Bus Protests

Perhaps my greatest weakness is my rashness. Or maybe it’s recklessness. I prefer the term “passion.” Described by coaches, friends, and jr. high teacher as “fire-cracker,” “hot-headed,” “strong-willed,” “spit-fire”…. Sometimes manifested (in my slightly more redeeming moments) through intervention on behalf of the helpless. If I’m honest though, the fire-themed descriptions mentioned above are a more accurate representation of the dangerous and damaging potential of a temper untamed.

The Peace Soldier bus may be my least favorite form of transportation in Zambia. Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure there are worse. The overnight bus from Kazembe to Lusaka isn’t exactly a barrel of pure joy. I think my issue with the Peace Soldier bus is that since it’s just a “short” trip, I still feel obligated to be functional when I get to wherever I’m going, but the trip is so exhausting that I just want to curl up and groan myself to sleep.

This last summer, several of us were on our way back from Mansa via the Peace Soldier bus. Much fun. After David successfully warded off a local man who wanted one of the other volunteers to marry him (she happens to be Chinese… he kept saying, “I like her breed.” *shudder*), I traded seats with a rather portly gentleman so that I could sit in the back seat next to David. On my other side was a mother with 2 young children.  The back row had 4 seats. The woman held the littlest boy on her lap while the preschooler occupied the last seat.  She seemed terrified of inconveniencing me and kept apologizing profusely while scooting the child closer to her to give me more room.

Just before the bus was about to leave, the scrawny pushy guy who takes the tickets opened the door at the demand of an angry and blustering man on the outside. The exchange was in Bemba, but it was obvious that the man wanted on the bus. He did not have a ticket but was offering the ticket man money.

Just one problem. The bus was full.

The ticket man stepped back on the bus, glanced around, and zoned in on the woman with two children sitting beside me. He yelled something at her, and she responded similarly. The back-and-forth quickly became heated, and the woman whipped her tickets out of her purse and began frantically waving them at the man while holding her other arm protectively in front of her preschooler in the seat next to me.

Unable to keep my mouth shut, I joined the conversation.

“What is the problem?” I asked.

“Ah! This woman, she has two children. The children can sit on her lap or on the floor. This man needs a seat.”

Never mind that it would have been physically impossible for even the skinniest of children to wedge themselves between the seats to sit on the disgusting floor, or the fact that the woman’s lap could not possibly have held both children, OR the obvious issue that she had purchased TWO seats and was only occupying TWO seats.

“How many seats did she purchase?”

“My friend, they are just small children.”

Ohhhhhhhh that was soooo not a good direction for him to go with this argument.

“Answer the question. How many seats did she purchase?”

The man decided to switch tactics.

“Ah, my friend! 5 people can sit in the back row! There are 5 seats in the back row!”

Let me interject and point out that he made two different statements. On one hand, 5 skinny people could probably have fit in the back row. We were not 5 skinny people. We were a large David, Meg, a 5-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a well-fed mother. His other assertion—that there are 5 seats in the back row—was simply wrong.

“You are wrong. There are 4 seats in the back row.”

The entire bus was now chortling their amusement as they watched the display.

“Musungu, you are blind!”

Spit-fire tendency triggered. I flew to my feet and my voice amplified a bit as smoke and brimstone poured out of my eyes.

“Count them with me! ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!” I gestured wildly at each seat as I numbered it. “Four seats! If there is not room for your friend outside, then he should have bought a ticket. The back seat is full.”

And with an air of finality I sat back down.

The bus ringing from the laughter of its passengers, the door finally shut and we pulled away down the dusty road.

Back in the good ol’ U.S. of A., I ride a different kind of bus. It’s actually a 15-passenger van, and I pack it full of homeless kids each weekday to shuttle back and forth from various summer camps.

Some of those kids are a little rough around the edges. As in, really rough. An 8-year-old made me cry last week. Sometimes I have to be a little more firm/harsh with them than I would be with the average kid.

Today, I had a rather humbling and heartbreaking realization. Somewhere along the line, the “fire-cracker” part of me that makes me capable of not just handling but also loving on and positively interacting with these kids kind of took over and mutated. Firm and harsh became my default. This became glaringly obvious when I barked at a first grader with a stutter (because he was drumming on the seat in front of him and I had asked him to stop twice) but then caught his hurt and fearful expression in the rear-view mirror.

So the second time in living memory that I stood up and addressed a bus full of people, it wasn’t to blow my top. It was to apologize.

The great thing about kids is that if you’ll just level with them, look them in the eye, and acknowledge you were wrong, their hearts are usually still soft enough to forgive and forget. They hugged me like always as they got off the bus. One of the teenage boys who usually rides with us but whose mom had dropped him off that morning stepped out of his basketball game to shout my name, flash a grin, and wave. The pre-teen girl that has become like my little sister dodged three counselors on her way to launch herself onto the bus and give me a hug (her mom had also dropped her off, so she hadn’t ridden with us—also, we did have a discussion about obeying the counselors as a result).

I have thought a lot in the past week about doing right things the wrong way, particularly in regards to my speech and whether I consider my words before they come rocketing out of my overactive mouth. I think I could have handled both bus situations better. It was right of me to stand up for the woman on the Peace Soldier bus (the first time I rode the overnight bus from Lusaka to Kazembe, the bus operator made a woman with two toddlers sit on the rancid floor so she wouldn’t be “in my way.” I was new to the culture and the country and a little bit paralyzed, so I didn’t speak up. I vowed it would never happen again…). I think it was also appropriate to shut down the blooming percussionist this morning.

But in both situations, I failed to speak in love, and so I failed to represent my King or set an example that the children watching would have done well to emulate. I became just one more self-entitled bullying Musungu and one more authoritarian adult. I do not wish to be either.

The words of my stuttering drummer left me with a smile as he departed the bus so very early this morning: “Don’t worry, Miss Meg. Your day will get better. You’re always nicer in the afternoon. Maybe you just need a nap.”

It seems there is hope for me yet.