THE CIFA

The CIFA, just hearing that one word makes me cringe. The CIFA is the provincial bus here in El Oro. Hatred for the CIFA is wide spread whether you are a foreigner or an Ecuadorian. Just to give a visual… you are on the side of street waving down the bus, you jump onto the still moving bus, and are herded into the crowded aisle amongst way more people than the capacity of the bus (or stuck hanging out the doorway if it is really overly crowded), and you are swung around while hanging on to the top bar for dear life trying to forget the uncomfortable lack of personal space all the meanwhile your life is in the hands of a time-possessed, under qualified, care-free CIFA bus driver. That is the CIFA. Someone once described it as being like sheep herded onto a vehicle.
The CIFA makes any day trip to another close by city an adventure. Every once in a while when you do get lucky and get on a CIFA that actually has some seats open, you are left in shock wondering whether you really are on the CIFA.
To make the CIFA even better there are two check points between Huaquillas and Machala, so anytime we leave our site we have to face one of the checkpoints. At the customs checkpoint the CIFA becomes a panic zone to hide your contraband goods. Bags will be thrown from person to person as they are hidden in any spot possible. The other checkpoint is the immigration checkpoint, where typically everyone has to get off the bus to show your ID, only to then have to fight your way back onto the CIFA.
Today´s CIFA ride was one of those adventurous experiences. Just before getting onto the CIFA in Machala I realized I had a bug on my back inside my shirt, I tried to scratch my back and get whatever the bug was. It turns out it was a wasp which then stung me on the hand. Since I didn’t see the wasp and wasn’t sure if it was a wasp or bee that stung me I began to worry. I´m allergic to bees and if this was a bee that means in the middle of my CIFA ride the allergic reaction may hit, so to be safe I tried to find Benadryl at a pharmacy but no one understood what the heck I was talking about. So after 10 minutes I decided I´m still alive, no swollen tongue, time for the CIFA.
We were lucky and had two seats in the back of the bus. 15 minutes into the trip we notice the people around us laughing and looking at the lady sitting across the aisle from us. There she was holding her my guess 5 year old son up to the sliding window of the bus. The other volunteer looked at me and said ¨Is he peeing out the bus window?¨. We couldn’t believe what we were witnessing. A mother holding her 5 year old up high enough to stand facing out of the moving bus´ window in order to pee. Really? And no one else seemed to be bothered by this act. Now, it is a known cultural norm here for little boys to pee in any direction in any place outside on the street and for older men to pee on street corners although at that point with the decency to face in to the wall at least, but peeing outside the window of a moving bus is one I sure haven’t seen so far. So next to us we had the boy who peed out the window, and behind him in the last seat of the bus a serious-you-should-get-a-motel-room make out session going on, and then for the last 30 minutes of the bus ride the pee boy became nauseous and wanted to throw up so his mother tells him to just keep facing towards the aisle in case he feels the need to throw up (which means a direct aim at us…thankfully he didn’t get sick). The only thing our bus ride was missing was a mother nursing her baby with her boob hanging out for the entire bus´ viewing (usually a normal occurrence to see multiple breasts just there, hanging out there while on a bus).