The Bus

A story by CHILUFYA NCHITO

Denial, delay, despair. These were known to Gladwell. They were the close, intimate friends he had spent the last few years getting better acquainted with. He had always felt he deserved more from life than what it had given. Felt cheated, maybe even abandoned by the prospect of a comfortable and settled life. That life had taken the nut and left him with the shells, the fine white powder, weevils, and worms.  The money he took home to his wife was barely enough to sustain them. This brought him deep shame; that he had had a father who was well off and yet had squandered his fortune and good name. This wasn’t true, but Gladwell knew these were the stories that his neighbours and church folk peddled behind his back and only got back to him in bits and pieces and gasps of “Ahh Mr. Cleans was your father? He was a very rich man.” The subsequent line “but what happened to you?” would be unsaid but he could hear it, hanging heavy in the air.      

Gladwell turned over to his wife and watched her in the dim 4am light that streamed from the neighbours security lights through the holes in the wall where the window should have been. He rummaged through his trousers looking for the small paper where he had put together the building supplies he would need to properly finish the house. It needed to be plastered— it had no floor, no ceiling, no windows, no doors except the main front door which wasn’t really a door but corrugated roofing sheets. The calculations were barely legible but he remembered a figure that now gave him a headache. He reached down to the floor and grabbed his phone that was tightly held together by rubber bands and Sellotape. He pressed the buttons impatiently but the phone didn’t come on; he hadn’t charged it. They hadn’t had power at  home for weeks now since the units finished and he had forgotten to pass through the corner store to charge it. It didn’t matter anyway because he didn’t have the five kwacha to pay for the charging. Gladwell knew Bonaventure would be outside hooting any minute now so he grabbed a t-shirt from the edge of the mattress, his shoes from under the bed and left.

Bonaventure was at the front of the house just as Gladwell stepped out. The bus was squeaking, and only one light came on in the front. “Ati bwanji mwana?” Bonaventure called out from the driver’s seat as Gladwell got into the bus. “Best best big boss,” Gladwell said cheerfully, more cheerfully than he felt. He called Bonaventure boss because it was true he was his boss but mostly he used it playfully as a term of endearment. Their relationship was built on a mutual playfulness and teasing that they would not be able to get through their days without. “Namvela ati cousin ali pa road lelo,” Bonaventure casually said to Gladwell. Cousin on the road wasn’t a good thing, it meant that they had two options. Either face cousin on the road and pay the fines for the squeaking of the bus and the lights that didn’t work or use shortcuts and hidden roads away from the highway. Gladwell removed the cashing for the week that had been stuffed in his back pocket and began to count it. They didn’t have enough to pay cousin any fines so hidden roads and shortcuts, it was.

Gladwell cleared his throat to prepare for the shouting and beckoning that was needed to attract passengers to the bus. For him this was one of the hardest parts of the job. He always went deep into himself and pretended to be another person as he did it. There was something embarrassing about shouting the stops and having to expose himself that way. Bargaining with the passengers that didn’t have enough for the ride, chasing after those who still needed some convincing and carrying the goods of marketeers and vendors. In his past life at his fancy corporate job, when he worked for his father, there had been no need to shout and beckon for customers. Behind his mukwa desk and Apple computer, the only bargaining he had to do was on eBay for the latest gadget he needed or the just-released sneakers he had to have. Now there was no eBay or Apple computer to shield him, just the real-life interface of having to be in close quarters with multitudes of people throughout the day. Heaving to expand his chest so that he could shout at the top of his voice for passengers. Saliva and sweat swirled through the air constantly from all angles because that’s what happens when bodies are tightly pressed together. There was no air-con to cool the air or provide a semblance of comfort, there was no desk or furniture. He spent his days sitting on a hard metal contraption between the door and the passenger’s seat. It was a far cry from the life he once knew. He slowly put his head out of the window and began the morning cry. “City Market bakwela, City Market bakwela.”

