The Wheels on the Bus...Getting around Khartoum

Bus. Costs about 13 cents per person. There are no bus stops—you just wave down the bus when you want to get on and hiss (“Zzzzz, Zzzzz”) when you want to get off. The guy hanging out the door collects the money and tells the driver when to stop to pick people up. The kids ride one of these home from school every day. Isaac and Nora and I sometimes take them on outings, too. Isaac was sitting with me on the bus, watching the money collector swing on and off the bus through the open door, and he said to me, “In Holland, there was a bus with a door that opened AND closed.”

Amjad or Minibus. See the little blue van next to the big city bus? We take one of these across the Nile every week to hippotherapy. Costs more than the public bus but takes you door to door. Holds five passengers comfortably, but we crammed our family in all summer, and this morning four adults and five children crammed into one on the way home from play group.

Rickshaw. Three-wheeled tiny vehicles, powered by a lawn mower engine. They even have a pull cord to start! They travel only within neighborhoods, and are not for long haul trips. I often see people riding home from grocery shopping, their bags piled in with them. Ed thinks someone should make a computer game featuring rickshaws.


Donkey cart. Cargo haulers, so we don't actually get to ride on them. They do lend bustling Khartoum a bucolic serenity, though.