U tsamaile joang?

As a Peace Corps volunteer, I am not permitted to drive in country.  Hitching is seriously discouraged, unless it is the only way you can get from point A to point B.  Riding in the back of an open-back truck is forbidden.  That leaves the option of public transport.  Taxis, Kombis, Quantums, Shuttles, Buses….the mode of transport varies from site to site.

I’ve learned that If a trip should take 2 hours, I can expect to arrive at my destination in four.  It’s a good general rule to follow…I will always be arriving 2 hours late.

I want to describe the details of a particular journey i took about a month ago, a journey that typifies all of the general experiences a volunteer deals with on public transport.  Most of the things that happened on this day I had seen before, but this was a very special day, as I’ve yet to deal with so much craziness in one trip.  Enjoy.

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I was coming back from Hlotse after a generally disappointing Teacher’s Workshop at the Leribe Ministry of Education Office.  After picking up some groceries, I made my way through the rank, a true stimulus for the senses.  Let me describe:

You walk between hundreds of shoddy, dirty tin shacks.  Depending on which way the wind is blowing, you may enjoy the sweet smells of roasted corn, bried meat, and maquena.  Some times, though,  the wind will betray you .  You might just get to savor the rancid smells of garbage, urine and excrement.

Throughout the way, people are looking at you, the white one, for support.  “Buy a banana!”  “Look at my goods”  “You want some daja?  I can get you great daja!”  It’ sucks to have to say ‘no’ so many times.  Each of them shoots a look of honest disappointment, they thought the white person was a sure thing.

On top of that are the conductors, harassing you from everywhere.  “Lekhoa!  Lekhoa!  U ea kae!?”  Each of them wants to take you somewhere you don’t want to go.  Some of them grab you.  You have to peel their hands off of your wrists and make it clear that you are not pleased.  They, like everyone else, don’t understand why you are being so rude.

This sounds intense, but Hlotse is one of the nicest taxi ranks in Lesotho. You get desensitized quickly, and these things become perfectly ordinary.  I walked through, unfazed and unappreciative of the sights, smells and sounds that were happening around me.

I made my way to a large, white and red, hand-painted sign sitting nearly-level on the top of a shack.  It read “Bokong Taxi Association.”  I approached the window, and purchased a ticket from the man at the counter.  He greeted me with a huge smile, “Ntate Kamohelo!” he exclaimed, while I tried to remember his name.  That’s the best thing about the Sesotho language, is forgetting people’s names isn’t awkward at all.  “Aaaaayyy Ntaaaate!”  I exclaimed, happy to see him.  He handed me a ticket and I picked my seat in the kombi.

In America this is where I would ask the driver what time we are going to leave.  In Africa, however, schedules are few and far between.  Time is fluid, it is time to leave when enough people get on the kombi…A waiting game.  From Hlotse it is never too bad, especially on this trip it was late enough in the day that the vehicle would fill quickly.   When leaving from my village, Ha Lejone, i can be sitting for 2 hours before departure.

While I sat and waited a woman pushed a bowl full of fruit through the open window.  I bought a banana just as a group of drunks stumbled into the vehicle and sat with me in the back seat.  They had 2 bags full of beer.  This was gonna be a fun ride.  One of them asked me in Sesotho if they could have my banana.  I said ‘no’.  I wasn’t irritated at first, but he said something in Sesotho and indicated with body language and facial expression that I was a selfish piece of garbage.  Get your own banana, I thought.  I would have shared if he wasn’t so rude about it.  I hate it when people expect me to give everything away.

The kombi filled and I counted the number of passengers.  It’s kind of a game for peace corps volunteers to see how many can actually squeeze into a kombi.  My record is 22, including children and babies.  Others have counted more, though.  This ride had 19, with just one baby sitting with her mother in front of me.  As always, there was a decal to my right, announcing in big, red letters: “Maximum Load: 15 passengers”.  Hah.

We departed and I started a conversation with banana-guy’s friend in Sesotho.  This guy didn’t seem like such a grumpy-gills, but he was certainly drunk, and he wouldn’t stop talking about my watch.  He wanted it.  He offered to trade his bag of beer, his sweater, and his cell-phone.  I lied and told him it was a gift from my father and I couldn’t part with it.  This didn’t stop him.  At one point, i misunderstood and thought he said he wanted to look at it.  He was a nice enough guy. I took it off and let him see it, and he smiled, fastened it to his wrist, and handed me the beer.  He was disappointed to see I hadn’t agreed to the trade.

