Starting with taxis because they’re the smallest: taxis in Ouaga are identifiable by their forest-green color. I believe that most taxis are old cars that got thrown out of more developed countries because they were too broken down to be resold or to pass smog. They often lack inner paneling on the doors, and frequently one or more of the door handles doesn’t work, so you either have to pull on a wire to open the door or you have to reach through the window to open it from the other side. In most cases, the shocks on the car were probably gone before I was born.
Once you get in the car, prices are negotiable. 300 francs (60 cents) is the going rate per person for a short trip without any turns; each turn that you make adds about 100F to the cost, and rates go up accordingly after dark or if you want to put a bicycle in the trunk. Taxi drivers will also pick up other passengers along the way. Usually the most they’ll take is 4 passengers sitting in the back and 1 or 2 in front, although I have taken taxi rides with other volunteers where we fit 9 passengers into one regular-sized car. How did that work? 2 people in the front passenger seat, 4 people squeezing into the back seats, 2 people on their laps, 1 the last person lying contorted on top of everyone. (We could have fit more people if anyone had sat in the trunk…) The funny thing about that situation was that no Burkinabes even blinked as one white person after another poured out of the car, like something out of a clown act.
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| My bush taxi, inside view |
The next step up in size is the bush taxi. Bush taxis are usually small buses or large vans, and in this case, they are almost always obviously rejected vehicles from other countries. There are 2 bush taxis that run regularly between my village and Ouaga, both for 1500F ($3) in each direction. They both leave village at 6:45-7am, and then leave the gas station where they park in Ouaga around 1pm. They’re unmarked, so you just have to know which bush taxi you need because there’s no sign. If one drove from Ouaga to my site in a private car, it would probably take about 1.5 hours, but in bush taxi, a fair estimate is 3 hours to get to Ouaga and 4 hours to return to village.
Why so long? First of all, they break down all the time. They also sometimes stop randomly to pick up passengers. More than that, though, it’s because bush taxis are the only transport to my village for both passengers and commerce, meaning that pretty much anything that can’t be produced in village got there on the roof of a bush taxi. Things that I’ve seen on the roof of bush taxis: bikes and motorcycles, suitcases, large furniture, mattresses, 100-pound sacks of rice, 20-pound boxes of pasta, 20-liter containers of petrol, sheet metal, gas tanks for cooking, insulated carts for selling cold beverages at the market, live chickens, goats, sheep, and fully-grown cows, and much much more. If you need to transport it, they will find a way to attach it to the bush taxi. I really want to see how they get the live cows strapped onto the roof. Maybe the only thing that I’ve never seen tied to a bush taxi is another bush taxi, but you can bet that it’s happened somewhere. Incidentally, bush taxis generally follow the same rule as regular taxis, which is to say, there’s always room for one more person, even when you’re already at twice the vehicle’s capacity.
The bush taxi I take the most often is staffed by 4 men, whom I refer to as Gold Tooth (the owner), Goofy Smile, Ninja Turtle, and The Black Diamond. With the possible exception of Gold Tooth, who as the owner doesn’t do so much heavy lifting, they are all extremely ripped. I have seen Ninja Turtle just stand around with a table held over his head in one hand while he waited for someone to finish strapping other stuff to the top of the car. The last time I went to Ouaga, I saw Goofy Smile and Ninja Turtle carry at least five 100-pound sacks of rice each on top of his head to the bush taxi, then lift it up over his head to Black Diamond, who reached down for them and secured them in place. And when they needed to put twenty 50-pound jugs of petrol onto the roof? Ninja Turtle handed them to Goofy Smile, who tossed them like basketballs up to Black Diamond. (Danger? What’s danger?)
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| Bush taxi on a medium-load day |
It used to bother me that the bush taxi made so many long stops for unclear reasons, but it’s something that I’ve kind of gotten used to now. And I appreciate it in a way; since I know all the staff, I can call them to tell them that I’m coming so they’ll wait for me, and I can count on them to watch my stuff if I want to leave it on the car while I walk around. Maybe they’ll even intervene if other passengers try to hassle me.
For long-distance travel between major cities, large bus companies are the way to go. The buses are usually not too broken down, sometimes have air conditioning, are not overbooked, and are faster and cheaper than bush taxi. Bo-o-oring!
A final heart-warming bush taxi story: when I was returning to site recently, we were about a mile from my village when the driver spotted 2 little girls between 4 and 6 years old waving their arms by the side of the road. They had been working in the fields with their families all day and were too tired to walk back, so he stopped to give them a free ride. The girls got on, and the bush taxi started to pull away when someone shouted to stop again. I looked out the window and saw a tiny 3-year-old girl with chubby cheeks sprinting from the opposite side of the field, chasing after us. Her eyes were wide, her head tilted back, and her arms were pumping frantically. The bush taxi stopped again, and Goofy Smile loped out to meet her halfway across the field and carried her back on his shoulder, smiling goofily. It’s easy to complain about the long waits and general terrible quality of transport, but at the same time, when I saw the out-of-breath little girl clinging relieved to Goofy Smile’s shoulder, I had to appreciate the system. It’s not a system of transport of anonymous passengers; it’s transport of friends. No little girl left behind.
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| Cows on a bush taxi |
