Call them matatu preachers, evangelists, pastors or men of God; you won’t miss them mainly on buses ferrying passengers from Thika to Nairobi and vice versa.
They board one bus from the other as they spread the ‘good news’ of our Lord Jesus. Even in those buses with ‘No Preaching’ and ‘No Smoking’ warning stickers, you will find them carrying out their ‘business’ as usual.
While there is nothing wrong with what they do, there are some passengers who simply find them irritating especially when they start asking for offerings.
These matatu preachers vary from one individual to the other based on the kind of messages they preach. These messages, however, more often than not, boil down to money, ‘mbesha’ or ‘donge!’ We sample a few of them.
1. Preachers of ‘prosperity’
You will find these preachers mostly in the morning as people go to work. Their messages are usually tailored in a way that they inspire optimism and hope to the morning passengers for the day ahead.
When it is about time to ask for offerings, they will make you believe that your success for that day is pegged on the offering you give.
2. Preachers of ‘fear’
These preachers are dominant during the evening rush hour. They will preach messages full of warnings and fear, sometimes making passengers feel like they won’t even get to their destinations.
When about to ask for offerings ‘to support the Gospel’, they will say something like, “…that small money that you refuse to contribute towards our Lord’s work can actually make you lose more. If you were to find thugs waylaying you, won’t you give them everything you have?”
3. Preachers of ‘vanity’
You will find these matatu preachers along Thika road any time of the day. Right from the time, they start preaching, they will show you how useless money, wealth and other material things of this world are. They will instead advise you to be concerned more about ‘the life after this earth’.
Ironically, they will still go round the bus collecting the same money after they are done with the preaching.
4. Preachers of ‘personal lives’
Their messages are full of personal life connotations mainly aimed at eliciting sympathy. The preachers will tell you the kind of nasty past or present they went or are going through yet they haven’t ‘despised Jesus’.
They will make you feel ‘privileged’ or ‘favoured’ that you have never gone through such miseries despite your ‘sinful nature’, the reason you should be ‘thankful to our Lord by offering to Him to promote His work’.