Ho Ho Ho!

The extremes that one experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer are sometimes so ridiculous as to be hilarious. Case in point: the journey I must take in order to go home for Christmas.

This trip begins with me getting my house ready for a three week absence. Cover my clothes rack so that my clothes won’t be caked with red dust when I get back, empty my water filter so it won’t start growing interesting algae, firmly close my latrine door so that the gnats that insist on communing there won’t decide to expand their colony into my house, and make sure I’ve turned off the gas for my little stove. I handed a spare key over to my neighbors so they can deposit the load of laundry I left them to wash. And once this is all done, the neighbor boys grabbed my bags (one of which is bigger than they are) to set them on the side of the road. Then I found a shady spot, one that is still in clear view of the road, to flag down the next taxi that comes my way.

Luckily this time I only had to sit for an hour, and not the usual three. What was once a green car came rattling around the corner. “Start waving!” I yelled to my entourage of eight and ten year old boys. The oldest one looked at me skeptically and said “THAT car, Guannigui?” You know your standards have reached an all time low when the village boy is even skeptical of your ride. He had a point you know. The car had been welded together more times than scrap metal in a high school shop class. But the car was going my way, and there’s no way I was going to pass that up.

It pulled over to pick me up. At the wheel was a chauffer I’ve ridden with before. Plenty of times, actually. I like him; he has a funny scratchy voice and always talks about when we’re getting married. We both know it’s a joke, which is a relief. But the joke has big enough strokes of wishful thinking in it for me to get the seat of honor in the taxi – the front seat. This is fine with me. The front seat means less dust, and less being crammed between two mothers with babies, a skinny Fulani herder, and the 14 year-old driver-in-training. After dropping off some women at a village on the way, the driver tells me that they jokingly accused him of giving me the front seat only because I’m white. “But what they don’t know,” he told me with a conspiratorial wink, “Is that you’re my wife. And the wife of the chauffeur always gets the front seat.” That’s right, buddy.

But not even this privileged position can make the trip any faster. From Tobre to Parakou should take two and half hours actually took five. This is due to multiple stops to drop people off, pick people up, argue the price, detour to a village to drop off boxes of tomato paste and soap, and the state of the roads. If I hadn’t been picked up by my husband, I probably would have been in the back seat. This means that once we hit the paved road, I look like four hours after smearing cheap self-tanning lotion all over my face. That is to say, orangish, with special emphasis on the creases around my nose.

Once we arrived at the paved road, I switched to a nicer car (by nicer we mean it has a tape deck, but the bass in the speakers went out in 1991, but this doesn’t stop us from playing the twangy guitar music at top volume). At this point it had already been three hours since I left Tobre. I was a little hungry. So I bought a paté, a piece of fried dough with a drop of sardine oil in the middle, for ten cents. Delicious.

One of the most important things to remember on bush taxi trips is that no matter what – no matter how many times the bald tires pop, no matter how many goats are tied on the roof rack, no matter how squished you are – you always get there eventually. This trip was no exception, and at 1:30 we rolled into Parakou. Which is where I am now.

I’m anticipating the next leg of my trip: a bus ride to Cotonou. This trip usually takes seven hours. The bus stops once along the way… in theory. One should expect a tire to blow or the engine to overheat. And also for the women on the bus to force the driver to pull over so they can all go pee on the side of the road. The one official stop is in a southern town, Bohicon. This place is the definition of chaos. All the bus lines stop in a certain bus park. A first-timer might look at the dirt lot filled with buses and wonder how our bus will ever find a place to squeeze in. But it does. And as soon as the bus stops, the hordes of vendors swarm the thing so that getting off is the most overwhelming part of your day. Oranges, soap, ambiguous cuts of meat, packs of Kleenex, plastic bags of water – all placed strategically to catch your attention (translation: shoved into your face). It helps to know ahead of time what you want to get off to buy, otherwise you might get so disoriented that when its time to continue on you miss the bus. I always head straight towards the ladies selling little orange soy crackers. If the season is right, then I go to the women selling pineapple and have them cut me up a little one. We joke about the price, me insisting that it costs 20 cents and them insisting that it costs 30. This place is really a experience during the rainy season. The dirt becomes a swamp, a quagmire, and there’s really no point in hoping to keep your feet clean. It’ll wash off at some point.

If I’m really lucky, the bus I take will have a TV in front. Three possible things can be shown: 1. A Celine Dion music video on loop, 2. A Cote d’Ivoirian music video on loop, or 3. A Cote d’Ivoirian sitcom on loop.

Back onto the bus for another couple of hours, where upon arrival I’ll find a green-shirted taxi-moto driver (a zemidjan), haggle the price, and take off for the cheap hotel we volunteers always stay at. A couple minutes of weaving in and out of the crazy Cotonou traffic and we’re there.

Now. Lets compare this with the transport that I’ll take to get from Cotonou, to Charles de Gualle airport in Paris, to San Francisco International. I will never complain about the leg room in coach again. An entire seat to myself! No squeezing five people in a space meant for three! “Free” meals! Champagne! I’m assuming there will be no flat tires or engine trouble (lets cross our fingers). A movie screen placed strategically to catch my attention (translation: on the back of the seat in front of me, right in front of my face). There will be people talking to be sure, but in hushed tones. If a baby cries, everyone will roll their mind’s eye. The only music to be heard is in the background of the In Case of Emergency video, or in the headphones that you can choose to wear. Upon arrival, the airport will be clean. The personnel will be helpful, if not especially friendly. If I’m hungry while I wait for the next flight, I’ll probably go buy a croissant, which if my memory doesn’t fail me, costs about four dollars. The bathrooms will have toilets (gnat free!), running water, soap, AND paper towels.

I’d like to take a moment to be true to my liberal arts education. The vast differences between the two sides of my trip (in Benin and leaving Benin), should not be compared in order to decide which way is better. Both have their charm. There’s something to be said about sitting on a stranger’s lap, squeezed into a taxi, smelling the body smells of the fifteen other people and five animals that share the vehicle with you. But, there is also something to be said for flush toilets, magazine stands, and a food tray that folds down. There’s something so fascinating about people’s love for Celine Dion, and music video technology in general. There’s also something fascinating about watching a newly released movie (one that isn’t pirated by Nigerians), and the technology that allows me to choose between ten of them. Don’t you think so?

Also, I think it’s worth saying that I’m really looking forward to the meal they’ll serve me on the plane. Not for the quaintness value, which is usually why I look forward to it, but I’m actually looking forward to the taste and nutritional value.

Merry Christmas everybody!