combis!

My friend just wrote a piece about combis (the buses that zoom us around the city, barreling back and forth, weaving through traffic). It inspired me to share my thoughts about combis. I've wanted to talk about the combis for a while now!

Some days I am so resistant to the combis, for pretty obvious reasons--taxis are relatively cheap here compared to the U.S. and take you places way faster than combis, they're crowded, you don't always get a seat, petty robberies occur on them, and you might have to take 1-3 different cars to get to where you're going. For other reasons though, combis make a lot more sense--it's usually at least a tenth of the price of a taxi, you get to feel badass, but most of all you get to see Lima from a whole different side. I have the privilege to choose usually between taxi and combi, depending on if I am traveling alone and depending on how far I am going. If I am going far and am alone, then I have to choose the combi. But short distances with a group of friends, I can afford to split the cost of a taxi. Some people spend 3 hours in combis getting to work, and then 3 hours to get home.

Today I learned a quicker way to get into town from where we live and was excited to try a new route. It's generally pretty easy to get somewhere, even if you haven't been there before. When I got off the first car at a stop I had never been to, the cobradores (men/women who charge the passengers) yelled from the side of their buses all the different destinations you might want. I immediately heard mine "La Marina! Javier Prado! La Marina!", jumped on, and knew I was going to get there sin problema. I always try to pick my seat strategically--hoping that there is a seat! After hearing too many stories about people's cell phones getting taken out of pockets, I always am probably overly anxious and cautious. Today on my way in I sat next to a girl who looked like she was in college. On my way back I sat in the row of single seats. It's always the teenage boys in groups that make me nervous. (as they did when I was also a teenager)

My friend's piece about combis brought up the various phenomena that occur on the combis that don't seem to based on anything formal. Most of the buses, I'm pretty sure, are kind of privately run. Definitely certain lines are.  So the bus drivers and their cobradores can kind of do whatever they want. It used to be that you could flag a combi or get off a combi wherever you wanted. (I remember being frustrated in Seattle when buses wouldn't stop for me if I was even 10 feet away from the bus stop.) Now though the police are trying to control them more. There are more actual bus stops, and the bus usually only lets you off at the stop. My friend refers to a common dialogue that occurs on the bus (which I have heard many times) where a passenger says they want to get off at the corner (a common way to ask for the bus to stop), and the cobrador says, ok, we'll drop you off at the bus stop. Or the bus driver will kind of just ignore the passenger until they have gone past the corner. It is definitely annoying to be on the bus when it stops wherever anyone wants to get off, but it's also not exactly correlated with the fact that if they are picking up a passenger, they will do that anywhere (so they get the $). She brings up the racism and classism that the exists with the passengers and how they speak to the cobradores.

The Peruvian American writer Daniel Alarcon has a short story called Ciudad de Payasos (City of Clowns) that he recently turned into a graphic novel with the artist Sheila Alvarado.  In the story, the combi plays a continual role, showing how people board the combi to do various "performances" to ask for money. He and Sheila got the idea to draw the inside of the combi like a theatrical stage. After reading his story, I feel like I am more open to exploring the city via the combi perspective and what happens on the combi.

Today on the ride home, it was a good combi day. The cobrador was a woman, which is less common, and still always kind of surprises me. It's not an awesome job---you kind of hang yourself out the bus yelling for passengers, soaking up all the fumes, dealing with the dust of the street. I watched one young guy dressed in some kind of uniform stop the bus at one spot where a girl was waiting for him. She got on and they sat a row apart from each other in the only free seats. They looked like they had just started dating. I thought it was sweet that he stopped the car to pick her up, so they could take the bus together. After about 20 minutes on the bus, a seat freed up and they could sit next to each other. At one spot the cobrador hurried on these two old men that weren't able to hop on as fast as the bus driver wanted them to. One slowly made his way to the back. And then a few blocks later, he went up to the front, asking where something was (I was relieved I'm not the only one who asks where to get off for different things!) The cobrador yelled to the bus in general "The social security building?" And everyone said "The next corner!" The cobradors also play a role when there are little kids getting on and off, helping them down as their parents have their hands full. For a brief second the cobrador is a babysitter, lifting the toddler down to the street.

On the last leg of my ride (my last car today was actually a taxi colectivo, not a combi--which is pretty much a taxi that goes between two places taking people), I enjoyed the fact that where we live way up north gets better weather than the rest of Lima. It was sunny and blue skies! (Not a common sight in Lima.) The last leg is through these neighborhoods that were just built in the last 10-15 years on sand dunes. I looked out the window and saw kites in the air. I got home happy to have found a new and quicker route to town, appreciative to have experienced the combi again, and having only spent 6 soles in comparison to what would have been at least 60 soles in taxi.