Transport

Not the most thrilling blog title I’m sure you’ll agree but I thought I would share with you all the joys of public transport here in Calabar. My daily journey to and from work thankfully involves walking the latter half, although I’m sure when the weather heats up this will become less of a joy as this bit is all up hill, well on the way home it is anyway. In the morning our route to work is something like this…..

We leave the house and lock up the compound make our way along the dirt road that leads from our house to the main road picking a route between the puddles and general wet patches. Then we walk a little to the nearest junction where we stand on the side of the road and shout “Watt”, this is in reference to Watt Market for google fans (or goggle fans if you’re Nigerian). Whatever transport happens to be passing that is heading to Watt will then stop if they have room for you. Our options are as follows;

a)      A shared taxi which will take up to six passengers, 4 in the back and 2 in the front passenger seat – really not very comfy at all and costs 50 naira, my least favourite option.

b)      A ‘bus’ (think camper van with rows of seats inside) which will take a vast number of passengers crammed in like sardines – again really not very comfy  but generally the door is open so at least you get air coming in and costs 40 naira to Watt

c)       A trike – a bit like a tuk tuk  but doesn’t seem to go quite as fast – these are my favourite as they only put three in the back and one in the front and are of course like gold dust, they cost 50 naira

There is also the option of a ‘drop’ in a private taxi but this is likely to cost about 300-400 naira and is reserved for things like coming home when it’s dark only as our allowance just won’t stretch that far. The buses and shared taxis have set routes that they take so if they aren’t going your way they wont stop or will only take you so far before you have to get out and find the next mode of transport. I have discovered that the buses run a really good route from where we get on in the mornings which will take me to some key places in the city so that is at least very handy and makes the budget stretch a bit further as generally the max for any journey is 50 naira, if only I could always guarantee myself a seat on the edge near the door every time I’d be happy. My heart sinks when they shout “Enter!” and direct you to a seat/tiny space at the back of the bus. The only good thing is they are so frequent that I have in fact refused to get on one once when I was directed to a tiny space right in the in the back and the next one that came along  right behind it was nearly empty. The claustrophobe in me point blank refused.

Once we alight at the market we navigate down Edem Street towards the river and into the Bayside Community. I think they will get used to seeing me but at the moment I am still a novelty, especially to the school we pass halfway down the hill. They know we’re coming now and the children have taken to waiting by the windows and shrieking when we pass, I always wave and smile at them which results in much shouting, smiling and waving back, if I’m feeling a bit low it never fails to make to make me feel happy. The walk from the market to the office probably takes about 10 minutes and the entire journey from leaving the house, just over twenty which was about the same as my commute in Newcastle but the difference between the two is unreal. I wonder if this will ever become normal to me?

I will try to take some photos of everything I’ve just described and add them to my page next week. For some reason I can’t upload photos to my blog as it takes forever but I can upload them to my picasa page so I’ll just update that from time to time.