Prochain Arrêt

Why boarding a bus invites introspective reflections and pleasures of the everyday. Next stop which loosely translates to ‘prochain arrêt’ in French revolves around bus rides and why there’s more to it than getting on and off.

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mong all the things that we do but don’t really pay much attention to or the ones we dismiss as drudgery rather than comfort, a few occasionally stand out, meant to ease the spirit and console our conflicting human nature.

The idea of flossing one’s teeth or popping a zit is one thing. Sorting a messy, forgotten cupboard or pushing a supermarket trolley brimming with loo rolls is another. But when feeling sad at home, I find hopping on a bus and giving it free reign to take me anywhere for a day embodies a certain quality that ushers in a balm of calm and cheer.

Why write about bus and not trains like most travel writers do? There were no trains on the island of tangled dreams where I grew up. Buses were the practical choice of transport and the way I learned the road. Not everyone would agree and feel the same way I feel about bus rides.

While the rest of us can complain about how slow a bus moves, how much time is wasted, and how certain things can bewilder the senses and sometimes assault the nostrils, I say that there’s dreaminess on every journey. I sit and allow time to drift and briefly detach myself from the false comfort of home.

In the moments of idleness, I indulge myself in looking at the world beyond the glass-paneled windows and in silence become the greatest voyeur to the universe that prevails inside the four-wheeled metal contraption.

Well, look at the man and his crazy mustache. Why is he carrying a lady’s bag? Are sweatpants really the new trousers now? I bet these kids don’t have any idea what corduroys are. Will this lady on my right attend to her squealing baby instead of her phone? I hope these punks would leave the snoring drunk alone. Great God! I’m not having that pink hair of yours, Grandma. And why does the bus driver keep on playing the same ‘I shot the sheriff’ tune? Oh wait, look at those lovebirds over there; don’t they remind me of something?

The outside world whizzes by fast. The one that exists within is in slow motion. Just as the bus makes its matronly progress towards its anticipated stop and then halts, so too are my internal conversations. The engine starts again, and I’m plunged right back into my private reverie as well as contemplation.

We were fairly young when my brother and I started traveling by bus with our parents. Then came the many occasions where it was just the two of us siblings embarking on a childhood expedition between our former hometown in the north and our new home in the south. A journey that took us half a day of travel.

I relied on my brother to decisively read transit tickets and signs as I shuffled behind, navigating our way through crowded terminals. Are we boarding the right bus? I often asked.

My brother agonized about our safety while my thoughts wandered around the roosters stowed in wicker baskets, the chickens inside cardboard boxes, and the goat in a knapsack that bleats every time the driver honks the horn, as well as all sorts of garish human accoutrements brought in for the journey that lies ahead.

“And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end”. – Pico Iyer

By the time I turned ten, short on height yet already familiar with bus travel (and neatly folded paper bills stashed inside my socks, the safest place for a child to hide money when traveling, so I was told), I had my very first solo commute.

On the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines, public infrastructures came painfully slow. The country was still shaking off the long shadow of the late Ferdinand Marcos regime. A new vision took off in the early part of the 90’s when roads were seen as a way to reignite the people’s confidence and highways could stitch back both land and the division altogether.

The roads were rough then. Passengers had to pin their buttocks to their seats that shook like massage chairs suffering from a seizure. It was enough to leave anyone with a bruised arm, a sore bottom, and a wounded pride.

As the bus thrust forward and careered maniacally to where it was supposed to travel, every piece of bolt and rivet would sing in protest—loud enough to cover the shame of anyone who accidentally let slip a wind from all the shaking. Just when you thought you’d made it, bags and belongings in hand, you notice only too late that you’ve stepped on someone else’s fresh, foamy offering to the eventful journey.

My journeys to the highlands and deep countryside had always amused me. On rainy days, thick fog would envelop the landscape, making it difficult to navigate the treacherous roads. The bus had to slowly claw its way up a hill. A false maneuver can mean falling off the cliff straight into the gurgling ravine awaiting below.

This was the quietest time of the entire journey. This was also the time when spirituality was at its finest. ‘Jesusmariasep!’ someone from the back would call out, breaking the heavy silence. Not before long, the crowd, my mother included, joined in the epiclesis hushed chorus, earnestly pleading and exalting the short version of ‘Jesus-Maria-Joseph!’

Descending down into the valleys, a quaint village comes into view every once in a while. A humble wooden abode stood next to towering trees that prick the sky. At every checkpoint of the journey, before entering a major town, all passengers except for the animals they brought on board were to get off the bus and dip their toes into spring water. At first, I thought it had something to do with provincial mumbo-jumbo, spirits, and safe passage. I was only to find out later on that it was a measure haphazardly placed to limit the spread of foot and mouth disease around that time.

When I no longer thought that it was necessary for me to keep stashing bills in my socks, my bus travels had become more frequent. The times were also changing.

On a trip to my late grandmother’s house, just as our bus was approaching the station, a suspected package was spotted at the back. These were the controversial days when bombs would go off in some parts of the region, orchestrated by Abu Sayaff and terrorist militia groups.

Panic hit swiftly. Some of the more athletic passengers jumped out of the windows. Mothers clutched their babies while the rest of us clung to our seats as the driver swerved us clear of the crowd, missing everything but our heartbeats. It was one of the most hair-raising chapters in my bus-riding saga. Thankfully no bomb exploded that day (unless you count the one in my stomach).

If you ask me, bus travel is part comedy and part high drama, yet sentimental all the same. It is riddled with philosophy and prosaic mysticism. On these countless journeys, you see lives from another angle. Sometimes you may even find yourself embroiled in an encounter that stays with you.

I sat once with a stranger of whom I was about to learn that he’s on his way to prison that same morning. What were the chances that he would grip me by the jugular and hold me hostage? Or throw me out of the window? Will I be headlines on tomorrow’s front page? The oddity of the experience had never felt more real when he kept on slipping Proustian remarks and witticisms about life in our conversation that to me, sounded like a tide of confessions.

To him, I was an indulgent audience that didn’t bother to notice the police officers in civilian clothes sitting on both sides of the aisle clasping their pistols as well as the handcuffs he was wearing, for I only realized it, albeit late, when he raised his hands to bid me goodbye.

You may think I’m contradicting myself when I say bus rides lift the mood, pulling you away from the dull grind. Maybe I didn’t make it clear. These trips carry me back too—to old roads and tender memories I thought I’d left behind.

Each time I take a seat on a bus, I see myself more clearly—a person, a wanderer, a traveler in the truest sense. Pico Iyer once put it better than I ever could. “And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end.”

Any bus journey will always have something to offer to any person onboard—an experience, a form of escape, enlightenment, empowerment (the likes of Rosa Parks), something endearing, or perhaps even elevating. Nevertheless, we take the emotion with us as we alight in an interval or in a designated stop, somewhat entirely different from the kind of person we were back then.

Yet even though buses have evolved over the years and become more robust, equipped with the trappings of convenience and modernity, I still think the journey is the same, as well as the feelings it offers.

Aboard this lumbering machine of motion—a transient place to a wanderer—is a token of worldliness that takes within itself a trace of all the roads and lands and borders it has crossed and traveled to. This humble bus that roars, constantly groans with excitement, leaving nothing but dust and fumes and memories in its wake. Along with it is where my earliest travels began.

How do you feel about bus rides and what was the most memorable bus travel you have taken? Where will your prochain arrêt or next stop in travel be? Feel free to share them in the comment section below. Happy travels!

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