Training to catch a bus (Ethiopia, 13/03/09)

Having found a hotel some fifty or so metres from the bus station the night before, and having been told I would need to be at the gate to the bus station at five am, I stumbled out of the hotel at five on the dot at was soon at the gate of the bus station, a huge empty, open space the size of a couple of football fields, still blanketed in almost complete darkness. I made my way to where the security guard the night before had indicated that the buses to Robe left from and where two buses where parked. As I approached the buses I noticed that there were a number of people milling around, and that further off on the other side of the station there were a collection of other buses and groups of people milling around. There didn't seem to be much going on, so I stood around trying not to fall asleep on my feet. After about ten minutes the blinding lights of an approaching bus illuminated how many people were actually waiting, and as the bus drew nearer everybody started to madly dash about - one group groping at the side of the bus and following it as it manoeuvred in to position, whilst another seemed to be forming some sort of line. By the time the bus came to a stop the two groups had converged - and when the official looking blue lab coat attired bus boy - with the appropriate laminated ID card draped around his neck appeared the crowd fell in to a queue at his direction, about twenty metres away from the bus. Having learnt the lesson long ago that white man can't queue (at least not with Africans) I stood back and watched the action unfold. After a fair amount of jostling the bus boy then started to allow people to get on the bus - but in a way that reminded me of old PLO training videos that I had seen somewhere. The bus boy allowed about ten people at a time to proceed, and in the dim pre-dawn light as the lucky passengers half ran and half scuttled the twenty metres to the bus, the shawls, woolly hats and turbans combined with the bags under their arms that looked like automatic weapons, made it look like a Hamas run training session. When they arrived at the bus door the jam of people slowed things down as people clambered aboard. Once on the bus they rushed back and forth, looking a little like a line of ants, reserving their seats, and stowing their luggage in any place they could find, above or below the seats. This went on until the bus was notionally full - about sixty to seventy people - without really making a dent in the length of the queue. A few locals were standing around with me asking where I was going, one explained that there weren't many buses to Robe, and as the first one was already full people were rushing to get on this one. At that point I decided that if there was a transport shortage then it would be inappropriate to steal a seat from a local, and despite the monumental effort of getting up before five am, I would change my plan and head straight up to Addis. I continued to stand around though pondering whether I had actually made a decision. I then noticed that what I had perceived as a relatively orderly boarding of the bus was anything but - people were not getting on, and more strangely, off the bus with some frequency, destroying any sense of order. After watching a few Johnny-come-latelys insinuate their way on to the bus, my bemusement at the whole process was starting to crack the feeble sense of reality that I was grasping at five thirty in the morning.
Then the bus boy approached me, confirmed that I was going to Robe, said "Come on" and half pulled me towards the bus. He took my bag off me, and then allocated me a seat right down the back of the bus, so everyone already on the bus could stare at me as I walked bus. The strange thing is that there was absolutely no animosity in their faces, despite them having ran, queued and then fought their way on to the bus, they seemed to just accept that the farengi would be allocated a seat as well. Having seen locals arrive after me and still get a seat my guilt waned, when my fellow passengers started welcoming me and talking to me in their broken English, I felt it would now be rude to get off the bus. As the sun began to rise and the first light of the morning lit up the bus station, I noticed that people were still chasing buses and queuing, as we set off on our journey, and I wondered how many of them would make it to where they wanted to go that day.