Buses in the third world are strange things. They have a life of their own, characters, characteristics and identities. A bus is run by a driver and conductor, and passengers are seen merely as an afterthought, a means to an end. They are only as important as the money they have. As soon as this is handed over to the conductor they cease to exist. After this transaction, they are unheard and unseen. They can be bartered between conductors, dropped off abruptly to evade trouble usually from the police, and even in rare cases, abandoned. The bus itself is a contraption that holds many meanings. As a source of the conductors and drivers’ income, it’s important, but it’s also a vehicle of imagination. It is not uncommon for buses to be given names like Eagle in the Sky, Rambo, Buffalo Soldier, usually a moniker to do with strength and victory. Bonaventure’s bus was called Rebel. Rebel was a bright yellow bus with tinted blue windows and for all intents and purposes was Bonaventure’s first-born son. He had stickers across the front windshield, and his name was plastered across the side. The back had a Bible verse for protection, Psalm 105:15.

The first route was filled with vegetable traders headed to Soweto market, the city’s largest fresh vegetable and livestock open air trading post. When Gladwell first started working as a conductor, he would talk to the traders, asking them about their businesses and personal lives, but these days he was too preoccupied and frankly couldn’t pretend to care. These days poverty was what was on his mind; he had no patience for idle chatter.  

He called out several times before anyone got onto the bus. They navigated the backways to get away from cousin, and eventually made a stop at their first bus stop. The bus was already half full so they didn’t need many more passengers. “One City Market, one City Market,” Gladwell shouted as he got off the bus and continued calling out as he went. As he did this, Bonaventure turned on the radio and reclined his seat. The passengers on the bus were mostly quiet so the music from the radio filled the empty silence. Before long, the bus was engulfed with the melodies of the UCZ choir from the radio, the hawkers’ conversations, chickens clucking and the inconsistent rumbling of the engine.  

Bonaventure thought about the prospects of his life. He had been a bus driver for nearly twenty years and had owned his bus for only five of those. Most of the other bus drivers didn’t own their buses so this was an achievement for him, but he was steadily approaching fifty and had nothing to show for his life. In another profession, he would have been talking about his pension and maybe buying some property but there was no such thing for bus drivers. He looked out of his window onto the busy bus station as the sun slowly rose in the sky. “Ba Bona!” someone shouted close by. He turned to see one of the talk time hawkers who he usually exchanged a few morning pleasantries with.

“Ati shani mwaiche?”

He let out a small grin and they shook hands. The talk time hawker hoped to be Bonaventure’s conductor one day. He had expressed this several times and Bonaventure had just brushed him off. In the bus station hierarchy, while bus conducting was not significantly higher than airtime hawking, there was a respectability that came with it. There was also the opportunity of seeing different places and interacting with more people and from there, bus driving wasn’t too far out of sight. “Ba mudala ulya te waku myesu,” the hawker felt a kinship with Bonaventure that he knew he and Gladwell didn’t share. “Bali shishita balya,” the hawker let out a hearty laugh and walked away. It wasn’t uncommon for people in the market to speak openly about their distaste or dislike of specific tribes. For the hawker to say Gladwell wasn't one of them and was docile wasn't anything new. Gladwell’s tribe in particular was not very popular, they were seen as slow, unfriendly and unintelligent. Bonaventure smiled coyly; it wasn’t the first time that someone had approached him regarding Gladwell with such negative sentiments about their kinship or lack thereof. Bonaventure wouldn’t want to seem contrarian during these conversations so he would just smile and nod. He never shared these conversations with Gladwell, he didn’t feel he needed to because they both knew that neither one of them was going anywhere. 

To be an outcast in the station was a terrible fate. The stations were built upon political and tribal hierarchies. The political hierarchies meant that the ruling parties callboys run the stations. They had the power to collect fines, control routes and provide security. This was closely tied to the tribal hierarchy as most people voted along tribal lines. Allegiance to parties was based on the tribes that party members and party officials came from. So whichever party was in power their tribe at that point ruled the stations. Gladwell's tribe had no political power as their party had never ruled and so they had no say in the happenings of the station. They were outcasts in the station. They were only allowed to hawk water and freezits. None of them were allowed to drive or operate buses. For Bonaventure, therefore, to allow Gladwell to conduct for him was seen by some as an extreme act of kindness and by others as an act of foolishness and rebellion. 

Gladwell returned to the bus with more than ten new passengers and these filled the bus to capacity. From here they could head straight to City Market with no stops. 

“Ba sister, chitani koni ka squeeze apo.” The sister he referred to looked him straight in the eye and refused to move.

“I can’t move any further, there isn’t any more room here.”

