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Picture yourself standing at a bus station in Nairobi, Kenya. The unwritten rule is that none of these minibuses (shared taxis, called matatus) will leave until they have enough passengers. That can be around 20 or more people. So every matatu has a tout shouting at top volume — even banging on the side of the bus — to corral more customers.

All of a sudden, what looks like a discotheque on wheels pulls up.

Music blasts from souped-up speakers. Strobe lights flash on the inside walls and seat backs. The exhaust pipe is purposely pinched to rev like a motorcycle. And unlike the drab greens of the average van, this one is painted with airbrushed portraits of Jimi Hendrix and Elvis and Johnny Cash — as well as lyrical fragments from the songs of the Beatles and Maroon 5.

Commuters make a beeline for the magical bus.

Nairobi's famous matatu art is making a comeback.

Kenya's president recently lifted a 10-year ban on matatu art. Bus owners are sending their vehicles to garages and paying artists like Roy Mungai, a.k.a. Great (who designed the Rolling Stone bus above) about $1,000 per vehicle. No surprise — a painted, souped-up matatu can charge double the fare of a plain one.

Which makes one wonder: Why did Kenya's government banish graffiti from its public transportation in the first place? And why would commuters pay twice as much to ride an artsy matatu?

Let's start with the appeal to commuters. A bus with graffiti turns out to be the speediest way to get from point A to point B. If young people prefer a painted bus that plays loud music, and they seem to, then it fills up faster. It leaves sooner. It gets places on time. And thus it's more popular with anyone who can afford the extra fare.

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Roy Mungai (a.k.a. Great) adds color to the windshield. Gregory Warner/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Gregory Warner/NPR

Roy Mungai (a.k.a. Great) adds color to the windshield.

Gregory Warner/NPR

It's a circle: Graffiti triggers enough of a change in commuter behavior that what may look like irreverent art is actually a source of profit for private bus owners. And that's why matatu owners have been flaunting the ban — and pressuring the government to allow artists to work.

As for the ban, the reason was road safety. Back in the day, artists would pretty much cover the windows and the windshield, leaving just a narrow strip for the driver to see through. Visibility was so limited that drivers would have to open the windows just to know where they were.

Understandably, many Kenyans are fearful now that the artists are back in business. They say the government caved to rich and powerful matatu owners.

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Yes, that is the late Libyan leader Moammar Ghadafi. On a bus. In Nairobi. Gregory Warner/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Gregory Warner/NPR

Yes, that is the late Libyan leader Moammar Ghadafi. On a bus. In Nairobi.

Gregory Warner/NPR

But the new generation of graffiti artists won't be blocking every inch of glass. Although that doesn't mean they'll be reining in their wilder instincts.

Roy Mungai, 27, is one of the bus decorators. Mungai studied 3D animation in college. Before he picks up a can of spray paint or steps into the garage, he'll map out his ideas on his laptop with CorelDRAW. He goes by the name "Great."

Many matatus in Nairobi are homages to various themes or brands, and Mungai's are no exception. The Rolling Stone matatu plays off Kenya's love of rock music. His newer projects include a riff off the logo of Rockford Fosgate, a maker of car sound systems, as well as an ironic tribute to the NYPD (complete with Keith-Haring-esque silhouettes of police beating civilians).

Despite his boastful name, Great is humble about his work. He grew up in a Nairobi slum admiring what he enviously calls "real matatu graffiti."

And he argues that the distinctive look of a matatu bus is actually a plus when it comes to the welfare of pedestrians. If you're run over by a speeding matatu and lucky enough to still be conscious, his advice: Don't worry about memorizing the license plate. Just focus on the three-foot-tall spray-painted face of the late Libyan leader Moammar Ghadafi speeding away from you.

graffiti

Kenya

Officials and activists from around the world gathered in New York this week to mark the 20th anniversary of the landmark 1995 World Conference on Women.

Although there were a lot of depressing statistics discussed at the current meeting, there was one piece of good news that many kept citing as reason for hope: Since 1995 the rate of women worldwide who die in childbirth has dropped by more than 40 percent.

