Chicken Buses #2

Were you late getting up and did not have time to have any breakfast?  Did you forget about your nephew’s birthday and are now rushing there empty-handed?  Are you feeling a bit under the weather?  Did you have to stay at work late and now need to head home in the dark? Or maybe you missed your Sunday service?  Well, no worries.  All that you might desire will be provided for you.  Whether it is a cold Fanta, a breakfast snack, a meal comprised of chicken with rice, a kid’s toy, a flashlight, some vitamins and even a 20 minute sermon, all of this can be found on your local chicken bus.

The chicken buses are wonderful inventions that cater to everyone’s needs.  Every stop you make, a vendor (or ten) board the bus offering you everything your heart might desire.  They are not worried if the bus starts moving before they have a chance to get off. They know that at the next stop they’ll be able to catch a bus back to their starting point and thereby satisfy another 50 people’s wishes. 

Over what by now amounts to years of travel and the dozens of countries I’ve been to, I must state that I love public transportation in third world countries.  There is nothing more convenient, more efficient and more user friendly than this form of transportation.  You never have to worry about not knowing the bus schedule.  You don’t have to worry about knowing which bus to take or about carrying the correct change. These buses, their drivers and their attendants will provide you with all the necessary information.  They will charge you the correct bus fare, will tell you where to get off the bus, which bus to catch for your next destination and will provide any assistance that you might need.

The vendors are an added benefit.  I have traveled through places such as Peru and Chile, where the buses might be a bit fancier and more comfortable, but where the same services are provided.  There, rather than coming onto the bus, they would lift their baskets on long sticks and offer you their goods through the window.  You would put the money in the basket; they would lower it, and raise their products up to you again. Here, despite their curvaceous figures, they managed to squeeze through the buses, and come to you directly.

So not only do you get to enjoy the services of a local travel agent, money changer, and an entire shopping center and food court, but you also get to listen to fantastic music, get very close and personal with many locals and travel from point A to point B. All of this you can accomplish by merely getting on one of the many colorful chicken buses.

PS: The opposite is also true.  You can get on one of these buses already in possession of everything that you need, and leave without one or all of those possessions.  The vendors, who are keen to sell you whatever they have, sometimes seem to take the opportunity to enrich themselves by other means, such as snatching from ones hand an iPhone and running off before anyone can even react.