(This column from 2022 was one of many written for Stabroek News by Dave Martins.)
In my younger years growing up in Guyana, I had the daily school-boy experience of travelling from Hague, on West Demerara by bus to Vreed-en- Hoop to catch the ferryboat to Georgetown. It was often a troublesome matter because the buses were often overloaded for those morning and afternoon trips and it was common practice in a full bus that youngsters like myself would be expected to give up their seat to an adult passenger joining, with the young person then sitting on the adult’s lap for the rest of the journey. Inevitably there was often much turmoil with this arrangement, with the bus conductor having to negotiate the transaction. As expected, the altercations were many and on several occasions I recall the bus driver having to get up from his seat and deal with the matter directly. From experience I can attest that the youth sitting on an adult’s lap all the way to Vreed-en-Hoop, or all the way returning home, was a vexatious business at best, with a lot of grumbling and angry faces on both sides.
I recall one particularly frantic episode, heading for the ferry, when I was a passenger on a bus going up. and a bus before ours had run off the road into a trench and all the passengers from that mishap joined our bus, with many of them soaking wet from the trench immersion and youngsters, like me then having to give up our seat in this arrangement which left us as wet as if it was our bus that had been in the water.
The entire West Dem bus operation was a daily exercise in frustration stemming from the overloading practices, and the wet-seat experience was easily the worst part of the scenario. Picture young Martins showing up at Saint Stanislaus College in Brickdam with a definite wet rat appearance, and even a touch of trench mud or greenery. Fortunately, I can only recall three occasions where this was the case, but the memories cling. I recall one instance when the soaking happened on a bus trip heading back to Hague and my mother’s face as this dishevelled rat got off the bus in the village. The bus-driver Kass had to intervene to placate the lady.
The relinquishing of your seat that landed on young passengers was actually a very frequent part of the constricted country bus experience, coming and going, with many travellers like myself choosing to stand instead, and holding on, for the rest of the journey. It was truly a matter of limited choices. Travellers these days don’t know how fortunate they are without that wet-seat experience. There is a famous Guyanese cuss-word that describes it well, but the editor will surely remove it from my column so I will save him the trouble by not using it here, but believe me the temptation is strong.
