Wednesday, September 19, 2007

A bus ride through Xelaju

Everything we do here is done slowly, with lethargy. We creep along to Xela Pan (the bakery) with the maestros from the Spanish school. My host sisters and I return home an hour after we were told we had to be back. Sometimes we talk for a solid hour after dinner and then we sit in silence…thinking of what else to say. The only thing they do quickly here is drive. Like maniacs, honking, swerving, screeching to a halt and then peeling out. EVERYONE has the simultaneous right-of-way…except for pedestrians.


I wish I could take each of you for a bus ride through Xela, just once. Oddly enough, it’s one of the most unique experiences I have in Xela. The buses are actually large vans for twelve to fifteen passengers. Each bus has a driver and an assistant. The assistants are uniformly young boys about the age of my brother Seppi. They stand on the step into the bus and hang out of the door, calling out a mantra of the various stops or destinations. If there is no assistant, you only need call out your desired destination and the driver will indicate with a flick of his head or hands whether or not he can take you there. As far as I can tell you have to know where buses pass just from experience because there are no marked bus stops. Basically, if you put out your hand, a bus will find you within seconds, even if it requires crossing several lanes of honking traffic.


What is most rich about the bus rides is the sheer number of people who manage to fit into one bus for a ride across town. I have counted up to more than thirty people in a bus meant to fit less than half that much. Furthermore, many of the passengers bring with them bundles of fruits, sacks of grain, briefcases, or yards of woven cloth. If the passenger getting on the bus can’t hold their possessions themselves, the next closest sitting passenger offers to carry the belongings until the owner gets off the bus. This is rarely an act of courtesy, but rather done out of mere necessity. The rule that the elderly and small children are given the priority for seats does not exist. Toddlers are squeezed between strangers, abuelitas sit on the floor, and only the assistant relinquishes his spot.


Somehow I feel incredible safe while riding these packed buses. Even though I may literally have someone on my lap, I don’t feel like anything can happen in a place so brimming full of traveling people and whispering voices and staring eyes. Although, one time I did think I was being pick-pocketed. I felt someone touching my back pocket as if trying to reach something. Afraid to say anything, I glanced to the side and behind me and saw my neighbor digging for a Quetzal in her pocket. We were sitting so closely that I couldn’t distinguish her pocket from mine!


One of my favorite things about the bus rides are when the driver doesn’t have an assistant and closes the door by breaking quickly and then resuming his speeding pace. Or when the radio plays an American pop song and the man across from me mouths the words subconsciously. Or the fact that it only cost a Quetzal to ride, regardless of your destination.


But more importantly, these rides epitomize something so intrinsically Guatemalan that my heart beats a little faster every time I ride and I find my lips curling up in a sad smile from time to time. The smell of hard working people, the empty eyes of the eleven-year-old who hangs out the window—half his body moving with the bus and half dragging somewhere behind, the shuffle of the golden coins on the dashboard, the blank faces of the passengers who rarely acknowledge the existence of the other people pressed against their crouching bodies. It all feels so absolutely real. There’s nothing manufactured or glossy like in a bus in the States. There’s just raw human yearning and waiting. And there’s nothing I can do but mirror the blank stares and clutch my backpack to my chest.

1 comment:

tonx91 said...

I really really love your description of the chicken busses. And your interpretation. It's really colorful and appeals to the senses. It makes me ache to be there with you.

I love you!
fiona