Sotramas are one of my favorite things about Bamako - not just because I fell in love in one or because they were on my wedding invitation or because as a chauffeur's girlfriend I used to get free rides in the front seat - sotramas epitomize Bamako for me. They are loud and bright and wild- but in their chaos, they are very reliable. They help citizens criss-cross quartiers in a way I have seen in few other cities. Imagine fleets of painted mini vans moving people around various Chicago neighborhoods! Sotramas are painted green and follow standard routes and charge a standard fare (between 20 and 30 cents a ride), but the drivers and their team of apprentices (aka apprendikes) have full creative freedom in their decoration. Often you see Che Guevera and Barak Obama flanking sides of the back door, or Madonna next to a veiled preying girl. The windows and ceiling's are often peppered with soccer stars from around the world. Up in the drivers cabin, where the lucky ones, usually hot girls, get to sit - there are fake flowers and tassles around the windows and sometimes snapshots of the sotrama team with various ladies.
You scrunch into the sotrama with 16 other people and the apprendeki. The latest arrivals angle their way into small spaces on the benches butt-first. Chickens and kids and produce share the floor/lap space. Flying through the city in a sotrama makes the whole sensory experience so much more intense - you watch the craziness wizzing by, but seeing all the diversity - the colors and people and clothes and produce in the sotrama - you realize you are part of all craziness too. You feel very alive.
When I am in a sotrama I often imagine myself playing I spy. Just today on my two-sotrama trip from the National Archives to basketball practice: I spy a pile of smoked sheep heads, I spy 30 different Bruce Lee DVDs, I spy sparkly, Chinese-imported slip-on shoes, I spy a near-accident, I spy another near-accident. That is when I stop playing I spy. If all the crazy moto and car drivers rode more sotramas, there would be less traffic and less pollution. I want to start a movement to make sotramas glamorous again. In Kenya, some matatus have flat screens and pimped out sound systems. As a friend suggested, maybe we should just start an "elite" line of sotramas with comfortable seats.... I am already a proud taxi owner, but it is my dream, one day, to own and decorate my own sotrama.
*I have sampled this blog title from one of my Chicago-twin (Khrist's) upcoming works.
Agreed. I think Sotramas would be even awesomer if they had two-tone murals on their walls. Imagine a green Sotrama approaching and looking like a Sotrama but then, when it gets close enough, you see it has a green-on-green scene of a hunter battling a lion. Or some other scene typical of the "transporteur malien" genre.
ReplyDeleteI spied several 'Barack Obama' t-shirts from a sotrama the other day!
ReplyDeleteI found your blog randomly. I visited Mali in 2007 and this post really brought me back there. Thanks!
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