If you regularly use public transport, you must have encountered one or two unruly matatu touts.
Though some touts are respectful and courteous, the majority of them have annoying habits which include:
1. Posing as passengers
Even when you are in no hurry at all, you never want to be kept waiting. Somehow, in a bid to teach you a lesson, nature often avails a near-empty matatu when you show up. Upon scanning the matatu, five heads are visible, all engrossed in their own thoughts. Ten minutes later, no other passenger has boarded. An hour later, the five heads begin alighting one by one. It turns out they were touts used as prop passengers.
2. Allowing you to bargain fare prices with them yet they won't be the one to collect it
You’ve made your budget on the fifty shillings you have: fare takes thirty, and you remain with twenty shillings which you’ll use to purchase sukuma wiki and tomatoes for supper. At the stage, the fare is exactly fifty, and you find it prudent to exercise your bargaining skills. The tout allows you in, but when it is time to collect the fare, someone who seems to have spent his entire life lifting weights goes around collecting the money.
3. Lying
It is common to hear touts chanting 'wawili wa haraka…wawili wa haraka (only two people needed before the matatu leaves the stage). The driver keeps revving the vehicle, moving it forward slowly then reversing again to its original position. If you are in a hurry, you pop in only to realize that the matatu still needs close to a million people, discounting the prop passengers.
4. When you are going about your business and a tout grabs your hand
It happens that you are up and about running your little errands. You pass by a matatu stage, which happens to be anywhere in the CBD. Matatus seem to decide, quite arbitrarily, where the stage should be. A tout grabs your hand and says proudly ‘gari ndo hii brathee.’
5. Changing music haphazardly
The music may not be particularly appealing but you have adjusted accordingly. The tout suddenly asks the driver to change the music or increase the volume. Pleading with the tout to turn down the volume is a waste of time because your plea will fall on deaf ears.