The No 94 bus

So these days I get the No 94 bus to work, three mornings a week, ... and I love it. The bus part that is: work is still a bit scary, but definitely getting better.

It took me a while to figure out that the No 94 bus goes from just around the corner, and ends up a three minute walk from my workplace. Fantastic.

The first time, I automatically walked halfway towards the back and sat without any thought somewhere on the left. When I told Abby and Alex later about the bus, their question was: "Was it a doubledecker?" "Yes..." "Did you sit upstairs?" "No..." "WHAT??? You went on a doubledecker bus and didn't sit upstairs??! What a waste of a chance!!!"

So now, every day I go on the bus, I head straight for the curly stairs, turn to the front, and sit in the seat right in the window, surrounded by glass, sailing along above the hedges and garden fences, watching the sky and the trees - and it is a lot more fun... I hope to take this as a life lesson - Don't Waste "Chances"!

The whole bus experience is the opposite of how it would be in Uganda. For one thing, it is totally safe. Yes it picks up speed at times, but basically it chunters steadily along, keeping in the right lane, never over-taking, pulling out slowly, stopping in the yellow boxes exactly where it is meant to stop...

For another thing, the bus leaves at the time it is scheduled to leave, every ten minutes in this case, on the dot. You don't wait for it to fill up, for more people to come, for the driver to go and pee or buy a coke...

For a third thing, you sit alone, rarely even sharing a double seat with anybody - in fact so far I have never shared my double seat. Nobody's shoulder or thigh pressing into yours, nobody's breath across your face, nobody pushing themselves past you to squeeze into an impossibly small space next to you. I did actually talk to someone on the bus sitting across from me, once, and heard his sad story of how his lady friend died and her family then rejected him. But normally I stick my earphones in, switch my brain off, look out the windows, and have thirty minutes of peace and quiet and try to draw in peace from the trees and fields. And pray... (but not that I'll survive the journey.)

For a fourth thing, the bus is a green option and therefore you can feel really good about it. It saves me adding my car's emissions to the atmosphere, and it doesn't puff out black clouds like many African buses do.

I love going to work by bus and choose it any day over driving, whereas in Uganda, OK I admit it, I only went by matatu about three times, ever. I had done more of my share of going by "public" in Zimbabwe, and I did not feel like exposing myself to the discomfort and risk of the buses in Uganda.

 

Here you never get this...

It doesn't start or end like this...

You never get this...

Hmm.... my version might seem pretty dull, predictable, and overly "safe" now I come to think of it. But, I am ready for safe, and for peaceful, for now. African buses will still be there when we come back for a visit, and I probably still won't ride them...