People you will never meet (2)

A long ---but hopefully illustrative--- post on bus synchronizers, the clocks of the chaotic Colombian transportation system.

Similarly as minute sellers, bus synchronizers are rather recent street characters. To better understand what they do and why they do it, it is convenient to know a bit better how public transportation works in Colombian cities.

The first thing you should know is that unlike most civilized cities, In Colombia public buses do not belong to the city or to the Colombian state. Here, private companies own a number of buses and little buses (called colectivos or busetas, no more than 20 seats). Each company is managed independently from each other and serves a number of routes. The sole role of the city is to provide licenses to the companies and to manage routes, designing and assigning them to companies.

Also unlike serious countries, when you take a bus or colectivo you pay in cash to the driver. So, yes, apart from driving the bus driver should be aware of the money and of the change (yes, you don't need to pay with the exact change). The fact that drivers have to deal with money directly changes everything, and is the main cause of one of the most chaotic events one has to experience as a citizen: the so-called war of the cent ("la guerra del centavo").

The war of the cent consists in the competition bus drivers have with each other in order to earn more money by picking up as many passengers as possible. This occurs because of a number of factors:

1. The concept of bus stop does not exist in Colombia. You can take and get off a bus wherever you want.
   
2. The bus drivers do not have a fix salary; their income depends on the number of passengers they pick up during the day. At the end of the day, a small part of the money they produce is for them, the rest goes to the owner of the bus (yes, buying and managing public buses is a great business in Colombia).
   
3. The same route is assigned to the several companies, so it could happen that, from a given place in the city, you have several options (that is, several companies) to choose from.
4. There is little control inside companies. Since there are no bus stops, location and velocity for each bus are highly variable. There are some controls inside the city, but these are insufficient.

With the above factors in mind, then it's probably easier to understand why the war of the cent is the fierce competition that takes place between two bus drivers in order to get passengers. Notice that this occurs mostly between drivers of the same company. As most things in life, this circumstance has pros and cons:

1. In the negative side, it could occur that even if there are buses available, they don't stop to pick you up because they're fighting to each other and picking you up would mean losing valuable advantage.
2. Also in the negative side, as drivers take the war very seriously, they rarely respect traffic lights and regulations. It could be very risky indeed: while I was in Cali, for instance, there was a serious accident: a colectivo crashed into a house, 2 died and 23 more were injured:
   
   
   
3. In the positive side, if you're waiting for a bus and then one of the competitors picks you up, because of the previous item, you have the guarantee that there's no faster way for arriving to your destination.
   
4. Also positive, although only from my perspective, being part of a bus competition could be very fun.
   

Now that you, my gentle reader, have a basic understanding of the way Colombian buses "work", let me introduce today's unique profession: the bus synchronizers.

As mentioned before, bus companies have only a few controls inside the city. Usually there is a central station at each side of the city. Inside the city, however, bus drivers have no information on how the other drivers of the same route are relatively placed. This occurs because, even if the central station could synchronize buses (e.g., by dispatching a bus each five minutes for each route), buses stop and pick passengers wherever they find them, thus quickly losing this initial synchronization.

This is where today's character comes into play: bus synchronizers are placed in strategic intersections in the city. Their only tools are a watch, a piece of paper and a pen: as soon as a bus of a given company passes through the intersection, the synchronizers record in the piece of paper the time and the number of the bus. This is half of the job. The other part consists in informing the passing driver about the location of the bus of the same route that has passed before him. As the bus passes, they could yell something as the following:

"You're 5 from the 2156, and he's 10 from the 4123"

which means that the bus passing is five minutes away from bus number 2156, and that the 2156 is 10 minutes away from bus number 4123. This way, drivers get a very precise idea of how the "passenger market" is functioning. For instance, by knowing that the time separation is more than 5 minutes, a driver could possibly decide to speed up, so to get closer, and pick up more passengers. Conversely, if the driver realizes he's very close to the previous bus (say 1 or 2 minutes) then he would probably slow down, as the previous bus must have gotten all the available passengers.

When a driver hears this information he usually throws a coin to the bus synchronizer, as a way of rewarding his service. This is not mandatory: bus synchronizers don't get upset if they don't receive money from a driver. They know that the day is long, and that their luck will arrive sooner than later: he (or she) will be able to gather enough coins to buy his lunch.

A synchronizer in action, in a busy street in Cali. He's approaching to deliver useful information to the driver of route number 3 of the "Recreativos" company. Ironically, just above the name "Recreativos" it reads the company motto: "Comfortable, Safe, and Efficient Transportation".
Thanks to my brother for the picture.

Sometimes there's more than a synchronizer in the same intersection; this is specially common in huge ones: only one synchronizer wouldn't be enough to serve a lot of routes at the same time. Bus drivers know where synchronizers are, and sometimes have a preferred one. Also, there are some ambitious bus synchronizers who offer an extra service: they provide drivers with coins. Indeed, since drivers need to give change back to passengers, and this change is usually coins, they can quickly run out of coins. Upon they payment of a small commission, a bus synchronizer can change your 2000 pesos banknote (0.81 euro) and give you coins for 1800 pesos (0.73 euro).