When you look deeper into that statistic, there's even more reason to celebrate. Sometimes a rosy global health statistic can overstate the extent of change. A few large countries that improve their situation pull up the average, masking the fact that everyone else has stagnated or worse. But the maternal mortality rate has plunged by 40 percent or more in at least 76 countries — that's close to half of the world's nations.

Goats and Soda

For Babies, Preterm Birth Is Now The No. 1 Cause Of Death

What's more, many of the countries where maternal mortality rates did not fall significantly are wealthy nations in North America and Europe where the rate was low to start with.

Meanwhile, a few of the countries where pregnant women faced the greatest risk back in 1995 have seen the greatest improvement. In Afghanistan, the number of women dying in childbirth per 100,000 live births plunged from 1,200 in 1995 to 400 by 2013 — that's about a 66 percent drop. The maternal death rate also declined spectacularly in Angola, Laos and Rwanda.

That said, maternal death remains a serious problem. Globally the maternal mortality rate remains high at 210 deaths per 100,000 live births. And every year 289,000 women die from childbirth — most of them from preventable causes and almost all of them, in places with minimal resources.

Goats and Soda

Dangerous Deliveries: Ebola Leaves Moms And Babies Without Care

Improving maternal health worldwide will require a heavy focus on sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for 62 percent of annual deaths. Southern Asia is the other hotspot — a fourth of maternal deaths occur there.

But the data suggest that two countries in particular need attention: India and Nigeria. Taken together, they are the site of about one-third all global maternal deaths.

Both countries have already made great strides. Nigeria's maternal mortality rate in 2013 is almost half the rate it was in 1995, for instance.

The solution to bringing the mortality rate down further seems to lie in doing more of what has already worked so well. According to several studies, a major reason maternal mortality rates have fallen is that more women are getting access to skilled attendants at birth. About three-fourths of women who die during child birth have major complications that a health worker could address. For instance, severe bleeding can be stopped by injecting the mother with oxytocin after birth, or an infection can be avoided through proper hygiene. In several regions, more women have access to contraception — which allows them to avoid dangerous pregnancies too soon after a previous birth or an unsafe abortion.

maternal health

pregnancy

babies

Global Health

On whether writing a book of analysis makes her self-conscious while writing her own poetry

I'm very lucky in that I have one of the worst memories you'll ever meet. And therefore, I remember nothing I've said when I'm close-reading other people's poems. I don't have an internal checklist that I then bring to the writing of my own. My entire body, mind, heart when I'm writing a poem are simply inside that experience.

I do think that having spent, you know, something like 30 years now closely attending to other people's poems and to what I feel makes them as magnificent and mysterious as they are — that must affect my relationship to my own writing. But one thing happens in one room and the other happens in another.

On her poem 'Two Linen Handkerchiefs' and expressing grief in poetry

Two Linen Handkerchiefs

How can you have been dead twelve years

and these still

The poem is broken off in exactly the way a life is broken off, in exactly the way grief breaks off, takes us beyond any possible capacity for words to speak. And yet it also, short as it is, holds all of our bewilderment in the face of death. How is it that these inanimate handkerchiefs — which did belong to my father and are still in a drawer of mine, and which I did accidentally come across — how can they still be so pristinely ironed and clean and existent when the person who chose them and used them and wore them is gone? ...

Compassion, in a way, is one of the most important things poems do for me, and I trust do for other people. They allow us to feel how shared our fates are.

- Jane Hirshfield

I think compassion, in a way, is one of the most important things poems do for me, and I trust do for other people. They allow us to feel how shared our fates are. If a person reads this poem when they're inside their own most immediate loss, they immediately — I hope — feel themselves accompanied. Someone else has been here. Someone else has felt what I felt. And, you know, we know this in our minds, but that's very different from being accompanied by the words of a poem, which are not ideas but are experiences.

Read an excerpt of Ten Windows

Read an excerpt of The Beauty

This week, we've brought the show to New Orleans, where Troy Andrews — better known as Trombone Shorty — began playing music at age 4. He was touring with his brother's band by age 6, and went to the same performing arts academy as Harry Connick Jr., Terence Blanchard and the Marsalis brothers. Now, just shy of 30, he's doing his part to spread New Orleans music around the world.

We've invited him to answer three questions about obscure musical instruments.

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