Lessons learned on a marshrutka

I once lived in a town in Arkansas with a population of about 10,000 residents. In that town, if you didn't have a car, you were out of luck. Without a car, you couldn't go anywhere unless you walked or rode a bicycle. It was very difficult for the Central American students I worked with, because they didn't have cars and they were at the mercy of the kindness of others if they wanted to go somewhere outside of a 200 meter radius from campus. And not only wasn't there transportation for trips around our town, but even worse, if you wanted to go to Little Rock or Crystal Bridges Museum or Eureka Springs, you were also out of luck as there was no mass transit of any kind, not even a Greyhound bus at your disposal. Nothing.

Strangely enough, Kyrgyzstan, a country with nowhere near the wealth of the United States, possesses something rather wonderful.  It is called the Marshrutka. It is what one calls the small bus or van that is part of the system of mass transport in this country.  The marshrutka system is really quite amazing.  For 8 soms, which is about 11 cents, I can flag down a marshrutka in front of our campus and be transported the 3 kilometers to downtown Naryn.  And about about every 20 minutes, during the weekdays, a marshrutka drives by campus, available to pick you up.  And, once on board, just tell the driver, and he'll drop you off anywhere along the route, no bus stop required.

A marshrutka driving on the road past our campus

Not only can you get a marshrutka for local trips, there are also marshrutkas that go to Bishkek on a daily basis.  I have been told that the 300 kilometer trip costs less than five dollars.  I have been way out in the boonies and have even seen marshrutkas provide transportation services for people high up in the mountains who would not otherwise have a ride.

Yes, marshrutkas can sometimes get crowded and many of them are old and somewhat dilapidated, and they often sputter down the road a bit more slowly than one would like. But, for about 11 cents, almost every single person in Kyrgyzstan has access to decent transportation, something that can't be said for many of the people in small-town Arkansas (and lots of other parts of the U.S., for that matter). Once upon a time, the vast majority of Americans had access to train and bus service and other forms of mass transit, but that is now lost in a country that caters to the wealthy and ignores those without personal resources. Sometimes it takes riding down the road in a marshrutka, ten-thousand miles from my home, to come to the sad realization of one of the things my country has lost along the way.

On the marshrutka to downtown Naryn