There are no bus stops in San Salvador. Well, there are places where buses stop and people get on and off, but there are no signs with pictures of buses, no benches, no helpful words to reassure you that you won’t just be waiting on the street all day like an idiot.
There are also no bus schedules. The buses cough back and forth from one end of the route to the other at their own pace, determined by traffic, the number of regular passengers, and how many people flag them down at random places on the side of the road. As I wait for Ruta Uno, I watch two 9s go by, one after the other, followed by a 44, a 30, a 9, two 44s, and another 9. Then a bus pulls up with psychedelic letters that look like they belong on a surfboard or guitar case. I study the fluorescent glyphs, trying to make them out. It could be a 4, or maybe a 7, or maybe it’s not a number at all. Only after the bus leaves do I realize the sign said “R-1.” That was, in fact, my bus.
A 9 goes by, followed by a 30, a 30, and another 9. I study each carefully, making sure the numbers are not optical illusions that will again transform themselves into R-1’s in passing. But it’s not always easy to find the route number. Sometimes it appears on a little card taped to the front window instead of professionally painted in illegible Day-Glo script above the windshield. In the latter cases I wind up spending six or seven seconds staring at the swirling colors before realizing that they are not route numbers, but rather messages like “Dios es Amor” (God is love), “El Salvador,” or, on one occasion, a cryptic, “Jeniffer.”
The bus drivers don’t own the buses, but they do drive the same ones every day. The vehicles themselves are old discarded American school buses, complete with English-only evacuation procedures printed over all emergency exits, though all traces of National School Bus Yellow, the official color, have been painted over as required by law. To the drivers, these are their offices, their cubicles, their mobile homes away from home, and they do their best to personalize them. A few weeks ago, they all brought out their political flags in honor of the upcoming presidential elections. The majority of drivers are left-wing, and had FMLN flags taped to windows or hung from rearview mirrors; I saw only one flag from ARENA, the ruling party, on a starkly clean blue bus with no other signs of personalization. I have also seen Salvadoran flags, Canadian flags, and American flags, plus one flag with the randomly English slogan, “In God We Trust.”
A bus goes by with glowing green shark fins attached to its top edges. I am so distracted by the spectacle that I miss another R-1. I curse under my breath, then wait impatiently as a 30 goes by, then two 44s, and then a 9.
I play with the coins in my hand: a dime, a nickel, and three pennies—seventeen cents, exact bus fare. They’ve switched to the U.S. dollar in El Salvador but it’s always dangerous not to have exact change. You give them a one-dollar bill and they ask if you have anything smaller. You give them a five and they wince. With a ten, you’re lucky if they don’t swear at you. One bus driver didn’t have change for a quarter. I let him keep it, my noble eight-cent contribution to the bus-driver cause.
Finally an R-1 comes and I manage to identify it before it pulls away. I climb aboard but freeze on the stairs, too astonished to continue. A two-foot stuffed ape hangs from the ceiling, accompanied by half a dozen smaller stuffed animals, including a rabbit, a monster, and a grimacing dog. A flashing red police light has been stuck to the ceiling and a fluorescent green strip blinks on and off, just above the rear-view mirror. All of this is reflected multiple times in the surfaces of three dozen CDs that have been glued to the ceiling. I have just climbed aboard a mobile fun house.
The other passengers appear inured to the spectacle, and the driver glares at me for loitering on the steps. I quickly hand him my seventeen cents and take a seat, but not before the bus lurches forward and I almost fall. I sit next to a man calmly reading a newspaper. The lynched toys swing back and forth all the way home.—Katherine Glover
Leave a Reply