Up to this point, A. and I have been doing most of our long-distance travel on the modern, air-conditioned metro system, but most of our neighbors are limited to the un-air conditioned and less reliable bus system because it’s cheaper. So last Wednesday we decided to take the bus to our friends’ place on the other side of the city. We piled into a crowded little van (but van is a strong word… it implies full enclosure) for the first unpaved leg of the journey, out of our community to the highway. Then we waited for nearly half an hour at the bus stop. While we waited, a very crowded bus came by and a few people scrambled on, some still hanging outside the door and trying to force their way inside as the bus sped away. Finally, ours showed up and we piled on. It was crowded and hot, but we were excited to be above ground and able to see all of the street-level activity between point A and point B. A few minutes down the road, a rhythmic, jolting, thudding starts under the floor of the bus. We look behind us to where the last passenger aboard is standing in the doorway, clinging to the outside of the bus. He is looking down at the tire, and seems somewhat amused. The motorcycle and truck drivers passing us are all staring in that direction, too—apparently the tread is coming off the tire and flinging against the bottom of the bus with each rotation. At the same time, we’re beginning to notice the grinding of the gears and the halting acceleration after each stop of the bus. We aren’t sure which problem will take down the bus first. As we’re sitting in a traffic jam at a huge, unregulated intersection with a cross flow of rickshaws, motorcycles, trucks, cars, and buses in front of us, we stare into the rooftops and inner rooms of the slum dwellings that line the highway, divided only by a canal of open sewage and huge pipes serving as walkways over the water. A man repairs a power line standing on a bamboo ladder whose bottom rung is just a couple of feet away from our back tire. Pedestrians and bicycles hurry past between the tire and the ladder. A few minutes later, the transmission beats the tire to its demise and everyone moves from our bus to another one further ahead in the traffic jam. This one runs on a slightly different route, but we manage to get off at approximately our desired destination and take another “van” to our friends’ community. After all of that, we still manage to reach their front door in less than two hours!
Yes, life here is good.