Taxi Ride from Cotonou

I am standing on the side of the road. It was lucky I could find some shade in which to wait, otherwise I would be sweating twice as much as I am already and getting worse. It’s quite impressive the difference between being directly in the sun and not can make. I see the glimmer of a windshield in the distance. It’s approaching along the stone road, dodging motos and moutons. I can tell it probably isn’t a taxi because the car looks too nice, too new, too cared for. It rolls by and I wave my right arm up and down, levitating, asking for the car to stop. It’s like hitchhiking, but instead of simple thumb sticking out I have to use my entire arm in one fluid animatronic movement. Instead of stopping the car glides by with a slight pause on the brakes. I shout out, ‘Azovè!’ and the car keeps going. Bust! So I wait until the next car comes by.. Just wait. I sit and wait. Then a car comes! I float the arm again in the critically acclaimed ‘taxi dance’ and yell out “Azovè!” as it whizzes by, but this time the car has more then one person in it and slows down enough for me to think it’s going to stop for good. I pick up my helmet and bag and start walking towards the car, but the driver must have conferred with his passengers that indeed I did say Azovè and takes off again before I can get to the door. He’s not going to Azovè. He might not even have been a taxi and was just pausing to see what the white lady wanted, the most likely scenario. The arrival of the third car is met with my disillusionment and I only manage à pathetic half rise and fall of the arm. With this one, however, I decide to tack on an additional point in the direction of my destination. This piques the driver’s interest and he slows down enough for me to call the ritual, “Azovè!” and he stops!!! I pick up my junk and hoof it over to the car where the driver opens the door and takes my helmet to put in the back. I climb in next to two other people and smile and say “Bon soir.” We’re rolling. “Two thousand, five hundred,” the driver says. “No, it’s two thousand,” I counter with authority, I say, but arrogance says the guy in the front passenger seat who shakes his head and butts in with an, “Oh! You white people!” “What?! It should be! It’s one thousand five hundred from Cotonou to Lokossa, right?" He nods his head. “And it’s only five hundred from Lokossa to Azovè, right?” Another nod in agreement. “So therefore,” I am reasoning in French now, mind you, with people who don’t necessarily speak the most correct French to begin with, “from Cotonou to Azovè it should only be two thousand. Do the math!” With this the entire car bursts into laughter. “You’re in Africa” says the guy in the front. Déjà vu. I know how this ends up and I’m not about to climb aboard a part-time delivery truck to sit in the sun for four hours on a dusty road while we get out every twenty minutes to push-start and jump on. I know that when I get out of the car he is only going to get 2 mille out of me. I keep quiet and try to sleep.

When my next door neighbor sees this he instantly prods me, “Are you trying to sleep?” “Not anymore” was my bitter response. We stop to pick up a new rider and switch up seating arrangements. The guy on the far left leaves, and a new guy walks up to the window. “No, he’s too fat,” says my neighbor, “where are we going to fit the fat guy?” he asks, seriously. So ‘musical chairs’ ensues. The guy to my left gets out with his mirror cargo and shifts to the front next to ‘surly old man’ and they squeeze in nice and tight while I get bumped to the middle between “Big Fat Man” and “Wake-Up Guy” and we are cruising again.

That lasts about twenty minutes and we stop again to pick up a woman that I quite honestly can’t see fitting in our sardine tin on wheels. She shoves her bags of produce in the back (miraculously with the help of African bungee cord magic) and somehow it works. It means cracking my hip out of socket, but it works. We are all squished in nice and tight now, and she gets out in less than 2km anyway so life goes back to normal with the six of us all nice and cozy. “What are you doing in Azovè?” says Wake-Up Guy. “Volunteer, Peace Corps,” I say groggily. “Oh, so you’re CIA spy?” I glare at this. “I mean, you are with the U.S. government right? You are being paid by the government to spy.” I yawn and explain that being a volunteer means taking an oath that we will fight (implicitly) against Communism, but are technically not allowed to participate in political activism (our own or otherwise). He doesn’t buy it and continues to grill me on whether or not we are considered a part of the government and our involvement with government actions. Then I start to doubt myself. Am I a spy? I am writing all this stuff for you guys. Everything I see and hear and experience, every conversation I have worth mentioning in sent in broad circles and disseminated throughout the U.S. and possibly further as it is the worldwide web and hacking is not out of our realm of reality. Was I brainwashed?

