Word: taxied
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Americans wincing over paying four dollars a gallon at the gas pump ought to meet John Gwat. The taxi driver in Cameroon's capital is paying six dollars a gallon, but in a country where the average monthly wage is about $180 - approximately one-tenth of the average American income. And like American consumers, there's precious little that Gwat and other taxi drivers here can do about the gas prices at the gas pumps. "At the end of the month about a quarter of the cars are just parked on the streets, because no one has the money...
...that, Gwat, 29, considers himself a lucky man. With no high school education, he spent several years driving a cab for a taxi company in Yaoundé, earning about four dollars a day - and used that income to put his four younger brothers through high school. Then, a few months ago he borrowed $1,000, quit his job, and bought himself a cab of his own: One of the thousands of battered yellow Toyotas which make up the main transportation infrastructure of Yaoundé, a city of more than 1 million people. It cost Gwat another $50 to customize...
...when the realization finally dawned on Cameroonians, the response was explosive. Beginning with a taxi strike in late February, thousands took to the streets to protest not only fuel prices but also the spiraling cost of staple foods such as rice and wheat. Barricades burned across the country and gas stations and government offices were torched. At least 24 protestors were killed by government forces, and hundreds of others were arrested during the ensuing crackdown...
...fuel at many gas pumps has plummeted. "Our fuel is not fine," he says. "They have started to mix in kerosene. It damages the engines." The managers of two Texaco stations in Yaoundé refute Gwat's claim. Not even the finest fuel would have spared Gwat's taxi the ravages of years of chugging along rutted dirt roads and up and down Yaoundé's muddy hills in the tropical humidity and pounding rainstorms. It requires several runs for the vehicle to make it to the top of the city's steepest hills...
...Mirsky described one day when protests were gearing up and Bogert convinced him and two female correspondents to bribe a taxi driver to take them to the countryside outside Beijing, where she had heard there was a column of tanks in a village. When they saw the tanks, Bogert proposed climbing atop them to ask the soldiers inside why they were in the village...