The Road

I wake up to my alarm and the scamping of little feet. My alarm (which, quiet fittingly is set to the song of time from Oceania of Time, I programmed it in myself) has scared Tyler and Jessi's two new kittens, Gingembre and Noname (which I've tenaciously been calling Meatkat for the past couple days, despite dirty looks from Jessi and Tyler - they want to name him another kind of spice) and they go darting for cover in their favorite hiding/sleeping spot – in the shelves on top of the pasta packages. They are both so cute and it has been a lot of fun playing with them the last couple days. Chris, Andrea and I snuck up to their house under instructions from Jessi to surprise Tyler for his birthday. He awoke to find a full breakfast spread (including bacon!) laid out with three of us and Jessi awaiting him. And he had no idea that any of it was coming. Good work Jessi!

But now all that is over - it's 6:30 am I have to get my butt in gear and get down to the road to catch the bus back to Toma. After saying goodbye to Jessi and Tyler I hop on my bike and get down to the road. Just in time to... wait for thirty minutes or so while the bus driver decides that he has enough passengers (or has finished his rousing round of morning banter) to leave. My wait is broken only by the occasional passing of bikes or motos on the road. Almost everyone says hello.

After about 10 minutes pass by a see a girl coming up the road with a chair on her head. As I'm wondering why in the world a young girl like her would be headed out of town with a chair on her head she stops in front of me, puts down there chair and says that her mom told her to bring this to you. I look down the road and sure enough her mother is about a hundred yards down the road, smiling and wave to me. I wave back and yell thank you in French and local language. She just waves back.

After a few more minutes the bus shows up, laden with its usual cargo of people, bags, boxes and animals. I wave the bus down, and tell them I'm headed to Toma. About a minute later my bike has been hoisted up to the roof and firmly tied down and we're on our way!

The road is bumpy, but not at its worst and at least by the light of day the driver can avoid or slow down for the bumps. And in case you get car sick there are very frequent stops to load on more passengers and cargo. At each of these stops the workers on the bus wait until the bus starts moving to hop on, partly because you're never really sure when the bus is actually going to move and partly because they want to look cool. I've always wondered if they ever got left behind on accident doing that.

Today the most exciting part of the trip is when one of the Guinea fowl got out of it's cage on top of the bus and made a break for it, flying off into the bush. Immediately a gang of maybe ten men and boys go running after it, yelling insults at the guy who put them in their cage as they run. They're back in less than five minutes, bird in hand and before everyone has a chance to calm down from all the excitement we're off again! But this time instead of his normal slow start the driver just steps on it and the gang of last minute bus jumpers is getting left behind! I start laughing as they thump the side of the bus, signaling the driver to stop. He eventually does stop and they clamber back on, looking only slightly abashed.

Before too long the 45 km to Toma is passed and I'm back home. Time for a shower and a nap!