Bus ride

I sit on the brown bus seat and glance around. A small girl of about 7 or 8 years in a red shirt immediately catches my eye. She stares, I stare. The bus driver starts the engine and maneuvers us onto the street and on our way. The girl moves two seats in front of me, in front of a middle-aged couple with their arms draped around each other. My eyes move from the graffiti-plastered seat to the back of his gray-flecked hair and her bushy ponytail. He occasionally plants a tender kiss on her forehead or cheek and they seem content munching cookies with pink icing and sprinkles. For a split second the little girl smiles at me and arranges her arm on the windowsill and looks out. I look out too. The wind ruffles her chocolate brown hair and tugs at her brilliant blue and black-edged ponytail holder. The now familiar side streets of Santa Barbara fill my view. Are we seeing the same things, I wonder. We pass the market. A plump lady wearing an apron sits in her booth, surrounded by plantains, onions, potatoes and fruit. We pass a pulperia*, two, three, I lose count. We pass wizened old men with salt and pepper beards. We pass wooden electrical poles with pictures of people running for office. A certain Thelma for mayor grins at me from her plastic poster. I wonder if she would be smiling so widely if she knew her makeup looked like an overly frosted birthday cake. Salsa music flows around me like an ocean tide, pulling me under with each beat. Majestic mountain grandeur rises above the pathetic buildings, clouds and mountain tops meld together until there seems to be no separation between earth and sky. My eyes fall back to the filthy streets littered with empty plastic water bags and shiny candy wrappers that glint in the afternoon sun. Laundry hangs on makeshift lines in dirty yards. Mothers hold babies on their hips and an almost toothless old man smokes a cigarette. How long before all of this seems normal to me? How long before my life in the States seems like a forgotten dream? The bus slowly empties as we near our destination. The little girl gets off. I savor the air as we turn onto the main road and increase our speed. I’m conscious again, conscious of life whizzing by. But it was the little things that made the ride interesting; the overturned cardboard box and the diaper-clad baby, the old man in a straw hat with a bag slung over his back and a rusty machete clutched in his right hand. Who am I? Where am I going? Am I just an unsympathetic bystander, watching from my comfortable bus seat as the world suffers, struggles, groans, begs, dances, sleeps, eats, cries, laughs outside my window?

Be the change you want to see in the world.
-Mahatma Gandhi

*A pulperia is a tiny convenience store, usually connected to a person's home.