Am I Lost?
“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Staci, you must try a matatu (in Kiswahili, “bus”) before you leave Kenya,” the JRS driver said with an earnest look in his eyes. I said, “Perhaps, one of these days.” The next day, a JRS staffer said, “We only have one driver and we can’t bring you back to Lavington.” With enthusiasm in his voice, he asked do you want to try a matatu? I said, “Um, I can call a taxi.” He made a sad face and said, sow, sow (in Kiswahili, “ok”). Then I thought back to the JRS driver’s comment and said begrudgingly, “Sure, but can I please have someone to go back with me?” He called the Rwandan peer educator (aka my North Star) I would be working with to run the sessions and asked him to accompany me back to JRS via Nairobi’s bus system.
North Star is one of nicest men, I have met in Kenya. Tall. Strong. Patient. After our session, he said, “Staci, [there is a] problem, the matutu drivers [are] striking.” I thought to myself, perhaps I should call a taxi and I wish that thought was followed through but before I could put that in action, North Star said with joy, “Staci, we will find another solution!” I so wanted to be a part of his determination and I said, sow, sow.
What was supposed to be a 45-minute car ride or a 1.5 hour bus ride, took us 3+ hours because the matatu bus drivers were on strike and they knew that I needed another adventurous story to write about.
North Star walked quickly through Kayole’s bustling business district. He told me the matatu drivers were striking because of the roads were bad and they wanted the government to do something about them. The roads were pretty bad and reminded me of Kakuma’s roads, full of pot holes. We found a matatu at the end of town.
The matatu could comfortably seat 10, maximum 14. I looked in the matatu and to me it looked full. I turned around and North Star gentle pushed me into a single seat that I shared with him. Each stop we would get out and they would shove more people in and then we would reconvene in the single seater. The matatu carried 20 people inside and three people hung from the outside. The amount of body odor was palatable and I felt like my left butt cheek was about to go to sleep because my body was teetering between ¼ of a single seater and North Star not intentionally hugging me but hugging me. It was a big clusterfuck. I was part of a sea of humanity and when I thought the sea wall could not hold anymore, they just shoved more people in. 10 minutes later, I peeled my left butt cheek off the seat and tried to compose myself, as I was about to step off the bus, the matatu started to drive off. Another gentleman yelled, Kukomesha! (in Kiswahili, Stop). He took a hold of my arm and this startled me and said, Wait. I noticed the road slowly moving under my feet and saw North Star hands out. I thought to myself, did North Star want me to jump to him meanwhile I am tethered to this random fellow in the matatu? The matatu halted to a stop before I had to make that decision. The guy gentle, well may-be not so gently pushed me out the door and they drove away.
We walked to a big bus. The bus looked like it came out of the 80s. The bus exhaust pipe coughed and wheezed as a large plume of exhaust smoke came from its engine. The bus driver made a 360 turn in the middle of the busy road. I am not sure how he turned around the bus with the height of traffic, but he did. North Star mentioned that the big bus would not enter Kayole where they were having demonstrations because the demonstrators would light the bus on fire.
Due to a massive traffic jam, we inched our way to Nairobi center. We sat for 15 minutes and I asked North Star if we should just walk. I am terrible with distance and directions so what do I know about the distance between here or there, but I am also impatient. All I know is that we were surrounded by 10 buses who were suffering from the same flu as ours and they were all coughing black smoke. North Star is patient. He said, they won’t let you get out but then one brave person stepped up and said in Kiswahili, I would like to get out. The comment broke the dam, the flood gates opened and we all left the bus. We walked in the middle of road because I am not quite clear why, but we did. We walked for 10 minutes and then I asked North Star if he was hungry. He said, no. I asked, Are you thirsty? He said yes. We stopped at a bakery and grabbed a cool drink and I bought him a couple of meat pies (I know a vegetarian spending money on meat pies is blasphemy but the poor guy was my guiding north star and he needed his strength for the next leg).
We jumped on yet another bus only to find out, it was going the opposite direction that we wanted to go. Luckily, the bus driver was munching on ugali (another story about this food product, yet to come!) and greens and told us we were on the wrong bus. We jumped on a different bus and I had multiple seat mates that are equally sweaty and had different unpleasant body odors. We arrived at JRS, 3+hours later. North Star bidded me a farewell after I gave him another bus fare to return home. I arrived to JRS full of guilt because North Star helped me but he had to go through that mess again. That night, I sat with my American buddy, ate Indian food, drank two gin and tonics, and took my 3rd warm shower in Kenya. For the place I am staying in, the pipes are broken so instead bucket shower in a hot intolerable environment, I am taking a bucket shower in a wake-me-up-fricken-cold environment. Good times.
This journey of public transportation in Nairobi has been a metaphor for my journey in the last week in Kenya. After Kakuma, it was supposed to be that I would work with my university partner in Nairobi and everything would be smooth sailing. I would have more participants than I could ever imagine and life would be grand. What really happened is that the public university remains on strike for the past 2-3 months and I only have 15 participants and 3 have chosen to partner with me. Figuratively and literally, it has been a serious of stops, starts, and major pot holes. But JRS, my partner in Kakuma has stepped in and saved me. They have provided me with an infinite amount of North Stars. I have been implementing the program in JRS’s parishes and working alongside their social workers, peer educators, and community leaders.
I am also so excited that tomorrow for I am going into Eastleigh, a mythical suburb I have read about. According to Life and Peace Institute (2016), “there are about 200,000 Somalis in Nairobi’s Eastleigh estate. These include Somali-Kenyans, refugees and Somalis from Somalia - both legal as well as illegal immigrants – almost all of whom are involved in business” (para. 4). It is also a suburb that the US government has posted frequent travel warnings as a high risk area. What could go wrong?
