After thirty minutes of riding under the hot African sun in a non-existent seat between the gear shift and the front passenger, with a side window stuck shut and four steaming bodies in the back seat, I began to wonder if those Chicago winters were so bad after all. After wiping another line of sweat from my brow, I mused that the closest I’d be getting to a snowflake in the next 6 months was this cab’s intricately cracked front windshield.
Ten US dollars for an hour long taxi ride doesn’t sound so bad. But here in Liberia, taxis are usually packed four in the back, and three in the front. Sorry for you if you get stuck in front middle like I did – you’ll get hit in the ass every time the driver shifts gears. The cars also tend to be old and dilapidated.
A rough taxi ride is the only way for me to get important supplies, like peanut butter, a colander, a bottle of wine, a bank account withdrawal, and a gasoline power generator. For those precious things, I need to head to big city Buchanan. This past weekend I made my first city run, and my first ever Liberian taxi ride.
The outgoing trip went rather smoothly, despite being crammed in the back with two people to my left and one person to my right; that the young lady next to me alternated resting her hand on my knee and my shoulder was not a sexual advance but spatial necessity. The only excitement came two minutes into the ride when we reached the police checkpoint, which my students tell exist solely as an illegitimate income generator for the police force . As we pulled up, a officer said something stern to the lady riding front middle and then a yelling argument conflagrated between them. If only I understood Liberian-English. For minutes, I assumed that she was refusing to pay her bribe. But soon I watched the policeman trying instead to give her money, which she refused to accept. After ten minutes, we had a Ministry of Justice official arbitrating, and five minutes later we were on our way. I learned later that the woman and policeman were husband and wife and he refused to permit her to travel to the city. He even tried to pay her to get her to stay, but she won. It didn’t look like a happy marriage.
If the trip to Buchanan didn’t allow me to see two other Peace Corps friends teaching in the county’s main high school, then it would only be a chore. There still aren’t good stores and it is so bustling that I’m constantly guarding my giant wads of Liberian dollar bills. Also, without ATM cards, the wait to withdraw my meager monthly allowance at the bank would have taken more than two hours. I waited fifteen minutes, didn’t move an inch forward moved, said Fuck It, and used my American bank’s debit card at the ATM outside.
I couldn’t wait to go back home. But home meant an ever rougher taxi ride.
The car banged, shimmied, and blew a thick white exhaust behind us. At the halfway point, the driver stopped to give the cab a walk-around to make sure nothing had fallen off.
Back on the road minutes later, while I pulled tightly on a hole in the dashboard with one hand to reduce the force of the gear shift against my butt as my other hand again wiped my brow, a motorbike sped past us. I bet the air feels amazing on one of those. AND you get to your destination faster. Why doesn’t Peace Corps let us ride them?
A dozen yards ahead and to the left, the speeding motorbike make a series of tight wobbles and then slammed sideways into the dirt. Our taxi driver swerved aside and continued on, ignoring the crash and the woman in the back seat demanding we stop to help them. Because of the opaque cloud of terra-cotta dust the fall created, I couldn’t see the damage. The closest decent hospital is an international flight away.
OK, Peace Corps…That’s why.
Almost home, I chose to ignore the heat and humidity and just appreciate that my seat-partner had recently used a breath mint.
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