The Most Important Visit We've Ever Made
6 years ago
9/29/2011
9/26/2011
Two roads diverged...
And I definitely took the long one.
My friend S and I decided to go on a bicycle trip to the big grocery outlet store. Part of this was in hopes of finding great deals on bulk purchases but mostly it was just an excuse to go for a bike ride. We stuck to the back roads because the main road, as noted in the previous post, is loaded with large trucks and general mayhem. There are a couple of routes that are blocked to cars but not to bicycles and we took full advantage of them. Then we started making our way back to the main road. At one point we came to a fork in the road and I, feeling poetic, quoted Robert Frost to myself as I made my selection.
Well, I definitely took the way less traveled! It turns out we were about two football fields from the store at that point. If we had gone right we would have seen it no problem. But instead I turned left. And we rode and rode and rode. Eventually we got to the main road. And we both felt that we hadn't yet gone far enough (this may be the only time in my life that something has felt closer on a bike than in a car, probably because the traffic sometimes makes the trip horrendously long in a car). So instead of turning right, we turned left again. We kept riding until the road merged with the freeway. At that point we realized that we had gone too far, turned around, and rode ALL the way back along the main road, then just a half mile more and we were there.
In the end a trip that should have been 3 1/2 miles turned into more than 8. But hey, we got some good exercise out of it! Needless to say, after we got our groceries we took the short way home.
My friend S and I decided to go on a bicycle trip to the big grocery outlet store. Part of this was in hopes of finding great deals on bulk purchases but mostly it was just an excuse to go for a bike ride. We stuck to the back roads because the main road, as noted in the previous post, is loaded with large trucks and general mayhem. There are a couple of routes that are blocked to cars but not to bicycles and we took full advantage of them. Then we started making our way back to the main road. At one point we came to a fork in the road and I, feeling poetic, quoted Robert Frost to myself as I made my selection.
Well, I definitely took the way less traveled! It turns out we were about two football fields from the store at that point. If we had gone right we would have seen it no problem. But instead I turned left. And we rode and rode and rode. Eventually we got to the main road. And we both felt that we hadn't yet gone far enough (this may be the only time in my life that something has felt closer on a bike than in a car, probably because the traffic sometimes makes the trip horrendously long in a car). So instead of turning right, we turned left again. We kept riding until the road merged with the freeway. At that point we realized that we had gone too far, turned around, and rode ALL the way back along the main road, then just a half mile more and we were there.
9/24/2011
The shortest distance between two obscure locations...
I dug through my travel logs from the village stay and used my notes there as the starting point for the following tales:
My first trip to the city was a Friday morning just after a night of long, hard rain. We waited for about 15 minutes as one car after another passed us by. Most of them were already full. A couple of them were owned by government organizations or rich foreigners and therefore only carried the driver and perhaps one passenger. Finally an old Ndiaga Ndiaye rattled up and we all climbed on.
There are a number of hills between the village and the city- some of the only sizable hills in the entire country. Perhaps because they aren't familiar with hills, perhaps because of the sad state of many of their trucks, perhaps because they work long hours with not enough sleep, or perhaps because of certain quirks about that particular stretch of road, it tends to be a nightmare for truck drivers. When it's wet, it's five times worse. As we crested the first hill an impressive sight met our eyes.
The road curves down the hill in an S shape. Right where it ended the left hook and started to curve right a semi was jackknifed at a 45 degree angle to the road, blocking all of one lane and part of the other. In the opposite ditch a semi had fallen entirely off the road and because there wasn't any shoulder it was laying on it's side several yards off of the pavement.
My friend told me this is fairly normal. Sure enough, half a mile later we came across another truck that had run off the road and was leaning precariously.
That's all we saw, but a week later my friends came from the other direction and said that they saw a truck tipped on its side. The next day one of the guys in the village told me that there had been a collision on the road because a taxi was driving without headlights. It's not surprising- one headlight is considered to be enough and when that one finally dies as well the driver probably won't want to stop and wait for daylight. I suppose he figured he could see the road just fine in the moonlight.
The problem is that lanes are not very well respected here, especially since there usually aren't any lines painted on the road. So another taxi probably came barreling down the road, much too close to the center, and of course he didn't see the oncoming car until it was way too late.
