I only need to walk a short distance to get to work here, but I need to take a matatu to cover the 10 km between Kitengela and the cross roads leading to Enkasity school. What is a matatu? A matatu is the local minibus (in Tanzania they were called "daladala"), which basically is a van, in which they have stuffed twelve seats. They are generally in very bad condition, and often overloaded with too many passangers. If you want to get in one, you just have to wave your hand. the matatu will then pull over and pick you up. There is one guy in the passangers' side, who collects the money and informs the driver when someone wants to get out by banging the roof of the van.
Matatus don't have a timetable, which they follow. Instead, they leave whenever they are full. An average waiting time in the matatu before it leaves from the station is about 30 minutes. Usually the drivers don't hurry starting the van; they stand outside talking to other people for as long as they feel like doing so.
Because of the incredibly unreliable matatus we have to leave at about 7 am to make sure we'll get to the school by 8.20. Sometimes we arrive late anyway, regardless of all the effort we made to be in time. Luckily the teachers know what it is like with the matatus. They totally understand us when we come late and say "We are sorry we are late, we had matatu problems".
Here's the most unbelievable matatu-morning story.
I had (intentionally - and luckily) slept longer than usually because my first lesson was only at 9.50. At 8 o'clock I walked to the matatu station and stepped into a matatu to wait for it to start. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the two other volunteers stepping into the same matatu as they had left home one hour before me. This is what had happened:
At first they had sat in the previous matatu for 45 minutes waiting for it to leave. Finally it had started, but had driven firts to a petrol station to put some air into its tires and to fill up the tank. Then the matatu headed for its normal route. Shortly the door of the matatu had fallen off, and of course they had to stop to repair it. After repairing it they continued driving, but then noticed a spot check on the way. They did a u-turn and drove back to the station - assumingly there was something wrong with the matatu and they didn't want to pay the bribe for the police. This was when my co-volunteers and the other passangers were told to take the matatu which I was in instead.
After a while the matatu in which I got into in the first place left the station. On the way we stopped to let some passangers out. The door of the matatu didn't have a handle inside so the driver had to get up to let the people out. Apparently, the matatu was missing a hand break as well, because we were sliding backwards while the driver was out. Then, after a couple of meters driving, the police stopped us. He was complaining about the lights on the front. The driver dug the missing part from under his bench and showed it to the police, which was enough for the police to let us continue. Finally I and the volunteer who works at the same school, got off the matatu. The other volunteer told us later that when he got to his stop, the door of that matatu had fallen off too!
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