Bus Seat Hospitality

Smaller mini-buses also promote bonding with seat-mates!

Riding the bus for inter-city travel is always a bit like playing roulette. It’s hard to know if the bus will leave at the time printed or if everyone will start showing up 15 minutes later and an hour later be departing. You might get a wide seat in a row of two chairs or be crammed in row of three chairs. They might stop at the village you’re trying to go to (if it’s on the main road) or they might just keep driving like it’s not on their list (this just happened to a colleague of mine!). 

A larger tour-style inter-city bus is fairly comfortable for
the first 4 out of 12 hours.

But one thing I’ve noticed is very consistent. People share food with their neighbors. I can’t believe how common it is to see people getting back on the bus after a rest-stop, and the person in front of me will offer the seat-mates one of two or three drinks they’ve purchased at the stop. Then the food comes out and one will give a little and then get a little of what their neighbor purchased. It is very expected that if you are traveling, then you must have accumulated enough money to buy things on the way (and you should buy small gifts to give people once you arrive). I was struck by how strange this all felt to me last weekend when I was the only person left waiting in the shade inside the bus at a rest-stop, and then a under-resourced looking young man came back on the bus with a small bag of snacks. He started peeling an orange a few seats in front of me and then automatically offered it to me, because that’s just the natural thing to do in this culture.

-- El Padre