough, there may be touching and even after-hours rendezvous but these appear to be the exception rather than the rule. Sometimes the girls sacrifice nothing at all. A case in point is Irene, a light-skinned Lang’ata girl who works for a tours and travel firm based in Ngara. When a neigbourhood friend landed a job as matatu conductor, she enjoyed free rides on a daily basis until he quit six months later. They remain casual friends.

In this joyriding sub-culture, the girls are far from innocent. Aware of the financial ramifications of waiving fees, drivers hardly go scouting for talent. From the inception of the ‘manyanga’ craze a few years ago, certain girls made it a practice to never part with money for short trips. They would ask, plead or even beg to be carried for free. Smiles and seductive behaviour were all tools of the trade and they often worked like a charm. You will still see these joyriders at matatu termini, ignoring vehicle after vehicle until the one that will carry them for free comes along.

A case in point: A girl from Nyeri was visiting her cousin in Nairobi’s Southlands Estate. When it was time to leave, they went outside the Southlands gate. Almost immediately, a route No.15 matatu put in an appearance and the country girl made a move to enter but her cousin pulled her back, saying: ‘Leave him (the conductor) alone – he can’t give you a sare (free ride)!’ So they stood there, discriminating matatus, until a ‘friendly’ one pulled up.

As the freemasonry between joyriding girls and mathree boys continues unabated, who are the losers?

It goes without saying that the matatu owners are directly – and negatively –affected by this secret communion that takes place every day. A ton of cash is lost every year as joyriders (including some men) are transported for free.

Parents are also negatively affected, especially where schoolgirls are involved. Traditionally, there is very little love lost between matatu men and parents of teenagers. Before the Michuki (then transport minister) reforms, when matatus were more crowded, there were numerous complains of girls being inappropriately groped or ‘touched’ especially by conductors offering unsolicited assistance when the girls were alighting or embarking.

With a maximum of fourteen passengers now allowed, such incidents have greatly reduced but the girls occasionally have to deal with sexual overtures and crude language. With so many complaints leveled at matatu men and given their reputation for rudeness, flouting road rules and door-swinging antics, it is no wonder that many parents regard matatu drivers and their touts as proof positive that human beings are descended from apes.

Unfortunately for the parents, the public transport sector is profoundly important to the nation’s development. With the railway transport system performing way under par and the Kenya Bus Service’s fortunes dwindling, the matatus are left with main load of taking commuters from point A to point B. In short, the matatus are here to stay, and the only hope for more responsible behaviour can only come in the form of inter-sector reforms.

For starters, more women are required and, indeed, many young women are both ready and willing to take up the challenge, either as drivers or conductors of PSVs. Some taxis now have women drivers and a few matatus have women as conductors but there is still way too much testosterone on the roads.

In fact, the liaison between young girls and the matatu boys was bound to happen. Most drivers and their conductors are, after all, single young men in their twenties and early thirties. They are at a point in their lives when the energy levels are high, libido is strong and the pressure to find a mate is optimal. As the transport sector reforms were introduced, there was a call to balance out the youngsters with older, more mature, drivers.

The young bloods were seen as too aggressive, inexperienced and more given to adventurism. On the other hand, there was fear that old drivers are ‘dead wood’ and unlikely to maximize the use of a matatu. The general idea was to mix up these two categories of drivers and hopefully bring more sanity to the all-important transport sector.

The Matatu Owners Association (MoA), PSV umbrella body, recently called for more individual responsibility amongst matatu operators. The Transport Licensing Board was asked to reconsider penalizing the whole matatu where an individual (mostly the driver) was actualy responsible for a traffic offence. A move towards personal responsibility would go far in curbing some of the uglier aspects of the matatu business. Parents of schoolgirls who utilize matatus might also want to call or pass by their daughter’s school once in a while – just to make sure that they actually get there. And the next time you’re honking and waving your fist at a lane-switching matatu, remember that your daughter may be right inside there, pouting defiantly at you and the world at large.

Ends…