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 come in
extravagant colors, sporting names, slogans, or entire tableaus,
with airbrushed portraits of everyone from Kanye West to Barack
Obama, of athletes, movie stars, or the most famous face of all:
Jesus Christ. 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 many socioeconomic
and political facets of late-twentieth-century Africa. In their
diversity of idiosyncratic designs they express multiple and
divergent aspects of Kenyan life including rapid urbanization,
organized crime, entrepreneurship, social insecurity, the
transition to democracy, chaos and congestion, popular culture, and
many others at once embodying both Kenya's staggering social
problems and 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 as a powerful expression of the
entrepreneurial aesthetics of the postcolonial world.
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