Matatus

Unless you have a personal vehicle in Kenya, you walk or take a matatu. We briefly considered trying to do a long-term car rental but after speaking with Mungai about Kenyan traffic laws, we decided against it. Apparently there are two main laws in the coastal provinces: in town you may go 50 kilometers/hr (about 35 mph), and outside of town you may go 80 kmh (about 50 mph). Kenyans seem to interpret this to mean that they can floor their cars outside of town and in town they should go a little slower. The real kicker was his advice that if you get in an accident, you make sure you go to the police station before the other guy. So, we walk or take a matatu.

Matatus (called dala dalas in Tanzania) are very old, usually very beat up vans. They resemble VW vans and have seats for 14 plus the driver. Notice I didn’t say it “seats 14”. Seats are really very minor in this whole calculation. When full they usually contain 15-20 people including someone who mans the door. You flag him down, tell him where you want to go, and negotiate a rate. When you arrive, you pay him the agreed upon rate or whatever you have on you. Since they usually overcharge us, we try to get it down to no more than 50% over the local rate. [In the picture above, the door man is the guy hanging out the door as the matatus drive around]

Matatus are usually loaded front to back and passengers prefer that you climb over them rather than give up the coveted front seats. Watching M navigate his way to the back of a matatu is good fun.

The matatus tear around the roads around here so when they approach you have to be careful not to wave or raise your arms or they pull over in a shower of dust and gravel. [this is why the photo above is taken from far away as well; I didn't want to be hit while capturing the matatu on film] It is a pretty convenient means of travel once you get the hang of it and it beats racing the “other guy” to the police station.

We used matatus today to do several errands including a visit to the local expat bar, into Ukunda (larger town 20 minutes walk from Diani) to get a Swahili book, and to the tailor to have some clothes made to supplement the ones we brought.

We stopped had lunch at a popular beach bar. We snapped this photo from our table. As you can see, we truly are in a beautiful place. [sorry the image is so small, you can click to make them larger but uploading the larger images takes about 5 minutes and these only take 3]