Ridin' the van

I do sometimes ride buses here. They are more or less the same as the buses where you live, and therefore they aren't terribly blogworthy. More often, however, I ride the vans. The vans are blogworthy. These marvelous vehicles were built several decades ago to serve as utility vans. I have little doubt that they performed their duties marvelously before being sent into "retirement" in Africa.  Here they had holes cut into the sides (for windows) and benches welded onto the walls. Four used tires, some dirty oil, and she's back on the road!

These are not large vehicles. They probably have the wheelbase of a typical sedan. Yet the seating is expected to accommodate 21 passengers. When there are more than that, up to six people stand between the feet of those sitting down and another two or three can hang off the back. You would think that carrying 30 people would bottom out the suspension but you would be wrong- these vehicles have no suspension.

The vans drive the same route all day long. When they don't have enough passengers they stop until enough people get on to pay for the next leg of the journey. The most you ever pay for a van ride in town is 30 cents (but usually 20 or less), so at that rate you can understand why the vans need so many passengers to pay for gas and never-ending repairs. Fortunately for me there are a lot of vans that run between my apartment and just about everywhere else in town (and lots of people riding). Otherwise you can end up sitting for 5 or 10 minutes waiting for enough passengers to get on so you can leave.

The insides of the vans are usually bare-bones. Well, bare metal. But often they have pictures. This morning I was languidly observing the collection as I rode a van into town. There were three big pictures. Two were well-known national religious leaders. These told me which religious sect the driver belonged to. The third was a wrestler. If I bothered to educate myself in the whos-who of the national wrestling scene, this picture would probably tell me what region the driver comes from and possibly also his ethnicity.

Those three pictures barely aroused my curiosity. Religious leaders and wrestlers are standard fare here and they commonly share space on windshields, bumpers, walls, T-shirts, and television. The only thing that really struck me was that the picture of the wrestler said "The king is back" and the "is back" part was written along the guy's spine. It made me wonder if whoever designed the poster actually speaks good English and deliberately made a pun for his own private giggles. I kind of doubted it, though, since the French line said "le futur Roi" (The future king), which didn't make much sense if the king was back.

Anyway, in between and around these three paper-sized images were lots of small pictures. They fell squarely into two categories: male rappers and female singers. I assume the guys were rappers because they all wore clothes made for somebody twice their size, they all stood in odd positions, and none of them were smiling. The females were all large women with so much makeup that they looked like china dolls. This look seems to be popular here. Unlike the rapper guys, they smiled.

Then an anomaly caught my eye.  Up there in the far corner. Could that be a white guy?! Oh wait. Nope. That's Michael Jackson.

Strange but true! I bet you wish you could take the van with me. You have to admit, it is way more fun than a boring old bus.