The Resistant and the Confident Independent Female Bus Driver

Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.
Jawaharlal Nehru

The large bus was empty at the main Marigot Bus Stop when I opened the bus door to step in on my way to Philipsburg to fill a prescription
I was going to sit in the back but the bus driver, whom I did not know, invited me to sit in the empty seat in front and once I sat down there
She started out by wishing me a “Bonjour” and I responded to her by wishing here a “Good Day” and the middle-age female bus driver also quickly wished me a “Very Good Day” as well in local Island English
We did not say anything more to one another after that as someone else entered the rather big white bus in the back

It was a very warm and sunny day after many days of oftentimes brief intense off and on rain on the little loosely-divided dynamic multi-ethnic and multicultural Caribbean Island nearly in the middle of the Caribbean archipelago in mid-February
Our first stop was in Saint-James on our way to Philipsburg and it immediately became very apparent that the female bus driver was something of a big surprise even to many of her female bus passengers They told her that it had been a very long time since the last time that they had been driven by a female bus driver on the small and quickly changing divided Caribbean Island

She explained to them with a tired shrug of her strong shoulders that for a long time she had been driving the route between Philipsburg and Maho Beach but that they had switched her over just recently to start driving the important Marigot-Philipsburg connection once again
One woman told her in Creole that that they were all indeed very happy to be driven by a female bus driver again and that the men wanted to dominate everything and to keep them down
The female bus driver pointed out to them that female drivers were much better and safer drivers than most male drivers
Most of the female bus passengers agreed with the confident female bus driver by emphasizing the fact that some of the male bus drivers oftentimes drove too fast causing them at times to fear for their lives and also that they sometimes did things while driving that made no sense whatsoever
“Too much testosterone driving them loco”, remarked another woman dryly to the intense entertainment of all of the women bus passengers as I turned around and looked at them mischievously laughing and giggling

There was one other silent man together with me in the large safely female-driven white bus Another woman going into Bellevue stepped into the bus and she was clearly taken aback when she noticed that it was a female bus driver driving the big white bus
She stepped into the back of the bus and she equally expressed her profound sense of joy to be driven by especially a female bus driver while handing the bus driver her exact bus fare for her specific trip to wherever it was she was eventually going
She told the female bus driver in local Caribbean English that still too many men wanted to take advantage of women and to keep them in their place on the loosely-divided small Caribbean Island

The female bus driver told them that she had just returned from a brief vacation in Miami where her daughter lived and worked and that much the very thing in a somewhat different manner up there was also going on with many different women and their various men as well
“Women them everywhere still constantly struggling every day for a more just and a more equal world for all”, she particularly told her many female bus passengers as they nearly all strongly nodded their heads in agreement with the resistant female bus driver
Whenever someone stepped out of the bus if they did not give her the exact change for their ride she would quickly go into her big brightly-pink purse besides her full of money and change and quickly give them their change either in euros, in dollars and cents or in Antillean guilders

Another man and a woman stepped into the back of the bus in Cole Bay on their way to Cay Hill She also loudly exclaimed in Dominican Spanish how happily surprised she was to be driven by a female bus driver
She sat down besides of her man and firmly put her small hand around his broad neck and she pointed out that no one nowhere was ever going to be able to keep down fiercely loving and deeply caring Caribbean women, who simply were not going to put up with anybody’s bullshit
There followed a long silence in the bus as it went up and around Cole Bay Hill before diving into Cay Hill where it stopped to let out the Dominican man and the woman, who had called out: “Bus Stop” before I did the very same thing a short while later and gave her two dollars and stepped out of the big white bus at the very end of the long road by the large Super Market in order to go to the Pharmacy and to fill my prescription.
©Gregory Gilbert Gumbs