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Thursday, July 13, 2006

matatu names

along Gitanga road, 11am - 12 noon.

Presha
Paparazzi
Shinning
Swag
Shock
Kansas City
Spikes
A couple in Arabic that I can't read (new-to-me phenomenon)

Matatus, aka death-traps, aka Mobile Discos, are the minibuses that make up Nairobi's informal public transit system. Overcrowded at rush hour, with people hanging out the back, lethally fast and immune to all road rules, they've been blamed over and over for the city's horrific rate of road fatalities. Everyone who grew up in Nairobi has at least one friend / relative who was killed in a car crash involving a matatu. But when they go on strike, the city comes to a standstill. Matatus rule the road. The name, Ma-tatu, comes from the original fixed fare of 3 Kenyan shillings. "Tatu" is "three" is Kiswahili.

posted by shailja at 3:03 AM

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Your dispatches are making me very nostalgic.

Here's a fun article discussing the evolution of matutu culture: http://www.eastandard.net/archives/cl/mags/pulse/articles.php?articleid=25739&date=22/07/2005

Since this article came out last year, there appears to have been a little devolution back to the wild ways as Michuki has shifted his attention to the "Armenians."

Rajesh in Cali

7/13/2006 11:27 AM  

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