Ride & Prejudice

Gbaga, from the multimedia artist #lunographe

In #Abidjan, Ivory Coast, no tube, no tram! Owning a car, even if it means taking a loan to buy an old smoking jalopy, remains the first external sign of social achievement. As a Daddy’s girl, I’ve never had to use the bus: can you picture a rusty coach swaying along the roads, overflowing with people stuck in a stuffy and stinky cabin? I was used to getting into a taxi; the leatherette is usually in an advanced state of decomposition and the drivers can’t help playing the horn like psychos, but the price is unbeatable, and they can be found everywhere, anytime of day or night. If you are penniless at the end of the month, you can get into a woro-woro, a shared taxi: passengers get in and out at roundabouts and negotiate their route with the driver and the three customers already in; the vehicle witnesses a permanent flow of negotiations in a blink of an eye to redesign the route at each stop taking the distance and time into account (tell me about flexibility and change management, ha!), but as you know, beggars can’t be choosers. If you wish to escape the hyper-centre of the capital, the best option is undoubtedly the legendary gbaka, a tremendous wreck taking up to 18 people together with plates of fish and baskets of cackling hens: the minibus follows a predefined map, but passengers get in and out whenever they want. Finally, there are those men dressed mighty poorly, and wearing worn-out flip-flops; those decent men serving the high society in shiny palaces during the day after sleeping on the earthy floor of ghettos poised at the very edge of the cliff, those lowly servants who cannot afford any of those cheap options either ride a patched-up bicycle or walk hours before the sun rises. I must confess, I used to keep a distant eye, full of disdain, on these collective transportation solutions. I thought they brought shame to my country.

When I arrived in France, I was 18– finally! -, I rushed proudly into the depths of the subway, four stops, one connection at Châtelet, how exciting! I walked at a brisk pace to match the rhythm of the rushing crowd, trying my best to adapt to this world of dynamic, developed, organized and successful citizens. Sometimes, I would escape from the busy town to ride my shiny bike in the wood in Sologne region: I noticed that biking as a hobby was a trendy thing to do. But the real achievement happened a decade later, when I got my driving license and took a loan to buy a cute and tiny urban car. My heart and pride even reached a pinnacle when I bumped into a colleague in the car park of the office who told me: “oh Niamke, this car, this is so you!”. I thought then «well done girl, you got there! »… Did I? I bankrupted myself to pay for minor repairs, I ate my breakfast in my machine-twin to make up for the time lost in traffic, every day I cursed a dozen of strangers fishtailing on the ring road and sang Abba at the top of my lungs to release the stress and worries. How cool is that?

This was my life on the road, until I landed in Bangkok, the paragon city of contrast. Daedalus would feel drowsy and overjoyed, inebriated by the fantastic network of underground, terrestrial and aerial rails; the obsolete maze of canals; the adventurous imaginary sidewalks; the mesh of bridges, footbridges, and aerial walkways.

The complex transportation netting of this megapolis plays with time, space, and money. You might be tempted to call a taxi because it is so cheap, but you’ll be sorry if you plan to be on time at peak hours. Anyone living in Bangkok knows that you should either use the motosai (moto-taxi that boldly and proudly navigates between the cars stuck in traffic) or the metro. This might be the reason why a BTS ticket (aerial metro) can cost more than a taxi fare. Having this in mind, in order to reach the National Museum before my guiding session at 9am, I used to jump on to the back of a song-thaew (« two-benches » in Thai, describes this red pick-up with two facing wooden benches in the back and a canvas roof on top; like the gbaka of my childhood, it follows a preset route, and stops on-demand as soon as someone wishes to get in or out); the song-thaew n°1240 took me to wharf 0 on the Chao Praya river where everyone waits quietly for the Express boat. Once aboard, a bossy lady controller noisily shakes a coin box as a not so kind reminder to buy a one-way ticket. At stop 9, the dock leading to the Grand Palace and the National Museum, we are welcomed by lines of motosais and tuk-tuks: locals generally ride a motorbike while tourists embark for an entertaining ride in a smoking and crackling tuk-tuk. I would spend less than 100 THB for this transportation combo and reach my destination in 40 minutes; double the time and cost if you take a taxi in the morning. It took me a couple of months to unplug my Parisian riding model that ranks the car at the top of the chain of transport value, and it took even longer to get rid of my prejudices against the old, rusty, and noisy mass transit of Abidjan. However, eventually, I learned how to queue in the subway at peak hours without swearing or sighing, how to let the world and his wife flock out of the wagon before leaching into it, how to get on a feverish and dented bus without fuss, I didn’t even bat an eyelid when my body temperature appeared on the gigantic screen of the subway according to the covid-related safety rules.

My inner self has created a new direction matrix to be used for years. It made me understand that if I can take advantage of the panel of solutions according to time and destination, I will always arrive safe in port. I’ve learned again about flexibility, and I now entertain the idea of leveraging this matrix outside the prosaic transportation dilemma. Well, let’s first find out how to use this bugging Navigo Easy pass, embed the irrationality of electric scooters that silently barge onto the clueless pedestrians, and most of all, I should reset, without delay, my internal computing program for journey times in Paris since to my surprise and great despair there is no mototsai waiting outside my house to help me catch up when I oversleep. I am not complaining because there are plenty of reliable public transport solutions, but for some reason, I don’t seem to adjust with the way time runs here. Seriously, am I the only one lost in lags and gaps?