"Please move! i need space for one more! there is space for one more, i see it!" the jeepney dispatcher barked at the weary passengers.
So i barked back, "Am i gonna be charged 1-peso promo fare for this or what?"
the dispatcher forced a smile and said that nobody's paying one peso. there is still more room.
in this place where public transport remains to be the main mode of transportation of the working class, there is always more room for the 25th potential passenger of the 20-seater jeepney. never hang by the rear side of the jeepney. never mind if they had to take the scaffold seat called "extension", never mind if it is a lady carrying 5 bags of groceries and a child infant. there is always room for more somehow. and somebody's gonna volunteer to hold that infant child for another, all the time.
what is quite amusing though is that the passengers seem like it. they seem to welcome every more passenger that tries to get in, despite the apparent passenger overloading. i know, what were they thinking, right?
the dispatcher barks and like choreographed dancers, the seated passengers moves all-together in the same direction, squeezing their bodies into tiny balls along with their 10,000 kilos worth of groceries, making room for one more. and then another, and then another. and when there's none left, another would volunteer to her lap.
"let me take your child while you hold on to the rear rails of the jeepney."
WHAT? shit, no. why would a parent even do that?
and he does hands over his child. to a stranger. who then happily takes on her role as part time sitter-in-the-jeepney while others happily pitches in cooing the child who appears quite confused of all the attention she's suddenly getting, and for being on the lap of a stranger.
but in the months i have been here, riding through this chaotic choreography, everyday, for five days, 4 weeks in a month, 12 months in a year, i tried to make sense of all the bumping and the squeezing and the accommodating that every one seemed to be happily obliging themselves with, every one except me.
you see, in small communities people do help each other. because you see, in a community that has not had the paranoia that are cars and overspeeding, filling the jeepney to the brim is treated more like public service than business.
"Come, come, Inday. We have room for you! Don't wait for the next one or you're not gonna make it before dark!" says an over-concerned citizen to a student checking if there was still space. and the girl gets on the jeepney. a swing to the left, a swing to the right, a bark from the dispatcher and magically a space wide enough to accommodate 1 roberto's queen siopao appears, and off we go.
It's the same thing, the way they treated bikers and biking. if you're utilitarian (meaning non-fred speed, helmentless, non-cleated, non-stravafied, and definitely non-MAMIL), people don't give you shit. even if you are a girl. because bikes and work and farming are as normal, as necessary as shitting. you don't come to the toilet lycra'd and helmented. you bike and you work. or walk. bikes gets you everywhere and every one knows that. when they get to their farms they don't go bragging it all to facebook that they BIKED to work, because duh, it's as normal as shitting, y'know.
so jeeps. jeeps are treated like carabaos, the beast of burden. it seems that people in the country have not divorced themselves from the idea that a piece of metal junk like the jeepneys are nothing but motorized carabaos and carabaos are safe animals to ride on. y'know, like you just jump onto the back of the carabao and off you go. then you see a mate and you ask him to hop along and then off you two go, on the back of the carabao. and then you invite some more and off you all go until you feel that it's already cramped and you have to stop inviting people in, OR that the carabao suddenly grunted, a sign that he's had enough of the weight and you can stop telling people "come hop right in." yes, that's our jeepneys. And yes, they do grunt. the engines grunt when the load's too much. and people do not seem to mind, not even the driver because y'know, he has to get these people to where they're going.
so jeepneys. in the rurals. never dangerous. more like beast of burden carabaos always happy to serve its boss.