The next trip into town we didn't see any disasters but we had some adventures of our own. Half way to the city the taxi filled up and the driver ejected a passenger whom he had formerly agreed to take to the next village. The passengers who wanted to get in were going all the way to the city and therefore were willing to pay more money. It was a bad sign. When we got to the city, instead of going to the station on the far end of the city as all taxis do, he dumped us off on the outskirts , saying that he wanted to take a different route through town. No amount of arguing could move him and we had no legal recourse because he wasn't an official taxi- so we got another taxi to take us through town.
After church we walked back to the station for taxis that take passengers across town. As we got there all of the taxi drivers were in a group, yelling at each other and waving their arms in the air. None of them were paying any attention to us or to their cars, so we just got into the car that looked the most promising. When the argument reached a conclusion of sorts the driver stormed over to the car, tumbled into the drivers seat, and with a final yell at the others eased us onto the road, mumbling under his breath all the while. Fortunately we had an uneventful ride so the volcano never erupted.
He drove us to within a couple of blocks of the station for the taxis that drive from the city to the village. When we walked up we found a car that already had two people sitting in it, waiting. We made the third and fourth, so I assumed that we would be able to leave right away. My friend explained to me that no, a full car has three in front and three in back. Two people are expected to sit in the front passenger seat! After 10 minutes a young man walked up and sat on the lap of the other young man who was already in the front seat, and we were off.
Well, to be honest he didn't sit on the other guy's lap. One was sitting on the front left corner of the seat and the other was wedged against the door, trying to not take up more than his fair half of the seat. It's a good thing they were both skinny guys and didn't have too much baggage. I have no clue what two big grandmas do when they come from the market and have to share a seat with one another and seven bags.
At any rate, we were off. We got almost out of town when the guy wedged against the passenger door yelled out to a man in a shop that we were passing and then told the driver to pull over. He asked the driver to wait and started walking back to the shop, which was now half a block behind us. We waited for a couple of minutes and then the driver turned off the engine. Finally the guy came back, carrying some large purchases. The driver got out, they put everything in the trunk, both got in, and we finally headed home.
On the way home from our next trip to town it was raining so we had the windows rolled up despite the body heat being generated by 6 adults. The driver kept wiping the inside of the windshield with a handkerchief. I'm guessing the defrost had long since stopped working. Remember what I said about taxis in the capital city? The taxis that run between villages and minor cities are probably the rejects from the city. I feel quite certain that a majority of cars entered in demolition derbies are in better condition than the average rural taxi and some of them might still be in better condition after the derby.
Anyway, we stopped at a small village halfway home to let off the second passenger in the front seat. Before his seat mate had time to breathe, the driver had waved in four soaking boys who were pleading for a lift. Two of them climbed into the front seat and sat on the lap of the guy up there and the other two climbed into the back with me, my friend, and another. So we had nine people in a 5-person car. Fortunately the car still made it up the hill (though the driver had to shift into first to make it) and as we picked up momentum going down the other side the rain started to let up. When my friend and I extracted ourselves from the back seat two minutes later we were sweaty but dry, other than a wet spot on my lap.
Frankly, part of me really enjoyed these experiences. There is something far more entertaining about all of this than sitting at a stoplight during rush hour. Or sitting in rush hour without stoplights...
The capital city has a ton of traffic and no stoplights, so at certain times of day the whole city gets pretty slow. But the worst traffic in the entire city is in and around one particular part of the industrial zone. Which is where I work.
Because the city is on a peninsula, there is only one main artery leading into to town. It branches in two directions just inside the city and I work right off of the smaller of these two roads. Unfortunately, even though it is the smaller road it is taken by a vast majority of the large trucks because it runs along the coast, where all of the ports and major factories are located. This spring during a particular road construction project they decide to stop letting trucks turn left onto a major side street. This forced all of the trucks to go to the roundabout half a mile from my work and come back. The result was that during peak hours traffic went through that roundabout at such a slow pace that the speedometer needle rarely twitched. And that meant that traffic on the entire road went at the same pace.
Well, they finally finished construction and I'm quite sure they repealed the interdiction on left turns, but that roundabout is still a bigger nightmare than it used to be. Sometimes my language tutor arrives at 4:00 and sometimes she comes at 4:45, and its largely because of that roundabout. If you get lucky you get through. If you don't, you sit.
