The bus is called the Country Commuter and, aside from the National Bus Line, it is the way that the majority of Malawians travel over long distances. Even if the bus passes only once a day, people will wait rather than take a passing minibus, knowing that the bus fare will be up to 100 kwatcha ($0.60) less.
The bus pulls into the depot and vendors flock to the sides. This is the Salima bus depot and the offerings are relatively meager: mostly foodstuffs hoisted to customers’ windows by outstretched arms and sticks. But, from the window of this same bus in the Lilongwe bus depot, a person can buy almost anything: cell phone units, kitchenware, shoes, purses, and even bras.
The man whose back is covering the CO is making a sale. It is conducted like this: The customer on the bus indicates what they wish to purchase and holds up the bill which they will be paying with. The vendor then searches for change, often running to find a friend with some money who he will pay back later. The vendor then offers up the change along with the item to be purchased. Then the customer pays. The system is there so that the customer, who is stuck on the bus, doesn’t get cheated by a vendor who absconds with their money. But I have found that vendors are often more honest than their prospective buyers; before I learned the correct order of a bus window transaction, one boy chased my departing bus through the station to deliver my 10 kwatcha change.
Most of the items for sale at this bus are food. Common traveling food includes hard boiled eggs with salt (one man I bought from had ingeniously individually twisted small packets of salt in newspaper), sodas, boiled or grilled corn on the cob, fried pockets stuffed with potatoes or meat, and various forms of fried dough, the most common of which is a slightly smaller than fisted-sized ball. The dough is mixed in 30-gallon plastic tubs by women who spend all day dropping balls of it into pots of boiling oil. Jesse and I call these doughy snacks “donuts” and I have been known to consume three or four over the course of a long bus ride. Eating donuts is always a bit risky- sometimes I end up with a tasty morsel to which someone has generously added sugar and other times I get a stale mouthful of grit from the side of the road.
Even knowing that the donut will be eaten right away, the vendors always serve their food in a little blue plastic bag (seen here on the donut stick farthest left) and always tie them in such a way to make reuse impossible. These bags are everywhere: stretching under the weight of nuclear hot chips, filled to the brim with tomatoes, rice, or beans, but mostly littering the side of every road and footpath. The importation of plastic baggies has done more for the pollution of the African continent than anything else.
The vendors all have something in common. Have you noticed? They’re all men. Rarely have I seen a girl or woman selling wares in bus depots even though it is the women who cook most of the wares.
The woman in orange is about to board this bus. She has already secured a seat and knowing that the bus will not leave for several more minutes, is not overly anxious to board, given the long hours seated that lie ahead. She is wearing her best dress, cut in the fashion of West Africa, a style only fifty years ago brought to Malawi. Ironically, this style of dress is now called “national wear” and every woman who can afford one owns one. The woman’s orange dress is new; the back zipper stills stays up.
Despite the prevalence of secondhand rejects sent by the bagful to Africa, clothing is astonishingly expensive. My students (who are from families who can afford education) generally own one or two nice outfits, their school uniform, and a few chitenjes. Young children walk around in an assortment of oversized and holey garments because it’s just too expensive to bother clothing them.
For example, let’s count shoes. In this photo, three people are wearing shoes, five are wearing sandals, and two are barefoot. Outside the gates of the bus depot the proportion of bare feet rises dramatically. Shoes are simply too expensive for most people to buy. Jesse recently had to purchase a new pair of tennis shoes, but after three days of scrounging the market with superior bargaining skills, was unable to find a pair of used shoes for less than $30. Clothing is just as bad. After rooting through a pile of shirts on a tarp on a dusty street, the price is still the same price as a thrift store in the United States.
There is no luggage storage below the bus. So where to put the bags? Usually the first row behind the driver is reserved for bags which are piled high with no regard for the order in which their owners will get off the bus. However, once the first row is technically full there is always room for a few more precarious parcels which usually end up toppling into the aisle. There is also a shelf over the seats which some brilliant engineer designed so that a sharp curve will land the contents on the head of the person sitting in the aisle seat. On every bus there’s always an older lady who is determined to shove her burgeoning chitenje-wrapped basket onto this narrow shelf. But, no matter who gets on the bus or what they are traveling with, space is always found.
So that’s the bus depot. You can see deep blues and hot pinks, fancy dresses and undistinguishable rags, babies and crones, teachers, rappers, and feather-clad lunatics, just by sitting on the cement bench of the depot for a day.
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