Chicken Bus!

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Just as the bus was leaving Robe bus station at 6.30am, I became aware of a rustling by my feet. I was sitting at the very front of the bus, with Hannah just behind me, as the conductor had insisted on moving us to the privileged seats at the front. I heard the rustling again, and assuming that the woman behind me was stretching out her legs, looked down to check that I wasn’t kicking her. It was a live chicken. Part way through the journey, I thought a Pepsi bottle falling out of the cupboard in the dashboard had killed it. But it was fine. I kept tidying up the rubbish, except for the plastic drinks bottle it ended up resting its head on, and after Dinsho, accidentally dropped kollo (local roasted barley snack) for it to eat. This appeared to be a chicken bus extraordinaire as, in addition to the 5 or 6 chickens under other seats (same owner as mine?), there were 8 large sacks of live chickens on the roof - approximately 150 in total. The whole bus clucked.

However, a slightly more disturbing event happened after an hour into the journey. The road was bad due to the recent rains - more than at this time last year - and when trying to pass a truck that was stuck in the mud, the back end of the bus started slipping. The driver tried to recover, but we also ended up getting stuck. The passengers all disembarked, and the men tried pushing the bus. It kept slipping back. Eventually, by attaching a rope and pulling, while others pushed from the back, the men got the bus moving … accompanied by cheers from those of us watching. The bus could not stop on the hill (presumably the driver was worried that he would not get going again) so we all had to walk up it, not an easy task in the mud.

We later narrowly avoided yet another incident. As the bus turned left at Modjo (not far from Addis) shouts went up from the passengers. The driver turned round to see what was happening and decided that it was urgent enough to stop. One of the sacks of chickens had come loose and was dangling over the side of the bus. They were unloaded onto the pavement on the way through Addis, and a man (the owner) shook each sack like a duvet - setting off a fresh round of clucking.

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Photos

My chicken!
One of around 160 chickens on the bus from Robe