Danfo-bonanza

Ok, so I hate starting every post with an apology and an excuse, but it's so hard not to! I was so ambitious, so optimistic, but really have nothing to say for myself. I beg your forgiveness. Part of the reason I've been putting this off, though, and also the reason I was originally so excited, is that buses really are a big deal here. Even the BBC says so. They have their own weekly column in my favorite newspaper and have become a popular icon of the city in the few tourist-friendly souvenir markets, which feature countless impressionistic paintings like this one. And they are central to the next project of a certain junior faculty member in a midwestern public university. So I wanted to do them justice. But that's stressful. So here's what I've got.


There are several different classes of buses in Lagos, but the beat up old yellow Volkswagen "Danfo" vans like the one above are easily the most iconic. Theyare completely hollowed out and installed with three or four hard benches instead of seats, fitting up to 22 people, including one drop seat for the conductor, who hangs out the side of the van as it becomes full, collecting fares and bellowing out the next stop. A favorite Lagos memory is the first time I saw these guys really in action, when they have to actually jump out of the van as it's still moving and then run along side it as passengers exit and new ones enter, all still while the bus is in motion! I don't quite have footage of this (of course, excuses excuses), but here's a conductor getting ready to hang out...



Bus decor is another beloved danfo institution. You can see decorative reflectors on the above piece, and some superfluous antennae on this one.


This one sports a number of common painted motifs -- the Nigerian flag, bad Nike swooshes, and praises to God:


Here's one of my friends' personal favorites (the buses are green on in the super special Victoria Island area), with praise for both family and Chelsea football, of course.


As you can imagine, with 22 people in a van built for what, 8?, danfo are quite crowded, hot, sweaty, and sticky, with everyone sitting shoulder to shoulder jammed in rows with little ventilation. Not extremely desirable, and not the safest either. They break down often along the side of the road, but what's worse, the motor parks where you catch them and change lines are notorious for gangs of area boys, and I've heard too many stories where the driver, conductor, and other "passengers" are all in cahoots to rob you of your money at some remote off-route destination.

So, with all that, I don't really take them by myself too often, usually only riding them with friends who know the system a bit and can give me a heads up if any trouble comes our way. Not surprisingly, then, most of my expat friends have never taken them, and find the idea of it just ridiculous. Which is why, at my friend's Nigeria themed going away party (based primarily off of local funeral traditions--thus the aso ebi matching nativewear), he decided to hire one for the night, and we all posed for photos in it. We definitely earned the crazy oyibos award that night, shocking the police at every checkpoint with a bunch of giggly white people giving the thumbs up from a beat up old danfo...


Besides the danfo, some of the other bus varieties include the much bigger Molue variety, which usually hold well over their official capacity of 44, with people standing in the aisles and hanging out the door along with the conductor. They were also the inspiration for Fela Kuti's song "Suffering and smiling" with the following lyrics:

Every day my people dey inside bus
Every day my people dey inside bus
Forty-nine sitting, ninety-nine standing
Them go pack themselves in like sardine
Them dey faint, them dey wake like cock


Anyway this particular molue has an aesthetic that looks straight of Anthropolgie catalogue, I think.



And finally, there's the new BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) and LagBus system, which much more like the buses we see in the US. The much beloved governor of Lagos, Babatunde Fashola, is credited getting these "modern" buses out on the street, and, what's really impressive, actually enforcing at least some of the dedicated lanes for them on the traffic-plagued Lagos highways. Here, we see one plastered in advertisements for Gov. Fashola himself, who is up for re-election next month.

And well I wanted to share a video from the road but the technology gods just won't have any of it -- blogspot won't let me upload it directly and I even opened a youtube account only to have them refuse the format as well. I will work on this for the future, but in the meantime leave you with this borrowed footage instead. (It's kinda long, but the first couple minutes give you the idea...)

Micros and Minis

My daily commute involves a variety of transportation -- and today all of it is getting blessed.