To conclude this installment devoted to bus synchronizers, it must be said that bus synchronizers have very diverse origins: you see old and young people, women and men, even small kids. You can easily tell they're very smart people. Perhaps their only knowledge in life is the notion of time and the numbers. Most likely, they have very difficult lives. I find it noble that, in very difficult circumstances, bus synchronizers have chosen to decrease the levels of chaos, rather than becoming thieves or drug addicts. What motivates most Colombians to take long, uncomfortable ---yet honest--- roads to survival will be always a mystery to me.

Next in this section: the parking assistants and the packing boys.

Movie Suggestions

The other day the list of nominees to the Academy Awards was announced. As usual, I haven't seen most of the nominated films; I expect to work on that in the forthcoming weekends. Nevertheless, I have seen two of the nominated films, and I would like to use this brief post to recommend them to you.

First, please do see Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona. It's a good movie, with interesting characters and a clever story. Nothing excessively outstanding, but in any case the movie is superior to most of the usual crap around. The movie's main characters are two American girls, played by Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall. They go to Barcelona during the summer and things happen. Those who have been in Barcelona (not my case) would have an extra motivation to see the movie, I guess. I have to admit that my main motivation to see the movie was Scarlett's performance (I had liked her role in 2005's Match Point, also with Woody) but I was very surprised with Hall's performance as Vicky. I think her acting was extremely convincing. Penelope Cruz also appears, in a role that in my humble opinion wasn't worth nominating for best actress in a supporting role.

The second suggestion is not a film, but a documentary, an animated one: Waltz with Bashir. It tells the story of a number of former Israeli soldiers who were sent to the Lebanon in the early 80s. In particular, the movie describes the steps the director (Ari Folman) follows so as to trace his involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacre. The animation is excellent so is the music and the way of describing Folman's memories/traumas from war. I think that even if you're not interested in politics you'll like this film, one of the nominated to best foreign language film.

To conclude, it must be said that I am most glad to see that Richard Jenkins was nominated to best actor, for his marvelous performance in The Visitor, a great movie I had already reviewed here.

This week's catchy song (8)

I never endorsed that habit of labeling music. I find it annoying to think of music as some sort of genealogical tree. It's simply too rough to attempt at classifying sounds and what they convey with fancy adjectives. That said, labels are sometimes useful as there are no better words to describe groups or songs. In that respect, looking at the music blogs I follow it turns out that most of them represent what some people call "indie". What "indie" is? How can something be classified as "indie"? Does it restrict itself to music? These are tough, profound questions, I am afraid. What I do know (and very well) is the music I like. And it can't be described with a couple of adjectives.

This week I offer you a truly catchy song, from an "indie" band, called MGMT (the artist formerly known as The Management). They released what some people call the best "indie" album of 2008, Oracular Spectacular. After hearing it a couple of times, one could say that they appeal to the 80s to get catchy. It's hard to analyze, anyway.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present you Electric Feel:

What's in a name?

Pretty much as they say that 'God moves in mysterious ways' one could perfectly say that 'stupidity comes in mysterious ways'. To support this claim, let me comment on a recent report I found in an online newspaper.

This is, essentially, a weird consequence of the 'Obamania' that nowadays makes the world happy and that sooner than later will disappoint us. According to this report, Barack Obama was able to inspire a couple in Cali, Colombia to name their newborn 'Barack Obama'. So, yes, there's someone in this world whose first name is (or sounds like) 'Barack Obama', with last name 'Sandoval Fajardo'. (Yes, in Colombia is common to use two first names and two last names.)

The mother said she expected her newborn to be as humble as Obama. The Colombian state ---represented by some public hospital--- was truly touched by this sweet and noble incarnation of stupidity, and will complement it by giving the kid free medical care and milk for six months. (Yes, not only the Colombian state rewards stupidity but also discriminates those parents who named their kids with conventional names.)

But let us avoid the political side of the story. Perhaps the most disturbing part of the news is that the actual spelling of the name was not confirmed. Since in Colombian Spanish sounds associated to letters "b" and "v" and to letters "c" and "k" are indistinguishable, a number of frightening spelling errors are possible. For instance, the poor baby could be named "Baracovama Sandoval Fajardo" or "Varakc Hovama Sandoval Fajardo", or even "Barako Vama Sandoval Fajardo".

It must be said that weird names are rather common in the Colombian and Latinamerican culture. This deserves a post (or even a series of posts). In Colombia, I observe that this is a phenomena most commonly found among low educated people. When naming a kid they prefer originality (in the most liberal definition of the word you can imagine) over common sense or psychological welfare of the newborn. This way, for example, one finds people called "John Kennedy" or "Usnavy", drawing inspiration from the 35th president and the navy of the USA, respectively.

How about that?

This week's catchy song (7)

A Camp is some sort of side project of The Cardigans vocalist Nina Persson. They have a 2001 self-titled album (which I recommend), and this year they're releasing their second one, called Colonia. Overall, I find A Camp's music highly enjoyable.

The suggestion for this week is Chinatown, a song extracted from Colonia. Enjoy: