I take great pleasure in riding on public transportation. Clearly, I can’t refute the convenience of a car, especially for grocery shopping where I comb through different stores, Indian, Aldi, Trader Joe’s, …., picking different items that a friend insists I can get from one store. The nerve to even say that kills my cooking mojo, but I refute this suggestion. Yes, it’s nice to have a car for many reasons, but there are pleasurable moments I only experience while riding on public transit.

One may marvel at the concept of this pleasure, what makes it fun. The pleasure sensory is complex, subjective, and unique to one. Our senses control what we enjoy or dislike. For me, my delights are attributes of experiences I allow myself during or after an encounter. For instance, I’ve tried America’s most favored apple, the delicious red apple, but I get a blunt taste and spongy texture that I struggle to swallow. On the other hand, I get a unique and enigmatic pleasure in sucking in the smell of cider mulch that some people find repulsive. 

It’s not that I wake up and think of public transportation the way I might about, say, tea and mandazi; it’s how much I enjoy the dramatic actions while I’m riding. More often than I’d like to see, there’s someone jumping over the exit gate or one ignoring the door closing warning and sternly fighting with the door to make it in before a train begins to move. Once too many, but one stands on my mind; I watched a man have this fight with the door as the train operator, likely in ire, opened and shut the door repeatedly. It was more like a dance than a fight; open and shut, open and shut. Defeated after a few trials, the man yanked part of his trench coat from the door, popping a button. I watched the button roll from the train platform as the train zoomed away, while the man walked along with the train and stood near the end of the platform, away from the rest of the passengers who’d been watching the dance-fight.

If one pays attention at all, as I do, and depending on the level of humor, the entertainment is endless, although sometimes scary. I once locked eyes with a man dressed in a black suit, like an executive of a company, with a computer bag hanging across his chest, squeeze himself behind a lady at the exit gate to elude paying for the fare. As I stood waiting for them to exit so that I could scan my card, he stared right at me, even though I couldn’t see his eyes behind his dark glasses. It was as if he was giving me a warning look. I turned my eyes away from his threatening look and waited for a moment before I scanned my card. When I saw him going toward my exit, I took a different exit instead of my regular exit and wandered that way for fifteen minutes before returning to my gate. I later played a pictured of him as a son, whose mother spoke very highly of, or a father, who taught his children the benefits of good behavior and the consequences of cheating, but I concluded that the Italian Mafia was well-dressed and probably had fixed moral codes. So, his moral code was befitting for him to skillfully thieve from the Metro while the rest of us paid for maintenance and operation for his comfort and seemingly habitual act.

While there are moments of mixed feelings, they are mostly dwarfed with entertainment, like the woman who refused to pay the bus fare. I’d been attuned to music before I caught on an exchange between her and the driver. “I pay too much [expletive] taxes,” she’d roared. “For your [expletive] information, I’ve served this country!”

I haven’t served this country, but I definitely learned a bold technique of claiming taxes. I imagined how I’d sit on that seat with confidence and boldness, and how hip it might be.

“This is your third time on this bus, Lady. Pay the fare,” said the driver.

As she argued with the driver, I stole a look at her where she’d taken the priority seat and rested her belonging side by side, occupying the whole seat. The hand she’d rested on one of the bags was chapped, and her nails were dark as if she’s given up on self-care, but the rings on her chapped fingers sparkled from a distance.    

“So take me out,” she bellowed, prompting me to turn away. “If I want to ride the whole day, it’s none of your [expletive] business!” 

After twenty minutes into the ride, the driver stopped, and the veteran wasn’t the one taken out of the bus; the driver called the Metro police and urged the passengers to wait outside for the next bus.

“She’s sitting there and we are the ones to vait for another bus,” one man said in a foreign accent. “Too much right in America. In India, they will throw you out in at once!”

It surprised me that she’d taken three rounds on the bus because it was a warm and breezy day, not the frigid winter days where even I sometimes felt like passing my stop just to keep warm on the bus, and neither was it hot day. Perhaps the veteran was simply having a leisure moment.

On a ride from Georgetown, D.C., to Friendship Heights, Maryland, another moment to cheat the driver exploded into racial discrimination. I’d ensconced on my seat and taken into tranquility with Third Day music when a man began an exchange with the driver.

“If it were them, white folks, you wouldn’t do that now, would ya?” He roared.

“You know the rules, Sir,” the driver answered calmly.

“Them, white folks, ride the bus for free aaaall day, but you ain’t say nothin’. Now you goin’ all livid on me,” he continued.

I waited for a few seconds before I ran my eyes around the bus to check on “‘them, white folks,”’ being blamed for bad behavior, but like me, they appeared engaged; looking out the window, reading, or maybe doing the same thing I was doing; nodding to the music I had long paused. I feared that if he sensed that I was paying attention, he could cast his wrath on me.

