Chicken Buses

With Peace Corps’ ban on operating motorized vehicles, public transportation it will be for the next two years. Welcome to the joy of riding on chicken buses.

Camionetas, or “chicken buses” as know by English speakers, are old U.S. school buses driven down through Mexico and given a second and more exciting chance at life here in Guatemala. Spruced up with brightly colored paint jobs (some might venture to say gaudy) and personalized with religious sayings, depictions of seductive women, drawings of cartoon characters, or some combination of the three, these former carriers of the youth of America are resurrected to haul the masses of Guatemala. And the masses they do haul. Rows that once sat four children now hold six adults, and those not lucky enough to find a seat stand packed into the aisle. There is no such thing as a camioneta being ‘full’. In fact the only time I have been on a camioneta when it didn’t stop for somebody waiting on the side of the road was on the way to Antigua the other day when the driver refused to pick up a clown (I was really relieved by this having heard a story of a volunteer being robbed at gun point by a clown outside of the PC office in Guate…really, it’s okay to laugh). Jam-packed far above the recommended capacity and operated as if the driver was vying for a spot on the NASCAR circuit, I am sure these buses experience more wear and tear during one trip on the winding road from Guate to Antigua than they did during their whole time in service in the states.

Every camioneta has two main actors working in close concert: the driver and the ayudante, literally “helper”. The driver’s job is to get the bus from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time as possible, and he also gets to control the selection and volume of the music (painfully loud seems to be the usual preference). The ayudante’s job (when he is not hanging off the side of the bus making catcalls at women on the sidewalk) is to announce the destination of the camioneta at stops (this is always shouted in rapid bursts of three, “Antigua! Antigua! Antigua!), to strap people’s belongings to the roof luggage racks, to hurry passengers on and off the bus, and, his most important duty, to collect the fares.

One would think that collecting the bus fares would be a fairly uncomplicated and straightforward process—when you get on the bus simply hand your money to the ayudante. Not so. Instead of asking for money upon boarding, the ayudante waits until the trip is underway to walk the aisle to collect the fares. This too would be a simple procedure were it not for the fact that the vast majority of the time the camionetas are so full it is nearly impossible to move. Thus commences the ‘dance of the ayudante’, featuring a stout man squeezing through small spaces. He sucks in here, forces a leg into an open space there, and wiggles his way through the masses amassing a wad of dirty cash. The performance is repeated as he returns to the front of the bus to take up his post hanging out the door. Ahh, what I wouldn’t give to be an ayudante for a day.