Magic School Bus

The buses down here are wild. To give you an idea, they are beat up old school buses from the USA cerca 1990. But these buses aren't bright yellow. They paint all sorts of crazy birds, beasts and words on the buses. The ones I've ridden have had everything from Jesus Christ on the cross to a big red swastica above the front door, but most of them are green or blue and Catholic themed, and they're definitely interesting to look at.

Aside from the appearance, I'm pretty sure they were designed for 1st-6th graders so you can imagine how well I fit on them. Since I've here, I've seen a total of two Salvadorans over 6 feet tall and one was a woman wearing heels so that doesn't really count. If I'm lucky enough to get a seat, my knees are in my chest or I sit diagonally. I say if I'm lucky enough because an open seat is a rarity on a Salvadoran bus. Most of the time every seat is full, plus the aisle is filled with another 30 or so people.

I went to church in the city with my house mom last week and I was standing in the open door next to the cobrador, holding on with one hand as we went down the highway at about 50 mph. Who is the cobrador? He's the guy who walks through the crowd of people crammed into the aisle, collecting bus fare from everyone while performing magical acts of aerobics to fit between everyone as he slides through. What I mean by aerobics is really just shoving his stomach into everyone and pushing his way through. Somehow all of the cobradors are overweight despite the fact that they have to defy the laws of physics to squeeze through everyone to walk up and down the aisle collecting bus fare.

Along with the cobrador, vendors get on and walk through the overcrowded aisle at most of the main stops, trying to sell anything from mangos to gum to natural herbal medicine while trudging through the crowd. If you were to follow my path walking through the aisle of the bus, it would be something like this: Step onto bus, sidestep old man with machette, squeeze past cobrador and wonder why you can't pay him as you get on, wiggle past stomach of cobrador (thought you were done with him for now), raise arms and poke one leg past group of kids, grab seat to pull yourself the rest of the way through crowd of kids, rub butt against woman holding a week's worth groceries and crotch against seat, inching past her... and congratulations, I'm now standing in the third row of the bus under the emergency exit door in the roof, the only place on the bus I can stand up straight. Crowds like this are bait for thieves, and one of my fellow volunteers was pick-pocketed her first week here.

Now this may sound miserable, and some days it is, but it's also exhilarating because it's so full of life and action and risk. Chaos can be fun sometimes.