These are the three cute words that Kenyans use to designate their three, not so sophisticated, main ways of transport. One soon finds out that having a car in Kenya is very rare and people travel mainly paying for this service -which is (relatively) cheap.
A matatu is a minibus, generally with loud music and potentially a bright neon for night decoration! Contains a few jammed seats and is as robust as one couldn't ever imagine. These vehicles travel the roads happily, shake like crazy when tackling with the impressive bumps and do not tilt when jumping the big steps of the broken -heart breaking- Kenyan roads.
They can also hold any sort of luggage in the non-prepared roof if only you own a couple of ropes. Where at the UK one gets nuts about health and safety, these people go for simple and practical engineering solutions... that do work. Matatus may be for public or private transport, but they are always up for hire for very little money (possibly starting with 500KSH) if you just do a bit of negotiation.
A tuk tuk is a tiny vehicle with three wheels and a cover to protect those who hire it -normally it should be three, but where three fit, one may as well fit 7! I cannot comment on the music here, but I would expect the Kenyans not to let us down with music. They seem to love their music in their vehicles! A tuk tuk can be hired for as little as 100KSH.
The bora bora is the cutest of all. A bike with a cushion in the back for transporting people. Seriously, the space may not be underestimated, I have seen entire families in a bora bora! Given that they allow to make some business, bikes here are rather expensive. I was told a brand new bike may cost approx. 10000KSH, which for Kenyan salaries is a lot! Jumping on one of those to get you to the side of the town isn't as expensive though, and one can simply pay 20KSH for a campy ride!
We arrived to Kisumu on Sunday evening after about 7h of trip in bumpy roads. The trip was long and we all had to take naps to feel it shorter. It was such a rich experience for our eyes! The views of the Kenyan fields and population left in me a sweet and sour feeling. Kenya is like a big field of corn, beautiful skylines of bright green and yellow leaves, decorated sometimes with a topping pink little brush of flowers. It is also earthy red and dark brown, and everything is coloured that way; the potatoes that come from the field, the skin of the people who start and end their lives stepping on the same hot ground. The colours are something that I will always remember. I will also remember the strong earth smell when it rains. These are some of the things with a sweet background.
The sour ones come in general from the poor life quality and desperation that you can read in people's faces -when you dear looking straight at them. As we drove for hours and hours, I found that the space in Kenya isn't even properly allocated/functionally split or anything similar. At the same place you may find a cow resting, a person sitting, a stall selling tomatoes/pottery/plants, a machine fixing something… Selling in market stalls is too expensive for most of the people, therefore street selling is very common and every now and then there is a market set on the side of the road. The goods are generally things that people pick up for very cheap from the fields: corn, tomatoes, onions, passion fruits, oranges, potatoes, cabbages… The arrangement of those I found very cute: whenever they pile 2 or 3 in a row of ones to top it up, this means the bucket/pile has a set price and is sold as a pack. For many of the people sitting at their stalls, shelling peas or chopping cabbage, I would not be surprised that just sell nothing during the whole day.
Other than those at the stalls, there is many people who run desperately behind the vehicles that go slow enough to sell their goods for almost nothing -their desperation is real sad. Women carry heavy buckets on their heads and many groups of kids simply walk to what seems to be nowhere or lie on the side of the road letting the sun and dust bathe their faces. It seems that life has a different pace here, as if there was no need to rush. Only cars go fast here.
I have talked about the matatu, tuk tuk and bora bora. So what about the hand gel? One of the first things in Kisumu was to actually start knowing the city that would welcome us for two weeks. Even though it is the third biggest city in Kenya, one could say that only a high street and a big market defines its limits. Markets are always great experiences for me. How can you know a culture if you don't see what and where they buy their things, what they eat…? They are also a very good social experience. In the markets here vintage shoes are cheap, and mostly what people buy -as they will not afford brand new ones. There are also many (mainly) men at the street repairing and cleaning shoes! The food here is just local or imported from somewhere in Kenya; which is great and ensures that products are actually picked when they are mature and are potentially of better quality, but also helping strengthening -up to a certain level- the local economy.
When it comes to fish, it also travels very little (mainly from lake Victoria) and you may get it fresh -fished on the day- or deep fried. Even though they look fleshy and happy, the quantity of flies that can be around do not generally make them too trustworthy… I had the opportunity to take a picture of a very smiley fish monger, she was very friendly (as most of the people here) and loved that I included her in the picture, and not just the fish!
People were most intrigued about our group -a fresh young combination of oriental faces, white europeans and darker Indian people- and kept asking lots of questions to our Kenyan minder! At this point, one of the fish mongers also wanted our hand gel, and how could I say no? Of course I donated it to her, with some guidelines to use it after her work with fish. Not that it will work on its own, but she was still so happy, and we couldn't help it to be happy too thinking a little gesture can sometimes make big things.
I want to finish again with a group picture that we took at the market on request of one of the Kenyans who also appear here.
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