It has long been a goal of mine to blend into the city here. I stand out enough with my white skin, blue eyes, and long brown hair. I take every advantage to dress and act like those around me. Often I find people complaining to the bus drivers and money collectors on the bus for this reason or that; most of the time I don’t know what the problem seems to be or don’t want to make a scene so my concern goes unmentioned.
Walking up to the bus I should have known there was something wrong. My regular bus stop the busses come almost full (full being 30+ passengers) yet this one had only 7 passengers. I was in a hurry to get to town so boarded. It wasn’t 30second before I noticed the problem. The bus almost tossed me out of my seat tipping right and left. I looked at the girl sitting next to me and she gave me an understanding smile. I felt as if I was in a cartoon car with wheels that were about to fall off. I began to pray that the wheel wouldn’t fall off but then decided because the likely hood of it falling off was so great that I prayed that the driver would keep his speed slow enough so that when the wheel did come off we wouldn’t crash too badly. We passed by other busses and passengers on our way to town. It got to a point that I almost paid to get off and board another bus but I didn’t. Once we got going the wheels seemed to straighten out and the ride was smoother the driver and money collector began to argue. I believe that the driver was trying to tell the money collector how to gather passengers and the money collector was complaining to the driver about his driving. This went on for about 15min as we slowly made our way to town.
I was so fed up with the lack of concern for the passengers within their care that as I exited I summoned my best Kirundi and finger wag and said, “motocar nziza, OYA!” (translation: the bus is good, NO!) and walked away.
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