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A paper presented by David Ogot snr. an alcoholism disease awareness campaigner, to a workshop on drug abuse and HIV/AIDS for matatu drivers and touts at the Nairobi City Council STI Center on 21st. February 2003 and on 14th. March 2003 at the Marble Arch Hotel, Nairobi. The workshops (the 2nd and 3rd in series of three) were organised By the Center for Adolescent and Geriatrics Outreach Services (CAGOS)

"Oh the joys of being young" or "oh to be young again and not be responsible for the decisions we make" are statements we often hear adults making. But when it comes to your health, nobody can escape responsibility for the consequences of the decisions they make- in fact it is usually the ill-informed, rash choices of our youth, usually made due to the false bravado of peer pressure - that come back to bite us in the butt, as adults.

The matatu industry has evolved a 'culture' which is highly detrimental to our health in many ways which are not immediately noticeable while at the same time being equally detrimental to the health of the touts and the drivers

Socially this culture has forced the majority of the Kenyan public to view matatus as a necessary evil with the emphasis on 'evil'. Indeed it has gone on to spawn such adjectives as 'matatu madness', 'matatu mania' and 'matatu matata!' among other less palatable descriptions.

Yet matatus are a very important part of our every day lives that we cannot do without, as they provide a basic necessity of modern day man - mobility. But matatus are causing great havoc to our health. Some of the effects we see immediately vis the almost daily carnage on our roads and the resultant loss of life or maiming of our loved ones.

But other effects are not immediately noticeable though their causes literally slap us in the face every time we enter a matatu. The key one is noise. Matatus' travel under a thunderous, billowing, all encompassing cloud of NOISE!

Picture this I am waiting at the bus stage for a matatu to go to town. "Here it comes I tell my friend." A puzzled look crosses his face as he asks "where? How do you know? I can't see it." I point as way up the road it turns into sight. " Listen" I command in response to the 'how did you know?' look creasing his face.

"Aaah!" he smiles in understanding as the matatu comes to a loud halt in front of us. 'Boom boom ba, boom boom ba' drummed the bass as the cloud of dust settled. The noise is a recipe for an instant headache. Looking around many of the potential clients only the older ones have wrinkled up brows against the noise. The younger ones seem to be in paradise. I can feel the bass in the pit of my stomach. The wooden planks and the corrugated iron sheets of the nearby kiosks set up their own accompaniment as they begin to vibrate.

"Let's go," I urge my friend as he looks at me doubtfully his look suggesting that I would be mad to enter the eye of that particular storm. But just as he gathers up courage to take a step forward, the tout who had leapt out even before the mini-bus came to a halt suddenly bellows at the top of his voice 'beba, beba, beba, beba, bebaaaaa!' before doubling over and hammering the coachwork with the side of a clenched fist. 'Blam, blam, blam, blam!' Then as if performing for some audience only known to himself, he straightens up does a quick shuffle to the music, before bursting forth with...'beba, beba, beba, bebaaaaa, 'blam, blam, blam blam!'

My foreign friend now takes a determined step backward as a steely glint I've learnt to recognise means 'no way' enters his eyes. The tout who had mercifully turned his attention to his bundle of miraa studiously selecting a few leafy twigs before stashing the rest in the folds of his designer jacket notices immediately and steps coward with alacrity. He deftly transfers the twigs to one hand while the other clamps down on my friends forearm totally missing the dangerous glint his eyes now take, in his attempts to coax him into the vehicle. I quickly take over to avoid a nasty situation, and within seconds we are squeezed into the second last row.

The sound within is deafening but no this still does not seem to placate the driver. More wood must be added to the pyre of our health so that the flames burn higher, brighter. Nonchalantly he lights a cigarette impervious to the one or two dissenting murmurs and lets rip with the klaxon horn. 'Phhffwwwwaaaaauuughhhhh' it rents the air adding its piercing tone to the touts' resumed assault on the mini-buses' coachwork which seems to be signal to the driver to take off. And this he does, with the tout running like an Olympiad by the side before just when it looks like being left behind for certain he jumps in, slides the door shut as he takes in the passengers with a big grin which seems to ask 'why aren't you applauding?'