“I got my card,” he bellowed as he fumbled through his Puma backpack. “I can afford to pay the [expletive] bus.”

So why don’t you just pay and shut up! I thought.

But when the driver stopped the bus and opened the door for some passenger to exit, the man slipped away through the back door. I thought that the ruckus was his crafty way of getting a free ride; just argue as the bus moved on. 

On the same route, a man once chanted, “Obama!” almost precisely in five-minute intervals, from his entry point to the bus depot, about a fifteen-minute ride. He sat poised, indifferent of glances we were passing at him. I couldn’t tell whether he was praising Obama or chastising him. After a while, some people habituated to the mysterious chant. I enjoyed it to the bus depot where we parted ways, while I was left in wonder of the mysterious chant.

Anyone who shares my sentimental joy on public rides would agree that some of the most peaceful and satisfying naps happen on public transit, especially to or from work. On D.C. Metro, the train engines can jingle great percussion instrumental lullabies while the swirly turns rock the train from side to side, leaving one drunk with sleep. Some people go so deep, gulping and emitting intensely vibrating snores that capture everyone’s. A man once snored loudly that the passengers began to laugh. “Holy moly,” someone said. “He’s out,” said another. It took one brave fellow to tap him on the shoulder, but that gesture was met with great furry; he glared at the man with contempt. When the train stopped, he [the snorer], dashed out like a rocket.  

Before my central nervous system decided to conflict with inputs, resulting in motion sickness, I’d get lost in a book. I read more pages on transit than I did at home. With this gone, it was not a surprise when, once, I woke up and found myself going back on the train. The train had reached the final stop and turned around with me inside it. While sharing this ordeal with friends, after swallowing my pride, I found out that I wasn’t the only one who’d been hijacked by the train. 

“You were lucky the train turned around,” someone said. “Mine was out of service! Luckily the train operator saw me banging on the door, and she let me out.”

“I was taken back three stations,” said another.

The humor in these stories permitted me to forgive the last person who’d walked out of that train’s car and left me there. Otherwise, I’d still be holding a grudge. Technology has since made things easy; I can set the alarm on my phone according to distance and enjoy my sleep without fear. 

When there’s no sleep or action, I discovered that I can gawk. I think that we all do, unknowingly. It’s hard to admit and don’t want to generalize, but I’ve been caught! A lady once caught me, staring and completely lost in her. Before she turned away, she threw me a judgmental look; she furrowed her brows and cringed intensely. I turned my eyes away slowly and with immense guilt, although my gawk was but the pleasure I was taking at her orange peplum-belted, coquelicot jacket that fit her perfectly. I wanted to say, “No, it’s not that [her thought]. I love your jacket!” But she was standing more than twenty feet from me and there were a few people standing between us. Besides, she had judged and reduced me. It was no use. When I got home, I went to the rabbit hole of Google search and came up nil! “She must have bought it from another country,” I comforted myself. It reminded me of a moment I complimented a lady who was wearing a lovely embroidered boho top. When I asked where she bought it, she said, “It’s old. I bought it in Beijing.” “Beijing!” I echoed. We laughed, but I found comfort in imagining how I’d have styled up the top she’d just thrown over a sheath khaki skirt. It was also nice to have a conversation without staring and mistakenly being judged.

When rules allow, as it does in Kenya or on any country bus, I get to share a bite with a complete stranger. One time, I bought roasted maize and hopped into a Matatu, a minibus, when a man sitting behind me said, “Ngama muodo odumano nega gi suya, pogna, the person eating the maize is killing me with the aroma. I broke the maize, a pleasure we are now denied to experience because of COVID-19, and passed it to the man. “Thank you. It’s delicious,” he said at first bite, followed by a guffaw as he chomped the maize. “Don’t salivate on it,” he told the man sitting next to him. “You didn’t ask.” The man smiled.    

I take pleasure in hearing people’s complaints when the train’s air conditioner breaks down during the heat-sweltering summer days. “This is horrible.” “D.C. Metro is so cheap.” “Welcome to the nation’s capital trash transportation,” one man had said. “The fare goes up every month, though!” I take pleasure while inside me I’m thinking of the noise pollution on Matatu and buses in Kenya that play music with the highest decibel and no one complains about it. When President Obama signed a law that regulates television advertisements volume, I thought the Kenyan president should take a ride on a Matatu and feel the pain many Kenyans endure when riding on these vehicles, but no one cares about the effect of noise pollution. He’d probably use his famous quote, “We have other oppressing issues.” You can ride or alight. I’ve alighted. Once, without knowledge of my surrounding, I sat on one of the only two seats left on the Matatu, and five minutes into the ride, sound exploded from twenty-four by fifteen-inch speaker. When I asked the driver to reduce the volume, he shrugged and turned away. The sound was aggravating all my senses. I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown. 

While such situations arise, I attest to many pleasures I encounter on public transit, aware that they may be one’s pet peeves.