Public Transportation Nightmare

Greetings friends and family!

I’m currently writing from the desktop computer of the secretary of Doctor Miriam Ssemanda, the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Eastern Africa, Baraton. Doctor Ssemanda was a guest professor of Swahili at Princeton last year, and it was by her invitation that I now find myself here at this lovely Seventh-Day Adventist college in the tiny hamlet of Baraton, roughly an hour outside of the larger hamlet of Eldoret, Kenya.

I look forward to telling you all about this school, but first I must relate a story about public transportation. Two nights ago (my most recent “last night in Nakuru” – of which I have already had three and will certainly have at least one more) Sylvia and I were both in the city until 6pm, and agreed to meet at the matatu stand at 6:15 to find a car for the ride home. Due to a bit of misfortune (or possibly a bad decision), the car for Mangu wasn’t a typical 14 passenger matatu, but instead a mini-bus that seats 24. Naturally, the most profitable trip a bus can take one in which every seat is full, and as such we typically spend a good half an hour or so sitting in the van waiting for sufficient passengers to arrive. Because this bus could accommodate a whopping 24, because Mangu is a relatively unpopular destination, and because it was a Sunday, well over an hour later we still found ourselves waiting for the bus to fill.

It was already near 7:30 when Sylvia remembered that she had promised her mother a loaf of bread. She ran out the door, saying something to one of the conductors and disappearing off into the night. This left me alone to ponder why it was that we seemed to have three conductors, and why they spent as much time shouting at each other as they did attempting to draw in as many passengers as possible. Just a few minutes later, the bus departed. Sylvia was no where to be seen. I asked one of the conductors to wait for her to return, be he insisted that we were in fact going to pick her up. That seemed rather unlikely, but as we were taking the rather unusual course of driving right into the market area as opposed to leaving the city, I resigned myself to gazing desperately out the window until some other course of action presented itself.

Soon I realized that we weren’t just passing through the city on an unusual route home, but actually weaving up and down every block while the conductors hung out the doors and windows trying to drum up more passengers. We even stopped in the middle of the road for a time while we debated prices with a potential rider. The bus was sufficiently large (and awkwardly parked) to stop all flow of traffic, and it wasn’t too long until we were receiving a variety of very unpleasant comments from drivers and pedestrians.

After about five minutes of this, I called Sylvia (who was very confused as to where we had gone) and gave her directions to our location, and she caught up to us right as we the negotiations were wrapping up, barely making it on board. Also during this period another lady disembarked to run an errand, leaving her bags and a small child on board. The general protocol is to wait for such people to return, but our rather disorganized conductors had had enough. Perhaps they finally grew weary of lingering in town (as had I, long before), or perhaps they too had heard the warning shouts from the street that the police were on their way. But for one reason or another we took off like a bat out of hell, abandoning the woman in the city without her child, her bag, or a ride.

Of course, I was not the only one a bit chagrined at this course of action, and before long most of the passengers were yelling at the driver to turn the bus around. Finally he did, but not before wasting five minutes driving out of the city and another five driving back in. By the time we returned the woman was no where to be found, and we had to spend another ten minutes driving around to search for her. All told, it was a little more than an hour and forty-five minutes from when I boarded the bus to when we finally hit the main road out of town. Sylvia and I were quite relieved to be on our way. The advances of the drunken man across the aisle were becoming a bit much for her to bear, and besides, we were both hungry and had much to do when we got home.

It isn’t uncommon for matatus full of passengers to stop at a gas station and fill up en route. Often the drivers and conductors are living day-to-day and ride-to-ride, and don’t have the means to maintain a full tank of gas anyway. I’ve often had to pay my fare up front so that they would even have the cash to put something into the tank. (There was also one time when me and a whole car full of people had to pay up front and then wait half an hour while we drove straight from the stage to the mechanic and had the tires realigned, but that has nothing to do with this story.) That being said, it IS uncommon for the three conductors to argue about who is going to pay and about who is going to do the pumping, and then to get into a ten minute argument with four or five gas attendants about God-knows-what before anyone even starts to fill the tank. This was starting to become the matatu ride from hell.

We were finally pulling out of the gas station a few minutes later when we stopped again, this time so the driver could bound out of his seat and come running around to the passenger door. “We’re being followed by some police from town, and we’re over loaded. If we get caught like this, we’ll all have to go together to the police station until the paperwork gets sorted out. Is anyone willing to get off here?”

No answer.

“Anyone?”

Silence.

“Is anyone willing to lay flat on top of the bus for a few miles until we get clear of here?”

Three guys jumped up.

Five minutes later we were pulled over, and a fairly irate officer was standing just in front of me, inspecting the contents of the bus. We were almost about to get off, when he noticed that most of the passengers were not wearing seat belts. A seditious grin slid across his face. “Why aren’t you wearing seatbelts!?” He demanded in Swahili. “That is a 500 shilling fine ($8 US – a huge penalty for these people) for every one of you! I’m turning this car around and taking it back to the station!” This meant we would all be thrown into jail until we paid our fine and were free to go again. Of course, then we’d still have to find another way of getting home. Plus, most of the people with us wouldn’t be able to pay, and I wasn’t sure what would become of them. I was not thrilled. And I could only imagine what would happen when we arrived at the station and the officer discovered the three men on top of the bus. There was a massive outcry from my fellow passengers, and the officer turned and made to return to his car.

Fortunately, one of our conductors thought quickly, and ran after him. I don’t know what he said or what he did, but after five tense minutes of waiting, he returned alone and shout “lets go.” I didn’t know whether he meant we were going to the station or continuing on our way, but over time it gradually became clear by the smiles emerging on the faces of those looking back out the windows that the officer was letting us pass.A few miles later we passed through the permanent police check point, and although we were all quite apprehensive, it passed without event.

A little bit later we stopped again for the men on top of the bus to come back inside. They were greeted with a hero’s welcome, which I thought was fitting. Although I was surprised at how readily everyone forgot that the greed, confusion, and inefficiency of the conductors was what had caused all of these problems to begin.

Either way, in all the confusion neither Sylvia nor I was ever asked to pay, so we couldn’t really complain too much. We arrived at our stop two and a half hours after we boarded the bus, about two hours later than we had expected. It was a long and miserable ride, but I suppose in retrospect it makes for a good story. Either way, I was happy to finally arrive safe and sound, and five hundred and fifty shillings richer than I could have been.

Sorry for the bad grammar and spelling, this post was composed in great haste. Hopefully one day I’ll have time to actually sit and do things thoughtfully.

Until then, I miss and love you all.