Movimiento Guayaquuileño

At the risk of dominating the posts...

They call it buseteando – going by bus.

You’re buseteando especially when you´re about to fall. You hang by your hands from the roof of the bus and you hope that – for a moment at least! – the bus will stop its stretch-jump-crashing for you to tumble along the aisle and through the door.

Or you sit, gringa with your long legs shoved against the hard blue plastic of the seat in front of you, tall and pale in this country of mountains and burdens and sun. Seated that way, you busetea even better upon the arrival of an old withered man and his two-string-missing guitar. As the bus invents lanes between the sidewalk and the road, dancing madly between bumpers and dirt, the old rumpled dignified beggar will sing you a song in an English you barely recognize because, of course, gringas don’t understand songs sung en español. Or perhaps he is simply showing you the serene enigmatic respect of the men here toward the women of a country where chivalry is still the peaceful law.

You busetea with children and Colombians selling candy, with wary eyes or laughing ease, with joy, with exhaustion, with a heavy backpack and impatience to arrive. You busetea with the confidence of recognition and the shame of realizing, when the Colombian with candy tells you so, that your destination was the street that you passed twenty-four blocks before.

And then, smiling, you follow your friend hand-by-hand along the animal aisle and take the thin friendly lanky hand that helps you down.

Or you push the woman in the pink suit, permiso disculpa you´re in my way, and panting lug your backpack toward the exit and the end.

Or the man in sunglasses points out the post office.
The cell phone store.
The market.
The MAAC.

And you leave the wild beautiful confused rhythm of the bus for the yellow haze of your sandals and the street.

Hugs from a land enchanted by motion,

Michele