Matatu A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi

• Main Author: Mutongi, Kenda (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Chicago University of Chicago Press 2017
• Subjects: Humanities; African history; Anthropology; Buses, trams & commercial vehicles: general interest; Urban communities; east african history; mass transit; kenya; africa; public transportation; ethnic studies; nairobi; matatu; matatus; colorful minibus; ramshackle; vehicles; aftermarket detailing; taxis; kanye west; barack obama; interdisciplinary research; 1960s; 20th century; socioeconomic; political conditions; diversity; idiosyncratic designs; kenyan life; rapid urbanization; organized crime; entrepreneurship; social insecurity; transition to democracy; society; popular culture
• Online Access: OAPEN Library: download the publication; OAPEN Library: description of the publication

Drive the streets of Nairobi, and you are sure to see many matatus-colorful minibuses that transport huge numbers of people around the city. Once ramshackle affairs held together with duct tape and wire, matatus today are name-brand vehicles maxed out with aftermarket detailing. They can be stately black or extravagantly colored, sporting names, slogans, or entire tableaus, with airbrushed portraits of everyone from Kanye West to Barack Obama. In this richly interdisciplinary book, Kenda Mutongi explores the history of the matatu from the 1960s to the present. As Mutongi shows, matatus offer a window onto the socioeconomic and political conditions of late-twentieth-century Africa. In their diversity of idiosyncratic designs, they reflect multiple and divergent aspects of Kenyan life-including, for example, rapid urbanization, organized crime, entrepreneurship, social insecurity, the transition to democracy, and popular culture-at once embodying Kenya's staggering social problems as well as the bright promises of its future. Offering a shining model of interdisciplinary analysis, Mutongi mixes historical, ethnographic, literary, linguistic, and economic approaches to tell the story of the matatu and explore the entrepreneurial aesthetics of the postcolonial world.