There is a matatu strike in Kenya. This is huge news.
Matatus are white vans, with a yellow stripe down the side, which are used as public transit throughout the country. A matatu strike would, I’m guessing, have an enormous impact.
Apparently, the matatu drivers are protesting a police safety crackdown. That gives me an opening to retell one of my matatu stories; one day in 2006, when we were working at a church in Keumbu but staying at a hotel in Kisii, our scheduled rental van failed to arrive and Pastor Abel had to flag us down a couple of matatus. I was sitting in the front passenger seat (which is on the left, since Kenya drives on the left side of the road, in British fashion). When we arrived at the hotel, Bob Willems came up to me and said something like, “Let me show you what kind of tire you’ve been riding on.” Sure enough, the tire directly under my seat was as bald as Yul Brynner.
I smiled at Bob.
“God is my co-pilot,” I said.
While I’m repeating myself, I’ll retell another favorite matatu story. The year before, in 2005, we had finished work in Ndonyo. Our cross-country transportation had dropped us off at Nakumatt, the Kenyan equivalent of Walmart, but from there we had to find a way back to our nearby hotel. Our two oldest team members, one of whom suffered from fibromyalgia, and our two mission-trip rookies had all been stressed by the cross-country trip, and so Pastor Paul Mbithi (now a bishop) took them in his car in order to get them back to the hotel as quickly as possible. Paul left “Mama Church” — his wife Grace — to find transportation for the rest of us. We figured that process would take a while, but Grace strode out to the curb, extended her hand, and immediately, as if by magic, the only empty matatu I’ve ever seen pulled up. What Mama Church wants, Mama Church gets. We pulled away in a different direction and ended up back at the hotel two or three minutes before Paul. We stood out front and made a big show of looking at our watches as he pulled up.