...and one very patient Peace Corps Trainee from a not so patient PCT. This is the story of the bus ride from my site visit in Rio San Juan back to the capital Managua.
In the very early morning two weeks ago I woke up and dressed by the light of my headlamp, took my bag, and woke up my host brother to walk me to the one direct bus from my site to Managua. The one that brought me there was an actual touristy bus with comfortable seats and a television. I was under the impression that I would be on the same bus on the way back. I was wrong. Before me stood a big yellow school bus that probably had failed to pass safety regulations in the U.S. ten years ago, and so was sent to Nicaragua to die.
Under the yellow light of the only open pulperia, or cornerstore, in town Ismael and I said sleepy goodbyes, and I claimed a seat on the bus. I looked at my watch. 3:50am. Surprisingly though, I felt good, and forty minutes later we passed the next town where another Nica 55 trainee go on ready to return from her own site visit. Then we sat. The busdriver, the yeller, and the cobradora all got off the bus to eat breakfast, go to the bathroom, or take a nap, I´m still not sure, but they left us waiting for fifteen minutes. It was a sign of things to come.
An hour later we arrived at the departmental head of San Carlos where I had a quick breakfast of coffee and a piece of bread, and chatted with the other trainee. Then it was back on the bus, and we were off...for five minutes, until we had another arbitrary fifteen minute wait, after we had just been sitting in the bus terminal for thirty minutes.
This is when things started to go bad. I had not planned well for the trip, and brought no food with me for the ten hour bus ride, thinking I would be so tired I would sleep most of the way. I had not counted on the school bus, nor on how crowded it would be, so that I was forced to stand when I gave up my seat to a mother and child. The other trainee was the first, actually, to give up her seat, and when I pointed out a free seat to her I was surprised to see her standing again only minutes later.
"The guy next to me threw up, and then other people started too," she explained, "I don´t do well when people around me get sick."
Usually one of us had a seat while the other was standing so we were able to switch off a few times, but by this point, about four hours in, I was a foul cloud of grumpiness. My plummeting blood sugar, lack of sleep, the bumping of the unpaved highway, and the resulting dust that coated my hair and face, along with the blaring ranchera music drilling its way into my unwilling skull made me hate everything and everyone. Especially the people squished up against me, and the chicken that little girl was holding. Did you pay for your ticket, bird? I thought not. I´m going to have the cobradora take care of you, and then I´m gonna fry you up and eat you, you flapping nuisance.
Then, miraculously, like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, the bus driver changed the station to Radio Disney (to be said Rahdio Disnehy), and instead of nasally trumpets suddenly the bus was filled with all the cheesy Spanish-language pop my little corazon could desire. Chino y Nacho, Selena Gomez, and Tito el Bambino, along with all my other guilty pleasures came to keep me company. Then next thing I knew, a gentleman gave up his seat for me, and I spent the rest of the hours drifting between sleep and the serenades of teenage heartthrobs until two in the afternoon when we pulled into Managua, took a taxi to the Peace Corps office, then on to the hotel where I took the most satisfying shower in my whole life.
And even the chicken was spared...at least until dinner.
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