Uncharitable Takes
On the hills I'm willing to die on
This was supposed to be a listicle, inspired by this tweet:
I agreed with all my heart with what this man was saying, so it was kind of jarring to watch him get cooked in the replies for what seemed to me to be simply having boundaries. That’s where the idea for this piece came from: I’d state the things that tick me off so they’re all out in the open — in solidarity, maybe, with this dude who dared to clearly set out what he wouldn’t put up with from other people. So, instead of getting right to the list… why am I here giving you stories instead?
Well… yesterday I had an interesting experience, one that recurs in my life every three months or so: I sat in the front of a matatu, next to the driver. The hour before that, I had hitched a ride in a friend’s car and, as is customary for all drivers in Nairobi, it was constant, consistent rage-baiting by matatu drivers. One almost broke his car’s side mirror in some confusing attempt to overtake us and gain like five meters before having to come to a standstill in traffic. This happened almost every time I hitched a ride with my friend; it wasn’t new, and it certainly isn’t news to anyone who drives in Nairobi. But getting into the front seat of that matatu — right after he dropped me off so I could head home, immediately after weaving around matatus — left a little lingering ripple in my psyche that stuck with me through the ride, and profoundly affected my experience of it.
The thing about matatus: you WILL need them (unless, of course, you’re moneyed, or a Strathmore baddie with big funds) [extra parentheses because this is an inside joke with so many layers only my peeps will understand!]. They’ll pull diabolical moves to get you to your interview on time when you left the house late, fretting over which style to tie your tie; they’ll get you to Rongai at 1 a.m. when your bar exam results have just been announced and you really, really don’t want to be alone; they’ll even get you to Thika if you decide to pull a reverse Brandy Maina and answer a summons to lay pipe all the way from Qwetu CUEA. Ah, matatus — you WILL love them, you WILL hate them, but it takes a lot of serendipity to understand them. You need to sit in the front with a matatu driver at least once to truly experience sonder; they’re the most polarising professionals in Kenya.
Just a little while after I sat down, the donda was hammering at the side of the matatu to stop — except… we were on the highway? Right before a bypass? I assume some mama had tarried in getting to the door when we passed the actual stage, and was stressing the donda to stop, who was in turn stressing the driver, whose eyes were bloodshot… he’d been driving on Ngong Road back and forth since 5 a.m.; it was 6:45 p.m. Then some guy opens the front door at the next stop — he’s on his phone, he doesn’t close the door, he keeps yapping into it, and I have to nudge him to close it. Last stop, some other guy is disputing 20 shillings of the fare with the donda… it’s 7 p.m.
I alight and — aside from my usual relief at being out of the noisy moving metallic box — I’m thinking: “Damn, what a life he must live,” watching the driver rev up the mat to drive away. I get him, if only a minuscule bit. All of the uncharitable opinions I hold about matatus — that they’re driven by decrepit maniacs; noisy, greedy dondas…
This weird, vaguely sonder-esque experience didn’t give me reason to rethink any of them, but it did help me understand that all my most uncharitable opinions of matatus and their drivers are based on traits that are load-bearing to them. And I felt that was worth stating before I list mine. So, without further ado, behold the list of my most uncharitable takes:
1. Deliberate lateness is clearly subcommunicated disrespect/disinterest. The one that began it all; I will die and be buried on this hill. People like to claim TikTok-era neurodivergence as an excuse, but I’ve seen my most neurospicy friends unable to even sleep because they were excited for something we were doing. I don’t even give more than two tries for this one anymore. I use the power vested in me by my degree to read (the room) and write (people off).
2. If I have to beg, I’d much rather die instead. You lose more when you beg than when you do nothing; at the very least you lose respect — your own for yourself, and certainly that of whoever you’re begging. People not meeting your expectations is not a them problem, it’s a YOU problem. Adjust your expectations accordingly; DEMAND nothing from people. No one likes a beggar anyway — not even the beggar themselves.
3. Morality has aesthetic criteria. This one isn’t even original; I think Nietzsche said it. You only need to look at how we react to cockroaches versus butterflies: even when the roach isn’t bothering anyone, being sighted renders it an existential threat.
4. Taking advice from someone who doesn’t have what you want is manifestly idiotic. Often enough, someone trying to get you to take a life path they themselves didn’t take — and who doesn’t have the life you want — isn’t giving advice; they’re trying to get a second go at life (and at their failures) through you. If you stop listening to people and just observe them instead, you can learn much more.
5. I’ll write off the people I love faster than the people I don’t. What we want the most is what we’re most afraid of, and the people we love the most are also the ones with the greatest ability to hurt us. And I’m sure you’ve noticed I’m big on respect (if not, read upstairs, then return). Proximity raises the stakes, and I’d rather amputate than bleed out slowly. I call it having standards. I don’t think that’s the full picture of it, but for now it has yet to fail me as a functional rule of thumb.
There’s a lot more of these, really, but I haven’t the energy or the willingness to reproduce them here. We all have a list like this, even if it isn’t as clearly articulated. And much like anyone else, I want it understood that my list is load-bearing: I wouldn’t have the gripes I do without the experiences I’ve had — same as Mr Matatu Driver. But that ride got me realising there’s some hypocrisy in asking for an automatic understanding, an assumption of good faith, for me and my gripes, when I can’t even offer it to the people who drive the things that take me everywhere I need to go, every day. Ah the wonder that is sonder.
Sonder (noun): the realization and understanding that all other people have lives as complex as one’s own.
Sonder is a felt sense, and an elusive one at that — because every person’s perspective is centered on what they experience. I sat in that front seat and built a whole interior life for a man I’ll never see again. And maybe that was only possible because I’ll never see him again. I wanted nothing from him in that moment, so I could see him clearly.
P.S.
What does Claude have to say about all this?
“Genuinely, though — this is no longer a listicle. It became an essay the moment that driver made you catch yourself.”
Well, shit. I tried.
Until next time, guys.
ciao~
let me indulge