Let me explain the title. Since we have been in southern Nepal, we have been using
public buses for transportation whenever we need to go further than 5-6 miles
away from where we are living. The
buses are super nice with comfy, lazy-boy-like seats. They have really nice air conditioning and they somehow
smell really really nice like someone just sprayed the perfect amount of air
freshener.
PSYCHE. There
is absolutely no A/C unless you count the blast of dust-laden wind that flows
steadily through the windows and straight into your eyes and mouth. IF you happen to get a seat (a huge
if), it is by no means comfortable.
However, it’s better than standing; especially if you’re over 5’5″
because that’s about the height of the ceiling. The combo of these buses and these roads really redefines
the term “bumpy ride”. It’s like a
full body workout to ride the bus and keep yourself from accidentally
sitting/falling on like 6 different Santa’s laps.
The air freshener is maybe the biggest joke of all. I would say that the smell is more like
the smell you would imagine would be present if a burly Norse-man went for a 3
week lumber-chopping trip and showered not once during the trip…then pretend
that the Nepali bus that you just climbed into pulled a “magic school bus” and
shrunk down small enough that you could take a bus ride into Mr. Burly’s hairy,
smelly armpit. Then maybe take
that smell and tone it down a bit cause it’s really not THAT bad…but it’s
pretty bad.
Anyways, the point is that it’s definitely not a
super-comfortable ride. And when
the Nepali’s are trying to fit 75-90 people on the 32 seater bus, it makes for
an interesting trip.
Today, we were heading out to a village about 10 km away
from us and our pastor decided that we were going to take the bus. A shudder ran through each of our
bodies and then we headed off to the bus stop. As the bus pulled up, it immediately became clear that this
was going to be a special bus ride.
The bus was clearly full.
And when I say full, I don’t mean full like you’re thinking. Take whatever “full” means in your head
and add like 20 more people onto the bus.
Seriously.
I watched as 3 of my teammates somehow were able to wedge
themselves into the bus. Then it
was my turn. I had no choice, I
just had to try to get up a little bit of speed and see if I could smash myself
into the wall of people and hope that part of me would slip into a crack
between them somewhere and get wedged in.
Right as I was about to take off, the pastor grabbed my shoulder and
stopped me. He gestured towards a
ladder that was just to the right of the door. I wasn’t sure where the ladder went exactly but I took it
because at that moment, I would have taken literally any alternative to getting
into that bus.
I began to climb the ladder. I could see below that my teammate was close behind me. As I passed the top of the bus, I
realized where this ladder was taking me!
It was a ladder to heaven!!
We crawled up onto the top of the bus and sat down on the
rack that was sitting on top. In
case that’s not specific enough for you, we were right behind the baskets full
of live chickens and pigeons. In
the end, Stephanie and Wes both ended up on top of the bus with me. We all looked at each other and had a
very clear “how is this my life?” moment.
Then the bus began to drive.
Hahah! It was
still a very bumpy ride but the top of the bus was CLEARLY the best place to
be. There was no bad smell, there
was a nice breeze, there was plenty of space, and there was nobody trying to
pick your pockets. When I realized how awesome my life was at that moment, I
did what I always want to do when something cool happens to me and texted my
lady back in Tulsa. I was
chuckling to myself as I sent the text.
As it was sending, I looked up to see where we were driving to and
literally, right as I looked up, a huge palm tree branch just WHACKED me in the
face! Hahah it actually hurt
pretty bad and I’m guessing I’m going to have at least a bit of a black eye
tomorrow. It didn’t even matter
though, it was hilarious and I immediately had another “this is my life” moment
and proceeded to then text my lady again to let her know that yet another cool
thing had happened to me. Lol good
times.
Other than that though, it was so nice on top of the
bus. I seriously don’t get why I
would ever get inside of the bus again.
On our bus ride back, the ladder was a little harder to get to so my
teammates all got inside the bus and I climbed up on the top all alone. I had some sweet time up there with
Jesus on our 10-15 minute bus ride.
Super awesome. If it’s an
option to get on the roof, I’ll never get in the bus again.
OK I finally got my video of ministry from Nepal to upload so I added it to the bottom of this post. Honestly, I wrote this post a long time ago and have just been holding onto it until I could get good enough internet to post this video. Finally got it up though. It is a little different from my other videos. More of just a video of the stuff that WALDO did in Nepal for the month ministry-wise. Hope you enjoy watching it! If you want to see a REALLY legit video, check out Stephanie May’s video from the month! Love you guys.