Later, drunken watch-guy grabbed the baby, without so much as looking at the mother, and started bouncing the child on his knee.  It was kind of heart-warming to see in a strange way.  He was drunk, but very good with the baby.  He was young.  I wondered if he had a kid of his own.

The baby got passed around to all the drunk guys.  If the mother was bothered, she didn’t show it.  Basotho are very communal with babies on transport.  They get passed around like a newspaper or a magazine.

Banana-guy was still getting on my nerves.  He was loud, drunk, and obnoxious.  The conductor on the combi was drinking too, and I had to keep passing a bottle of rum that was being passed between them.  The kombi was now party-central.  All the Ntate except the quiet one to my left were passing drinks around.  They offered me, but I declined, again with a lie, saying Peace Corps doesn’t allow it.  The driver cracked open a beer, and I made a mental note to keep track of how many he had.  The Bo ‘M’e, or ladies on the kombi were dead silent.  They were obviously unhappy with what was happening, but they would never complain.

We started making our way up the mountain, and the ‘M’e with the baby whipped out some mountains of her own and started feeding her child.  Boobs are nothing special in Lesotho, just another part of the body.  You’ll see them everywhere, at the store, walking down the street.  It always startles me and I look away when I realize what i’m seeing, but Basotho are truly unaffected.

We reached the check-point, a gate that for me signals the half-way point of the trip.  It was originally designed as a check to keep people from stealing supplies from the construction of the Katse Dam.  I’m not sure why it’s there, now, but there are police stationed there, and lots of Bo ‘M’e selling peaches and fruits to the travelers that have to get out of their vehicles.  Nothing gets searched, and the older ladies usually don’t even bother to get out of the vehicles.  It’s pretty useless.

We got back into the car and continued our crawl up the mountain.  The kombis aren’t particularly powerful machines and they struggle with the steep grades.  The music was way too loud.  They listen to a horrible mixture of accordian and screaming “music” called famole.  It is Lesotho’s very own, very unique herd-boy gansta rap…i’m not even joking.  As I said, the music was too loud and there was one particular ear-splitting whistle that rattled my brain and made me wish I were dead.

Now well into his second beer(that I was privy to), the driver pulled the car over and took a pee over the ledge of the mountain.

Shortly after, the vehicle started hopping like a jumping bean.  Inside the kombi heads were being shaken, beers were being spilled.  First gear was slipping.  Second gear was okay, but there was not enough torque to get us over the steeper grades.  Eventually, the grade became too steep even for jumping-bean gear.  The kombi could not continue without stalling.  The radio was turned off.  Some things were said in Sesotho I didn’t understand.  The party around me fell dead silent.  Skillfully, the driver turned us around on the narrow mountain road. Dammit, I thought, after all of this time we’re going to have to go back down.  Who knows how long it will be until they can find us a ride to get us home! Dreading the trip back down, i sulked my way into acceptance.  This is Africa.  These things happen.

I was reaching for my water bottle when the driver popped us into gear and we started going up the mountain…in reverse.

Now a smart man would have said, “No.  This is a bad idea.  Going up the mountain in reverse with a driver that has been drinking is actually kind of a stupid choice.  Let me out of the car.”  That is what a smart man would say.  I was not a smart man that day.  I was overcome with a particular combination of confusion, surprise, dread and delight.  My reaction was….laughter.  I laughed out long and loud in disbelief.  The rest of the kombi was dead quiet.

Somehow, we made it up the mountain safe.  Again, the driver skillfully spun us around and we continued our way down the mountain, towards my home.  Eventually, another kombi tailed us and started flashing its lights at us.  We pulled over, and some people said something to me in Sesotho I didn’t understand.  Eventually I figured out they wanted me to get in the other kombi with two of the ‘M’e I was riding with.  I grabbed my things, and hopped into the other kombi.

The rest of the trip was nothing short of amazing.  There were 4 of us in the kombi total.  The music wasn’t too loud, and it was afrojazz…the perfect music for traveling through the top of the mountains as dusk settled in.  I took it all in, the music, the scenery, the sobriety of my driver the joy of having a whole row of seats to myself.  Soon I would be home.  Everything. Was. Perfect.

Tagged as: kombi, Lesotho, public transport, Travel