A Glimpse Of The Life Of A Bus Driver
We saw this article by Fulani Girl and couldn’t resist re-posting:
My dad tells me that way before I was born, his first job was as a driver. He left home when he was 14 years old to explore a world beyond what his village could offer him. The man did not like to farm at all. So he forged some documents, added two years to his DOB and got a commercial driver’s license to pay the bills. No food for lazy man.
It is hard work being a bus driver en Afrique. You wake well before everyone else and you are usually the last to go to bed. Otherwise, how would the masses move around? In between, you deal with irate passengers, corrupt traffic police, overworked shock absorbers, dishonest mechanics and a very snarky assistant who probably skims the fare. If you’re one of the lucky ones, you actually own your bus, if not you have one paranoid owner perpetually questioning your integrity. Monkey work baboon chop.
The buses are called different things in different countries. Poda Poda (not to be confused with the bodas of Uganda) in Sierra Leone, Danfo in Nigeria, Tro Tro in Ghana and Magbana in Guinea to name a few. Different names, same equation. There is a bus, there is a driver and there is an assistant who lets people on and off the bus, collects fares and dishes insults in between. Read the full article
