In countries around the world, there are long-distance buses which boasts television sets hanging from the ceiling.   A nervous expectancy will sometimes fill the traveler as he takes his seat and looks at the silent monitor, wondering what it will spill out once the bus gets moving.  Even more, he wonders at what volume it will spill it.  I have been on buses where earplugs were required to salvage one’s hearing, where blindfolds would have been necessary to preserve the innocence of a child, and where telling yourself “this is a genuine cultural experience” was just about the only way too keep from leaping out the window.  Once I was even on a bus—this was in Egypt’s Sinai—where the movie was so loud and bad that when the bus engine caught fire and killed the electrical system, I closed my eyes and gave thanks.

But there are other times too, times when the bus gets going and the movie begins and something beautiful happens.  The volume is decent.  The selection is interesting.  You’re fairly certain you’re not going to mentally break sometime in the next 14 hours.  In the end you may even step off the bus feeling renewed, reminded of what it is you love about life, reminded of what’s going on in the world around you, reminded that you can—and probably should—find ways to be a part of it all.

Near Tunja, Colombia

This happened to me just this past weekend, when I boarded a bus in the Colombian town of San Gil, bound for the city of Tunja four hours away.  As the bus twisted through a landscape of mountains and crops and cows, I watched three movies:  Man on Fire, Fireproof, and Human Trafficking.  I was at a disadvantage in that the films were dubbed in Spanish, which I don’t really understand.  But the gist of a good movie is also evident through facial expressions, interaction, etc.

Since my bus had originated in another city, only half an hour remained in Man on Fire when I boarded (but I had seen it before).  I resonated with aspects of Denzel Washington’s character – somewhat alone and on the periphery of society, pained, capable of getting absolutely angry and driven when injustice hurts and threatens people.  When he exchanges his life so that a child might live, tears filled my eyes.  Oh, I know it’s just a movie.  But I also know that there are real people who do give up their lives so that children may live, and as my bus hurtled around curves in Colombia, I was deeply moved.

I imagine that Fireproof, the only movie I saw in its entirety, got some criticism in some quarters for being such a clean movie.  But it too inspired me, for it depicted a man seeking to live a life of integrity, who at times was driven to his knees because of the brokenness around him and the pain within him. 

Before leaving San Gil, I came upon a wedding at a church...and a dog sleeping in the aisle. Travel is to encounter all sorts of things, some of them downright splendid.

Then there was Human Trafficking, which looked at the global problem for which it was titled.  It did an excellent job of putting human faces to the issue, and showing the several ways women find themselves trapped.  There was no way to watch the film without considering how even now, as I looked out the window at fantastic green hills, countless women were looking at very different scenes.  I was angry, wishing I could be a stick thrown in the spoke of the wheels of this terrible business.

Four hours after leaving San Gil, I stepped off the bus into the chilly air of Tunja, Colombia's highest departmental capital.  I felt more alive than I did at the start of the day.  There was too much that I still hoped to be, too much crap going on in the world, for me to feel normal right now.  Even here in Colombia—with up to four million people internally displaced because of ongoing conflict in parts of the country—a lot was happening beneath the surface of what I was seeing.

There have indeed been days when I've given thanks that my bus caught fire so the movies would stop.  Today, however, wasn’t one of them.

Joel Carillet, chief editor of Wandering Educators, is a freelance writer and photographer based in Tennessee. He is the author of 30 Reasons to Travel: Photographs and Reflections from Southeast Asia. To learn more about him, or to follow his weekly photoblog, visit www.joelcarillet.com.