Taxis

On my way into Ait Idir this morning at 5am to help with a health lesson with a fellow volunteer, I sleepily took into account of my surroundings and made a few mental notes:

Most taxis are in the same shape… 5 minutes away from breaking down. The grande taxis are usually a sedan (Mercedes) or station wagon with additional seats in the back. A taxi isn’t full until there are three people sitting upfront (including the driver) and four people squeezed in the backseat. The station wagons can squeeze an additional three people in the very back seat. Kids don’t really count as people and they usually sit on the laps on the adults.

Taxi drivers remove the handle to roll the windows down, sometimes they have the handle upfront and you can ask for it to roll the window down. This is rare. Seatbelts get in the way so they are often removed. There is a misconception that the air makes people sick and so they keep the windows up, despite the soaring temperatures. Often the speedometer is broken, and you can guesstimate the speed (usually ridiculously fast). The dashboards are colorfully decorated with rugs and fringe and stickers. Usually prayer beads or a cd inscripted with passages from the Koran hangs from the rearview mirror.

Before we left this morning, the taxi driver kicked each of the tires to check their inflation, I thought this was quite humorous but kept my mouth closed. Taxis typically try to start on a downhill because the rarely start on the first time. It’s not uncommon to see a few men push a taxi to get it started…

I ate a mystery meat last night in the couscous. It was from the head of the cow, I found out later from the kids in my host family. . After my host mom had left to give the leftovers to our neighbor, I asked the kids what the meat was, and they burst out laughing. Mohammad was saying, “Ur-thili! Ur-thili!” meaning “It’s bad! It’s bad!” It was tough meat and had small white spikes on one side, so I thought it was the taste buds from the tongue. These spikes were hard to chew and so I swallowed the pieces whole and they kinda hurt. It was by far the most interesting meat I have had so far—the list keeps expanding, kidneys, heart, intestines, cartilage from cow ears…

Still alive :)