Ju-ju visions and near-death experiences

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Ju-Ju in a matatu

It was approaching nightfall. I worked my way through the usual hubbub of humans and found a half-filled matatu that was going the same way as me. I took a seat at the back and was blessed with a window that opened halfway. As dusk descended, the small, single-bulb ceiling-light illuminated a dim interior. People climbed in and took their seats. The matatu filled quickly, as usually happens at this time of the evening.

There I was, just chilling out, pondering the congested street next to me and not noticing much else, when the matatu took off. The makanga (conductor) fluttered in the wind for a few seconds before swinging himself inside and sliding the door closed.

With everyone settled inside and his makanga safely indoors, the driver proceeded to set the scene for the rest of the trip. The ceiling light went off and, with the blip-blip of fluorescent technology, a light mounted on the interior side panel came on. Just then, Bob Marley’s “Stir It Up” started up on the powerful sound system.

The blip-blip turned out to be what they call a ‘black-light’ or an ‘ultra-violet’ light. And, lo and behold, stenciled everywhere on the bare paint of the matatu interior, in day-glow paint, were little shining motifs of cannabis sativa leaves – you know, the five-pointed star that signifies Jamaican Ju-Ju.

Amongst the black bodies in the matatu you couldn’t see a thing but for an occasional square of white collar sticking out of a jacket top. There was that usual ‘haze’ that ultra-violet seems to bring with it. With the cannabis plantation in front of me, Bob Marley piped at high volume, and a haze that could have been mistaken for what used to be called a ‘hot-box’ (of ganja smoke), the illusion was entirely convincing.

Images came flooding back to me: of nights at a reggae club called Scratch, in Cape Town in the late seventies. When the Wailers were fresh, and Chris Blackwell’s Island Records (the ‘Island’ being Jamaica) was just starting to boom with Bob’s new boogey …

The scene was complete. A stony (stoned?) silence descended on the matatu’s entranced travelers. The makanga just rocked in his seat, happpppeeeeee. The driver proud he had stage-managed an effect that would have had any seventies student skanking slowly. But, it seems, something was still missing…

The driver leaned imperceptibly forward and with a little twiddle of this left hand he almost blew the entire rear of the matatu onto the road. Clearly, Aston 'Familyman' Barrett’s four-string figures weren’t big enough in the boom of the bass bin in the back. Forgive me for thinking something HAD just been blown onto the road because the rush of air at my legs would have fooled anyone. Shite, he’s not serious, I thought.

Everything slowed to a low frequency trance. When I signaled the conductor that I wanted to alight, it must have taken another fifteen seconds for him to register. He eventually gave the usual smacks to the side of the matatu, signaling the driver. Nothing happened. The makanga had to repeat the action. The message eventually reached the driver’s brain and we slurred to a stop.

I had to walk a kilometer back to where I should have been dropped….

I was still suffering from subwoofer shock when another memory seeped out from the mists of my disorientation: Driving and listening to reggae. Preparing myself properly for a visit with some Rasta brethren in Khayalitsha, Cape Town. Neglecting to turn off at Vanguard Drive on the M2 freeway. Landing up in Bellville, some twenty kilometers further on. And wondering: “was I on the right road in the first place ……….?!”

Sheesh.

Mambo mbaye! …………………….. Sana.

I have a dream …

Like a few other cities on the continent, Nairobi is aspiring to become a world-class African city. But Nairobi, unlike the others, is only hoping to achieve this by 2030! Maybe it IS a realistic timeline but what I find strange is that, to my knowledge, there is no Vision Committee, or similar, that has set any milestones to be reached along the way. Maybe it is hoped that The Vision will somehow miraculously appear. And like other miraculous visions, it will probably take a Vatican investigation – or serious investigation, at least - to establish whether it did in fact happen!

I think the powers that be are hoping that by fixing a few roads (that should have been fixed decades ago) and promoting the growth of the IT sector, it’s going to be spontaneous combustion. Never mind that unemployment is so rampant that the government doesn’t actually measure the statistic, or that the Kenya Power and Lighting Company can only provide power on two or three days a week, or that the roads in Industrial Area are still so bad that it is costing millions a month just in vehicle repair and upkeep for those that ply the route. Never mind all of that, the Vision is coming!

A very good piece of airbrush art I saw on the back of a bus the other day expressed the Vision perfectly and succinctly: Just like you say that someone has “20:20 vision”, the legend at the top of the picture said “Vision 20:30”. And below it was a depiction of one very cross-eyed cat staring blankly out. Pole, mwananchi, (sorry, citizens) but I had to laugh at the aptness of the image.

