To Hitch or Not To Hitch?

When I first arrived in country and heard about people “hitching,” I thought it was insane, crazy, and frankly, quite dangerous, and I therefore resolved never to do it. When I received my site announcement during PST, and after meeting my counterpart, I was relieved to know that my site, Sefhare, had transport to and from my shopping villages (Palapye and Mahalapye) daily. For about the first two months to my site, I learned the bus schedule and exclusively used buses to get to and from my shopping villages. However, after two months of taking the buses, I finally understood the appeal of hitching.

The bus system in my village is horrible. Buses often don’t come; they break down, are incredibly slow, and there is never sitting room.  My shopping village is 2 hours away. Standing for that long with 60 pounds of groceries on your back is difficult. In addition, waiting at the bus rink for hours with that much food (much of it perishable) increases the likelihood that food will spoil. It took a few months, but I eventually became comfortable with hitching, and even switched my main shopping village to Palapye because it is easier to hitch out from.

Hitching is relatively safe in Botswana, and, because of unreliable public transport, everyone does it. Botswana is a nation of hitchers. There are standard fares for car rides that are usually the same as bus fares. When hitching it is always important that you carry mixed bills with you so that you can pay the driver. When hitching, as with everything else, it is always good to be mindful. When hitching, I always seek out another person (usually a female) who is going the same place as I am. I always make sure that the driver is not drinking or rude.  

I have had some great hitches (new car, leather seats, AC), and some odd hitches. The oddest hitch occurred recently, only a few weeks back. It was a weekday, and another volunteer, Kate Slisz, and I had only thirty minutes to get our shopping done before the next bus left. We had a lot to do. First, we had to take a special cab to Builders World to get screws for a solar dehydrator project we were working on. Then, we had to go to SPAR to buy food for the next few days. Luck was with us, and we finished all of our shopping in time to make it to the bus stop and hitching post. While we were waiting for the bus to arrive, a black car pulled up to the hitching post. It stopped and waited for a few minutes, but people weren’t approaching it. Usually, this means that the car is not picking up passengers. Kate decided to check it out, and found out that the car was going straight to our village! As it turned out, the reason that people were not getting inside was because it was a funeral car. Kate and I, not being particularly picky and in a hurry, decided to take the hitch. Which is how, we ended up hitching in the back of a funeral car next to a white coffin that, while not currently holding a dead body, clearly had held dead people in it at some point (as evidenced by the coffin stains and rolling wheels).