Getting comfy with goats at 60km an hour
November 11th, 2005 by Sarin
It was one Saturday morning and I was sitting in the back row of a hiace anticipating the hairpin turns that comes with the route Calheta->Praia (Praia = capital city). As I’ve ridden dozens of hiaces in my time here in Cape Verde, everything seemed to be quite normal. Then, I felt something furry reach out and grab my foot from underneath my feet. My natural reaction to furry things grabbing my feet is to lift them off the floor and look at what’s underneath. A passenger boarding had stuffed a goat with its legs tied underneath the seat, and as the hiace piled up with more passengers, I was stuck 4 deep in the back row, with no leg room, and goat underneath to keep me company. When the goat started peeing all over the floor, I kicked it with my heel out of frustration. It groaned in pain, as any urinating animal would have at the time (ok I felt really guilty afterwards).
Most would say that my experience of being stuck in a van with a urinating farm animal was quite different, and yeah I still admit it was. There will be plenty of others who will also say, that they’ve been there, done that, and that peeing goats on an 8am direct hiace to downtown Praia is cake. But it goes to say that everybody who’s familiar with hiaces, always wants to “one-up” you with their own horror story. I however, don’t consider them horror stories and have begun to think of them as “just another day in a hiace”.
Hiaces (pronounced “yoss”) are the Cape Verdean equivalent of an African bush taxi that serves as public transport between major towns. Every hiace I have seen on this island are typical red Toyota vans where the only difference sometimes is the lettering on the front. Most vehicles are in very good condition, and it’s the driver that you have to worry about the most. All of them play local or hip-hop music at high volume even at 6 in the morning. Every hiace fits 4-4-4 and 3 in the front including the driver. That’s 15 if you weren’t counting. Of course, 15 is always the bare minimum and all sorts of passengers find their way in, girls and kids sitting on laps and guys hanging out windows. In addition to the excess of people, people bring their groceries, farm tools, water barrels, whole stores within a box, and my current favorite, live animals (either tied to the roof or sitting right next to you).
Flagging down a hiace is actually a reverse effort. Every hiace driver will make an extra effort to make sure you get on their hiace and an even greater effort, to fill it up. This is achieved by the driver driving around the town screaming his destination out loud, looking in your direction and awaiting your response. Just nod yes, and you’ve got yourself a ride. Sometimes, you don’t even have to say anything and a “hype-man” (a man who does all the screaming for the driver) will shove you into a hiace without ever awaiting your response. If you are in the correct hiace, this really works in your favor.
A “hype-man” is one of the extra efforts a hiace driver will do to fill up his ride. When the hiace is full, the “hype-man” is paid off, and he moves to the next hiace doing the exact same thing. Some “hype-men” might even try to pull you out of an empty hiace so you could join his almost-full hiace in order to get going. Considering they don’t leave until they are full, it’s best to do what he says.
Once the ride gets going, hopefully you’ve gotten used to the crying babies, the smell of dead fish, goat urine and the smell of some Africans who haven’t bathed themselves in weeks. Also get really comfortable crammed into your seat, as the ride might be long and it might take your breath away.
From taking your breath away, I mean 2 things. Most times that you would need a hiace, you know that you are going to be riding from town to town. In between towns, you will be treated with remarkable scenery of the Cape Verdean countryside. Verdant hills and valleys seem to never end. Banana plantations, small villages, remote untouched areas all making your long trip in the hiace decreasingly short. There were many times on clear days when riding in a hiace is good sight seeing, and even though I’ve been in country for months, it still seems new to me.
And then there’s the other thing. There will always be the rare occasion that you don’t have any time to enjoy the view because the hiace driver becomes a speed freak. When he means “Praia, Directo”, he literally means “Directo”. He starts whipping through hairpin turns and coming within a hairlength of hitting other vehicles or running off the road. You pass by a church and then everybody in the hiace starts crossing themselves in unison praying that they would make it out alive. But yet, you stick through it because you’re enjoying the ride and you know there are locals who look more scared than you are. You’re actually more worried that more passengers or animals won’t board to make the ride any more dangerous than it already is.
And that in a nutshell is how virtually every Cape Verdean travels around. There are very few that have cars, and they must have good reason considering hiace fares go for 30 cents to 2 dollars depending on the distance of your trip. On the most populated island, Santiago, hiace are very easy to find, and I don’t often get into the same ones twice. On the other islands, sometimes you would have to arrange the hiace driver to come by your house to pick you up on his morning route so even then, it’s still not a hassle.
You could ramble on and on about the horrible conditions of hiaces and bush taxis in Africa, but you fail to judge them from a local perspective. Hiaces are not that much different than city subways cramming in people and cargo of all shapes. At least in a hiace there are open windows and a human who can direct things. But, just like city subways, almost anything goes (and does) in a hiace.
Related Posts Share this post:
