Are we theeere yet?

For better or for worse, I have spent much of the last 10 days on public transport. Buses, minibuses, pickup trucks, shared taxis. Despite the discomfort and general sweatiness of such travel, I am enjoying it thoroughly, enjoying the chance to see a good portion of southern Africa - from Lusaka to Johannesburg, through Malawi and Mozambique - with the locals who travel these routes routinely.

Through the sweat, cramped muscles and inexhaustible waiting, I have met fascinating people and shared good conversations.

Traveling from Lilongwe to the coast of Lake Malawi, I sat next to a Senegalese businessman who has bought and sold most commodities you can name in as many different African countries. Though this man spoke barely a word of English, he routinely lambasted the conductor in rapid French and Portuguese for piling too many people on the bus. I enjoyed our hours of French conversation, which seemed to confuse the Malawians around us, and the unique perspectives he offered on Malawi.

Coming back from Mt. Mulanje to Blantyre, Malawi's business capital, Nathan and I rode in the back of a pickup truck, a common mode of transport known as matolas in Malawi. We bonded with a group of young Malawian men over a heated game of dice, conversations about religion (typical) and the teamwork required to try to cover ourselves and our belongings from sudden downpours of rain. When the truck left the highway to detour through back alleyways in a nondescript small town, we were told that this was to evade a police checkpoint that regulates matola transport, and we all laughed heartily.

Most recently, in a minibus from Zomba, the British colonial capital perched atop rolling hills and reminiscent of many hill stations I have visited throughout India, to Blantyre, I sat next to a young student finishing his Masters in international relations - similar to the program I plan to begin next fall. We spoke continuously about African politics and his intentions to continue his studies at McGill University in Montreal, making the hour and a half journey fly by in no time at all.

In my dozen or so journeys thus far, conversation has not always filled the hours. Often, I find myself sitting grumpily, cursing myself or other convenient scapegoats - the reckless driver or rude conductor, the scratchy, blown-out audio speakers blaring the same tune over and over again, or the elbowy and smelly man sitting next to me. Most bus rides involve varying periods of waiting until the bus fills up with people; these situations are particularly excruciating and are avoided at all costs. I got on one minibus that was nearly full and apparently ready to roll, proud of myself for avoiding the long fill-up period, only to find that the driver had hired his friends to act as passengers to project the appearance of a full bus and thus attract genuine passengers to get on board. As the minibus circulated town and picked up new passengers, these fake passengers would casually disembark and collect their small payments from the conductor.

The worst of such waiting periods, however, was relieved by an amazing coincidence. As I waited for over three hours for a mid-size bus to fill up in Lilongwe, I read a passage from Ryszard Kapuscinski's The Shadow of the Sun which encapsulated my frustration so perfectly that I couldn't help but relax and silently chuckle. Describing the process of waiting for a bus to fill up in 1958 Accra, Ghana, Kapuscinski wrote:

We climb onto the bus and sit down. At this point there is a risk of
culture clash, of collision and conflict. It will undoubtedly occur if the
passenger is a foreigner who doesn't know Africa. Someone like that will start looking around, squirming, inquiring, "When will the bus leave?"

"What do you mean, when?" the astonished driver will reply. "It will leave when we find enough people to fill it up."

Kapuscinski proceeded to describe his observed differences between African and European concepts of time, which, from my observations, ring true 50 years later and thousands of kilometres away. I cannot repress my Western anxieties completely, and I occasionally still feel grumpy and frustrated during travel, but my varied trips through southern Africa are slowly ingraining in me a new kind of contented resignation about time: "It will leave when we find enough people to fill it up." How this skill will translate to a time-oriented Western job market, I have yet to find out.

On that note, I'm off to catch a bus to the Mozambique border. I'll write from Mozambique, with five or so more bus rides to recount. Until then.