And you ask, isn't there any other way to get to your work? Yes, there is. And it's sometimes worse. We decided to go bowling one night. Some friends on a scooter told us that the roundabout was a nightmare so we went the other way. We took the back roads as far as we could, scooted along the main road with surprisingly little hastle (everybody trying to get out of the city must have been stuck at the roundpoint yet) and soon got to our left turn. Unfortunately it is the only left turn for a long, long distance and nearly everything of interest or importance is to the left. All that is on the right are some factories and the ocean. We turned onto the road and sat. And sat. And sat. After sitting there for half an hour and going about a quarter of a mile some other friends texted us and said that there was road construction up ahead. Yeah, we knew about that, but...
This road is supposed to be two lanes but in the afternoons it turns into three, with motorcycles and bicycles weaving in between lanes. As we sat in the inside of the two lanes going our direction a car whipped around us when there was a break in oncoming traffic. As he tried to squeeze by a semi truck he got too close to an open culvert (we have those all over the place) and his back tire fell in. CLUNK.
It was a smallish sedan and soon several guys had run up to try to lift it out. Meanwhile a giant rice truck, which had gotten around some of the mess by dodging trees and sign posts on the sidewalk, came lurching up to the car and halted. He restrained himself from blaring his horn, possibly because he found the situation as amusing as I did, but the people behind him didn't have the same restraint. A couple of motorcycles quickly darted past him, swerved around the guys pushing on the car, and zipped past.
Soon they had the car out, traffic moved just enough for it to merge back into the correct lane, and traffic resumed its flow in the opposite direction. Our side, however, kept creeping along. We discussed having somebody get out and walk to the restaurant a quarter mile up the road to order pizza for us. It was supper time and we figured the pizza would probably be ready by the time we got there. We decided to have faith and wait.
It took us an hour to travel just over half a mile, but we finally got out. In order to avoid further hangups we doubled back along the autoroute, came within 300 meters of where we had started (albeit seperated by a number of walls and some train tracks) and then took back roads the rest of the way. The rest of the trip, which was probably 5 miles, took 15 minutes or less.
We shall see what happens as the city continues to grow. When that road was built it had wilderness on both sides. Now it's in the heart of the city. Not the suburbs, the heart. As in, the suburbs aren't even anywhere close anymore. It's hard to readjust an infrastructure to accommodate that kind of population explosion. It's kind of like the bridge over the railroad tracks that ends in the wall of a factory. Oops. Somebody's plans changed there!
When I was preparing to come I planned to avoid driving at all costs. But when I got here one of the first things I was told was that they needed more drivers. So I've gotten to do a lot of it, and in some ways I even enjoy it. It's a lot more stressful than driving back home, even in the cities, but it is also a challenge. It's like playing a video game, but a lot more important.
My first trip to the city was a Friday morning just after a night of long, hard rain. We waited for about 15 minutes as one car after another passed us by. Most of them were already full. A couple of them were owned by government organizations or rich foreigners and therefore only carried the driver and perhaps one passenger. Finally an old Ndiaga Ndiaye rattled up and we all climbed on.
There are a number of hills between the village and the city- some of the only sizable hills in the entire country. Perhaps because they aren't familiar with hills, perhaps because of the sad state of many of their trucks, perhaps because they work long hours with not enough sleep, or perhaps because of certain quirks about that particular stretch of road, it tends to be a nightmare for truck drivers. When it's wet, it's five times worse. As we crested the first hill an impressive sight met our eyes.
The road curves down the hill in an S shape. Right where it ended the left hook and started to curve right a semi was jackknifed at a 45 degree angle to the road, blocking all of one lane and part of the other. In the opposite ditch a semi had fallen entirely off the road and because there wasn't any shoulder it was laying on it's side several yards off of the pavement.
My friend told me this is fairly normal. Sure enough, half a mile later we came across another truck that had run off the road and was leaning precariously.
That's all we saw, but a week later my friends came from the other direction and said that they saw a truck tipped on its side. The next day one of the guys in the village told me that there had been a collision on the road because a taxi was driving without headlights. It's not surprising- one headlight is considered to be enough and when that one finally dies as well the driver probably won't want to stop and wait for daylight. I suppose he figured he could see the road just fine in the moonlight.
The problem is that lanes are not very well respected here, especially since there usually aren't any lines painted on the road. So another taxi probably came barreling down the road, much too close to the center, and of course he didn't see the oncoming car until it was way too late.
