Polite Notice: Behold the East African textile safari

I tell everyone that if I don't make it as a journalist, my backup is to become a seamstress. I love to sew and I love to look at fabrics and imagine what to make with them. I was in fabric heaven in Kenya and Tanzania because kangas - one of my favourite types of cotton cloth - are from there. One word: whimsical.

Kangas are rectangular pieces of fabric traditionally worn by women and girls, and sometimes men inside the house. Usually people wrap themselves in a kanga, but designers also have fun transforming them into dresses, tops, skirts, pants and even handbags. Half the fun is figuring out how to use the cloth to its best effect.

Kangas are about 150 years old and originated in East Africa.  They always include three sections: the middle design, the border, and the printed saying. These days, Kenyan kangas almost always have a common Swahili saying, but older kangas also have sayings printed in Arabic, since Arabic was also used on the East African coast. In other countries you can also find kangas with sayings in Lingala.

The word could have more than one origin. Wikipedia tells me it comes from the Swahili verb "ku-kanga" or "to wrap" (people typically wrap themselves in kanga). But they could also be named after the wild bird "kanga" because the first cloth design was black and white with spots, resembling these animals (this is according to the special exhibit on kangas in Stone Town's House of Wonders museum, which is perhaps a more credible source).

Kangas are typically sold in sets of two rectangles, but it is possible to buy just one cut rectangle to use, for example, as a beach wrap. I stocked up on a few patterns. My colleague helped me translate a few, and I figured out the rest with the help of Google translate. I am told that one appears to be a condolence kanga (something you might offer to a friend who flunked an exam), another says something like "I eat in the dark because I fear my neighbours" and my favourite one - which I will turn into a dress one day - goes something like "I am better without you." Maybe it's a celebratory break-up kanga?

Other fantastic fabrics in the East African textile safari include kitenge (see left). The fabric is printed in traditional batik fashion using wax and dye. Apparently, some of the patterns have special meanings, although I don't know what these two on the left mean. This is also the kind of cloth you see printed with political slogans and faces of politicians.

In Kenya it's common to see Maasai men dressed in shukas (left). These brightly coloured wraps are heavier than kanga and use plaid and striped patterns. I noticed the palette is often bright red, orange, purple, with occasional splashes of dark blue or even bright green. All the shukas I encountered were made from acrylic wool, but I imagine traditionally they were woven from real wool. Not only are cattle herders clearly visible among their herds, but wearing a shuka protects from sun and dust.

My last discovery was the mtandio. A textile trader in the market in Stone Town explained to me that it's related to the kanga, but there is no saying printed on it and the cotton is lighter in weight. Mtandios can have a border, like a kanga, but not always, he said. The one I chose (see left) has no saying or border. Just a striped pattern. Muslim women wear mtandios to veil themselves. I will use mine as a scarf.

Polite Notice: Matatus are getting a make-over

As I have no car, I rely a lot on public transportation in whatever city I live. This includes Nairobi. The catch is that public transit in Nairobi is not exactly as user-friendly as, say, Toronto, Montreal, Geneva or Madrid. It took me some practice and a lot of courage to work up the nerve to take Nairobi's city buses, called matatus.

These are typically (but not always) 14-seater mini-vans run by cooperatives. They're cheap, at times unsafe, and usually very quick getting you from A to B (unless the bus is pulled over by the police for some kind of violation or stuck in a massive Nairobi-style traffic jam). They're notorious for breaking traffic rules and every now and then a matatu on a long-haul route outside Nairobi gets into a serious (read: casualties) accident. But unless you have your own car, a driver or the money to take taxis everywhere, matatus are a necessity, and really, I don't think folks in Nairobi could live without them.

So it was big news when on November 1 the municipal government announced that as of January 2011 the matatu ownership structure will change, so that single-owner matatus will no longer be able to operate. The idea, officials explained, was to phase out the mini-vans and encourage matatu owners to form special associations ("saccos") to encourage more responsibility and accountability among matatu owners and the drivers to whom they rent out their vehicles. It's supposed to become a self-regulating industry.

"Matatu owners entrust the responsibility of their vehicles to reckless drivers and this is what we want to eliminate," transport minister Amos Kimunya told The Daily Nation newspaper in early November.

The Matatu Welfare and Matatu Owners Association welcomed the announcement, saying it would "rein in" disobedient drivers.

Speaking with some taxi drivers (one of whom only lasted three days as a matatu driver and then quit because the pressure was too much), many seemed skeptical that the new system would take root. A system where there's more accountability could make it more expensive for matatu owners, and maybe that cost will be passed down to passengers. On the other hand, it could make public transit safer for passengers and discourage the use of private cars which clog up Nairobi roads.

As an aside, I feel compelled to share the names of Nairobi's matatus. Most vans have decals on them, usually some kind of name to identify it, and then usually some kind of religious saying on the back window or bumper. They're not as colourful as Dakar's buses, for example, because the rules are pretty stringent when it comes to colours and decorations, but the names are more than half the fun.

The most memorable I found are:

Cosy

Coexist (where the C is a crescent moon, the O is a Star of David and the T is a cross)

Junior Mafia

Heroes and Heroines

Godzilla

The best place to spot these matatus is at the Westlands roundabout where there are two matatu stages, but I don't dare take out my camera to snap photos for safety reasons.