C'est pas un voyage ca, c'est la souffrance (“This is not a journey, this is suffering”)

The title of this entry is a rather uncharitable comment on the journey from another 'Bush Taxi' passenger. The Bush Taxi is the basic inter-city transport for millions of people in Africa. To picture it in your mind, think of a vehicle of similar construction to The Mystery Machine – Scooby Doo's Camper Van. There are initially 2 seats on the left, 1 on the right, for 7 rows (plus the back row). It looks quite spacious.

You take your seat on the left-hand side. It is built like a sofa, with a very generous arm-rest. Don't get used to it – the arm-rest folds down to span the aisle and form another seat. That makes 4. Then you shuffle along and that makes 5. In the end, there are 8 rows of seats that span the width of the vehicle.

The person beside you is too fat? That's unfortunate! They paid for a seat, you paid for a seat, you both get what you paid for. If you want more room, buy two seats.

We did fairly well for room. Left-to-right it was Alison, Clarke, skinny old lady, skinny youth, skinny man. After the inevitable round of sandwich, watch and biscuit sellers outside and once every seat was taken, the 42 passengers set off. 40 adults plus 2 children on their mothers' laps. Before your Western sensibilities start complaining about personal space, etc., it is worth noting that the Africans we have met do not have an invisible metre-wide barrier around their person. Also, more space per-person means fewer people on the bus to pay the running costs, means higher fares.

Just after the roundabout leaving Kribi (a painted tractor tyre, filled with earth, and planted out with flowers – reuse-and-recycle is a way of life they take for granted here), Clarke fell asleep. He awoke to find a hand in his hair! Was Alison showing affection? No – it was the skinny youth!! He dozed off, instinctively made himself comfortable by putting his arm along the back of the seats and his hand started twitching. Laughter from other passengers eventually woke him up.
“Huh?! Why the laughter? Let me sleep!”
“Your hand is on the white guy's shoulder!”
“Eh? Oh, right” (looks embarrassed).

The journey was punctuated by stops. At crossings between provinces, and at other places where the police decide there is a need to inspect vehicles, the driver had to show his paperwork. It's a way of life that the people here are used to. At one stop, people got out to have a 'Comfort break' as our trans-Atlantic colleagues diplomatically call it. Boys to the right, girls to the left, find a tree. This gave a problem for the last guy back onto the bus – seated in front of us, near the back. He was supposed to climb over 5 rows of people to get to his seat. He took one look at the crowd, went round the side, opened the window and came in 'Dukes of Hazzard' style.

It was at one stop – a village – where our comfort ended. The lightly-built lady got out and a policeman whose shift was over got in. Like many policemen here, he was very-tall and very well built and our comfort was over (he did apologise). More stops followed (all apparently cordial but there were far more than on the way out of town). So, the passengers started to give the policeman what sounded like good-natured teasing about it (which he took with good humour). Next stop: Mvan bus depot, taxi home, kettle on.

As we found out from neighbour Mary, the security is sometimes heightened when they are expecting an influx of people into the city. A few days later we joined the influx as they went to Omnisports Stadium for the last home World-Cup qualifier. More of that next time.