The next trip into town we didn't see any disasters but we had some adventures of our own. Half way to the city the taxi filled up and the driver ejected a passenger whom he had formerly agreed to take to the next village. The passengers who wanted to get in were going all the way to the city and therefore were willing to pay more money. It was a bad sign. When we got to the city, instead of going to the station on the far end of the city as all taxis do, he dumped us off on the outskirts , saying that he wanted to take a different route through town. No amount of arguing could move him and we had no legal recourse because he wasn't an official taxi- so we got another taxi to take us through town.
After church we walked back to the station for taxis that take passengers across town. As we got there all of the taxi drivers were in a group, yelling at each other and waving their arms in the air. None of them were paying any attention to us or to their cars, so we just got into the car that looked the most promising. When the argument reached a conclusion of sorts the driver stormed over to the car, tumbled into the drivers seat, and with a final yell at the others eased us onto the road, mumbling under his breath all the while. Fortunately we had an uneventful ride so the volcano never erupted.
He drove us to within a couple of blocks of the station for the taxis that drive from the city to the village. When we walked up we found a car that already had two people sitting in it, waiting. We made the third and fourth, so I assumed that we would be able to leave right away. My friend explained to me that no, a full car has three in front and three in back. Two people are expected to sit in the front passenger seat! After 10 minutes a young man walked up and sat on the lap of the other young man who was already in the front seat, and we were off.
Well, to be honest he didn't sit on the other guy's lap. One was sitting on the front left corner of the seat and the other was wedged against the door, trying to not take up more than his fair half of the seat. It's a good thing they were both skinny guys and didn't have too much baggage. I have no clue what two big grandmas do when they come from the market and have to share a seat with one another and seven bags.
At any rate, we were off. We got almost out of town when the guy wedged against the passenger door yelled out to a man in a shop that we were passing and then told the driver to pull over. He asked the driver to wait and started walking back to the shop, which was now half a block behind us. We waited for a couple of minutes and then the driver turned off the engine. Finally the guy came back, carrying some large purchases. The driver got out, they put everything in the trunk, both got in, and we finally headed home.
On the way home from our next trip to town it was raining so we had the windows rolled up despite the body heat being generated by 6 adults. The driver kept wiping the inside of the windshield with a handkerchief. I'm guessing the defrost had long since stopped working. Remember what I said about taxis in the capital city? The taxis that run between villages and minor cities are probably the rejects from the city. I feel quite certain that a majority of cars entered in demolition derbies are in better condition than the average rural taxi and some of them might still be in better condition after the derby.
Anyway, we stopped at a small village halfway home to let off the second passenger in the front seat. Before his seat mate had time to breathe, the driver had waved in four soaking boys who were pleading for a lift. Two of them climbed into the front seat and sat on the lap of the guy up there and the other two climbed into the back with me, my friend, and another. So we had nine people in a 5-person car. Fortunately the car still made it up the hill (though the driver had to shift into first to make it) and as we picked up momentum going down the other side the rain started to let up. When my friend and I extracted ourselves from the back seat two minutes later we were sweaty but dry, other than a wet spot on my lap.
Frankly, part of me really enjoyed these experiences. There is something far more entertaining about all of this than sitting at a stoplight during rush hour. Or sitting in rush hour without stoplights...
The capital city has a ton of traffic and no stoplights, so at certain times of day the whole city gets pretty slow. But the worst traffic in the entire city is in and around one particular part of the industrial zone. Which is where I work.
Because the city is on a peninsula, there is only one main artery leading into to town. It branches in two directions just inside the city and I work right off of the smaller of these two roads. Unfortunately, even though it is the smaller road it is taken by a vast majority of the large trucks because it runs along the coast, where all of the ports and major factories are located. This spring during a particular road construction project they decide to stop letting trucks turn left onto a major side street. This forced all of the trucks to go to the roundabout half a mile from my work and come back. The result was that during peak hours traffic went through that roundabout at such a slow pace that the speedometer needle rarely twitched. And that meant that traffic on the entire road went at the same pace.
Well, they finally finished construction and I'm quite sure they repealed the interdiction on left turns, but that roundabout is still a bigger nightmare than it used to be. Sometimes my language tutor arrives at 4:00 and sometimes she comes at 4:45, and its largely because of that roundabout. If you get lucky you get through. If you don't, you sit.