Most mornings I catch one of the zippy white minibuses that crowd El Alto, while in the evening I make my way home via one of the lumbering microbuses. These decommissioned Blue Bird school busses have been operating in Bolivia for decades – many since the 1950s and 1960s. Sometimes when I’m in a hurry, I make my way down to La Paz in a shared taxi or “trufi” via the switchbacks of Pasankeri. Today I took that route and as the city spread below me it looked like the whole capital was fluttering: it’s carnival and today is Martes de Cha’lla or the Tuesday of libations and blessings; both the capital and its satellite, El Alto, are engulfed in corkscrew paper streamers, pastel plastic flags, loose flower petals, and balloons.

It seems all of La Paz and El Alto are blessing their homes, corners stores, newspapers stands, office buildings, or the neighborhood restaurants they operate out of their adobe homes. I even saw a shoeshine boy walk by this morning with his little kit wrapped in streamers. Although I know to be ready for it, I still can’t help but jump at the startlingly loud firecrackers people set off as they cha’llar their sources of income and ask for blessings, security, and wealth in the coming year. On each block, people are pouring cups of beer and digging into huge plates of deep-fried pork or sajta de pollo, their bodies entangled in the ubiquitous streamers, their heads dusted with confetti.

And because these conjoined cities are filled with taxi, trufi, micro and minibus drivers, the city streets are crowded today with rather festive looking transportion. Unfortunately carnival also means roving packs of children armed with cans of spray foam, super-soaker guns and water balloons, so all of my photos were taken hurriedly as I tried to dodge these little armies (we gringos are big game during carnival, so I spend a lot of time trying to avoid being caught exposed on the street). Here’s a rather sparsely-decorated microbus taken out my trufi window. Others are so laden down with garlands it isn’t clear how anyone can operate them.

It’s a common practice here in Bolivia for sindicatos de transporte or transport unions to hold elaborate blessings for their fleets. The small town of Copacabana – on the shore of lake Titicaca -- is a favorite place to ch’allar: weekly masses followed by car, bus, truck, and taxi blessings performed by both a Catholic priest (with holy water) and an Aymara yatiri/healer (with incense and alcohol). And many buses bear the markings of that blessing year-round: heavy velour drapery embossed in gold bearing the name of the Virgen de Copacabana.

This brief montage gives you a glimpse into the kinds of transportation I use on a daily basis, namely the minibuses that zip through the streets of El Alto and the larger Micros I can rely on to get home late at night. The opening shot shows some typical decor. Many minibuses are littered with stuffed animals. This driver has a ch'uspa from Alasitas (the annual miniatures fair) stuffed with Euros, Bolivianos and Dollars -- meant to represent his hope for wealth (Alasitas offers another opportunity for blessings, usually performed exclusively by a Yatiri /Aymara healer). At the center of this ch’uspa -- although it’s not very clear here due to lighting -- are some air fresheners featuring images of sexxxy ladies in bikinis. So we know his priorities for 2011. The next segment offers a glimpse of what it's like to walk through one of the main overpasses in the Ceja (El Alto’s main commercial district) where voceros call out destinations and prices; it’s followed by a view onto one of the arteries running into the hub of the Ceja. Today my 7-year-old vocero was alternately collecting fares and shooting innocent bystanders with his supersoaker as we raced through El Alto.

At night, Micro drivers fill up their larger, lumbering buses until people are hanging out the door -- but I couldn't quite capture that on video since my evening commute is too dark for my flip camera to capture. On work nights I wait in line sometimes for an hour to get a premium seat on a micro. Getting off the micro, however, can be a little stressful and requires using your butt and gut to force your way through the human wall that occupies the center aisle (here is a brief clip of a bus before it fills up). Finally, I close with a clip from a previous post -- my view from my usual Micro, number 530, making our way slowly through the bustle of the Ceja at night as we all make our way home after a long day of work...