ETHIOPIA: Bus Station Chaos

Alright, the Addis bus station may be one of the craziest places I have ever been. Because the bus was full, we were told to get to the bus station at 5:30 AM to ensure passage. It is still dark out and just throngs of people already milling around the station parking lot amid the ever-present, noxious diesel fumes. We can’t tell who works for the bus station or is just out to get some Birr by being helpful. Regardless, everyone keeps pointing to the far end of the lot when we say Bahir Dar, and there we proceeded. We also kept being told that the bus would leave in 30 minutes and just look for the 4-digit number written on the ticket. Our bus didn’t leave until about 8:00 AM, the bus number changed once, and during the wait we just watched the spectacle all around us.

I was traveling with my friend Christian, who was going for a 2-week historical circuit trip beginning in Bahir Dar, whereas I was just going for a long weekend in Bahir Dar. Also present was my friend Tori, who was taking a different bus to Harar for the weekend, and Christian’s roommate and a German documentary film crew (two people) who had no real reason to be at the station other than to witness the chaos and watch us get on board.

I am not sure I can adequately describe the chaos about bus travel here. The confusion was magnified partly because I didn’t understand all the Amharic yelling going on around me. Granted, this is my first experience with developing world land transport. But other farangi, who have been in other developing countries including other African countries, claim that the bus station at Addis is one of the craziest scenes they ever witness while traveling. It is a huge parking lot filled with old buses. Some seem in quite the state of disrepair while others don’t seem bad at all. People are just standing around or sitting on their luggage anywhere there is free space in the lot. Buses just come and go, honk their horn, while never stopping. This causes constant mass migrations of people from one spot to another. It was non-stop: buses just reversing, buses making wide turns into crowds of people, buses just idling and burning everyone’s eyes as you got stuck in a plume of pollution.

Loading onto the bus was the craziest of all. An empty bus would come into the parking lot and make its way to its loading spot. People would be running alongside the bus hanging onto the doorknob at the front and rear door. Up to a dozen people all jockeying for that doorknob. The bus stops, the doors open and, holy shit, people just start climbing over one another to get into the bus and get a seat. Pushing, shoving, yelling, climbing, it didn’t matter. Whatever it took to get on the bus. Then the bus fills up to the tipping point. Around 10 minutes later someone gets on the bus and starts kicking people off so it’s still full but not to the brim full. Imagine this scene going on at around 10 separate buses at the same time. Just mobs attempting to funnel into the small bus doorway. While watching this Christian and I looked at each other with “What the fuck?” looks. Christian then stated how he had to make sure his large pack made it onto the top of the bus so I needed to fight for the seats by myself. Great.



But it wasn’t so bad. Eventually our bus did come, with the people hanging onto the doorknobs as it pulled into its designated spot. I ended up at the front door but that didn’t open. (“The door is sick,” one of the bus assistants yelled out the window.) So the mad rush was already underway at the back door. I did jockey for position and was shoved more than I shoved back. I held up getting onto the bus to allow an older woman to get ahead of me, which meant three men also squeezed in, elbows first, ahead of me. But the man who sold us our bus tickets and told us to be there at 5:30 AM was sitting in prime seats in the front of the bus. He saved seats for us farangi. After I was seated he went and found Christian still trying to ensure his pack ended up on the bus and not in someone’s arms running out of the bus station. He asked Christian for Birr 20 for getting us seats. Christian gave this up grudgingly and spoke about it quite a bit the rest of the trip. (I notice that many Europeans I meet are outraged by this sort of thing. I think Birr 20 was cheap for us to get good seats up in the front of the bus. It’s one thing for people to charge farangi prices, which happens often, and another thing to pay for someone saving a seat. At least I see a difference.) To not give the sole illusion that getting on the bus was a survival of the fittest exercise, it also seemed that other prime seats in the front were saved or left open for some elderly women who entered the bus at their leisure. I felt bad for a minute that we had such good seats when a woman had to sit on a folding chair in the middle of the aisle. Not bad enough to actually give up my seat but still felt bad.

While all this was going on the German documentarians began filming. Filming and photographing in Ethiopia is dicey. People want Birr to be photographed and the government has made many objects around town off-limits to be shot. Once the camera came out people started asking for money to grant permission to film. Not government people or bus station people just random people, especially the beggars. I had just gotten seated and looked out the window and saw a young man, smiling widely, standing in front of the camera holding his hand in front blocking the lens. He apparently was telling them they couldn’t film, but in a jovial way. This young man turned out to be our bus driver. Since I was on the bus I am unsure what if any kind of footage they ended up with. So now everyone is seated. Two beggars get on and make their way through the bus, hands out. One of them is one who was asking for filming money. He stops next to our seats and begins talking loudly. We hear “farangi” and people begin laughing. He was talking about us. Later on, during a stop in our journey, an Ethiopian translated what the beggar said. Something about how farangi think they can come to Ethiopia and film and photograph and not pay money. Why do farangi think they can take photos for free. Ethiopia is weird with the photographs.

So now we were ready to leave. Bahir Dar is officially listed as a day and half trip although we were assured we would get there that night. About 16 hours later we arrived in Bahir Dar. The bus ride itself was crazier than the bus station.