Nairobi's anarchy is a form of self-management in constant motion. The matatu are certainly the most striking expression of this. Where other entities have taken the cold waters and mixed them with the earth to make building mortar, the people of the matatu have taken the streets and made it their kingdom.
It has sniffed the dust, courted the potholes, embraced the asymmetrical roundabouts. It has stormed pavements, penetrated one-way streets, raped even the Cbd after conquering and subduing suburban areas.

The matatu mock the institutions and offer them the alibi of unsustainable traffic, the matatu have no laws, they are independent islands floating in an open-air gulag archipelago, signs of a disorganised but organic mafia, billboards to cling to in order to survive in the daily nomadism of the city.
They have no stops, they change their terminus and drivers every day, they pull up and down as if they had the rubber bumpers of bumper cars on their sides. They greet and call people standing on the side of the road, making no difference of caste, race, expression. If you have to move and don't have too much money, the matatu is there to woo you, like a neighbourhood bully dressed in an original and provocative manner...
...Today, it is hard to imagine Nairobi without matatu, even though they continue to symbolise hell-raising traffic, traffic violations, drug dealing and every other illegal activity besides every possible appearance of goliardia.

Pop artists, provocative starlets, preachers, criminals or characters from the past are paired with phrases from the Bible or the Koran, verses from songs or famous sayings. On Kenyatta Avenue, rapper 50 Cent overtakes Che Guevara on a curve, while Beyoncé pulls up and closes the gap on Pablo Escobar.
The matatu ride is one of the classic moments of modern African congregation in enclosed spaces: loudspeakers and subwoofers blasting black music at full blast, young men shouting appreciations in slang, young mothers breastfeeding, men in suits who can't wait to get off, and ticket conductors hanging from half-open or even removed doors who, like conductors of an imaginary orchestra of chaos, drive to every roadside space and recruit passengers.

Periodically they are banned, sent out of the centre, checked and stripped. Each time they come out unscathed, louder and brighter than before, and are filled with new colours, slogans, graffiti that make them both confusing and trendy.
The neighbourhood bully always finds room for a new tattoo on his skin marked by a dangerous life and has just the right music to invite you to the dance.