And you ask, isn't there any other way to get to your work? Yes, there is. And it's sometimes worse. We decided to go bowling one night. Some friends on a scooter told us that the roundabout was a nightmare so we went the other way. We took the back roads as far as we could, scooted along the main road with surprisingly little hastle (everybody trying to get out of the city must have been stuck at the roundpoint yet) and soon got to our left turn. Unfortunately it is the only left turn for a long, long distance and nearly everything of interest or importance is to the left. All that is on the right are some factories and the ocean. We turned onto the road and sat. And sat. And sat. After sitting there for half an hour and going about a quarter of a mile some other friends texted us and said that there was road construction up ahead. Yeah, we knew about that, but...
This road is supposed to be two lanes but in the afternoons it turns into three, with motorcycles and bicycles weaving in between lanes. As we sat in the inside of the two lanes going our direction a car whipped around us when there was a break in oncoming traffic. As he tried to squeeze by a semi truck he got too close to an open culvert (we have those all over the place) and his back tire fell in. CLUNK.
It was a smallish sedan and soon several guys had run up to try to lift it out. Meanwhile a giant rice truck, which had gotten around some of the mess by dodging trees and sign posts on the sidewalk, came lurching up to the car and halted. He restrained himself from blaring his horn, possibly because he found the situation as amusing as I did, but the people behind him didn't have the same restraint. A couple of motorcycles quickly darted past him, swerved around the guys pushing on the car, and zipped past.
Soon they had the car out, traffic moved just enough for it to merge back into the correct lane, and traffic resumed its flow in the opposite direction. Our side, however, kept creeping along. We discussed having somebody get out and walk to the restaurant a quarter mile up the road to order pizza for us. It was supper time and we figured the pizza would probably be ready by the time we got there. We decided to have faith and wait.
It took us an hour to travel just over half a mile, but we finally got out. In order to avoid further hangups we doubled back along the autoroute, came within 300 meters of where we had started (albeit seperated by a number of walls and some train tracks) and then took back roads the rest of the way. The rest of the trip, which was probably 5 miles, took 15 minutes or less.
We shall see what happens as the city continues to grow. When that road was built it had wilderness on both sides. Now it's in the heart of the city. Not the suburbs, the heart. As in, the suburbs aren't even anywhere close anymore. It's hard to readjust an infrastructure to accommodate that kind of population explosion. It's kind of like the bridge over the railroad tracks that ends in the wall of a factory. Oops. Somebody's plans changed there!
When I was preparing to come I planned to avoid driving at all costs. But when I got here one of the first things I was told was that they needed more drivers. So I've gotten to do a lot of it, and in some ways I even enjoy it. It's a lot more stressful than driving back home, even in the cities, but it is also a challenge. It's like playing a video game, but a lot more important.
9/18/2011
Transport
Long have I awaited this momentous post. That's probably why I haven't ever done it, and also why the next 45 minutes is probably not going to be enough time for me to write it now. Public transportation here is unlike anything you have ever seen stateside. I did post some pictures a while back showing the decorations on car rapides and taxis. When I first got here it took a while just to adjust to the idea of hand-painted words all over cars. I thought only high-schoolers did that!
I have now spent enough time in the capital that I have tried nearly every type of public transportation. There are taxis, which can be anything from a 2008 Iranian-built "local" model to a gigantic Mercedes with no suspension that predates me by nearly two decades. If you imagine the cars that the lower middle class (like my family) drove 10 years ago, that is the typical taxi. Late-80s Toyota Corollas and Carinas might be the best-represented models in the city.
And yes, they have been driven into the ground. Once three of them have been driven into the ground the guys take them apart, trade out bad parts for less bad ones (or clever substitutes), and put two of the cars back on the road with a fresh coat of paint. As for niceties like rear seatbelts, window handles, door handles, door seals, etc... they just get removed when they don't work anymore. Who needs them anyway?
All of the official taxis are yellow and black (with decorations, of course!). Then there are "clandos" who do their work unofficially. Apparently not all of them are illegal anymore. Out in the village all you can get is clandos like the one in the photo.
Car rapides. They are old delivery vans that have been completely stripped out and converted into mobile sardine cans. I once counted 29 people in a vehicle that probably has the same wheelbase as a regular 12 passenger van. You can see an interesting documentary here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZjD9QrMR7Y&feature=related. As long as you don't mind grandma sitting halfway on your lap and putting her vegies under your feet, they are a fantastic way to get around town (well, certain parts of it anyway) for very, very cheap. They cost less than a 10th of what a taxi costs.
