Gangsta Life...A Ramble

East Africa is expensive - not only for us muzungos, but for Africans generally. Any food except ugali (maize porridge) is priced comparatively with Canada. Petrol works out to around $1.10CDN a litre.

A school teacher in Kenya earns around $15.00CDN a month...and since the advent of 'universal' education programs in both Uganda and Kenya, a teacher may have 200 or more students of different ages in a single class. Obviously these programs are more about self-congratulatory newspaper announcements and back-slapping by government officials than the quality of education provided.

We are trying to get by on around $25.00CDN total per day for food, transport and lodging. In India and Nepal we rarely spent more than $15.00 per day, but in Africa we're finding even this fatter budget...tight. To save money we are doing almost all of our own cooking. Each town has one packaged goods store for canned products. Then there will be a local market behind a big apartment block or beside the highway a few kilometers outside town. There will also be a local butcher where an entire seeping carcass of goat, cow and/or camel hangs from a hook in an unrefrigerated chamber and is periodically hacked at. (We boil or fry our meat forever.) Finally, each town has a tiny, perpetually understocked dairy where you can buy goat milk and eggs, usually in a 400 degree shack of scavenged wood and corrugated steel. Spending half a day shopping like a local is quaint and interesting at first, but you inevitably begin to wish for a massive, sterile, heartless and ridiculously well-stocked one-stop Western supermarket. (Sigh.)

There are basically three ways to travel in Africa. In descending order of expense: first, if you are a middle-aged cardiologist, you ship your own vehicle and drive overland. Second, if you are a 'people-person' or are terrified of Africans, you join a group "adventure overland tour" and are shuttled around with twenty or so others in semi-trailers converted into giant four-wheel drive buses. I imagine the experience is something like being parked in front of a new high-tech 3D television, with a nasal-British guide flipping the channels for you: "And tomorrow we wake up at seven OK people? Mango and French Toast for breaky, then we drive to the Pygmy Village....etc. etc." Finally, you are faced with riding the local matatus.

Every 'developing nation' (and I use that term very, very lightly...because to be frank I don't think that is what is happening at all) has it's own form of cheap transport. You've got your tuk-tuks, your boda-bodas, your rickshaws, your matatus. A matatu is a small Japanese passenger van designed to hold a maximum of eleven. We frequently count over twenty adults, plus assorted children (of which there are, invariably, many). Now, a matatu is obviously an extremely complex instrument, and is therefore staffed by no less than three men: the driver, the 'turn-boy' who screams at other matatus to get out of the fucking way, please, and a third hanger-on who waves randomly and pretends to count money.

When the Japanese have decided these vans are no longer road-worthy, or that they no longer represent the peak of Twenty-First Century consumerism, they are shipped to Africa and bought cheap. The most perplexing decision a matatu driver faces is whether to airbrush a giant portrait of Obama, Tupac, Celine Dion or the Transformers movie logo on his ride. After that come the speakers, where size certainly does not equal quality. These wailing demons from distortion hell are mounted directly behind the cab, facing the embattled passengers. For the young (they're all young) matatu driver, concerns such as the abovementioned come far before more proletarian decisions...such as a brake job or tire replacement. No one ever got laid because he had a nice new set of brake calipers.

I had a profoundly ironic but not altogether unpleasant moment waiting for our matatu to leave (Did I mention that? There is no fixed time for a matatu to leave; it leaves when full. So we wait...sometimes entire afternoons, until the requisite twenty-plus passengers are shoehorned in.) Anyway, I had Dr Dre, in an uncharacteristically whiney mood, vibrating my ears into mush while I attempted to kindly ignore a crowd of a dozen or so beggar children pressing into the glass an inch from my face. It seemed the kids were engaged in an intense competition to win muzungo money by seeing who could squish more square inches of sweaty skin up against the glass, thus creating a kind of squirming Picassoesque portrait of twisted nose and torqued flesh. And so:

"I started this gangster shit..."
"...Muzungo! Money! Money...!
"...and this tha mutha fuckin thanks I get?"
"...Money please! Money now! Money! Money! Money!"

The noise and abysmal vision, combined with the heat of purgatory and the almost sweet stench of chickens dying under my feet, damn near sent me into a ripping acid flashback. This would have been cool for the driver: matatu drivers are solidly fucked up, either "On the Cut" (stoned on Quat, a twiggy chewing narcotoc popular in Arab nations), drunk on chaangba (the local brew made with formaldyhyde and rubbing alchohol...I'm not making this shit up), or simply stoned. Trust me, if you were a matatu driver, you to would be reaching for a little something to take the edge off.

Beside staying consistently high, a matatu driver's sole satisfaction in life is proving to his passengers that he is God-For-A-Moment by constantly and thoroughly scaring the piss out of them. This is also true in India, but India is so crowded speeds rarely exceed 40KM/H. East Africa, however, has plenty of wide-open road (some of it even sorta paved) for the driver to really let'er buck. Passing in a fully-locked four wheel slide on a single track of pitted mud, on a blind corner, with a semi-trainer approaching, is standard operating. In two months we have seen maybe three other tourists riding matatus. Perhaps this is a bad sign?

The compensation for the insanity and inconvienience is that the price is right, and (when the speakers blow out) we get to talk to fellow passengers. East Africans are incredibly talkative, curious and friendly. They are a joy. It also helps that everyone except the hand-to-mouth farmers speak impeccable English. East Africans always open a conversation with one of the following:

1. "We hate our government. We are waiting for them to die off."
2. "Our government is corrupt. The old men have to die."
3. "Our government are teeves (thiefs). They should all die."
4. "Obama is Big Chief now."
5. "Obama is Big Boss Man now."
6. "Obama is Number One Man."

The correct response to any of these is "Yes."