You come across a lot of characters in a bus. This is true anywhere in the world, really. There’s the token drunk guy, slurring his yells, the crazy who smells and wants to get you talking. There’s always the crying baby with the mom on the cell phone, shoving candy down her other kids’ throats then getting angry when they don’t sit still. In Malawi we have comparable characters. Drunk guy, check. Smelly talkative crazy, check. Crying baby, not so much, but a lot of babies attached to fully exposed breasts. We got more Bible thumping Reverends in one bus than I’ve ever met in my whole life combined.
Rarely in the world of public bus transport is there the overly obnoxious, insanely loud and inconsiderate loony sitting right behind you. I mean, it happens, but usually in short intervals and usually the loony is verifiably loony. Those crazies are usually asked to leave or eventually subdued or you can move away from them. But not in Malawi, and not on a night bus. Once on the night bus, there’s no getting off, and there’s no moving around for as long as the bus is en route. Unless you want to lose your seat and stand in the isle for the next four hours. When we happen to be traveling together from Lilongwe to Mzuzu or vice versa and don’t have the patience to hitchhike, Robert and I like to take the night bus. It gives us a full day to spend in whatever city we happen to be in without the stress of daytime travel. Also, the night bus is faster than the regular bus because there are fewer stops and we’re passed out half the time. It’s actually a really pleasant way to go, if you’ve got a seat and managed to avoid sitting too close to Mr. Chatty Stinkypits.
On one such an evening, Robert and I found ourselves sitting in front of what I can only describe as the loudest, dumbest, most insanely obnoxious young women in Africa. I don’t know if they were actually dumb, because I don’t speak Chichewa, but I’m pretty sure they were really dumb. And had I known what dumb stuff they were saying, violence may have ensued. I honestly don’t know what had made them so oblivious that they insisted on talking to each other and on the phone all night, screaming. Just screaming everything they said. It wasn’t even very loud in the bus. Apparently, everything they had to say was of vital importance that even the driver, half a mile away in the driver’s seat, had to know. I really didn’t get it. After a while of shooting death glares at them, telling them to be quiet, and then to PLEASE be quiet in a rude way, Rob and I just ended up staring straight ahead in bewilderment. Exhausted, sleep deprived bewilderment. Eventually, the whole bus turned against them and started yelling back, very un-Malawian. When a bus full of Malawians lose their smiley composure and start yelling in anger, you know it’s bad. The point at which Malawians start yelling in anger is equivalent to when American’s start setting police cars on fire. Or camping out on Wall Street.
Needless to say, the dummies didn’t get the picture. They yelled right back, probably defending their right to free speech at 2am on a bus of a million tired not amused people, but I don’t really know because again, I don’t speak Chichewa. Alright, enough complaining, I’ll get to the point. Rob brought up an interesting saying he’d heard about stones in cans and dumb people that I thought worth repeating in Cyberspace. He said that the more stones a person has in their can, the less the stones rattle around. The fewer stones a person has, the louder and more abhorrent is the rattle. Thank you, Master Robert, for your stones of wisdom. Wish I could translate that into Chichewa. Not that the dummies would get it.
Rarely in the world of public bus transport is there the overly obnoxious, insanely loud and inconsiderate loony sitting right behind you. I mean, it happens, but usually in short intervals and usually the loony is verifiably loony. Those crazies are usually asked to leave or eventually subdued or you can move away from them. But not in Malawi, and not on a night bus. Once on the night bus, there’s no getting off, and there’s no moving around for as long as the bus is en route. Unless you want to lose your seat and stand in the isle for the next four hours. When we happen to be traveling together from Lilongwe to Mzuzu or vice versa and don’t have the patience to hitchhike, Robert and I like to take the night bus. It gives us a full day to spend in whatever city we happen to be in without the stress of daytime travel. Also, the night bus is faster than the regular bus because there are fewer stops and we’re passed out half the time. It’s actually a really pleasant way to go, if you’ve got a seat and managed to avoid sitting too close to Mr. Chatty Stinkypits.
On one such an evening, Robert and I found ourselves sitting in front of what I can only describe as the loudest, dumbest, most insanely obnoxious young women in Africa. I don’t know if they were actually dumb, because I don’t speak Chichewa, but I’m pretty sure they were really dumb. And had I known what dumb stuff they were saying, violence may have ensued. I honestly don’t know what had made them so oblivious that they insisted on talking to each other and on the phone all night, screaming. Just screaming everything they said. It wasn’t even very loud in the bus. Apparently, everything they had to say was of vital importance that even the driver, half a mile away in the driver’s seat, had to know. I really didn’t get it. After a while of shooting death glares at them, telling them to be quiet, and then to PLEASE be quiet in a rude way, Rob and I just ended up staring straight ahead in bewilderment. Exhausted, sleep deprived bewilderment. Eventually, the whole bus turned against them and started yelling back, very un-Malawian. When a bus full of Malawians lose their smiley composure and start yelling in anger, you know it’s bad. The point at which Malawians start yelling in anger is equivalent to when American’s start setting police cars on fire. Or camping out on Wall Street.
Needless to say, the dummies didn’t get the picture. They yelled right back, probably defending their right to free speech at 2am on a bus of a million tired not amused people, but I don’t really know because again, I don’t speak Chichewa. Alright, enough complaining, I’ll get to the point. Rob brought up an interesting saying he’d heard about stones in cans and dumb people that I thought worth repeating in Cyberspace. He said that the more stones a person has in their can, the less the stones rattle around. The fewer stones a person has, the louder and more abhorrent is the rattle. Thank you, Master Robert, for your stones of wisdom. Wish I could translate that into Chichewa. Not that the dummies would get it.
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