The amazing 7-place. These are old peugeot 505s that never die. The back seat was clearly made for the youngest children in the family. If you are more than 5'5" tall your knees will be wedged up against the seat in front of you. My poor roommate, who is probably 6'3", had to ride in back once and he vows he will never do it again. He doesn't like that bird-in-the-shell feeling. I only rode one 7 place and it was only for a few minutes. That was a relief because I too was in the back seat and it was raining- both outside and inside- because of a missing window seal.
And then there are Ndiaga Ndiayes, which are the same basic idea as a Car Rapide but bigger. They go between cities. The seating inside is similar to a conventional bus but there is no passenger door in the front (just in the back) and there are fold-up seats in the isle to maximize the capacity. Like in the car rapides, major baggage goes on the roof. Sometimes you can see a Ndiaga Ndiaye that is nearly twice it's normal height because of baggage. Once in a while you see one careening down the road (suspension is a rare commodity) with two dozen guys up on the roof banging on drums and yelling. I'm still not sure what that's about. I think it might be a religious group. Either that or soccer fans, which are arguably a religious group of their own rite.
Finally, there are the "official" buses like the one in the photo. Some run set routes within the capital city and some run between cities. The price for the in-city buses is slightly more than the car rapides but they make fewer stops so they are usually a little bit faster. Like any other vehicles, though, they frequently get stuck in traffic. That, combined with rather liberal timekeeping, means that a bus can easily be an hour late. The only time I tried to take one I had to sit at the bus stop for at least 45 minutes before it showed up. If you want to get somewhere more or less on time you need to take a car rapide. There are so many of them that you usually don't have to wait very long.
That takes care of transportation in the city. But once you get out in the country, everything changes. Any vehicle going between two points becomes a potential taxi. As long as there is an open seat, someone will pay to fill it. The village where I stayed is between a major city and a smaller one that finds itself on the main highway across the country. On the road between these two towns are four or five villages. Many people from the villages work or go to school in the major city or want to sell goods on the main highway, but none of them own vehicles.
Most days aren't a problem. There is enough traffic going back and forth, and enough guys driving clandos, that you don't usually have to wait more than 10 or 15 minutes for a ride. Some days though, especially on a major M holiday, you can be sitting there for an awfully long time.
SO, that is an overview. That's all I have time for tonight. Next blog I'll share some stories from my various rides on public transportation.
I have now spent enough time in the capital that I have tried nearly every type of public transportation. There are taxis, which can be anything from a 2008 Iranian-built "local" model to a gigantic Mercedes with no suspension that predates me by nearly two decades. If you imagine the cars that the lower middle class (like my family) drove 10 years ago, that is the typical taxi. Late-80s Toyota Corollas and Carinas might be the best-represented models in the city.And yes, they have been driven into the ground. Once three of them have been driven into the ground the guys take them apart, trade out bad parts for less bad ones (or clever substitutes), and put two of the cars back on the road with a fresh coat of paint. As for niceties like rear seatbelts, window handles, door handles, door seals, etc... they just get removed when they don't work anymore. Who needs them anyway?
All of the official taxis are yellow and black (with decorations, of course!). Then there are "clandos" who do their work unofficially. Apparently not all of them are illegal anymore. Out in the village all you can get is clandos like the one in the photo.
Car rapides. They are old delivery vans that have been completely stripped out and converted into mobile sardine cans. I once counted 29 people in a vehicle that probably has the same wheelbase as a regular 12 passenger van. You can see an interesting documentary here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZjD9QrMR7Y&feature=related. As long as you don't mind grandma sitting halfway on your lap and putting her vegies under your feet, they are a fantastic way to get around town (well, certain parts of it anyway) for very, very cheap. They cost less than a 10th of what a taxi costs.
The amazing 7-place. These are old peugeot 505s that never die. The back seat was clearly made for the youngest children in the family. If you are more than 5'5" tall your knees will be wedged up against the seat in front of you. My poor roommate, who is probably 6'3", had to ride in back once and he vows he will never do it again. He doesn't like that bird-in-the-shell feeling. I only rode one 7 place and it was only for a few minutes. That was a relief because I too was in the back seat and it was raining- both outside and inside- because of a missing window seal. And then there are Ndiaga Ndiayes, which are the same basic idea as a Car Rapide but bigger. They go between cities. The seating inside is similar to a conventional bus but there is no passenger door in the front (just in the back) and there are fold-up seats in the isle to maximize the capacity. Like in the car rapides, major baggage goes on the roof. Sometimes you can see a Ndiaga Ndiaye that is nearly twice it's normal height because of baggage. Once in a while you see one careening down the road (suspension is a rare commodity) with two dozen guys up on the roof banging on drums and yelling. I'm still not sure what that's about. I think it might be a religious group. Either that or soccer fans, which are arguably a religious group of their own rite.
