A matato (in Kenya, or dalla dalla in Tanzania) is the most eventful way to travel in East Africa between small and major cities. I mentioned them briefly above, but my recent experience convinced me that they are worthy of blog post to themselves.
Often small 11 seat Toyota Hiace vans, they pack in 22 people including the white guy with his big backpack, the driver and one or two guys collecting money and pushing people in and out the van at every stop. They race down the main roads, then swerve off into the dirt and rocky side (in Africa, most roads don't have a paved side, the concrete just ends, often with a good foot's worth of difference). The van comes to a sudden abrupt, bone shaking safari like halt, the door slides open, lots of shouting ensues, people spill out, others get shoved in. Much dirtier people, most probably from the slums, in groups of four or five run up to the windows selling whatever crap they've got: "yugouurts" for flavoured milk and "fresh [inaudible]" for grilled corn on the cob.
When the matato gets going, the driver decides to overtake anything and everything without any aversion to risk. Pumping into the wrong lane, I have on occasion seen a Mercedes truck carrying a twenty foot equivalent shipping container hurtling towards us; the tristar growing as the relative speed of 150km/h. When in Nakuru, we saw on the news that 5 Koreans had died in a head on collision outside Naivasha early on the morning. Scary shit to say the least. There is a certain aversion to common sense here, though I sometimes wonder if it's not just practicality at it's best.
Generally the matatos don't park in the safest areas of town either. The first one I got in Nairobi involved the guy collecting tickets getting his shirt ripped off in a barbaric mauling by 10 other guys...probably for taking someone else's customers.
I'm somewhat glad that the rest of my trip will be in an organised tour truck, but my sense of adventure will miss the matato mayhem.
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