Madam, Fare…

This story is part of our?Chumz Money Stories, which details the different ways people have interacted with money.

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“Babes please wake up,” that was what I was telling myself that morning, trying to convince myself to get out of bed. “You need to get to work.?You want that awesome outfit? You want to tour the Maldives? You gotta work work.” Side note, umm Mauritius has been on my vision board as a place to travel to since 2021, and we’re in 2023, it has never really quite left it.

I should probably start saving on?Chumz, maybe the app will give me enough discipline to see it through (soft laugh). That should have been enough motivation, the fact that I still want to travel to the Maldives, for me to get out of bed every single day and get to work but instead, I lay there, trying to convince myself to wake up. After a thousand please wake-ups, probably a million affirmations I finally get out of bed and head to the shower.

“I should really be given a gold medal for pulling myself out of bed, even though that is what I’m supposed to do but that is not what we’re focusing on at the moment,” I said to myself proudly, as I picked up my phone.

“It’s 6:30 am!!!! Oh hell, I’m about to be hella late for work. 10 minutes for every single matatu seat to be filled. I live along Thika Road so I have to account for a 45-minute to 1-hour Muthaiga traffic jam before I get to town. And then a thirty-minute matatu ride to my workplace. And then I arrive at the office and get summoned by HR. Not to mention the time that I will use to prepare myself. What a lovely day this is going to be!”

“But I thought I just slept for ten minutes after snoozing the alarm!” I said to myself, as I ran across my house trying to do seventy things at once. Okay probably not seventy but you get the gist.

“Black trousers, white shirt, black shoes, and a brown trenchcoat, the simplest outfit I can pull off in this rush. Today Imma wear my tiny loops, the gold, don’t know where I threw the silver ones last night. I’ll probably look for them when I get home from work.”

“Where are my white sneakers, ah here they are. It looks like I might do a bit of running or paced walking today. And here I was wondering why half of the people in the CBD walked like they were out for your shoulders.”

I’m a person who uses monologues to calm myself down in moments of anxiety. Most of the time, my monologue is probably just me speaking my thoughts out loud.

I skid down the stairs and almost ran toward the matatu stage. Luckily, I found that I was the last person boarding the 14-seater matatu and then it skid off to the highway. I kept looking at the time as it seemed to be going pretty fast now that I was definitely late.

Now this is where the juicy part is. “Madam, fare,” the conductor tapped and asked me, and I gave him my phone so that he can input the phone number or till number I was sending the fare to, as I didn’t have any cash at the time. At that point, I don’t know what exactly happened, or what I did, but the money didn’t go through and I only came to realize later.

When we got to town, I got off the matatu and hopped onto the next one. Lucky for me, again, the stage of the second matatu was right next to where I alighted. So I just queued and boarded matatu number two. As matatu number two almost got filled, a guy popped up at the door. As I say this, keep in mind that I was still anxious due to the fact that I was getting late to work.

Back to the guy. He kinda looked familiar to me, but my anxious mind didn’t quite have the capacity to remember who he was. I was wearing my spectacles at the time, had a brown trenchcoat, and had black knotless braids on. So the guy tells the conductor that he was looking for someone and called a lady a few seats in front of me.

He called her with such an almost angry voice that kinda made me look up. There was a bit of flurry and movement in the matatu at that time. Looking at her, I noticed she kinda looked like me. She was wearing spectacles, had a brown leather jacket, and had black knotless braids.

“Mbona umeiniitisha number na hujalipa fare madam?” the guy asks her, angrily.

It was at that moment that I realized who the guy was, he was the conductor of matatu number one. I froze and my adrenaline rose sky-high. I tell you, I was literally shivering. I took out my phone so that I can check if the money went through and it was at this point that I realized that it didn’t go through.

Meanwhile, the lady was trying to convince the conductor from matatu one that she wasn’t the one. I don’t remember their conversation exactly as I was pretty scared and anxious. All I could remember was hearing the conductor’s voice being pretty harsh and harassing the other lady. So I decided to stand up, tell him it was me and make sure that I pay him. You would think that my standing and telling him that it’s actually me, would calm him down but instead, it added fuel to the fire.

Kumbe umekaa hapo na pesa yangu? Ulikuwa unadhani sitakupata?”he asked harshly, and at this point the matatu went silent.

The silence combined with having to deal with this overly harsh conductor, made me shake even more and I went mute. At that moment, you could see my hands shaking and the expression of fear on my face. I remember him asking me a question, I don’t remember what it was exactly but I didn’t answer it cause remember I had gone mute.

My not answering his question prompted him to further ask more questions, none of which I heard, and the tone kept getting harsher. At some point, conductor number two told him to stop being so harsh that people make mistakes and that he should just give me the number I pay, and we get that over and done with.

Looking back, the whole scenario lasted for a short time but it looked prolonged due to the fact that I was pretty anxious. So we stepped out of matatu number two so that we could get the whole situation over and done with. Remember that my hands are still shaking. So every time I tried to pay, I messed up in some way and had to start again.

Conductor number one now had turned from scolding me to telling me how things should be done, which still wasn’t helping at all. He was like people don’t do that, next time just tell me, no need to run away with the money and such stuff.

In matatu number two, there is this guy who noticed my struggle and offered to help. He got off the matatu and asked conductor number one how much the fare was, he then proceeded to remove his wallet and give the guy the money and hushed him away.

He then turned to me and asked me if everything was good. I tell you the floodgates just opened and I started crying. Well, not literally crying, but a few tears dropped down my cheeks. He took me to a restaurant and ordered breakfast for the both of us.

At this point, it had escaped my mind that I hadn’t taken breakfast in the morning. I declined and told him that I had to get to work, and then he advised me to call my boss, he even helped me make up a story that I could use to get the day off. Funny enough it worked and I was given the day off. We sat in the restaurant for some time as we talked and I got to calm my nerves.

From that day on, I’ve never boarded the matatu that that conductor is in. I always check who the conductor is before boarding. We still see each other but kinda ignore each other. But I gotta admit, that the whole scenario really shook me.

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