Meanwhile our driver has smoke spiraling past his slitted eyes from the cigarette dangling from his lips while he takes the vehicle revs to the maximum before changing the gears with a flourish, his gear hand ending up hovering in the air with each shift. I feel like I am in one of those ads you always see for, 'this car can get from 0 to 60 in four seconds.'

With no warning he suddenly swerves the vehicle hard towards the curb as suddenly my ears almost burst as another Nissan mini-bus hurtles past with a banshee like 'phiraw, phiraw, phiraw, phiraaaawwwwwwauuhhhh'! of its' klaxon cuts just in front of our vehicle and just misses getting flattened by a Kenya Bus Services monster as it races on with our nissan now in hot pursuit.

Looking around at the other passengers all I can discern is stoic acceptance of their lot. All seemed resigned to their fate a quick trip to town - or heaven. Everybody that is except the younger ones who with rapid mouth movements chew gum incessantly snapping their fingers to the beat. Two teenage girls occupying the two front seats next to the young driver who by now is holding onto the steering wheel lightly with three fingers (after all it is power steering his elbow propped through the open window while with the other hand flies lightly over the buttons on the cassette deck amplifier as he tries to coax the bass deeper, talk (shout?) animatedly with him completely oblivious of the danger.

Suddenly without any warning the matatu in front brakes hard coming to a dead stop without any warning to pick up a passenger. I am watching our drivers eyes through the rear view mirror and I tell you the fellow does not bat an eyelid as he swerves to the right to overtake, sending two women scampering form safety one of whom drops a paperbag which promptly splits opening sending fruits rolling pell mell in every direction. This scene of the poor ladies somehow strikes a humorous bone in the two teenage girls sending them into gales of laughter and several high fives. Then we are at the main Langata highway and I know now the fun is really going to start.

Everybody is now closes their windows. The music is numbing. the tout perched precariously bent over one passenger and balancing on the headrest of the front seats snaps his fingers in front of our faces symbolising 'pay up' while tapping the shoulders of the girls in front. But the driver turns and shouts something at him, and they start laughing. As all this is going on I can see that vehicles ahead have slowed down and we are catching up at an alarming speed with our driver still looking behind. Apparently my friend has noticed as well if the pressure he applies on my arm is anything to go by. Just when I feel all is lost the driver whips his head around swerves into the other lane causing the driver of a sleek Mercedes-Benz to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision. Our driver throws a hand in the air as he stops the cassette player to change the tape. The ensuing silence is deafening which he promptly takes advantage of to make some disparaging remarks about owners of Mercedes-Benz's always driving in a hurry as if they owned the roads.

As the tout takes more of his miraa (khat) the music comes crashing back on. But with a new twist. The lyrics, oh my God the lyrics. It's like porn without the pictures. The level of violence, venom, anger and hate directed at women in this song and the subsequent ones is unbeleivable The singers talk about doing all kinds of unprintable things including having sex with somebody's' mother, then sister, aunty any body as long as they are female. This is all being described graphically and how all women are bitches who just want to mess up men.

If this is the kind of music Kenyan youth are listening to no wonder they go and act it out in all kinds of ways on hapless schoolgirls. The lyrics are coming through loud and clear yet there are young people and old people, male and female all packed into this hurtling porno-theatre. All the passengers don't know where too look. But not the two girls in front who even mouth some of the lyrics loudly as they laugh a clap to keep time to the staccato beat.

The matatu touts seem to act out this music too as evidenced at the next stop when a two young girls refuse to enter refuse to enter the vehicle, he spews forth filth at them calling them all kinds of names concluding that their prostitute mothers were making enough money to buy them cars since obviously they were sleeping with wazungus (Caucasians) and that is why they were so snooty nosed as to refused to enter matatus' with smelly blacks.

Through all this the tout keeps munching busily at his khat, occasionally pinching off a small piece of Big G chewing gum and popping it into his mouth add flavour and hold the whole wad together as now in town and almost at the end of our journey, the driver lights another cigarette. A lady who tries to tell him to put it out is shouted down by the tout who slides open the door and asks her if the smoke is too overpowering for her she can alight. The hapless woman keeps quiet.

