Aiga buses

Aiga buses (pasi) !!!  We've thought this word was spellled "busi" all year, and just learned that it's actually "pasi", not "busi". But considering Samoans do not differentiate between their B's and P's, things can get confusing real fast. Some students cannot tell the difference between "poops" and "boobs", "pitch" (as in the name of the movie that Samoan students have watched 55 times since it came out "Pitch Perfect") and another word that rhymes with it.....; the list goes on and on.

some of this blog has been inspired by/parts have been taken from a past world teachers' blog some years ago, with my own editing.

Aiga means "family" in Samoan.  The aiga buses are driven by any member of a family who can buy/remodel/make a bus, and the money goes to the family rather than the government or a private company.

Aiga buses are "seki a" (sec-ee ah) (=cool/awesome) for a few reasons. They are all made out of the front of a pickup truck. Samoans somehow attach the rest of the bus to the pickup truck cab. The inside of the buses are usually entirely wood and the roofs are made from long, curved pieces of wood, which are beautiful (and weirdly remind me of cabins in Vermont, haha!)  They have simple plastic windows that you slide up when it rains. 

The inside and the outside of the buses are quite elaborate. Each gets a crazy paint job and a name or some kind of slogan scrolled across the side. These can be anywhere from "West Side",  "God is Awesome", or the American flag. Some have public service announcement-type advertisements with pictures or photographs about ocean safety, driving safety, drinking & driving, etc.  The inside cab of the buses are decorated with everything- crazy fuzzy zebra or leopard print fabrics, tassels, lights, boas. And about 20 pine tree air fresheners hang inside some of them, haha!

I've posted this picture before of a
Leone bus showing it's Lion Pride!!!

 

Riding a bus is quite an experience. In the morning and afternoons the buses get super packed. The seats/benches are tiny and 2 small people could fit nicely; however they expect 2 Samoan sized people to fit! This usually means that the person in the aisle seat is basically just squatting and holding onto the seat in front of them while the bus zooms at the island-wide speed limit of 25 mph over HUGE potholes and around dogs, chickens, children, and around the crazy switchback curves of the island coast, literally feet from the Pacific Ocean. Bus drivers don’t always stop picking people up once the seats are full. There is a distinct seating hierarchy. Men move the back to make room for women, and the young move to the back to make from for the old. Once a bus is “full” kids move onto an adult’s lap. Once that has happened, teenagers move to each other’s laps. Finally new riders stand in the aisles. Sometimes bus drivers choose to drive right by high school students (you can tell because they wear their school's uniform) because people under 18 only have to pay a quarter, and the drivers would rather take adults who pay about a dollar, depending on how far they are going (though we still haven't really figured out the rates.... we just always give a dollar. Sometimes it should be less and sometimes it should be more, but very few buses have their fares marked and those that do never make sense.  I try to always have dollar bills because if I give them a 5 dollar bill and expect change, they sometimes only give me $3 back). 

Thankfully, there are many Leone buses so we usually don't have too much trouble catching a bus.  If we lived any further west, however, we would need to take the Amanave buses (of which there are only 2). So at the end of the day, you see the Amanave bus pass and everyone from beyond Leone the whole way up to Amanave has to fit on that bus, or take a Leone bus to Leone and hitch a ride further through ATL (the Amanave To Leone crew).

Another thing to consider in your bus ride is what time the tuna factory workers get out.  After a whole day canning tuna, their clothes have a pretty bad stench to them, so one tries to get on a bus back before the shift change in the afternoon. Otherwise, you will have a smelly bus ride and be sticking your head out the window like a dog to get some fresh air.

Aiga buses are famous for blaring Samoan music or home-remixed mashups as they drive around. Rocking out with reggae-style music with the wind in your face can make for a great de-stressor, and it is only a $1 to ride!  Once you get past Nu'uuli the rest of the road is right on the water-which is so clear you can even see sea turtles swimming from the bus!  Sometimes we just get on a bus on a really hot day just to cool down. It's one dollar for some time with all natural air conditioning.