A CHAT FROM LONDON: The sights and sounds of public transport in a Western city

I had been shopping.

Many of us queued to get in, and as I straggled (not struggled) with a load of grocery bags, contemplated waiting for the next available BUS.

Buses in London have computerised technology. ONE is time. As you wait. the timetable gives you exact minutes and seconds for next list of availability. That is why, as soon as everyone is in the vehicle, drivers do not wait to fill more passengers. Strict guidelines. They cannot waste time. If you miss getting in, you have to STAND BY...

Drivers have to be careful not to injure passengers while vehicle is moving or away from designated areas. There are serious consequences.

Liability is ONE...

So if you miss, you know exactly for how long ... 2 to 10 minutes, average. Times get longer during late nights but that is another tale.

I huddled myself in. Close behind a very old fellow tagged, softly. As I looked over my shoulder in indecision, he uttered the unthinkable.

“You, alright, lad?”

Lad is colloquial for boys or males.

I nodded and as he had a pleasant expression, decided to be a gentleman, “I am fine, what about you?”

He said OK, smiled as we stumbled inside.

Touched our Oyster travel cards, which is normal in the said computerised London buses and searched for spaces. Being an elderly fellow, he was offered a seat by a young passenger as soon as he stepped in. I stood near a window with the mountain luggage in my blood-knuckled palms.

When I used to travel in Latin America, someone would always volunteer to hold your luggage for yo, if you were standing. Culture and manners in Latin America and Africa are similar. Here in Europe you will hardly see anyone seated asking to hold the luggage for you. It is a very “me-me” culture. Yes, you might be helped to carry something up the stairs, usually mothers with heavy prams and babies, mostly; but, otherwise, no sir.

Old man looked at me standing with my groceries. There was a glint in his eye.

A space was soon available when a mzee woman reached her home.

Another man, probably half my age quickly took the seat. Old man looked at him then at me and back to him; we both smiled.

His thoughts were quite obvious.

Bus rattled on. London. London. Londoooon.

Months ago I was seated in another bus. Entered a man who resembled a building about to collapse. I had an injured leg.

“Young man, may I sit please?” Crumbling stranger, moaned.

I pointed at the leg.

I could see he did not believe me.

He was heaving and sighing and miserable. Overweight. Probably did not exercise. Sunset story.

I got up and offered him the seat, one hand holding the rail. I was actually in pain.

Like a sack of cement the fat man sank and vanished into the chair. His mouth and nose wheezing.

It was a long journey. Luckily a passenger next to him gave me space. We were now both seated.

“Thanks, young man,” he managed to say, probably, feeling guilty.

“Thanks for calling me a young man,” I replied, smiling.

“Don’t you like it?”

I smiled. He started lamenting how age is catching up with him. “Since I reached my 40th year things are getting harder.”

I was shocked.

“You are 40?”

“Yes, why?”

Well I did not elaborate as I had reached my destination.

I stumbled out, reflecting. If that man was the age he had declared, when he was born I was already working. So he could definitely my child. But these things do not matter in Europe.

So as I chatted to the true, old man, an Asian looking, lady volunteered her seat.

“Sit on her lap!” The mzee joked. He had a sense of humour which left the Asian woman in stitches. She giggled, pleasantly.

As soon as the lady alighted it was my turn to ask the mzee some stuff.

He was as free as gush of wind. Just rumbled on.

He would say things like, “See that road over there. It used to be bushes in 1946.”

1946!

“Yes. I was a post office delivery boy.”

Days of post office. What was his secret of looking so jovial, fun and fit?

“I used to play cricket and boxing.”

Voila. Exercise.

“Do you use the internet?”

“Nah,” said he, bored.

“Where are you from? “He wondered after I had swallowed my amusement.

I asked him to guess.

“The Caribbean? Jamaica?”

“Nope.”

“Nigeria?”

“Nope.”

For the first time, he seemed lost.

“OK, help me.”

“Tanzania?”

“Ah. Tanganyika?”

He pronounced “Turn-gun-knee-car...”

These days, you rarely hear that word overseas. But if he was truly 95 years old, he would know ancient things like that.

Tanganyika. Yes indeed.