Sozzle on Hitching

Joy Rides

There is a very strange culture that has developed around hitchhiking in Guinea Bissau. Given the complete lack of relative wealth in this country, obviously vehicles are very few and far between. So as a volunteer it would make perfect sense to collect people walking for long distances and allow them passage in the rear of the pick up truck. Written like that it looks so simple, but in reality this hitching is complicated business. What I mean is, a joy ride in the car is so sought after by everyone that it is hard to tell who is actually travelling somewhere. Most people on hearing the car rush out to try and get a ride waving frantically and shouting "boolayer" (give me a lift).

The best example of this we have had was a group of lads. They seemed to have been out all night at the local party around Christmas. They leapt in the back of he truck as we trundled past, picked up the empty water containers and proceeded to drum on them. They all sung and clapped and drummed very happily and tunefully. They jeered at onlookers who were seemingly jealous of the joyride they had managed to steal. So caught up in their music and glee that it wasn't until we had driven around 30 miles (half way to Bissau) that they banged on the side of the truck. One of them laughing hysterically asked when we were going to start heading back. We told them we were going to Bissau and were not heading back until the evening. All of them now laughing hysterically at the realisation that the Brancos were not actually just joyriding around for show to eventually return to the village, disembarked and started their 30 mile walk home, past all the people they had been jeering at.

Invisible Passengers

Sometimes when you have to stop to meet someone's half cousin twice removed, you turn your back for a second and someone's grandmother has snuck on to the back seat behind you. You have never met them before. Unless you say "bon dia" they will stare stoically through you concentrating hard on the road ahead hoping you might not notice them. Then proceed to have unnecessarily loud conversations with your other passengers as soon as you set off.

Obligatory Favours

On several occasions we have been stopped by armed military or police and actually told we will be giving their friends a lift. And inside the vehicle. Considering they have big guns on these occasions we found it possible to force a partially willing smile. This happened a lot on our road trip to Gambia. One man we had to take for 100miles and the whole trip is only 200! Another policeman who got in to the car started playing music for himself on his mobile phone speaker. So I switched on the car radio and turned up our own happy jiggly African music extra LOUD.

The Small Print

When a Biomboan asks you for a lift to Bissau, prepare yourself for the hidden meaning in the untranslatable text. the request made never fully explains what is actually intended. For example, 'Can I get a lift with you to Bissau?' translated in to Biomboan actually means the following: 1) Can I come to Bissau? 2) Can my cousin, her sister and my grandmother come also? 3) Can you drop my cousins sister at the doctors? 4) Can we also transport 4 troughs of chilli peppers to sell at the market? 5) Can my grandmother buy 3 bags of rice on the way 6) Can you also meet me at a certain place at a certain time (after you have finished all your errands for the charity) to take me home again? 7) Can you also be responsible for providing me with some water and bread, because even though I am an adult and I know I am going to the city for a whole day I have no intention of bringing my own supplies to keep me going because I know the Brancos will have brought some.

Car Games

The kids are the most desperate for rides. In fact it is quite scary how unaware they are of the potential dangers of a moving vehicle coming in to contact with a little brown body. We have had to keep numbers limited and make everyone sit down. It still doesn't stop them hurling themselves at the back of the truck in the desperate competition to leap in while we are driving along. All of this came to a head on one occasion when we had been back and forth to the police station all morning (another story). On dropping an adolescent off at his stop, a hoard of the more savage little terrorists came running out. I was in the back this time. Some made it in and others got left behind. But I didn't do a good job of shouting loud enough to control the onslaught. Just at the point when I told Edd to "go go go quick" one little boy (William) who had succeeded, decided to stand up and look unsympathetically at his unsuccessful rivals when the forward jerk of the truck sent him face first out of the truck and on to the ground. He got up straight away (because African kids are seriously hardy), crying a bit obviously obviously with blood running down his face. In sheer panic I bellowed at all the kids to get out and called to Edd for some expert special kid attention. By this time an old woman (presumed to be his grandmother) had run out, smacked him hard and seemed to be giving his a damn good telling off for messing around. Edd picked William up and wiped off the blood. It seemed that he only had a little cut on his lip and it looked a lot worse than it was. William seemed very grateful to be rescued from his scary grandmother and clung to Edd like a limpit, burying his snotty dusty and bloody face in his chest while he sobbed. The car games that we were prepared to tolerate changed after this.

It certainly took a while to accept and relax in to the hitching culture. There usually isn't an ask, a please or thank you or even an acknowledgement of you as a driver. Unless you protest otherwise, you would end up forever more as a public service, a dumb mannequin there to arrest the taxi when a violent slapping of the side of the vehicle is heard. This can be as frequently as every 50 yds outside each and every house. But after a while, its easy to see that it is only if you don't make the effort to change the way it works (rather than ranting about it), you make it worse for yourself and people to follow. So setting simple rules seems to be the way forward and fingers crossed we seem to be understand and more respected for it. I think this is more a people thing than and African thing....but perhaps here in this environment, everything is exaggerated!