1) Police at the roundabouts – You are in a hurry, running late for a meeting. Get to Nyayo roundabout and the boys in blue decide you’ll spend a whole 30 minutes waiting for ‘the road to clear’. In real sense, they allow cars from the once wannabe rich Lang’ata area to trickle into town.
2) Preachers in buses – it is an evening, you are headed home after a long day, and all you need is some peace. Or, its early in the morning, you have an exam and since you were too busy drinking and partying over the weekend, you were really counting on this few minutes as your bus snakes through the usual Nairobi traffic. Boom! Enter the preacher, who shouts on top of their hoarse voice in the name of giving the word, you cannot even concentrate on a single thing.
3) Nosy ‘neigbours’ – You are on your phone catching up with friends and looking at shared photos on different whatsapp groups, not knowing the person seated next to you is busy looking at all that you are doing, in fact, they will laugh first, and loudest to any funny photo they see on your phone!
4) The loud mouths – There are people who either want to show off or are the type that is forever seeking attention. “I sent him 450,000 yesterday, I’ll send the remaining 50,000 tomorrow in the morning”. Seriously! why would someone talk about their businesses in such public places?
5) The sleepy heads – if you are lucky not to seat next to a nosy individual, it will be highly unlikely you will escape these ones. As if they are starved of sleep, these ones will literally ‘sleep on you’. You will wake them up like a thousand and one times because their heads are resting on your shoulders, but they will keep repeating it. The worst is when they start drooling and the sight is unpleasant to say the least.
6) The choosy ones – Mostly applies to men. They will always want to seat next to beautiful women. Others will go to the extent of saying 'there is someone here', when clearly there is no one, only for them to allow the next lass to show the slightest interest that they want to occupy the seat. Others will even push and almost occupy the whole seat just to communicate that 'you are not wanted'.
7) Team Mafisi Sacco Members – These ones will hit on any lady seating next to them. They will try strike a conversation whichever way, by all means. It gets worse if you mistakenly encourage them by even the faintest of smiles.
8) Cheeky touts – Matatu touts are not the most trusted people, mostly because they hike fares as they please. You will give them a thousand note and of course expect your change. It will not come, and you will ask for your change from Kawangware to town, the response you’ll get ‘ngojea madam haijatosha bado’. You wonder how, yet they have been working the whole day.
9) Insanely loud music - At times you need some soothing music to be seeping through the speakers, it is entertaining, and tend to give you a certain mood as you travel. There are, however, insanely loud music. By the time you get to your destination, all you want to do is take a few minutes to adjust to the immediate surroundings, you feel like you have been thrown out of another planet.
10) Unreliable Matatus - You are getting late for an appointment, you board one matatu from Umoja knowing you are going to town. on reaching Nyayo Stadium, seeing the 9am snarl up, they decide we are not going to town, 'mwisho wa gari', just like that and they leave you the burden of hustling for other means to get to town. Unreliable.
[A matatu operating in Nairobi. The roads are littered with a thousand and one annoying things that the passengers go through every day.]