Field Report To You Oh My God: Part Two: The Chenna Mafia
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 14
Chenna is like a Tuscan hilltown: Breezy, great views, a “high road” that cuts across a ridge, and a local mafia. Any bus passengers trying to get out of town in the morning (like I was attempting to do on this bright, sunny day) will have to contend with the Chenna mafia. See, Chenna bus operators could offer reasonable public transportation options to a public that certainly demands it, but they insist on tactics of fear, intimidation, and stupidity.
Case in point: It’s 8am and I want to go to Mizan, about 50 km distant. So I chow down on five sambusas, a glass of weak tea, and enter the bus station, looking for a bus headed that direction (there are only two directions buses can go in Chenna: east or west). There certainly is! It’s going to Mizan. I hop on and take a seat. I’m used to this waiting game: Buses don’t even start their engines until 95 percent full, buses don’t leave the bus station until 100 percent full, and buses don’t leave town until 150 percent full. It’s just the Ethiopian way. I understand that. I’ve long ago cultured a patient demeanor in the face of such difficulties.
Then I remember that two buses originating from Bonga will be passing through Chenna around 8:30am en route to Mizan. If they have space available, I can hop on and get to Mizan hours before the Chenna bus even pulls out of the bus station. I get off the bus and walk to the street. This is where serious travelers wait: The side of the road looking for anything with wheels and an internal-combustion engine to get them from point A to point B. I’ve seen people waiting in the middle of nowhere shouting as buses pass them by (nevermind the bus is at 200 percent capacity) and I’ve seen people wait hours to hop a ride a little over a kilometer walk away. (Some Ethiopians are epic walkers; others are allergic to moving their legs.)
So I wait outside the bus station, along the main road, greeting Chenna’s idle men, miscreant children, and women-on-a-mission. A young man wearing designer eyeglasses approaches, smartly dressed and toting a duffel bag. His name is Assefa, and he’s a high school teacher in Shay Bench, about 50 km south of Chenna, where he grew up, and where he was visiting family for the past week. Assefa and I shoot the breeze and then see the Bonga-to-Mizan come barreling down the road. We pick up our bags and get ready to elbow our way onto any free seats.
The bus pulls up and it looks half empty. The door swings open and a doorman beckons us inside. There is nothing illegal about what we’re doing. It is simple travel economics: May as well take the express bus over the local bus. But then the Chenna Mafia roars into action. Thugs block the door to the bus. There is a commotion, yelling, and then the Chenna-to-Mizan bus pulls out of the gates, engine revving. It nearly rams the side of the Bonga bus and all of a sudden it’s Mad Max, as one bus chases another bus, blocking it from making any U-turns, all the way out of town.
Assefa and I stand on the side of the road. I’m a bit stunned, as I nearly got crushed by the Chenna bus, and still can’t believe what I just saw. But here it gets stranger.
An Isuzu truck pulls up and it’s going to Shay Bench. Assefa is in luck! He asks me if I’d like a lift to a junction town halfway to Mizan, where I can catch a bus onwards. I tell him no, I’d rather only take one bus today. We shake goodbye. He runs up to the truck and is halfway inside when I see angry hands rip him from the cab and pull him backwards and to the ground, as if he was trying to jump a fence at a minimum-security prison and the police got to him too soon. The angry hands belonged to Chenna’s bus thugs, who were probably receiving a daily pay of 2 birr for their thugging of Ethiopia’s schoolteachers. Assefa collects himself, shouts a few angry words, and then walks back toward me.
He tries to contain his anger but he knows there are better ways than this. I tell him I’m sorry, but Americans would be locked up for actions less than what those thugs did.
The Chenna bus is back and is patrolling town, looking for passengers, something it should’ve been doing instead of going apeshit on schoolteachers. Assefa and I board, submissively, and the busboy (who is wearing a streetwise “Newsies” cap straight outta da 1920s ghetto) smiles widely at me and says something. “Don’t talk to me, dumbo,” I say, in English, and head straight for the bench seating in the back.
The ride to Mizan is all bumper cars. The road is terrible, and we descend at least 1,000 meters over the course of 30 km. Passengers keep the windows open and periodically attempt to vomit. I sit in the back, the bounciest part of the bus, and keep a straight pokerface on me at all times. The passengers keep looking over at me to see how I’m handling the tortuous journey, and I look half-asleep.
Assefa quietly tells me how he wants to move to America, that he tries his every chance at getting lucky in the Diversity Visa lottery, but always no dice. He then tells me his backup plan is to move to Kenya, to Egypt, or maybe to South Africa. Places where he can make a better life for himself. I tell him Ethiopia has one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, and he tells me that that’s just propaganda the government peddles to its people. The real Ethiopians aren’t seeing any additional wealth. All they see is 40 percent inflation and Asians building roads for them.
I wish Assefa good luck. On a different day I might try to convince him to stay in Ethiopia, to make a better life for his fellow countryman, and to stay close to his family. But after the Chenna Mafia fiasco, I send Assefa my deepest hope he makes it far, far away.
End of Part Two
