Don't Let Your Boy Grow Up to Be a Minibus Conductor

Riding a minibus in Malawi is always an adventure. Crammed in with people that haven’t bathed for a few days, goats and chickens at your feet, baby’s peeing on your shoes, it’s a unique experience. Someday I’ll quit being so stingy and move around more in taxis or rental cars or even my own car. In the meantime, I continue to amuse myself with this immersive cultural experience.

 

My foot falls asleep just looking at this picture

As in most businesses, the more customers you have, the more money you make. More passengers in a minibus means more money. The four main factors that limit the number of passengers in the bus are 1) tolerance of the passengers, 2) road laws, 3) the need for a driver and conductor in the bus, and to a lesser extent, space. Unfortunately, Malawians are generally used to, and accepting of, poor customer service (at least compared to my high, pompous standards). They’re used to getting crammed into a bus like sardines because this is the way it always has been. I’ve heard people complain from time to time, but these seeds of upheaval are quickly put down by a stern scolding from the conductor and driver. Like most laws in Malawi, those regulating the number of passengers in a vehicle are very loosely and erratically enforced. This is due to police officers being underequipped, understaffed, under-motivated, bribed, etc. Probably the most important reason for poor enforcement of road laws is that certain roads rarely have police on them, and on those roads the conductor and driver can pack people in excessively without any fear of consequences. Until the Google car or whatever gets to Malawi, there’s no way around needing a driver. However, the space the conductor takes up is very flexible. To make more room for passengers, the conductor can stand up hunched over (the roof of a minibus is about as high as that of a minivan). He can put his head, torso and arms out the window (I’ve heard of more than one conductor being decapitated here, it’s a dangerous job). I’ve been in buses full with one to many people allowed by law, and while approaching a roadblock with police officers, the driver told the conductor to get out, run up ahead, and we’d simply pick him up beyond the roadblock. Very sly.

Maybe I’ve been in America for too long, but a couple days ago something hilarious happened that I had never seen before. I was getting on the bus to the hospital I’m working at. The bus was filling up quickly. The driver and conductor were confident there wouldn’t be any police along the way so they packed us in. We started off with what seemed to me to be a completely full bus, with the conductor hanging out the window barely keeping his legs inside. I was surprised when we stopped to pick up another passenger about a kilometer down the road. Everyone in the bus groaned. Someone asked the conductor where the hell this new passenger was going to sit. The conductor told everyone not to worry. The passenger got in with the conductor pushing his butt in from behind and quickly slammed the door shut. The conductor was outside and I figured we would just leave him behind and the driver would pick him up later or something. The conductor then jumped up so that one of his feet got onto an open window and he pulled himself up on top of the bus! I started laughing, and then everyone was more amused by me, the big white guy on the bus, being amused by the situation then the situation itself. We all joked that this would be a Malawian-style bus ride and that this would never happen in the States. We then proceeded to Nkhoma with the conductor clinging onto the top of the bus. The road to the hospital is curvy through some low mountains. We could hear him struggling to brace himself up there around a few turns, but I had the impression he’d done this many times before and probably had pretty good core strength for this work requirement.

I’ve said it before: this place never stops amazing me. A friend once said that living in Malawi is like one big acid trip, but I’m going to refrain from confirming or denying that…