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.

Polite Notice: 10 things I learned while in Kenya (and Tanzania)

1. Help people find their way if they're lost even if it takes you out of your way. (Nearly everyone did this for me and I was extremely grateful ... especially the time I got on the wrong matatu and ended up in Eastlands and had no clue how to get back to Westlands.)

2. I do not need many clothes to get by. (I landed in Nairobi with one - count it! one! - suitcase. I was told, "You don't look like you wear the same thing every day." See?)

3. Buy less.

4. Wear sunscreen.

5. Carry only "little money" and no bank cards. (This is partly for safety reasons in a big city like Nairobi, but it also was good for curbing any thoughtless spending.)

6. Eat whole foods, but not whole mangoes.

7. Be generous.

8. Talk to people.

9. Don't be too ambitious about how much you want to get done in a day. (Pole pole!)

10. There's dancing everywhere. Just go look for it.

Polite Notice: The electric purple tree is a jacaranda

Just in time for my departure from Nairobi I have learned that the electric purple trees I so love are actually jacarandas. 
This plant is native to South America and was introduced to parts of Africa (like East Africa) and is also found in Australia. 
I noticed the other day that the jacarandas on my street had shed all their blooms. So now they're just green leafy trees.

Polite Notice: One last video interview for the road

My colleagues at Fahamu gave me some lovely going-away presents. As a farewell gift to them, I quickly cut together this one-on-one interview between George, the programme officer overseeing Fahamu's Pan African Fellowship, and Firoze, Fahamu's recently retired director.

Polite Notice: Baby elephants will make your day

The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi houses orphaned baby elephants (and rhinos - but these are elusive). 

I went to visit them on a Sunday morning. I edited this short video, taken with a point-and-shoot camera, with a program called VideoSpirit Pro (trial version). I'm not sure I fully understood the software because the audio cuts out under a few clips. This is definitely not Final Cut, but the elephants are cute anyway.

When a baby elephant (anywhere between birth and three years) is found alone in the wild, the Wildlife Trust is called in to rescue it and raise it at the orphanage before helping it to re-integrate into the wild. 

The re-integration process takes from age three to age eight. All of them, regardless of where they are found, are re-integrated into herds in Tsavo National Park. At the moment, there are 19 elephants at the Trust and two rhinos.

Some of the babies were found at the bottom of wells. They can fall in and their mothers are unable to rescue them, so they are left behind. Nearby people will hear them crying and call the wildlife authorities. Many elephants were orphaned by poachers who killed their mothers for their ivory tusks. A few were left orphaned when their mothers died from starvation in drought-affected areas of the country.

When they are old enough, they will slowly re-integrate into established herds in Tsavo. This process takes a long time because the baby elephants must develop a new "mistrust" for human beings after spending their infancy with them.

Watch and smile! These elephants are under 18 months old.

Polite Notice: Muthurwa residents are taking their case to court

Muthurwa is one of Nairobi’s oldest estates (by estate, I mean a sort of housing complex). More than 3,000 families live on what – by my totally unofficial estimate – is less than a square kilometer on the east edge of Nairobi’s downtown. 

Muthurwa was built by the Kenya Railways Corporation just after the Second World War to house its employees. When the railway was privatized a few years ago (thank you structural adjustment), residents had to start paying rent. Management of the estate was passed on to a separate entity, which has announced it plans to sell the land. Rows of houses (single-room dwellings) have been marked with large Xs for demolition.

I attended a community organizing meeting on Sunday, 24 October. (It was mostly in Swahili, but instructive nonetheless.) The residents are working with the rights NGO Kituo Cha Sheria to bring their case to court and put a stay on the demolition. (They already managed to stay the demolition once, back in July, when they were given three days – three days!! – notice to vacate their dwellings. They are living on borrowed time now.)

Under Kenya’s new constitution, the residents can plead with the court that their right to housing is being abused. As Priscilla from Kituo Cha Sheria told me, if they can’t save the houses, they at least want to fight for a dignified eviction. The residents need time to find new places to live.

Muthurwa is very conveniently located. Transport from the next affordable estate, one resident told me, would cost her 70 shillings (CAD$0.83) each day. She can’t afford that. Many of the residents either run small businesses in Muthurwa, or work in or near the downtown core.

Patrick is helping the residents organize. He works with Bunge la Mwananchi, a social movement in Kenya that was prominent in the run up to the constitutional referendum on 4 August this year. Bunge la Mwananchi mobilizes all sections of the grassroots for various causes. Here, with the help of Kituo Cha Sheria, they’re helping Muthurwa residents take their case to court.

On the Sunday I visited, the people elected 11 representatives to be their voices in court in November when they will go before the judge.

Last month, the water corporation shut off the water in Muthurwa. In July, several outdoor toilets were destroyed and a row of houses torn down. Muthurwa’s electricity was cut off around that time, too.

Polite Notice: iMovie ain't no Final Cut, but it will do the trick

I shot and edited a series of interviews for the launch of Fahamu's Pan African Fellowship Programme. This is an exciting project where ten young Kenyan grassroots activists will get training in activism, work in established NGOs and help strengthen their respective movements.

These interviews were shot on an HD handycam and edited with iMovie. Now, it's definitely less sophisticated than Final Cut (you can't split the audio tracks, for one, so all the background sound is there, and it's pretty loud) but I think it does the trick.