A bus ride

by Daniel

The cramp in my right leg became unbearable. But apart from massaging it – first gently, then with ever more force smashing my fist on the hardened detracted muscle – there was nothing I could do about it. Moving my hip 5 cm to the left brought some relief although my neighbour was obviously not pleased with it. Still he only gave a mumbled grunt and further said nothing.

It had been almost three hours since we embarked the minibus leaving the dusty bus station of Gonder. After a hard round of bargaining we had managed to find a seat in the run-down Toyota. It was still almost double the regular fare but we had been promised the “good” seats in the back row. In font of us sat a father with his ill daughter. He was maybe in his forties but the hard work as a farmer made him appear much older, his face was wrinkled and his strong hands held an old and gnarled stick. His daughter, maybe in her early twenties, just shrank into her seat with drops of fevery sweat rolling down her forehead, all the while staring at that strange couple sitting behind her. A feverish odor filled the bus so I opened the window.

But, really, when we started rolling out of that dusty compound we had our own seat, not having to share them with another passenger or two. The driver had kept his promise.

Two miles out of town that changed. The driver and his assistant, who always stood next to the window leaning out and shouting the destination at anybody we passed, wold cram ever more people into the already overcrowded minibus. With space already at a minimum for my long faranji legs I had to share my seat first with a rather petite village girl who accompanied us just until the next village and then with a wretched but brightly smiling sheperd. He was utterly delighted sitting next to this big bearded foreigner and he tried to strike up a conversation pointing at my arm and touching my straight and seemingly soft hair, all the while giving all sorts of funny giggles and complimenting me in Amharic. I kind of liked this fellow and his curiosity flattered me but from the first minute his distinct smell of countless days of hard-work sweat and one month old goat milk put my nostrils and my endurance to an impeccable test. When another passenger wanted to open the window the father of that sick girl protested. Then my thigh started to cramp.

It was a relief when after roughly two hours of nose and leg pain we briefly stopped and the sheperd guy went off. I took the opportunity to get off as well stretching my legs and desperately gasping for some fresh air although the driver’s assistant impatiently waved at me to get back into the bus. The sheperd was then replaced with a huge Ethiopian man in his fifties (I started wondering how he could fit next to me being roughly as tall and a lot broader) but who looked cleanly shaved and wore a stylish leather jacket and polished leather shoes. After having sat next to that sheperd for a never ending two hours, he felt like a relief. A nice scent of vanilla and coconut shampoo mixed with a flowery note from his aftershave filled my nostrils and now it was me who felt the urge of touching his skin and smelling his hair. He turned out to be working as a geologist for the government with a good command of English and we chatted away the last half hour on our trip to Bahir Dar, carefully avoiding any reference to politics...