Mini-bus Mavuto…..

February 5, 2007

The drive to work involves heading out past the bus station beyond the hospital and on towards the Chirimba Industrial Estate - the majority takes place over a road that doesn’t have that many potholes and only a few areas to watch for random running children / goats and cyclists keep an ear out better than most areas.

The problem comes when you get to the Chichiri bridge - which for the moment does not exist - rebuilding work is taking place that I imagine I will never see the end of during my time here - you can see what it looks like below:

It’s been like that for a few months and not much has changed.

So what happens is that traffic approaching from the city side waits where a little man blocks the road with a barrel - then on the other side, another little man moves his barrel out the way and waves his out-of-town traffic through - they then drive down into the river gully and across a muddy-makeshift roadway supported by sandbags and up the other side - once across, the first little man moves his barrel, lets the out of town traffic through and then waves the city side onwards while the 2nd little man blocks off any further traffic from the out of town direction

pretty simple you’d think.

Until it gets to around 5pm - when all hell breaks loose and the little men are nowhere to be seen - and if they are, they’re just ignored anyway - the curse of the mini-bus driver comes to haunt during these times.

Mini-bus drivers are the scourge of Africa - they drive like amphetamine fueled F1 madmen in clapped out vehicles that are on the verge of exploding - they pack vans with as many people as possible and rush to the next possible pick-up - trying to overtake fellow mini-buses while they are at it - with cello-tape windows, doors falling off, plumes of black smoke pouring from the exhaust, no indicators, smashed windscreens and a very unpredictable nature due to stopping abruptly at the first sign of a possible fare (ie: person randomly walking near the road - of which there are quite a lot of)

The dream of the mini-bus driver is that no matter how many passengers as he can push through the door his death-trap will never be full and that he will always be the first to the next stop - this creates a sort of chaotic rally around Blantyre, as there are an awful fucking lot of these mini-bus mongoloids messing about all over the place causing all manner of mayhem - if there is a traffic incident of any description, it will usually have started or ended with a mini-bus in some way or form - they may not be at the scene any longer - but they will probably have had a hand in it somewhere.

So at 5pm what happens is Mini-bus drivers no longer want to wait for barrels to be moved or to give the sensible right of way to oncoming traffic - reason being that oncoming traffic is made up of fellow mini-bus drivers and therefore will always be oncoming unless they are restrained from doing so - this is when the mini-bus driver decides to go to war and push on through the muddy gully of doom regardless - which is very hard to do when it’s been raining for most of the day, there’s only enough room for one vehicle anyway and the person coming towards you is a mini-bus driver who is just as stupid as you are.

So what happens is around 40 mini-buses pile into the gully from opposite directions - get stuck in the mud - beep horns - shout - argue - and accelerate into any available space believing forward motion is progress and not in fact just ensuring they are going to be there for even longer - meanwhile everyone else realises that the mini-bus drivers have fucked the bridge up again - perform 3 point turns and try and find another longer route round.

Which sometimes leads to Lorries backing up and getting into impossible situations and blocking the entire road while getting stuck in the bush - like this:

So what is the answer??

Grow old and grey watching in disbelief as the next id-jot dives into the mini-bus melting pot down in the river??

Wait around for a few hours at the office for traffic to die down around 7pm??

Take the long way round and encounter even more idiotic Malawian Motor vehicle related Mayhem? (note that people walk home for the most part - and they walk in the road or ride bikes - and they are also not the crispiest crackers in the packet either, so you often nearly clip a few people by the roadside when things are busy)

No - you go the secret-secret back way through the jungle/forest area behind the industrial estate:

There’s only room for one and it gets very interesting when the rains have been - you really need the 4x4 for it as well - and nerve wracking as it may be due to the unpredictable nature of things popping up out of nowhere and other cars/trucks possibly coming the other way - (and the fact that I am not a good driver and shouldn’t be in control of such a vehicle) the 6 or 7 minute ride sure beats the hell out of sitting around watching Mini-bus Mavuto (trouble) for 40 mins before fighting your way through that fucking muddy gully.

Fucking Mini-buses - the motorised version of Mosquitoes I tell you - death to them all - the world would be an infinitely better place.