Tapiers and Buses

So, I finally got to ride in a Tapier and Bus all in 2 days!

Saturday morning, we went over to Emily's house (a 26 year old lady in our church), and spent the day with her and her daughter, Shannon, who happens to be adorable, and I want to bring home with me! We went to the market, which is right by their house, and we looked at a lot of clothing shops. Then we bought some shrimp and some vegetables, and Emily cooked some concoction with shrimp and Okra, and we put it over rice, and then tomatoes and cucumbers. It was pretty good, but I got really sick after eating it, again. I seem to get sick all of the time here. Anyways, so around 2:00, Mrs. Hunter called me and asked if I had forgotten about something, and apparently there was a misunderstanding between Hemdath and myself, and he thought I was teaching him English, so he was at our house, around 3 miles away from Emily's. So he came to get me from Emily's so we could go back to our house and have an english lesson before the Pastor's class at 3:00. This, was my first experience on a Tapier.

So, we walk out to the road, and I say, "Are we supposed to just stand here, or is there a designated place to go for the Tapier to pick us up?", Hemdath smiles and says "yes" (He's a man of few words, unlike me) After about 2 minutes, a Tapier stops, because Hemdath put his hand out, kind of like waving at someone by your waist. I get in and whack my head on the top because there's about 3 feet of space between the floor and the ceiling, and then when you keep going, there's still only 3 feet, so you continue to scrunch your body while trying to sit down. Luckily, there were only 3 other people in the Tapier, because I've seen 10-12 people in Tapiers before. Anyway, so I finally sit down, and he gets in and sits down, and the driver jerks us as he speeds up rather, shall we say, rapidly. I go flying into Hemdath, because I didn't know you were supposed to hold onto anything, so Hemdath tells me to hold onto this bar thing that goes all the way across the top of the Tapier. So I did. Then I realize that all the windows are way low, about 1 1/2 feet off the floor, so I duck WAY down, so I can see out the window as we're flying down the road. Meanwhile, the guys on the Tapier are a little fascinated with the fact that I'm white, and are trying to talk to me. I'm overwhelmed with the whole experience, and don't understand what they're saying anyway, so I look at Hemdath. He proceeds to interpret, and I slowly have a conversation. They want to know if I like the Tapier, and Hemdath laughs as he tries to explain that question to me, (its obvious to him that I'm not too big of a fan) and I tell them they drive like crazy people. The guys bust out laughing. After a few minutes, we arrive at our road, and I try to get out, whacking my head again on the ceiling. Then we uneventfully walked to our house.

2nd experience:

The next day, Sunday, we went to Sister Shirley's house after church to teach some of the teenage girls singing. Afterwards, Hemdath always takes us home. Last week, someone offered us a ride, and they took us the whole way home (about 3o minutes) because they were going that way anyway. This time, we caught a bus. Ellen and I climbed in, and went to the very back row. The vehicle had around 8 people, which again, was a small amount of people. This was probably because this bus travels so far away, and the time of day we were traveling, was not a busy time. Ellen and I could not sit up completely straight because we hit our head on the top of the vehicle, so for the first 10 minutes we sat very slouched. The bus driver for some reason thought we needed to get to Skeldon very fast, so he drove so fast Ellen looked down, and I hid my face behind her, because I was seriously concerned that we were going to have an accident. They had to be going 100 mph, but they have kilometers, so I don't really know how fast it was. Hemdath laughed at us, but it was not funny. We stopped a few times to let people off, and zoomed off again- they drive like maniacs, and if there was something in the road, I'm not sure they would stop, they swerve. Thankfully, that was a safe trip, and they took us all the way our stop once more. They have a driver of the vehicle, and then they have another guy who sits in the back with the passengers, and collects money and directs. So the guy that was directing in the bus was staring at us, probably because of our skin once again, and trying to talk to us about going to the beach or something, but I couldn't quite understand him, so once again, Hemdath interpreted, but I didn't really feel like talking to this guy alot, because he was making gestures about women we were passing on the road. So there's my 2 experiences of public transportation.

Hope that wasn't boring, sorry no pictures yet!