Anyway, it seems to me that the vision is just another obfuscation of the REAL facts that need to be looked at in the city, and in the country as a whole. Forget becoming a world-class African city … Just give the people jobs. But I’ll probably never get to see Vision 2030 anyway. But then I suspect a lot of others won’t either!

(Talking of 20:30 vision, I have been wondering whether it is just my imagination or do I see more Luo wearing spectacles than any other of the Kenyan peoples? Is there something in the Nilotic eye structure that predisposes the Luo more towards eye problems? It’s a small and totally insignificant observation but I’d still be interested to know if there’s anything in it. Perhaps one of the numerous Kenyan opticians that read this blog can answer my query…?)

Baton charged

Still talking of sight, a hilarious one in town is watching what the policemen get up to sometimes – particularly in the pursuit of orderly traffic flow … Firstly, though, I tend to think that half the traffic problems experienced in this city arise from the fact that none of the policemen have ever driven a car, and probably never will. The result is that they do not understand the sheer frustration that arises from sitting completely stationery in traffic for fifteen minutes before being given the go-ahead to move. Secondly, they also don’t understand that when you allow too great a flow of traffic in one direction you ‘clog the artery’ and actually CREATE a traffic jam rather than alleviate it.

This ineptitude of some aside, what is really funny is what you sometimes see following an obvious contravention of a policeman’s directions …

Policemen on the traffic beat carry wooden or rubber batons. When I first got here I wondered how come the wooden ones were so worn out at the end. The human head is generally soft enough not to inflict damage upon a baton, so I was left wondering. Some of the rubber batons too, I noticed, are actually ‘frayed’ at the ends. It took a little downtown observation, on Moi Avenue particularly, to see the reasons behind the degenerated condition of the Nairobi policeman’s baton.

Imagine the scene: A matatu driver doesn’t see the figure of a policeman behind the bulk of a bus in front of him. He drives a little too far over the intersection and blocks the path of vehicles now coming from his right side. The policeman, nerves shot from directing the completely reckless procession of public service vehicles (PSV’s) and private vehicles alike, blows his top.

The policeman strides with obvious malicious intent towards the driver of the matatu. He raises his baton. He serves two or three firm blows – not to the driver - but to the side of the matatu! The driver sees it coming and lunges to his left in mock avoidance of the blows - blows that will obviously not strike him.

This little pantomime done, everything returns to normal: The policeman has vented his (usually justifiable) frustration and returns to his post somewhere amidst the congested throng. And the driver has accepted his punishment with enough feigned fear to appease the policeman. Peace has been restored at the cost of a dent and a sliver of wood.

Thus, Nairobi policemens' batons become as frayed as the nerves of the policemen who wield them!

A brush with death

This little piece of levity aside, some mention has to be made of more serious traffic contraventions on the part of matatu drivers. Heading out of town on Thika Road the other evening, around 8pm, traffic was as thick as usual for that time – maybe a little more so. In the first half hour of our journey we traveled roughly 200 meters - from the taxi rank to the first traffic roundabout heading out of town – amidst the compressed convergence of competing cars. Anyone can imagine what this does to the psychological state of a driver, particularly seeing as he is now driving in a haze of exhaust fumes that looks like The Moors in a Hammer Films horror flick.

Coming to the first part of Thika Road itself, the driver sees a steady stream of tail lights dotted from here to eternity. Patience blown completely, and with a will to get home before midnight, the matatu driver decides that everyone’s life is worth as little as his makanga values his own life (he who willingly risks his life and limb a great many times a day.) So what does the driver do?

Instead of going AROUND the roundabout and joining the traffic at the far end, he chooses instead to make a sharp right turn (what we sometimes call a hairpin turn), directly into the face of the oncoming traffic circling the roundabout. With reggae blasting through the sound system, the one-drop rhythm is now punctuated with the sound of car hooters and screeching tyres, plus the gasps and exclamations of the passengers.

I now go into replay mode: my childhood experience of driving ‘Dodge-em’ cars on the Durban beachfront! Who will yield first?

The matatu driver is doing the macho thing and calling everyone’s bluff, driving sans deviation in the left lane (the lane that is actually the RIGHT lane for vehicles coming towards us!) He’s going like the blazes and clearly intends to intrude into the gap he sees forming between a bus and another matatu, roughly a kilometer up the road …

I can make light of it now but it wasn’t a comfortable experience. Cars swerving right and left, hooters sounding, passengers praying. And the matatu making a straight line – the shortest possible distance – between the gap and the impending demise of us all!

A kilometer up the road, he hardly touches his brakes before mounting the paving stones of the island that separates the two left hand lanes from the right. The island itself is not actually an island but is more an unremitting collection of dongas, each one big enough to fit a prostate cow. He proceeds to bounce us all mercilessly across the divide. I smack my head on the metal ridge above me.

