The last bus problem and culture

If you happen to live in a village or the city peripherals in Tanzania-the most interesting aspect is that there is no schedule time for buses, you just jointly gather and wait for a bus to arrive. Now what does this say about our culture? Either the frequency of buses arrival is big enough to remove the need for the schedule, or the public is not conscious of the very notion of time keeping? What does this allow? Excuses, for not keeping time? The need for planning? Is this a knowledge problem or a culture problem? The interesting aspect is during the week especially for market days- the system run smoothly until around 5 o’clock then a stumped ensue; everyone now is trying to get on these minibuses to head home! Some go through windows or even some go to an extend or being blight rude to get in, actually morals go out of the window as people go through the window to get the vacant seats.

Do not get me wrong Tanzania people are very kind, caring and thoughtful; it is just in this very instance the locus of moral is lost. I guess we get our moral locus back when we get off this skunk minibus-my English friend had an experience on it and he late told me he got a name for our useful “Dala Dala”-he term them “spine-crushers”, is the name fitting? Well without order, the name is perfect! The lesson here is that for any repeating process it is important to consider both planning horizons and cycle time and the impact those have on the incentives they create for the people. Game theory does not work well here because even though the game is repeated the actors are changing all the time!