Finally, there are the "official" buses like the one in the photo. Some run set routes within the capital city and some run between cities. The price for the in-city buses is slightly more than the car rapides but they make fewer stops so they are usually a little bit faster. Like any other vehicles, though, they frequently get stuck in traffic. That, combined with rather liberal timekeeping, means that a bus can easily be an hour late. The only time I tried to take one I had to sit at the bus stop for at least 45 minutes before it showed up. If you want to get somewhere more or less on time you need to take a car rapide. There are so many of them that you usually don't have to wait very long.
Most days aren't a problem. There is enough traffic going back and forth, and enough guys driving clandos, that you don't usually have to wait more than 10 or 15 minutes for a ride. Some days though, especially on a major M holiday, you can be sitting there for an awfully long time.
SO, that is an overview. That's all I have time for tonight. Next blog I'll share some stories from my various rides on public transportation.
9/04/2011
More Village
After everyone was done eating they would pass around a cup of water so everyone could have a drink. I think I drank five times more water than anyone else in the village. I often had a water bottle with me, but I got used to eating without drinking anything. Thank you to uncle K for the filter, I put it through it's paces!
I bet you are thinking, "That sounds like a lot of sitting around and talking." Yes, it was. What made it particularly difficult was that I rarely understood what they were saying. For hours on end I was largely left to observe the others and get lost in my thoughts. Then all of the sudden they would all call my name and tap me on the shoulder."huh? what?"
"He just greeted you!" they would say, pointing to a man who was ambling by.
"Oh... désolé." [sorry] And then I would scramble to think of the appropriate greeting and blurt it out to the expectant well-wisher.
I did find some ways to pass the time, though. I introduced some of the guys to checkers and found out that they had a similar game called "Dame." They gave up playing me when I kept losing. We also played a variation on tic-tac toe where you only get to place three pieces and then have to move them.
I wanted to teach them chess but it would have been kind of complicated finding objects to represent the six different figures in two different colors. We did some other games too using the stones that were lying around and squares or circles drawn in the sand.
Some of the younger boys kept themselves busy during these extended social periods with hand weaving (see picture). They used a pen to weave a plastic line, kind of like fishing line, into a sort of scrunchy that is widely used here in place of washcloths for personal hygiene. They let me try weaving for a while and were gracious enough to undo several knots for me until I got it right.
I enjoyed the time after supper the most. I generally hung out with a group that included more French speakers, so I was able to get in on the conversation once in a while. We also had music on several evenings, as I mentioned in the former blog. La nuit en afrique- ça bouge! I even did a little dancing. The goal of most of the dance seems to be to get various parts of your body to keep as many different rythms at once as possible, kind of like a human drumset. I'm not talented enough for that. The goal near the end of most songs is just to move your feet as quickly as possible. I can do that. It reminds me of track practice.
Once in a while, mainly in the evenings, we would randomly start singing worship songs. Most of these were translated into both the trade language and French, and most of them had originally been written in English. That was great because I already knew the tunes so it wasn't too hard to pick up the words for at least the chorus and sing along. Often they wanted to hear the English version also, so I would sing that for them. One evening we were singing worship songs until 1 AM.
I think I'll wrap up this blog there. The next one will be about my adventures with the local transportation system. Hang on tight, there aren't any seatbelts!!!
9/02/2011
Language Loligags
*note* I know you will probably want to tar and feather me for putting off the next installment of village pictures. Read this anyway, you'll like it.
As I was walking home from work today I was swarmed by children. They are all, as near as I can tell, members of the same family which lives in a shack right behind where I work. Technically they are squatters on our property, but we don't really care. Anyway... I have been getting to "know" some of them, mainly the oldest girl (6ish years old) for the past several months. Our deep relationship consists of "hello" and "what is your name?," since that is all the French that they know. I should really greet them in their own language, but theirs is not one of the four local languages in which I have learned the typical greetings.
Tonight though, six of them came to greet me and shake my hand. They tried speaking to me in their language, and I tried to repeat what they said so as to at least pretend to have a conversation. And I just kept shaking hands. The girl switched into the trade language, which I am supposedly learning, and she said something that included either the word "money" or the word "friend." They sound similar and I am always getting them confused. So she was either professing her friendship or asking me for money. By that time I had shaken each hand at least three times so I bid them farewell and continued on my way. The girl followed me for a while and then eventually went back home. I trundled onward, wondering what all had just transpired.