Apart from my cry of pain, there was an audible exhalation of relief from us all as the bus calmly gives way to the intruder from outside. Our driver carries on as if nothing has happened.

But he puts a gospel CD on the player.

The downtown shopaholic

Shopping on the streets of downtown Nairobi never ceases to amaze me. Not only are there some great little shops tucked away in the strangest of places but the strangest of things are sold in tucked away places.

Firstly, you can buy the most amazing selection of Chinese DVD’s for Ksh150 a time (R18). Whether you want the complete works of Arnie the Terminator, or every Charlie Chaplin movie ever made, you will find it on Tom Mboya Street. Especially interesting are the collections that no-one else wants. The complete collection of Bond movies features every movie, from “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” to “Quantum of Solace”. Every one! What I hope to find again is the complete collection of Viet Nam movies that includes “Apocalypse Now”, “Full Metal Jacket”, and even “Forrest Gump”!

On the downtown streets, the most common shop is a little kiosk, not much bigger than a broom cupboard that sells anything from cellphones to ‘bling’ watches. Increasingly, the cellphones are Chinese knock-offs of Nokias and Blackberry’s and, by all accounts, they work fine. They just break down easily! The best bling watch I saw had a dollar sign so big on the face that you couldn’t see the hands! And every fourth kiosk is an M-Pesa agent, as I have noted before.

Slightly more uptown there are the ‘tourist’ shops that sell Maasai blankets, kikois, kangas and kitengis, and the perfunctory array of wooden wildlife sculptures. But if you want to see the most amazing array of African fabrics you have to go to the Mombasa Rest House (a name from former times) and climb the thirty steps to the first floor. At the top of the stairs you will find two rooms, 3m X 3m, where every inch of the walls and the floor too, is covered by the most colourful array of fabrics you will ever see. On the few tables set in front of the fabrics you will find contemporary ‘inyangas’ (herbalists) who will mix up a concoction of cosmetics for a woman’s every need. The prices of everything are half of what you’ll spend uptown.

The wares of pavement hawkers have been mentioned here before but what I neglected to say last time is that the sidewalk newspaper sellers have the best books and magazines you will find in Nairobi. Of course, the novels of Danielle Steele and Jackie Collins are bought quickly by the schoolgirls. But those of D.H Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, and Ernie the Hemingway, among many others, seem to lie there forever. Many of these ‘hawkers’ have licenses to sell newspapers of the sidewalk. But they don’t really do that any more. They sell books aplenty. Many of them obtain their stocks from the ‘car boot sale’ that is held at the Village Market every month (bought from departing U.N. employees). And their magazines include back-issues of the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Mojo and ID (all available for Ksh50-Ksh100 – R7-R12)!

Last, but not least among the shops, are the ‘local’ restaurants you find downtown. As opposed to the Ksh100 you’ll pay for a plate of chips uptown, you’ll get one here for Ksh35. Coffee costs Ksh25 as opposed to Ksh100 plus. But be careful how you order. Coffee is most often consumed black in Kenya (white coffee might cost extra). Tea – or ‘chai’ as it is known here - is often so light in colour you’ll think they forgot the teabag. And, if you’re new to East Africa, avoid the meat dishes! You DON’T want to get what we call ‘stomach’ in Nairobi…

Tragedy in the making?

For the last part of this blog I am taking a suitably grave tone. It’s a little note of alarm:

The entire expanse of land that constitutes the northern reaches of Kenya (perhaps a third of the country’s total land mass) is experiencing an unprecedented drought. Cattle and zebra, in particular, are dying rapidly while the vultures and hyenas are getting fat!

There is already a major food shortage in Kenya and it is estimated that up to 10 million Kenyans in the north face starvation if things don’t get better soon. The food shortage is also not being helped by the hundreds of thousands Somali refugees that are streaming steadily across the border. Cattle are being allowed to die because humans come first. But still, neither cattle nor humans are doing too well.

It has happened before that there has been drought, of course. But this time there seems to be gravity to the situation that is scary. Even camels, the favoured form of transport in the region (after old Series III Land Rovers), are battling under the extreme dry conditions.

As seems to be something of an African malaise, survival after the last drought did not bring any planning with it, and whatever survival plan the government might be putting in place now, I fear it’s going to be too little, too late.

I suspect that Kenya is going to face starvation on an unparalleled level if the coming season of ‘short rains’ don’t bring more than what their name portends …. But I really hope I’m wrong.


With that sober thought it is, as always, peace and love to you all.

Amani na mapenzi.

B-)