The Wheels on the Bus

January 9, 2009


So, these past holidays I took yet another "bus" into Almaty, to spend the New Year with my old host family in Almalybak. We have quite a bit of snow here in the South of Kazakhstan now, and based on my previous experiences, I wasn't exactly ecstatic to jump into another vessel of death and make the trek to Almaty. Well, this trip proved much less dangerous, but much worse in so many other ways...

I know the bus driver now, and if I give him enough warning, he'll come and pick me up at my house in the morning for the ride to Almaty. When he got to my house, there was only one other woman on the vehicle so far, and I slid past her into a nice seat by the window. We drove around Merke picking up our other passengers and cargo (being the holidays, a lot of people were paying our driver to deliver their presents to family in Almaty - it was almost like we were playing Santa Claus, yay!) Before we left Merke, I noticed that the woman next to me had a folded hand towel on her lap and a little plastic bag. Considering that everything in Kazakhstan is carried in these plastic shopping bags, I didn't give it a second thought. MISTAKE NUMBER 1.

About fifteen minutes outside of Merke, this woman next to me curled up towards me and placed her head on my shoulder. Yea, in America, total invasion of that personal bubble! In Kazakhstan, aparently you don't even have to ask before you use your neighbor as a sleeping aid. I kind of giggled at first (MISTAKE NUMBER 2), thinking of the stories I could tell my fellow volunteers about my new best friend. BUT, as I came to learn, this was the absolute least of my worries. We carried on in this manner: me shifting slightly under her weight, her snoozing away on my shoulder. About an hour and a half outside of Merke, my new friend woke up. She started shifting restlessly in her seat and fanning her face. A few short minutes later, she began frantically asking the driver to stop the car. He pulled over into the snow and a young Russian guy in the front seat got out, and opened the back door (he had to unload two heavy speakers before the woman could burst out of the van). She knelt down in the snow and started gagging. She then lifted up handfuls of snow and began rubbing it all over her face and arms. She returned to the van a few minutes later, quite damp, and definitely very ill-looking.

We continued on our way, the rest of the passengers seemingly unfazed, and I was just glad that she clearly wouldn't be sleeping on me anymore - oh wait! What's this heavy lump I feel on my right shoulder? I was not giggling anymore. She tried to sleep (on me!) for another 30 minutes or so, before she instantly (and without warning) lifted her head, grabbed that plastic bag on her lap, and began vomitting excessively and noisily into the bag. No one in the front of the van even turned around! My right thigh is literally touching this puking woman, who was just sleeping on my shoulder and the sounds coming from her wretching body are grotesque (to put it lightly). Well, fortunately by this point, we were only about 15 minutes from our halfway point (where we unload quickly for bathroom breaks and food). So, she just held that little bag of puke until we arrived. I could not have exited that vehicle sooner. I was practically running away from the scene, just trying to get those sounds out of my head, when my new best friend began yelling after me -- "Wait! We will go to the toilets together." Oh great, she likes me. She followed me around like a little puppy dog as I grabbed an iced tea for the road.

I almost screamed when the bus pulled away from the stop and this woman, oh this woman, made the move to lie on my shoulder again! Does she not remember that she was just heaving into a small plastic bag at my side? I was bound and determined to no longer be a comfortable shoulder to rest on. I was constantly finding excuses to lean down and grab something out of my bag, or check the time on my cell phone, forcing her to remove her head from my shoulder. But as soon as I had settled back into a stationary position, her head would find its way back to my shoulder. I had all of these visions of her puking down my neck, and other awful images. I was not a happy traveler.

Well, to cut the rest of the 4 hour bus ride short... my new friend DID end up throwing up again (3 more times in fact! All of them as she sat next to me on this doomed vehicle). Each time she tried to sleep on my shoulder, and each time I found myself squirming around in my seat trying to shake this dreaded puking head from my body. The third time she threw up, we all had to smell the pizza flavored croutons she had picked up as a snack from our first stop - those things smelled bad going down, you don't even want to imagine what they were like coming back up. Well, unfortunately the little girl in the back seat had reached her limit and when that smell reached her, she began throwing up as well! So the two were puking in chorus, and I just had my head smashed against the cold window trying to think about anything other than the sound and the smell. Side note: after one of the times she threw up, she asked the driver to stop the car. She handed her bag of vomit to the young Russian guy and asked him to throw it out into the snow for her! That poor guy's face was absolutely priceless. All I could think, was that we had all taken one for the team at this point, and really it was his turn. He obliged.

When we pulled into Almaty I was so anxious to get off of that vehicle and as far away from that woman as possible that I actually banged my head against the door in my haste. I quickly grabbed my backpack and nearly sprinted away from the scene, not even stopping to say goodbye to my fantastic new friend. I am, in no way, looking forward to my next trip to Almaty.

And if that van pulls up in front of my house with that woman on it, I am going to have to learn how to say "I'd rather not, Thank You".

The worst part? I ended up eating Sbarro pizza for lunch later that day - by choice! :)