Where You Put Your Eye

Long, long ago, when I had small children and Sesame Street played incessantly in the background of my life, I remember being attracted to a particularly deep concept that was taught in song and cartoon. The premise was how things appear is dependent upon your point of view, or, as the song went, “Where you Put Your Eye.” If you look at the earth from the moon, it looks like a blue marble. If you look at the earth through a microscope, you see millions of organisms that are otherwise invisible. And if you look at the earth through an as-yet-undeveloped instrument that would allow you to see at the quantum level, you might discover different dimensions, or even other worlds.

That’s a pretty deep introduction to a post about bus monkeys.

There are hundreds of buses in Quito inasmuch as they form the major mode of public transportation. There are three major fixed north-south city routes because Quito is laid out in a narrow valley in a north-south orientation. You can ride those for a quarter. One Saturday, Hermana Ordonez took me on an adventure. We exited our apartment building, walked a half block to the Ecovilla line, paid a quarter and rode it all the way north to the terminal. We caught another bus, rode around the neighborhood called La Luz (The Light), back to the terminal, then caught the Ecovilla again and rode it all the way to its southern terminus, Centro Historico, finally turning around coming back to where we started. That took about two hours and cost a grand total of 25 cents! In contrast, a taxi ride will cost about $10 an hour.

In addition to the three fixed-route lines, there are many other buses that travel to places the lines don’t go, and in particular to other towns and villages outside of Quito. You can board one at the Terminal (that scary place I wrote about that reminded me of Blade Runner) or you can catch one literally on the fly as they drive through town—if you know where to stand. How do you know you’re catching the right one? First, the inside front windshield is plastered with about a dozen names of places, and you are expected to quickly read through the signs to determine if you’re getting on the right bus. Or, a young man (excuse me, I’ve also seen one young woman) standing in the open doorway of the bus will yell the names of the places at you as the bus passes by. He is, as the elders informed me, the bus monkey, so named, I presume, because he hangs onto a handrail as he swings in and out of the bus yelling at passersby.

If, in a split moment, you decide this bus is the right bus, you signal the driver, who slows down to a brisk roll and you leap onto the still-moving bus. The bus monkey may assist you, or he may be distracted by a pretty young lady he’s ogling at the time. The elders told me that being a bus monkey can be a position of power inasmuch as they can fleece long-distance travelers for more money than the trip actually costs and pocket the difference.

Last Monday, Elder Ottosen was sick and Sister Ottosen needed to meet with a contractor in Otavalo. She asked me if I would be her companion for the day. You’ve heard me rhapsodize about Otavalo in previous posts, and I haven’t had the occasion to go there yet, so despite my fear of buses, I agreed to go.

Why am I afraid of buses? Hermana Ottosen and Elder Ottosen tell about the time the bus monkey made two men get up out of their seats so the Ottosens could sit down. The young men were traveling a short distance and the Ottosens had a three-hour ride ahead of them. The young men got their revenge by leaving their fleas behind and the Ottosens suffered with flea bites for days. One time the Ottosens got on the wrong bus and were dropped on the side of the road outside their actual destination—suitcases, toolboxes and all. Another time, one of our newly-arrived hermanas took her seat on a crowded bus. The poncho of someone standing near her briefly covered her backpack which was on her lap. As the bus stopped, the standee left, and the hermana noticed that her backpack had been slashed and the valuable contents removed. These folks are GOOD!

To avoid the indignity of leaping onto a still-rolling bus at our advanced ages, we took a taxi to the terminal. Hermana Ottosen on occasion would ask my opinion about this or that—she was being kind—and finally I told her, “Look, I’m the junior companion here—I’m following you!” Thus, she picked the bus. I was amazed when we took our seats near the front. It was clean, the seating was like you would find on a tour bus (not like a school bus), there were curtains in the window, a television, a driver and a bus monkey. When the bus left the terminal, there were only half a dozen of us aboard. As we drove through town on our way to Otavalo, the bus monkey performed his duties, yelling at people that we were going to Otavalo, and signaling to the bus driver if someone was running to catch the bus.

I mentioned the bus monkey to Hermana Ottosen, and she corrected me, saying she likes to call them ayudantes, or helpers. She told me about how many times the ayudantes had helped her and Elder Ottosen stow their tools and luggage under the bus, assisted them in getting a seat, and answered their questions. It was clear that where the elders saw them as bus monkeys, the Ottosens viewed them more like flight attendants. And I realized that from my viewpoint as a non-bus-user walking along the streets, it was easy to see them as bus monkeys. But once inside the bus, I saw them as helpers.

These young men work hard. They are in and out of the buses, running alongside, helping people onto the bus, watching crowds of people for some sign that they want to ride, communicating with the driver, deciding which street vendors will be allowed onto the bus to sell food or videos or music, opening and securing the lower hatches, being particularly attentive to women with children and older folks. After we had rolled out of Quito and were in the countryside, our ayudante moved down the aisle to collect our fare, $2.50 per person for a three-hour bus ride!

I also learned the power that a suggestion has on my mind. As I sat in my bus seat, despite the fact that the bus seemed relatively new and clean, I kept imagining that my posterior and legs were getting flea bitten. Of course, they weren’t, I was only imagining it. But I did notice that Hermana Ottosen, who was sitting in the seat closest to the aisle, kept her purse strap wound around her arm a couple of times. And I kept my backpack on my lap. So apparently some events are more likely than others on the bus.