Public Transportation...

So I’ve reflected a lot on public transportation here…and how much I dislike it. Dislike is a very mild description, but in keeping this blog PG, we’ll go with it. From riding in a small taxi with 15 people and a chicken, to 32 hours on a bus without a seat, to people getting sick and babies crying, to being hustled at the bus stand and getting ripped off on the price just because I’m mzungu…the list goes on. Sometimes I wonder why I thought it would be a good idea to travel across East Africa using public transportation, given my severe hatred for it. But here’s another story for you. 

Travelling from Bukoba to Ngara on the day before returning home to the bush, was quite the adventure. Let me paint a picture for you: Marisa had her backpack plus 3 side bags. I had my backpack, plus one large side bag of clothes/shoes, plus another side bag with 22 lbs of rice and a volleyball. We’re not mobile is what I’m trying to say, but if your rice had rocks in it, you would carry 22lbs across country borders to eat happily for the next 5 months too. So keeping this in mind, now picture us waking up at 5:30am, calling our new piki piki driver friend to take us to the bus stand on the back of a motorcycle (well, one motorcycle each). It’s too much already…thankfully, Amir was very friendly, and since there wasn’t a direct bus to Ngara that day, he helped us find the one we needed to get onto, got us good seats, and the right price! I love simply being helped, rather than being hassled. Especially at 6am when I have 22lbs of rice. Ha.

So we were off on the bus to an unknown city, where we would allegedly take a small coaster bus to Ngara. The bus man knew we were heading to Ngara, so he actually set us up with a taxi. Nice! Except we were the only two in the taxi, so we drove around this random town like the wazungu on parade looking for more passengers. Finally, we were off, and quite comfortable actually! We stopped at one point to pile a bunch of students in the trunk to drop them at school with large sacks of dirt. After an hour or two, we were ushered into the front seat of another taxi. Always a production, since I still have 22 lbs of rice! While a little less comfortable since Marisa was on my lap and it was 100 degrees and the rode was full of GIANT potholes, I felt like I was in a real life game of Mario Kart….

All is fun and games until the car breaks down though. Which of course it did. In the middle of nowhere. PERFECT. This was the point that I realized all I had eaten was 4 small bananas that I bought out the window of the bus that morning, but luckily I had 2 more bananas to eat…yum. The driver and some of the men did their best to fix whatever was wrong, however the general solution to any car problem here is to just pour water and try again. Somehow, it actually works most of the time, but usually the car is running at the time of pouring…And since our car was not running, the water was not helping. After, oh, maybe an hour or so? A small coaster coming from Kahama and heading to Ngara came along, and of course one of our bus man friends was on it and SO excited to see us. The bus was able to jump the taxi, but we were able to squeeze into the back of the bus for the rest of the journey. Probably for the best for our safety.  Just one last piki ride to Alex and Sue’s house, and we were in for the night. Such relief!

So after 1 piki piki ride, a bus ride, two taxi rides, a coaster ride and another piki ride….we made it to Ngara! PHEWWWWW. That’s 6 modes of transportation with 22lbs of rice over my shoulder and 6 bananas in my stomach for 9 hours… in case you lost track.

Needless to say, I was really happy to be one day away from home. I can only handle this craziness for so long, before I actually go crazy.  I’ll have a much greater appreciation for my own car when I get back to America, that’s for sure.