Nothing captures the experience of East Africa quite like
the Matatu. When I first heard Bev refer to it, I thought
she was just showing off her Swahili, weird pronunciation
and all. When I first rode in one I though I had gone to
hell. It was all part of that great smack in the face known
as 'welcome to the third world...you're not in Kansas anymore.'
Let me see if I can describe it for you.
Take a passenger van in the style of a VW bus and built only
slightly more recently. Beat it to death so that it's held
together with chewing gum and duct tape. Smush as many people
into it as you can. Re-wire everything. Give it a driver
who ought to be a bike messenger in NYC. Put it on a two way
road with three lanes and no lines and add a cloud of dust so
that no one can tell whether there's any oncoming traffic or not
but tries to pass anyway and you have the true Matatu experience.
Oh, and this was after the government crackdown!!
I did come to love it after a while and since only a small
percentage of people own cars, it's the transportation method of
choice for most Kenyans.
Not that I was avoiding the whole thing but I did give some time
before taking part. Anything with Full Gospel in front of it I
tend to approach with some caution. It turned out to be kind of
fun.
As a member of Willie Bernstein I learned to embrace musical
disasters. When the singers were warming up the crowd (OK about
50 of us) things went pretty well. When the preacher felt moved
to sing a song in one key and the keyboardist felt moved to play
in another...well, Charles Ives would have been proud.
One of my favorite co-workers is a deacon there. He was also part
of the warm-up section of the service. He managed to keep things
going when the heavy hitters were out back talking to the Lord or
more likely each other on strategy.
Now, to say it was disorganized wouldn't be fair. It's more like
an organized middle and people doing a lot of whatever before and
after. Everything from praying loudly to kids running around,
people wandering in and out at will. Not terribly threatening
especially since most of it was in Swahili. Apparently people
start showing up at 6:00 in the morning for a 10:30 service whose
starting time is approximate at best. We stayed for about three
and a half hours and felt like we were getting of easy. And if
nothing else it was a nicer way to let local kids see a white
person and play with our hair without it getting out of hand.