Transportation

Transportation here is awesome. Taxis cost $3.00 max to go anywhere in the city. Even cheaper are the buses and car rapides. Busses run on no apparent timetable and have no indicated stops and/or maps with routes. Apparently they come every half hour-ish and you are just supposed to know where they go. But, at only 150 cfa ~ 30 cents, it’s hella cheap. Just take a Senegalese friend who knows what’s up. Same goes for the car rapides, which I prefer because they are way more baller. It’s this old van/ bus looking thing decked out in bright colors with streamers hanging off the back and jam packed with people. A boy called the apprenti hangs quite literally from the back of the bus and shouts the general direction where the car rapide is headed. You hop on and pay your 100cfa ~20cents and if you’re lucky you can sit down, otherwise you get to stand squished between lots of other gross bodies. To get off at a stop you take a coin and rap the metal ceiling to let the driver or apprenti know you’re getting off. The apprenti then smacks the side of the bus a few times for good measure to make sure the driver knows what’s up. You hop off and bam! you’re at your destination (generally.) No windows or seatbelts required.

There are no stop signs, traffic lights, speed limits, or any discernible traffic laws. Lanes are marked (sometimes) but one-lane roads are often turned into two lanes when taxis and cars just pass each other as they please. It’s like the whole entire country is playing chicken with their vehicles. Aggressive driving to say the least. On my walk to the Baobab Center in the morning I get to cross the VDN which is 6 lanes traffic, both directions. It’s exactly like playing frogger. Cars rule the road here and people don’t believe in crosswalks (since there aren’t any anways.) That, and the government apparently didn’t believe in building sidewalks when they created this road system. Walking is a multitasking feat. You can either look at all your surroundings and trip every two feet, or you can look at your feet and stay level but not get to check anything out. Sidewalks don’t exist and the side of the road that kind of resembles a sidewalk half of the time is covered in rubble, a puddle, garbage, or sheep. People don’t believe in garbage cans here so if you have trash you just throw it on the ground where you are. I have a feeling I’m not going to be able to embrace that habit during my stay here.