When I got home I swung by the boutique downstairs before going up to my apartment. There I had an interesting conversation with my friend M, who runs the place. He speaks the trade language fluently and he also speaks some French, so we get by (despite both having heavy accents in French) and I am hoping to pick up more of the trade language from him. As I was hanging around, another of his friends came in and they started discussing wrestling in the trade language (I knew what they were talking about because I recognized the names of the wrestlers). The friend asked M something and he said to wait 10 minutes. The friend something else and M said, "okay, 5 minutes."
After that guy left M and I chatted a bit more and then I told him my initial purpose for coming; I needed to buy an egg. Unfortunately I have a very hard time pronouncing the word for egg in French (oeuf) and he didn't seem to understand me. He told me to come back in 5 minutes. I asked him to repeat himself and he told me to go up to my apartment and come back in 5 minutes. I figured he must have missunderstood me entirely and was inviting me to go do something in 5 minutes with him and his other friend. Several customers walked in just then so I left, not knowing what else to do.
I got back to my apartment and discussed the interchange with my roommate, who explained to me that when you ask for an egg in the boutique, it means that you want a hard-boiled egg. That is why he had told me to come back in 5 minutes. In order to buy a regular egg, you need to ask for "un oeuf non préparé." (a non-prepared egg).
I was very tempted to not go back down. I was feeling kind of tired of not being understood and I would rather just escape to Facebook where people speak English. But I went back down to the boutique and bought the hardboiled egg, since I had technically asked him to make it, and then I bought a regular egg as well. Whew! One language dilemma solved anyway! Now I just need to decide what to do with these eggs.
As I was walking home from work today I was swarmed by children. They are all, as near as I can tell, members of the same family which lives in a shack right behind where I work. Technically they are squatters on our property, but we don't really care. Anyway... I have been getting to "know" some of them, mainly the oldest girl (6ish years old) for the past several months. Our deep relationship consists of "hello" and "what is your name?," since that is all the French that they know. I should really greet them in their own language, but theirs is not one of the four local languages in which I have learned the typical greetings.
Tonight though, six of them came to greet me and shake my hand. They tried speaking to me in their language, and I tried to repeat what they said so as to at least pretend to have a conversation. And I just kept shaking hands. The girl switched into the trade language, which I am supposedly learning, and she said something that included either the word "money" or the word "friend." They sound similar and I am always getting them confused. So she was either professing her friendship or asking me for money. By that time I had shaken each hand at least three times so I bid them farewell and continued on my way. The girl followed me for a while and then eventually went back home. I trundled onward, wondering what all had just transpired.
When I got home I swung by the boutique downstairs before going up to my apartment. There I had an interesting conversation with my friend M, who runs the place. He speaks the trade language fluently and he also speaks some French, so we get by (despite both having heavy accents in French) and I am hoping to pick up more of the trade language from him. As I was hanging around, another of his friends came in and they started discussing wrestling in the trade language (I knew what they were talking about because I recognized the names of the wrestlers). The friend asked M something and he said to wait 10 minutes. The friend something else and M said, "okay, 5 minutes."
After that guy left M and I chatted a bit more and then I told him my initial purpose for coming; I needed to buy an egg. Unfortunately I have a very hard time pronouncing the word for egg in French (oeuf) and he didn't seem to understand me. He told me to come back in 5 minutes. I asked him to repeat himself and he told me to go up to my apartment and come back in 5 minutes. I figured he must have missunderstood me entirely and was inviting me to go do something in 5 minutes with him and his other friend. Several customers walked in just then so I left, not knowing what else to do.
I got back to my apartment and discussed the interchange with my roommate, who explained to me that when you ask for an egg in the boutique, it means that you want a hard-boiled egg. That is why he had told me to come back in 5 minutes. In order to buy a regular egg, you need to ask for "un oeuf non préparé." (a non-prepared egg).
I was very tempted to not go back down. I was feeling kind of tired of not being understood and I would rather just escape to Facebook where people speak English. But I went back down to the boutique and bought the hardboiled egg, since I had technically asked him to make it, and then I bought a regular egg as well. Whew! One language dilemma solved anyway! Now I just need to decide what to do with these eggs.
