Bush Taxi Laughs and Frustrations

My main mode of transportation around this country is in bush taxis. They're really not that bad and actually really amusing when you step back and think about it. If a 5 seater car or hatchback has less than 7 people in it, it feels like you're traveling first class. When they hold more than 10 people you begin to just pray that your leg won't fall off after being asleep for over an hour. 12 people is impressive, though no less painful. Women dress up to travel in bush taxis. Most Peace Corps Volutneers dress down. Chauffeurs will turn the vent button, push some wires together, then honk the horn to start the car. Keys are optional. Space is shared with all kinds of living beings, from humans to goats, to chickens, to sheep... there really are not restrictions. This is the life of a bush taxi. Like I said, they're really not that bad. Sometimes I even find them to be therapeutic in a weird kind of way.

One of my favorite bush taxi stories recently happened in December. Here is the scene: Me and Emily are sharing the passenger seat, I'm on the door side, Emily is dodging the shift stick. A boy of about 5 is sitting next to Emily, sharing the driver's seat. Right in front of all of us on the dash is a plastic hand with STOP written on the palm. The scene unfolds.

Emily (pointing to the hand and looking at the little boy): STOP
Little Boy (looking back and forth between the hand and Emily): STOP
Emily: do you want to learn english? ok. Repeat after me (lifts one finger up). One (repeats two or three times emphasizing finger).
Little Boy: Won
Emily continues the process (won, doo, free, fo, fyve, seex, sven, ate, nein, tin).
Emily: you're cute
Little boy: you're cute (with surprisingly good pronounciation)
Emily and I crack up
Emily: No. You're cute.
Little Boy: no. you're cute.
Me (still cracking up with Emily): you should tell him that he's beautiful.
Emily to Little Boy: You're beautiful.
Little Boy: You're bute-i-fo

We could not get enough of this little guy. This bush taxi ride was definitely too short. It wasn't until we were laughing about this later that we realized we should have asked the little boy if he had lost weight.

Another recent time that I just couldn't stop laughing. Me, Jocelyn, Nori, and Emily were all in a bush taxi coming back to Pagala from Atakpame. About halfway there, the driver pulls over and tells us that one of the guys in the car was feeling a little car sick so he had to go do his business for just a second. We get going eventually but realize that the guy who had been feeling sick is not in the car. He had gotten into the trunk. We tell the driver that he shouldn't put him in the trunk just because he was sick (maybe he was afraid he's get sick in the car we thought). The driver told us it was the guy's idea to get into the trunk. What if something's wrong and he can't communicate? We kept on proding. Then (this is when we all started cracking up) he yells the guy's name and get's a muffled response from him. See, he's fine, he says. I don't know about you, but getting in the trunk of a car that is already filled with other people's luggage is exactly where I would want to be if I was feeling carsick...

This story on the frustrating side of the spectrum. Me and a group of six other people were on our way to Atakpame from Lome, which was perfect in terms of traveling because we could fill a 5 placer and get going vite, vite. So we catch a car and get going right away as planned. We're about half an hour out of Lome when we stop at a checkpoint and the driver gets out. These stops (as random as they are) happen on a regular basis so we didn't think much of it until a guy gets in the driver's seat who was not the driver. Where you going, he asks us. Atakpame, we answer. Where is our driver, was the logical question that followed. Long story short the guy told us that the driver did not have the right documents and this guy was confiscating the vehicle. But could not just let us out to find a different car going north. We had to get out at the station in Lome. So we ended up driving back to where we had started and ended up waiting an extra hour and a half so that a 12 placer vehicle could fill up. It's this kind of thing that's less therapeutic and a little more stressful.