Shortly thereafter with several maneuvers through the traffic that would make a kid on dodgems envious and several hair-raising near misses the tout jumps out and shouts mwisho! (literal translation 'end') meaning that is the last stop. he dazed passengers pile out. My foreign friend has not said a word during the whole trip.

That is a typical matatu ride into town from Langata. More or less the same thing happens on other routes. If there were a pregnant woman aboard that vehicle, she would probably have miscarried, most passengers have dot off in a daze with their ears ringing, a sign of temporary deafness caused by prolonged exposure to loud noise.

But the long term consequence to the drivers and touts of these vehicles will be partial or complete deafness. And what of the babies you always see being carried in these matatus? There auditory facilities are still delicate and exposing them to this kind of auditory levels is sentencing them to deafness at an extremely early age. Before they even learn to speak or read and thus drastically changing the course of their lives. In effect this is tantamount to child abuse as the innocent baby is not in a position to say 'no I don't want to enter that vehicle.'

Yet you find that teenage and other young single mothers still want to subject not only themselves but their tiny babies to these horrendous decibel levels as they associate themselves with certain touts, drivers who they flirt with or vehicles which play 'the best' or 'latest music'. All this is part of the evolving matatu culture with some girls not attending school but choosing to ride in mats as they a nicknamed, the whole day with their boyfriend tout or driver of the moment. Some even run away from their homes to be with their 'boyfriends'.

Passengers are subjected to passive smoking as drivers and touts in many mats smoke even if the passengers protest and in spite of the fact that it is illegal. But the fact that the drivers even chew 'miraa' or even the the occasional 'one-for-the-road' mini - pack, (alcohol packed in little plastic sachets) puts not only themselves but more importantly the passenger at high risk. These factors are expressed in the high accident rate with matatus country wide.

The 'matatu culture' seeks to convey a message of hard drinking, smoking, hip, young, loaded, 'thumb-your-nose-at-covention', sexy, 'boozing-my-own-money, sheng-speaking, tough, 'dressed-to-a-T', listens-to-the-latest-music, urban cowboy. This is seen evidently in the kind of music they play all manner of stickers on the coachwork 'parental advisory required' or 'beware: explicit lyrics', 'bad boy' as well as the ones portrayed inside which promote a drug using culture. Some of these read 'don't step on the grass smoke it instead' or 'a friend with weed is a friend indeed', and 'free your mind'. These three particular ones support bhang (marijuana) use. The touts especially, make themselves look so defiant and having the time of their lives that many teenagers actually drop out of schools, some even running away from home to become touts and thus join this glamorous looking fast paced life.

Indeed even the mode of dress, especially T-shirts is used to carry these messages of 'the culture.' T-shirts showing huge rolls of 'bhang' with catchy messages are quite common. In fact the most common drugs used by touts especially are bhang, miraa, and then cigarettes. Alcohol is used more towards the evening as they start on the mini-packs closer to shutting down time. They later go to night spots with these young girls sometimes with these vehicles whereby they sit inside the vehicle listen to their own music, chew khat, smoke marijuana, drink alcohol and finally engage in sex all inside the vehicle. Result is an increase in STIs (Sexually Transmitted Infections, unwanted pregnancies, school drop-outs and of course HIV/AIDs and thus deaths.)

Then there is the stress caused to everybody especially through noise. Try and see how much noise around you is caused by matatus. Then their behaviour on the road to pedestrians, other road users and passengers is another cause of daily stress. Imagine for a moment somebody sneaking up behind you and shouting loudly scaring you. When this happens other things also happen to your body. Your heartbeat rate would increase which would also cause your blood pressure to rise. Noise also prevents one from sleeping well which leaves your body tired and thus prone to disease. Students trying to study in schools near roads are also affected as they cannot concentrate effectively.

Thus you need to get rid of the drug use which comes with the matatu culture as this does not auger well for your health or for your passengers and can only lead to more conflict in future with society. The time to clean up your act is now, for otherwise you will continue crippling or killing yourselves and your passengers through accidents whilst other health related problems like deafness, HIV/AIDs, alcoholism, respiratory and other ailments due to tobacco and bhang use will manifest themselves at a later stage as they always do. At that time you will not belong to a group, but will suffer these consequences alone. The choice is with you now.

Ladies and Gentlemen thank you for giving me your time, God bless you.

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