Poda-ing about town

Getting around Freetown can be slightly…problematic. The weather is not conducive to long leisurely strolls from place to place (blog entry on ‘when shopping trips go wrong’ coming soon). In the rainy season the downpours can be so dramatic and so sudden that even putting one foot in front of the other can seem like an epic battle. Outside of the rainy season there’s a good chance that by the time you’ve walked for more than 10 minutes, you’ll be so drenched in sweat, that you may be mistaken for a victim of the rainy season that time somehow forgot.

Added to the difficulties presented by the weather, are the hazards presented by pretty much everything else: The distinct lack of pavements, the open drains and sewers, the aptly named ‘manholes’, and alarming absence of ‘manhole-covers’.

So, in short, walking is out. This leaves you with four options.

Option 1: Taxi. You would be forgiven for thinking that Option 1 is an easy and straightforward option. Unfortunately you’d be wrong. Taxis in Freetown are mind bogglingly complicated. There are a few key rules that you must learn. Once learnt these rules only serve to confuse you further:

• Rule 1: Taxis don’t go where you want them to go, they go where they are going, and its good luck if that coincides with the destination you had in mind.

• Rule 2: Anyone can jump in, or out, of a taxi at anytime. If there’s a spare seat the taxi is not full. (This actually makes a lot of sense now, but at first the idea of successfully hailing a taxi and then having other people hopping in with you seemed strangely galling.)

• Rule 3: (And this is where it gets really confusing). Never tell a taxi driver where you want to go before you get in a taxi. If you do this then it means you have chartered the taxi, and although it slightly increases your chances of ending up in the right place, it also costs you five times as much. Unfortunately the flip side of this rule is that if you get in the taxi without saying where you want to go, there’s a good chance that you’re in the wrong taxi.

• Rule 4: All taxi journeys cost 900Leones, apart from ‘two-way’ journeys which cost double, unless of course you accidentally charter a taxi (see rule 3), in which case it costs 5,000Leones. Confusingly ‘two-way’ does not mean return; it just means a journey that is twice as far as a one-way. Even more confusingly some ‘two-way’ journeys cannot be done in one taxi, so you must pay ‘one-way’ to two different taxis. And just to add to the general theme of confusion, I’m not at all sure what journeys constitute two-way and which are only one-way. I just know that if I took a taxi to work I would have to take two taxis and still have a fair distance to walk at the end.

As you may have gathered, I haven’t really managed to work out the taxi system yet. So…

Option 2: The Poda Poda – ahh the Poda Poda. I have an unreasonably soft-spot for the Poda Podas, which baffles the majority of Westerners (and a good proportion of Sierra Leoneons) who refuse to get into them. Poda Podas are like buses, only much smaller and with far more people in them. They are essentially battered and compact mini-busses in various alarming stages of disrepair. Staffed by two men - one Driver and one ‘Apprentice’, (who sits in the back, collecting the money and yelling unfathomable things out of the open window), they rattle and clatter around the city, carrying more men, women, children and chickens then you could possibly imagine.

Officially, if such a thing were written down (which seems highly unlikely), Podas can carry 17 people. Two in the front next to the driver, and fifteen along four crowded benches in the back. The benches themselves are works of impressive ingenuity. The back bench spans the whole width of the van and seats four. The three benches in front can sit three and are mounted so that the far seats are against one wall, leaving just enough room for passengers to clamber in and out via a tiny walkway against the other wall.

Once all the bench space is filled the three-seater benches turn into four-seaters via a sliding panel that can extend each bench to fill the full width of the van. Once full, a Poda Poda is therefore really full and there is no clear etiquette as to whether people sat on the sliding panels across the gangway are expected to move to allow passengers off, or whether it’s acceptable for passengers to clamber over each other in their bid for the exit.

In practice Poda Podas often carry far more than their (already ambitious) allocation of 17. There seems to be another rule (although again, I doubt this has found its way to any form of actual rule book), that if you’re only taking up the space of one seat, you only pay for one seat. This leads to the surprising practice of quite tough looking teenage boys spending long journeys sitting on each others laps. On one of my more memorable Poda Poda rides home, I found my self crammed on the back bench with four teenage boys filling two seats to my left, and two junior school boys sitting on the seat to my right. All six of the boys passed the journey by alternating between singing along loudly to the Rhianna album being blasted from the front speakers, and grinning at me before bursting into amused/bemused laughter.

There is no such thing as a boring Poda Poda ride, and my soft-spot stems from the fact that, although hot and crowded, Poda Poda journeys are also immensely amusing and incredibly good natured. People say good morning as you step on their foot trying to squeeze through the impossibly small gaps, money and change is passed hand to hand through the passengers on the way to and from the Apprentice, jokes are shared and explained, and on the far too frequent occasions I fail to recognise my stop, heart felt apologies and detailed directions are offered to set me back on track.

I have learnt today that Poda Poda translates to ‘to strive and struggle to find a living’, basically the Krio version of ‘makings ends meet’. It’s a philosophy with a lot more meaning on the streets of Freetown.

Option 3: Okada (motorbike taxis). Option 3 is not an option. Although widely acknowledged as the fastest route around town, with the added bonus of being the only transport option that will actually take you where you ask to go, Okadas are also the most dangerous transportation mode known to man – with the possible exception of home-made kerosene rocket packs. The main piece of advice offered to the newly arrived is “check that the driver’s not drunk before you get on.” Ermm…so never use an Okada in Freetown.

Option 4: Friends with cars. This is an excellent option. Thank you Natalie. Thank you John. You’re both stars.