The Wonderful World Of Transport

Transport. Oh, transport. I don’t know even how to begin to explain transport from my village to the capital (or any other place). Imagine this: a van with rows of seats that are meant for 4 people (a snug fit even with 4). The drivers make it mandatory that 5 people are to go in each row. We are packed in the van like sardines. It doesn’t matter if you are 500 pounds; you still count as one person across the row. Or if you have children up to the age of five, you and your one or two kids still count as one person. It is the funniest thing to watch because I will see grown men sitting on top of each across the row because there is no room whatsoever. One butt cheek will be on the seat and the other cheek will be on their neighbor’s thigh. Often times, one man will lean forward against the seat in front of him while his neighbor leans back against their seat because there is not enough shoulder room for everyone. There often times that my knees are uncomfortably shoved up against the seat in front because there is no leg space. I am 5’3! Can you imagine what it is like for men who are 6 feet +?! Sometimes they pack live chickens/goats on top of the roof or in the taxi near my feet and I will forget they are there and I will step on them. Sometimes the children will pee during the 4 hour trip. Not the best situation if they pee/defecate about ten minutes into our ride because there is no escape from the smell. The windows. I almost forgot about the windows. Well…or lack there of. I always think if we were to get into an accident, no one would survive because there are so many people crammed in the bush taxi (with no seat belts, mind you) that it would not be possible to get out. There is that fact and the fact that often times the windows don’t open or sometimes there is no window at all and there is this big sheet of wood covering where the window once was. There are multiple times where the taxi breaks down or I will hear a loud scraping noise during the trip that I imagine cannot be good for the van or us. One instance when I was going to a district capital the van was going about 20 miles an hour because it kept on breaking down and would not go any faster. This was during the middle of the day, mind you, when the temperature was probably near 100 degrees. Did I mention none of the taxis have air conditioning. So every 5 minutes the driver stops the bush taxi to lift up his seat to remove a part that looks like it belongs to the engine. He blows in it a few times and then puts it back into the car. The whole time I am thinking, “Oh my God, I am going to die from the heat and I am pretty sure you are supposed to be removing that part/blowing in it to fix it.” But after stopping like twenty times to blow in the part we finally reached our destination. There is also a tradeoff between breathing in dust and being hot. Since 90% of the roads in Burkina are unpaved they are often dirt/sand roads with many, many potholes. You spend more time in the middle of the roade or the left side of the road trying to avoid the potholes. lol. I don’t mind breathing in the dust but I do mind being hot. I always like to sit by the window on the off chance that we do get into an accident I have a small chance of surviving but I also like having control of the window to open and close it as I please. One time I had the window open because it was incredibly hot (actually, there is never really time that the window is closed because it’s always hot) but having the window open meant that we were breathing in dust. The window next to me kept on bugging me to close the window. I finally turned to the women and said, “Women, it is ungodly hot! The window is staying open! One time my friend Josh came to visit me from his village and the first thing he says once he gets out of the bush taxi at the station was, “I do not think there was one point during that entire 4 hour trip that both butt cheeks were on the seat.” One time I rode down to my village with my friend, Gwen, and I felt so bad for her because her seat was broken so she was sitting on the seat springs. She is not used to riding in bush taxis because the road to her village from the capital in on a highway so she always rides in a bus. Experiencing transport is so ungodly awful that it is funny and you just have to find it amusing to convince yourself to take it the next time.