ZZ Top: Have mercy, old bus be packed up tight.

When Dusty and Billy wrote this song, I have to wonder if they were recounting an experience in Africa.

Though probably not, because unlike the opening line to this song, you never have to wait all day for the bus.  They come by every few minutes in fact – hold out your hand, wherever you are along the way, and if there’s room, they’ll stop; and often even if there is not room.  They’re all packed.  And I mean packed.  They are not the city buses you are thinking of, but rather small vans, much like an airport shuttle, so everyone is seated.  In theory anyway.  The four rows all have a small collapsible (and debatably stable) seat at the end, so in transit, not an inch is wasted.  And I mean not an inch at any given moment.  Rows that seat four will often have five or six adults squeezed in.  Yet that doesn’t deter the drivers from stopping or the porters from taking on passengers – people are arranged to sit on strangers’ laps, the porter will often stand, hunched over, for long chunks of the journey, his rear end maybe hanging out of the slid-open window or hovering in someone’s face.  I spent a good half hour of one bus trip basically on my knees, shins digging into the hump behind the driver’s seat, fighting to keep a portion of one butt cheek on the torn and taped-up seat behind me, as the passengers on either side slowly inched me out.  Periodically throughout the trip, the porter watches my arm as he gently pokes it – I think he’s waiting for a bruise to form under my thin skin.  Towards the end of this ride, the porter, the guy on my left, and the guy behind Claire engage in a conversation peppered with uproarious laughter and the word mzungo over and again.  I’m slightly uncomfortable imagining the unsavory content of the conversation; Claire assuages this by imagining they’re telling the mzungo version of “your momma” jokes.

The drivers are mostly maniacal and are on the horn – hard! (no polite “toot toot”s) – more than they’re off it.  They will come up behind a bicycle (carrying, say, a bed, or a bundle of 10-foot poles) with unfathomable speed, and then lean on the horn.  The cyclist doesn’t flinch.  The chickens and goats scurry out of the way.  Everyone knows the drill.  Dust-covered small children sit along the roadsides, inches from the buses roaring past.  One driver pulled on his seatbelt as we approached a military check point (they do spot inspections and occasionally check papers), and promptly removes it once out of sign of the soldiers.  Before I left for Africa, I received countless exhortations of “be careful!”  I assume my family and friends meant from alligators and snakes, or terrorists and bandits, or forbidden trans-continental love.  I don’t suppose they were referring to the bus.  But as it turns out, riding the public bus is probably the most dangerous thing I do in Burundi. 

The roads are trashed – the smooth portions are a brief respite from the jostling and jerking that colors most of the ride. 

And colorful it is.  While stops are made on an as-needed basis at the wave of an arm, there are a few pre-determined stops at the small towns that dot the route.  At these stops, the buses are swarmed with women and boys peddling their goods, elbowing each other out of the way to get the windows – baskets of fruits and vegetables on heads (“Madame Madame!  Mandarina!  Mille francs!”), platters of banana-leaf encased cassava “bread,” bunches of onions, hard-cooked eggs (also stacked on heads), peanut packets, freshly grilled skewered “brochettes“ (kebab), bunches of miniature bananas. 

The sight of a mzungo on the bus will elicit particular enthusiasm; I imagine they envision a profit in their future.  I love the excitement of these roadside transactions (and the prospect of having some fresh produce at my disposal) – but make it fast … when the bus is ready to go, it goes, whether or not your hand is out the window in mid-exchange.  As the bus takes off, the porter is without fail still hanging out of the open door – he eventually piles inside and slides the door shut with an authoritative slam.  

There is of course no schedule – as soon as they’re full, they go.  The city buses operate from the area just outside of old market in downtown Bujumbura, which sadly has recently been rendered inoperable by a fire – arson is suspected.  We can take these buses back and forth between downtown and our house in Buj. The chaos is dizzying.  How anyone knows which bus goes where, I have no idea, but everyone seems to know. The buses are parked so close to each other, one has to almost turn sideways to pass between them.  A guy is walking around holding two live chickens upside down by the feet.  Somehow, my colleague Peter finds the bus that will take us to our street’s corner – it costs just under 20 cents.

Catching a bus between Kigutu and and Bujumbura is less confusing, but no less chaotic. The very second we step out of a cab or a VHW vehicle at the depots (which are just the gas station or street corner where buses once began convening and have done so ever since), we are surrounded by young guys anxious to outscream each other and win our business.  On a journey this week to Kigutu with a Burundian friend, there is a fierce negotiation as we arrive at the solicited vehicle to discover the only seats left are in the first row, next to the doors.  Arnaud tells me he is insisting that the porter not add three more passengers to the already-full front row, which is of course common practice; at each stop, Arnaud gives the porter the hairy eyeball, ensuring the promise is kept.  The guy next to me has a giant television on his lap. 

As a sidenote to my friends in New York, I am apparently not the last living person with a tube tv; I now know there are two of us.  When tv guy exits at a stop along the way, I slide over toward the door.  As the porter goes to close it, people in the back admonish him “don’t break the mzungo.”

Claire and me - risking it all in the front seat.

If you’re lucky (and enjoy danger), you score shotgun, which keeps you immune from the fight for butt space or the violation of the sanctity of your own lap.  On a recent journey, my friend Claire and I were hurriedly escorted from our VHW vehicle to the front seat of a bus headed for Bujumbura, as two passengers disembarked.  I figured we had gotten lucky, not noticing that these two passengers simply climbed in the back to continue their journey.  I later remember my friend Gerard having an intense conversation in Kirundi (they always seem to be intense) from the front of our VHW vehicle through the open rear doors, with the porter.  Sometime later, I twig on and ask him if he negotiated that front seat for me – of course, he says.  He didn’t think I’d be happy in the back, strangers climbing over me, huddled among the masses.  I never cease to be touched by the way my Burundian friends take care of me.  

Money is exchanged informally at some point (no one knows when) along the way.  A tap on the shoulder and a rubbing of fingers indicates it’s time.  Money is passed from the back of the bus from passenger to passenger to reach the porter.  The two-hour ride from upcountry (any place outside of the capital, whether north or south, is “upcountry”) to Bujumbura is 3000 BIF – less than $2.

The vehicles are all in unbelievable disrepair.  The sliding side doors and exterior luxuries like bumpers hang on by a thread, everything inside is filthy, dusty, cracked, torn, taped, peeling, uneven, inoperable (ahem, seatbelts), wobbly.   In contrast to the dilapidation is the names of these buses.  Bright metallic letters shine on windshields with proud names like Bless of God (sic), God is One, God is Power Full (sic), Only God, Fils de Dieu (son of God), God Love Me (sic), Chance of God.  Others have seemingly random names like “Doucement” (softly) and Old Secret – I’m sure they mean something profound to someone.  Many of course are in Kirundi or Swahili, and I do see the word “Imana” on several – Kirundi for God.  Some have hilarious juxtapositions, like “In God We Trust” on the front, and “Lakers” across the back.  My favorite so far is “Elvis.”  Even in Burundi he’s the king.

I sit with a South African on my flight to Johannesburg.  He has worked in Angola, Rwanda, and presently Uganda.  We discuss the buses – his face expresses horror as he eschews the idea of ever riding the public bus in such countries (his stories about the buses in Tanzania are so outrageous that I now think Burundi comparatively safe).  My South African friends in Bujumbura would agree – they wouldn’t get on the bus if you paid them.  Well, easy for them – they have cars.  But we do not.  So travel between Kigutu and Bujumbura, if schedules don’t coincide with a VHW trip, necessitates the bus.   And without fail, have mercy indeed – old bus be packed up tight!