By: Brenda Holo
Worth Noting:
- Sure enough, when the matatu come around, it stopped right in front of us, there was only one empty seat with assuring of clutching to the rails of the matatu if one misses it.
- With the memory of having to stand all the way, I barely had enough time to look across at my closet rival. (The Godfather Kofia guy) before we began an epic struggle to access the matatu.
- For someone like him to put up a fight! We each had one foot inside the matatu and a tenuous grip on the door frame. I bellowed and fought my neck bulging with veins, elbowing my competitor until I secured the empty seat. To yours truly that was hell kinda of a struggle.
When it rains hell breaks loose! In Nairobi the only mode of transport if you don’t have the luxury of owning a vehicle is opting for the matatu. I had been standing at the bus stop for around 30 minutes eagerly awaiting for a matatu back home from work.
I was becoming increasingly desperate to get on the matatu that will slide by. I deftly elbowed my way through the crowd and positioned myself as close to the road as I could.
A short man with gamey thighs in one of those unnecessarily Godfather Kofia’s also emerged from the crowd and took up a position to my right.
He too had concluded that the greater proximity to the roadside offered the best chance of success.
I nodded a greeting in his direction. The ancient theory of matatu hoping during rush hour should never go unappreciated.
Sure enough, when the matatu come around, it stopped right in front of us, there was only one empty seat with assuring of clutching to the rails of the matatu if one misses it.
With the memory of having to stand all the way, I barely had enough time to look across at my closet rival. (The Godfather Kofia guy) before we began an epic struggle to access the matatu.
For someone like him to put up a fight! We each had one foot inside the matatu and a tenuous grip on the door frame. I bellowed and fought my neck bulging with veins, elbowing my competitor until I secured the empty seat. To yours truly that was hell kinda of a struggle.
I got on. Not that I am proud of it, but these were, as they say, desperate times.
BACK TO THE STORY AT HAND
Before I could start dozing off as a winner of the empty seat, due to the soothing motion, halfway to my destination, shit hit the fun!
The conductor hit the space above the door with a coin. The driver pulled over and a passenger boarded the matatu.
An enthusiastic guy jumps up his seat and decides it’s his moral duty to assist a “helpless blind “, man who has just boarded the matatu and supposedly looks lost.
As he makes his way down the aisle which is swarmed by travelers, he is loudly asking other passengers, “Where is he going?”
The visually impaired guy does not realize at first he is the recipient of the “Anaenda Wapi?” ( loosely translates to Where is he going?)
Until those other passengers closest to him say “I don’t know, why don’t you ask him?”
I wonder who told Kenyans that when speaking to a visually impaired person you have to be louder, it’s their eyes, not their ears that don’t work. Amen!
A short while after the supposedly peaceful resolution of the desperate good Samaritan to help out the “hapless blind fella”, peace was restored to the matatu., …..or so I thought.
A squabble over bus fare erupted between the conductor and a middle age lady. The passenger claimed that she always pays 50 shillings on this route and was wondering why the conductor has raised the fare to 70shillings. The conductor to his defense mumbles something in the spirit of rush hour and rain.
The woman reluctantly removed an additional 20 shillings coin from her purse and offered it to the conductor citing all manner of ways that 20bob coin would not help HIM get a better lifestyle.
“Enyewe hata hiyo 20bob haitamsaidia”, said the woman. These conductors are always lame.
At this point, everyone in the matatu had been drawn into the conversation. One guy who was deep asleep abandoned his sleep to ensure he did not miss a word. The conductor did his best to carry on as if he didn’t hear the slur, “lame” but it must’ve been difficult to ignore the chuckles and giggles from the rest of the passengers in the matatu.
STEPPING BACKWARDS WITH DISABILITY HUMOUR
Once again, disability rears its head in our daily encounters and invokes what we call a two side coin. On the other hand, disability is something REAL. it’s experienced by real people and treated seriously by people who don’t experience it. It’s like people with disability always need help and sympathy because that’s what a benevolent society does. But this right here is not respect but Ableism
And on the other hand, we have the NOT REAL kind of disability. The one we make cheap jokes to settle a personal vendetta.
Ableism is a set of beliefs or practices that devalue and discriminate against people with physical, intellectual, or Psychiatric disabilities and often rest on assumptions that people with disabilities need to be fixed and not equal to non-disabled individuals.
Language matters, Anytime you use a word like lame, retarded, dump, crazy, or insane to mean terrible you are reinforcing the connection. Language is. A powerful tool that can dehumanize anyone.