“You think because I’m a conductor I don’t know how to speak English?” Gladwell responded.  “Atase, bonse muno tiziba chizungu. Uganiza ati ni chitundu cha ba mbuye bako?” Of course everyone on the bus could speak English but they just chose not to.

Gladwell opened the window closest to him and pulled a hawker who was selling bubble gum and chilli bites. “Boi, aba bakazi niba uza ati ba fendeleko bani yanka mu chizungu, bayanke mu chizungu.” It was time for the hawker to prove to the lady that despite his appearance, he too could speak English.

“You should to buy your own car next time, not just spoking chizungu.”

The whole bus burst into laughter as they headed for City Market. As the bus erupted in laughter Gladwell thought about how in his past life he would have been the woman speaking English on the bus. Even now his Nyanja was sometimes broken and incomprehensible. Bonaventure often had to correct him. He had lived a privileged life and had only got on buses when his car was in the garage, when his driver was unavailable or those rare moments when he wanted a ‘dose of reality’. But he wasn’t playing make believe anymore. Now these people with rape and chickens held tightly under their armpits were his kin. Now he could not look above their heads and mock their lifestyle. Now he mocked them when they responded to him in English. Now he looked down on those who saw themselves as better off as had often been done to him many moons ago.

On the road they managed to keep away from cousin. Bonaventure asked if Gladwell had enough cashing for fuel. They were running on empty and Bonaventure didn’t have the energy to push the bus if it came to that. Gladwell counted through the money and said they could fuel up but only for fifty kwacha. They got to the filling station and immediately Gladwell began to usher the passengers off the bus. Gladwell handed the fuel attendant the fifty and he began to fuel. Just as they finished fuelling a police vehicle pulled into the filling station. Bonaventure quickly returned to the bus and sped off before the policemen got out of their car. The passengers were left open-mouthed and began hurling insults at Gladwell.

“Bus yayenda kuti?” They frantically wanted to know where the bus had gone and why the bus driver had suddenly sped off. Others demanded their money back.

“The bus is coming. Let’s just follow it,” Gladwell said to the passengers calmly. “Ba driver benzo yesako chabe ma brakes.” Who didn’t know that bus brakes needed to be tested often. Gladwell led the passengers to a small alleyway where Bonaventure had parked the bus.      

“Sembe yenze ya yipa paja,” Bonaventure said to Gladwell and they both let out a sigh of relief. It would have been bad to encounter the police as this bus had no insurance, no road tax or fitness. Bonaventure couldn’t afford these extra costs or at least that’s what he told Gladwell.  It was an understood practice among bus drivers to do maintenance of their vehicles only when absolutely necessary. What constituted absolute necessity wasn’t always clear.

All the passengers disembarked the bus at City Market and now Bonaventure and Gladwell had to join the queue of buses for the return journey to Kwasila compound. Bonaventure reclined his chair and fell asleep as Gladwell took his phone to the kantemba, a small metal kiosk that sold assorted goods from sweets and biscuits to phone accessories and offered a phone charging service. At the kantemba he began to bargain with the shop owner with the five kwacha he had.

“Ni ten-kwacha boss,” the kantemba owner told him. Gladwell didn’t have ten kwacha to spare,  the lowest he could get the guy to go was seven kwacha. When he removed the phone from his pocket with its Sellotape and rubber bands, the kantemba owner chuckled.

“Ah… mwana amayi sobelesa phone, you know how children can be,” Gladwell said in response to the guy’s chuckles and disapproval of his phone.

“I don’t even know how to charge it, big man,” the kantemba owner said to Gladwell. They had to find a box for the phone to be propped on at a specific angle for it to work. When it finally came on Gladwell walked away from the kantemba and called out to the owner “make sure no one steals it.” He said it jokingly but also half seriously. He couldn’t afford to lose that phone, however ridiculous it may have looked. He had scrounged up money to buy it and now he needed it more than ever. News had reached him from his father’s lawyer that there was an undisclosed property in the will that had just come to his attention. It was potentially worth a lot of money but he and his siblings would have to decide what to do with it. The thought of reconnecting with his siblings made his stomach curl but Gladwell would consider doing it if it involved some money. If he did get his share of the proceeds from the sale, he intended to buy a small piece of land on the outskirts of the city and build a proper house. A better house than the one he currently lived in in the compound. Just that thought filled him with some hope, but barely. It seemed too good to be true. 

