The diversity of public transport (part one)

A Busride in Tanzania is an adventureous thing, for very little money you get a lot, if you are lucky even a free rollercoaster ride. The adventure already starts the day before when you go buy the ticket. The bus terminal is always crowded and once you get there you are surrounded by people that want to ‘help’ you. Which means every single one tries to convince you (and sometimes almost drag you to the ticket office of their choice) that with them and only with them you can get the right bus and the best price and all the other options will be unsafe and you’ll be ripped off. Once you mangaged to actually get to the ticket offices there is only left to find one at a suitable time and most of all you try to find a company that seems to have at least somewhat reasonable vehicles. They will give you a ticket that can vary from a decently printed form to just some dirty piece of paper with your name on it (or what they figured your name is) and you always try to get a seat in the front of the bus. The day of departure you got to be at the terminal at least half an hour before departure, nobody knows why because most of the time the bust does not depart in time anyway. And then the adventure really starts, first exciting thing is what kind of bus you get, best case is a bus that looks only about 20 years old and does seem to still have all parts. Worst case is you don’t even believe the bus is able to drive at all. The next thing is the driver, can be from simply dangerous to suicidal and it is perfectly normal for a single driver to be behind the wheel for up to twelve hours and all of this on horrible roads which are very bumpy and most of the not time not paved and next to the roads are plenty of examples of what can go wrong.
The second busride in Tanzania was the scariest one at the same time. As there was no bus terminal where we caught a bus we just wanted to stop a bus of our liking, but a self declared agent interfered with that. With the support of a policemen he convinced us to buy the ticket with him which resulted in him not choosing the best bus but the cheapest one so his provision would be high. The only free seats were on the last row of the bus and i was sitting next to the former window which by now was a huge hole losely covered with something not very reassuring. But the horrow had not yet started! Speed bumps were no reason to slow down so every time we passed one of these we were thrown up and had to be very careful not to hit the ceiling. As it took a while to gain speed the driver tried not to lose it at any cost and which on descending roads turned out to be scarier than any rollercoaster. Passing cars regardless of traffic from the opposite direction appeared to be a hobby of our african Schumacher. The heavily sweating young african man next to us was scared to death as well and I don’t remember ever being as happing when leaving a vehicle.