As I am swirling in self-doubt and questioning the eternal question of the meaning of existence and “Who Am I?” he does a change of topic that would rouge the cheeks in shame of the best NASCAR pit crew. “What were you doing in Cotonou?” “Using the bank and the internet” WHY?! WHY do I answer these questions, and with honesty?! So unnecessary!! “Is your boyfriend in Cotonou?” I doubled back, “What? Cotonou?” Then I spot a hole of freedom, “No, he is in Djakotomey. Yes, he lives in Djakotomey. And he is my boyfriend and we’re dating together,” I reassure him of the fact that there will never, ever be a chance for him and no point in even asking for my number like they normally want to. “What network is your phone?” Drat! Boyfriend is obviously not enough of a deterrent, I must develop some inner problem and right quick. Although, being an international spy for the U.S. government doesn’t help to decrease my intrigue. “97” I reply with surliness evident. “Ah, MTN,” he smiles knowingly (oh no! is that HIS network, too?! It’s cheap for us to date because he can call me on the same network) “Everywhere You Go.” Oh! Thank God! He just wants to demonstrate his command of English slogans, “Yes, so I hear.” Then he falls asleep and Big Fat Guy nudges me into waking him up and although the temptation of revenge is gnawing at my soul I decide to let him sleep just to give myself peace – spiting my funny bone to save my sanity. And it goes like that until at least Come.

At Come we stop. For no reason. Literally, I can't see any point in stopping in Come. I get the idea of wanting to eat, Come is known for their snails, bread, and "ablo" - a flat corn muffin type thing - but when the driver gets out and just stands there while I fight off the fists being thrust through the windows into my face trying to get us to buy their goods I don't see the necessity. At last, he gets back in the car and we're off. I am still confused, but by now it is expected.

The driver is swerving potholes at alarming speeds. He honks at big trucks he passes in the of a motorcyclist who sports the look of impending doom across his rapidly approaching face. I take a deep breath and try to relax as we dip and slide and roll over through and around every road hazard imaginable. The driver isn’t fazed and just honks and keeps on rolling, until he slams on the brakes unexpectedly. There is a goat in the road. Someone’s paycheck just munching rotten road trash. Unsuspecting that he is next in line for a roadkill dinner he waited until the last possible second, until the driver was slamming on his brakes, until I can't see his little body in front of the hood any longer from the back of the car and he darts to the left across the road and I rub my neck from the whiplash. By now, every part of my body is aching; my legs crossed and slammed together until my feet are going numb, my hips turned to fit in at 25% and my back tingling from being twisted, my ribs sore from the elbow of Big Fat Man digging for the past hour. My head just hurts from the nausea caused by the leaking gasoline smell in the car.

We stop again in Lokossa. I also hope that we keep on going, but more and more frequently we have been stopping and being sold off in the taxi depot. Essentially I would have to give up my position that I had fought to make comfortable for the past two hours of the trip to get into a whole new, fully loaded taxi ready to annoy the shit out of me. Luckily for me on this one trip I get to keep my seat and after only a few moments we are on our way again. To Dogbo. That's usually quite a painful stop. On more than one occasion I have been involved in a few feuds. Most recently Jordan and I were in a taxi when a man came up to the driver's side window to talk to us. After calling through the window, "yovo, yovo, blanche" repeatedly I'd had enough and called out, "this isn't a zoo. We're not animals for your display." Stupid as he was, or playing a great kindergarten 'whatever you say is the opposite game' he replied, "this is a zoo? You are animals for me to watch?" I fumed. "Get out of here," I cried out. "Driver, can we please leave?!" The driver turned around to get back into the car, found the good sitting on the window sill, yelled at him for something (we can only hope to spare us but it's possible he didn't want his car door more screwed up than it was already). The dude backed off and moved around the front of the car to Jordan's window where he leaned in to talk to her again. I tried to swat him away from behind the chair and Jordan took a swing at him with her purse - hitting the incoming woman as a bystander. He jumped back and then moved down to my window, where he tapped the glass. Obviously this boy has never paid attention to the signs at the zoo because I'm sure there are more than a few that explicitly state: Do Not Tap the Glass. I snapped.

I jumped out of the car, ripped off my bags and threw them in and took off after him. I chased him away from the car and towards the back of the marché. I thought he would get the point, but I didn't expect this: he tore off. He was frightened by me and he was sprinting as far away as possible. I couldn't help but laugh at this grown man sprinting away from a comparatively small white girl in a dress. I laughed all the way back to the taxi where all the zemis cried out, "what did he take? what did he take?" I just laughed. How ridiculous this all was. "Just know that he ran away from a girl," I told everyone. I was only going to take so much rude and offensive behavior and that was now evident. I then yelled out to him a emasculating comment as we pulled away and he sheepishly walked back from the marché. Dogbo was done.

From here is Djakotomey - home to Aaron and then Dennis. Look to the right to see the ridiculously large white German eagle on the brick wall of an iconoclast house seen along the highway. And then it's done.

At last! There is hope. The last 5km from Djakotomey were the longest. So long that by the time I spot the road sign that marks my house after the Supermarché Immaculé. "At the sign," I cried out to the driver. "At the sign?" He asked back, incredulously; they always think white people don't know what they're saying when they're speaking French. "Of course, I don't live in the sign, just drop me off there," I replied. "Oh, ok," he saw, just in time to slam on the breaks one more time, dust flying, back tires spinning right in the large dirt area in front of the compounds including my house. "Ok, thanks." I cringed as I peeled myself out of the sweaty plush back seat. I just want to get inside and take a shower. Good thing I don't have to do this again until next week.