As he got back to the bus, he found that they were now second in line on the bus queue. Bonaventure was awake, laid back and sipping on a small sachet of Officers. A little whiskey helped the hours while away. As they got to the front of the line, they were approached by the station commander.  

“Allo guys, ati how?”      

The station commander was a guy called Joe. He knew everything that happened at the station. A driver couldn’t change routes or load and unload passengers without Joe’s approval. Bonaventure quickly sat up from his slouch and began to fidget with the buttons on his shirt. All drivers were meant to wear smart blue shirts, but these were often crumpled at the back of their chairs and only thrown on in a hurry either in the presence of police or station commanders. Joe didn’t tolerate any nonsense from the drivers; he demanded order and wielded a control that was almost menacing. He asked them for their receipt from the station they had stopped at before City Market. 

Bonaventure turned to Gladwell and said “Ndiye wamene avi ziba uyu.”      

For any bus to leave the station, a fee had to be paid to the resident ruling party officials at that stop. It had completely slipped Gladwell’s mind. His heart began racing and he quickly shouted out, “Ahh boss, we will pay on our way back.”

The station fees cut into their profits significantly and new ones popped up out of nowhere. If rival gangs emerged sometimes buses would have to pay twice, often they would mount random road blocks and there was no escaping them. Stories were told of a driver who had tried to defy the rules, refused to pay and be bullied. He was shut out of the station and no passengers were allowed to board his bus. Joe turned to Bonaventure and raised his eyebrows. “I’m not going to tolerate this Ba Bona. This should be the last time.” 

“Ahh yes boss, mufana a luvyanya.”  Bonaventure let Gladwell take the blame. Gladwell didn’t like to disappoint Bonaventure and he knew that Joe’s complaining made him unhappy. His mistake could cost them later.

As they drove out of the station there was an eerie silence in the bus. Until one passenger whispered to Gladwell “Na shota one kwacha, ni pempako.”  He couldn’t have chosen a worse time to ask for a discount.

Gladwell turned to Bonaventure, “One ba sala kuno.” Gladwell couldn’t afford any shortages on his cashing so the passenger had to be dropped off.

As the bus hummed through the streets and Gladwell went through the motions of disembarking passengers and giving them their change, he was a mindless machine. His body responded but his mind was far away. He thought about the wife and kids he had left at home and if they’d had anything to eat. He hadn’t eaten the whole day either and he couldn’t afford to. The seven kwacha that he paid for his phone charging would have been his lunch money. Bonaventure called out to him and he snapped out of his trance.

“Boi, I need some water.” Bonaventure had been coughing for some time, but Gladwell hadn’t noticed. All the passengers offered advice and the bus was practically at a standstill. Gladwell got off the bus and went to the side of the road where a small boy with a cooler box was selling water and Freezits. He bought the water and returned to the bus. At this point the coughing had morphed into vomiting and Bonaventure was bent over outside the driver’s door. Gladwell quickly ran over to him and handed him the water. Bonaventure took a few sips before vomiting again. The passengers were now getting impatient and Gladwell knew he had to come up with a plan. He didn’t have a licence or know how to drive so he had to find someone who could drive the bus. He carried Bonaventure into the bus and sat him on the passenger’s seat in the front as he contemplated running to the nearest station to look for someone who could drive the bus. The young man who had been occupying the seat gave Bonaventure a cold stare but he ignored it. “Choka ngati sufuna.” Bonaventure didn’t care if any of the passengers wanted to leave the bus at this point. They wouldn’t be getting refunds but they were free to go. An elderly passenger asked why Gladwell couldn’t drive the bus.

“Nilibe licence mbuya,” he told the old man. He knew he needed a driving licence but he hadn't gotten around to doing it.

“Ok, I'll drive to the closest station for everyone to get off and then you can handle it from there.”      

Gladwell was thankful for the man’s kindness and they drove quickly to the station. 

As they drove to the next stop, Gladwell noticed that Bonaventure’s condition worsened, he was now drooling and mumbling incoherently. He mumbled something about his wife so Gladwell reached into his pocket to get his phone and dial his wife’s number but there was no credit on the phone. At the station the bus was surrounded with callboys and hawkers shouting over each other and trying to get a glimpse of Bonaventure who was now foaming at the mouth and fitting. Gladwell got a few bystanders to help carry him further inside the bus. They laid him on the middle seat and Gladwell sat with him as he nestled his head  and ensured he didn't choke on his own saliva. Emmanuel, a driver who operated the same route as they did, left his bus on the queue and offered to drive them to the hospital. On the way to the hospital Gladwell’s mind drifted between fixing his eyes tightly on Bonaventure’s face and willing him to wake up and facing the road willing the bus to move faster.  

