Come Ride With Me!
Take a step into our world…. Every time we have to go
somewhere, we have to take a minibus or a full-size bus. This is one experience
that we will NEVER forget! Let me go ahead and explain our adventure to you
from December 18th.
It was Alecia Hodges, Megan Deitrich, and I getting ready to
come home from Beira and we, of course, had to hit up the bus station. After
about 10 minutes of waiting, a bus appeared around the corner and everyone
started readying themselves for battle! People started appearing out of the
wood-works mobbing the loading area. “Hold onto your pockets!� I yelled! As the
bus stopped, it literally looked like a bunch of bees trying to get into the
only entry of a nest! No one cared! There was an old woman pushing through the
middle like she owned the place, a few boys that felt on top of the world,
doing their best, a teenage mom with a baby on her back and about 150 other
people trying to get through that door all at once! People were pushing and
hitting each other, just to get a hold on that handle! It was like a bunch of
kindergarteners fighting for the last ice cream… but WORSE! It gets so heated that the bus driver starts
moving the bus back and forth. This is when it gets EXTREMELY interesting! Here
we are, three Americans, among all of these crazy Africans, just trying to get
home! I was holding my zipper pocket tight with one hand and trying to get a
grip with the other! I was about two feet from the door behind about fifteen to
twenty people (seriously) and well, one hand just wasn’t getting the job done.
Telling the people to ‘relax’ doesn’t work, and relaxing in the crowd doesn’t
either…. They don’t understand that it’s ‘ok’ to not be the first on! I started
getting pushed around in the mob, so I said to heck with my pocket and had to
put a little force into it. As I fought for a grip on the handle, a boy fell
from my left to right and looked me in the eyes with the most terrified look on
his face, yelling, “AHHHHHH!!!!�, assuming it was me. Well, after a few
forearms and bloody eyes, I got my hand on the bar! Ok… there were no forearms
or bloody eyes but you could imagine what it would be like huh!? There you go,
now you’re starting to get the picture! I had to fight with all of my strength
to pull myself in the bus with people trying to pull me back off! I put my bag
in a seat at the back and saved two next to it for the girls. I returned to the
door and stuck my hand through the mob yelling, “GIVE ME YOUR HAND!!! JUST GIVE
ME YOUR HAND!!!� Finally, Megan latched on and I yanked her in! One down, one
to go! At the same time I was rescuing the girls from the fight, I had to tell
these people that the three seats were for us! I again returned to the door and
saw Alecia in the middle of it with a cringed look on her face with, “They’re
too close, they’re too close!!!� written all over it! After about a minute or
two of her fighting to get on, I got a hold on her hand and pulled her up! She
looked back and said, “Yeah!!! Get y’all a Colby and you’ll get on the bus!!!
HA!!!� We reached our seats, checked our pockets and finally got to relax!
Just another day on the bus in Mozambique!