Gladwell had never seen death, he hadn’t been there when his father had died. He had got home after a session at the gym and found the gate open and vehicles in the driveway. He hurried into the house and all he heard was wailing. Moments later bailiffs pounced on their fathers’ belongings and he and his siblings were thrown out. In a meeting a few days later, Mr. Malama, the family lawyer, told them that unfortunately, their fathers’ estate was now in the hands of a Mr. Mahmud, to whom their father owed large sums of money. His father’s death had been caused by a stroke upon receiving a notice from court that all his possessions were to be handed over. That day coloured Gladwell’s life vividly. After his father’s death his extended family had deserted him and his siblings, leaving them destitute. A few months after that he met Bonaventure at a bar, and that same day he discovered his girlfriend was pregnant. When Bonaventure offered him the opportunity it had been to run the bus business together as a partnership. It might have seemed like he was just a conductor but they had hoped to buy more buses and put them on the road. Gladwell had even suggested to Bonaventure that he could create an app for the business that would set them apart. A timed bus service that passengers could monitor on their phones. Unfortunately, Bonaventure hadn’t fully shared with Gladwell that at the time they were starting the venture he hadn’t finished paying off the bus and when he eventually did, the business didn’t bring in enough money to expand.

Emmanuel weaved through Lusaka traffic with ease. Despite the circumstances, he was composed and this offered Gladwell some comfort. He would turn his head away from the road every so often to see how Bonaventure was doing and utter “Gladwell osa yopa, we are almost at the hospital, Ba Bona will be fine.” They were five minutes away from the hospital when they noticed a build-up of traffic ahead. Emmanuel put on the hazard lights and squeezed and inched through the traffic to the front of the build-up. There, a road block was mounted. At the sight of the police officers, Gladwell’s heart sank. He closed his eyes firmly shut imagining ways to escape. Could they jump out of the window? Could he ask Emmanuel to ram straight into the roadblock and continue driving? If only his father was alive, he would have called the police commissioner, and they wouldn’t have had to stop at the roadblock. But if his father was alive, he wouldn’t be at the back of a bus with his friend on his lap fighting for his life. If his father was alive, he wouldn’t be a conductor. If his father was alive, he wouldn’t live in a compound in an unfinished house and  he wouldn’t have a wife and three kids he couldn’t care for.

 Bonaventure’s breathing had become more laboured and they couldn’t afford to deal with the police. Emmanuel was confident they’d be let through, so he rolled down his window and beckoned to the policewoman. She came to the window.     

Gladwell remembered the first time he and Bonaventure encountered the police. It was their last trip from the main station to the compound for the day, so they had taken the opportunity to cash in as much as possible by overloading the bus. There was a goat and a bicycle tied on the roof of the bus and the back door could barely close with all the charcoal stuffed behind the back seat. After that encounter with the police, the bus had been impounded for a month, Gladwell was evicted from his home, Bonaventure’s wife moved in with her mother, and they lost their bus route. Gladwell wondered what would be at the end of today's encounter. 

“So you think you are more important than all the people in line here? Park on the side of the road.” 

“Please, madam,” Emmanuel called to her. “Our friend is not well, we are rushing to the hospital.”      

She peered through the bus and saw Bonaventure lying on Gladwell’s lap. She locked eyes briefly with him, and Gladwell hoped that they conveyed how desperate their situation was. Did she understand that Bona was his only friend, that her delay could cost him the loss of this life, this comfortless makeshift life he had put together for himself and wasn’t ready to lose. “Madam, please,” he let out in a soft crack. She diverted her eyes and they locked instead onto the floor, where there were a few strewn papers and plastics. Her eyes caught onto a small finished sachet of Officers and a few cigarette stubs. Any sympathy that Gladwell had managed to garner quickly left her eyes. “The problem imwe bafana, too much moba. Park on the side. I want to inspect the vehicle.”  As Emmanuel parked the bus on the side of the road, Gladwell closed Bonaventure’s eyes.