Toshana Forbes: Lover of big vehicles and people

WITH her perfectly manicured nails wrapped around the steering wheel of a Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) bus, a radiant smile ready to greet her passengers, and her keen eyes peeled on the streets of the Corporate Area, 32-year-old Toshana Forbes is the queen of route 47.

She is well-known and loved by not just her regular passengers, but also the vendors, street wardens, taxi and mini-bus operators, and even beggars along the route from Chancery Street to downtown Kingston, which sees her travelling by Hughenden and along Molynes Road into Half-Way-Tree, before heading onto Lyndhurst Road, Studio One Boulevard and Slipe Pen Road to her destination.

“So how come you’re not travelling with the baby today?” she greeted the All Woman writer last week as she stopped to pick her up on Molynes Road, extending the same level of compassion that she does to all who board her bus on weekday mornings.

“So where is the miserable wife, Papa?” she asked an elderly man at another bus stop as she helped him up the steps of the vehicle.

“Hear her outside a quarrel with me to come up into the bus,” he responded, as he hobbled to his seat and secured another for his wife, who limped her way to him a few moments later, grumbling every step of the way.

As Forbes drove along her route, manoeuvring the sharp corners of some of the the narrow streets with grace and poise, she frequently honked to her many well-wishers, who shouted and waved excitedly when they saw that she was the one behind the wheel. “Tash”, “Too Cute”, “Slim”, “Young girl”, and “Angel” are just a few of the terms of endearment used by passengers and other road users who hailed her.

A beggar quickly made his way to the window of the bus when she stopped at a traffic light in Half-Way-Tree, as he knew he was in for a treat.

“Why a my bus alone you always see?” she chided him as she rummaged through her purse for loose change. He smiled and blew her a kiss as he walked happily away with his $100 bill.

As she made her way up King Street in downtown Kingston, to join the queue at the bus terminus, she told All Woman that she became a bus driver purely by chance as she had always dreamt of being an entrepreneur.

“I always wanted to own my own business, and that was a goal of mine from I was attending St Catherine High School,” she said as she parked the bus and took a walk down the aisle to stretch her limbs. “But when I left high school in 2003, I grabbed the opportunities as they came. I did clerical jobs and did promotions for Kirk Distributors Limited off Marcus Garvey Drive.”

When Forbes heard of an opportunity to become a JUTC bus driver in 2011, she said: “Sure, why not?”

“I’ve been driving since I was 14,” she gushed, as passengers started to board the bus for the journey back to Chancery Street.

Even with at least 10 commuters approaching the bus door in a five-minute period to ask her where the bus was heading, her tone remained friendly and helpful as she responded to them all.

“My father’s mechanic, along with my father were the ones who taught me to drive. Plus, I was always fascinated by big vehicles, so it really came naturally to me,” she recounted.

Despite her love for driving, Forbes said being at the helm of a public passenger vehicle — transporting scores of people at a time — is a tough task, which is often made tougher by reckless road users. She reflected on an accident in which she was involved years ago while driving along the the 21AX route, which is from Spanish Town in St Catherine, to Cross Roads in St Andrew.

“There was a designated bus lane on the Mandela Highway at the time, and as I was going through the stoplight at the Caymanas intersection, a driver turned immediately in front of the bus and it caused a collision,” she related.

Even though no one was hurt, the incident stuck with Forbes as a reminder that not all road users will be vigilant, and she must be cautious for the sake of not just her passengers but other road users travelling in smaller motor vehicles.

While the number of women operating public passenger vehicles increased in the last few years, the roads are still largely considered male territory. As one of the 207 women in just under 1,000 JUTC bus drivers, Forbes receives her share of prejudicial treatment on a daily basis from callous motorists.

“They will ‘bad-drive’ you and then stop to call you names and insult you,” a laughing Forbes told All Woman. “I’ve heard just about every bad name they can think of to call a woman. They drive and stop, and then they cuss you out, then drive off, then stop again — all of that. But after a while, they go about their business and you just keep it moving.”

As she was about to leave the bus terminus, a senior citizen boarded the bus. As he swiped his JUTC Smarter Card, Forbes noticed a few tablets in his hand.

“What you doing with those blue pills, barber? Be careful y’know! I was looking in the shop this morning and didn’t see you, you alright?” she asked.

“Sell me a sell them, you don’t want some to buy? They have some for woman too enuh,” he joked, as he took his seat, explaining that he hadn’t reached the shop yet because he had to come into downtown Kingston for an item.

“I’m a people person,” Forbes told All Woman, as she readied to leave the terminus. “Respect goes where respect comes from. They talk to you nice, you talk to them nice. They look out for you and you look out back for them. And majority of them are nice people to deal with.”

And for the difficult passengers, Forbes said she remains polite, but firm.

“Especially the people who beg rides; sometimes you can go easy on them and give them a ‘bly’, but there are some who take it for granted. So I limit myself to one rider, if any, at any given time. So if someone comes along begging a ride, and I have one already, I’ll tell them sorry but they can’t come. And if they insist on taking the bus and pass me, I don’t argue with them, I just exit the bus, and if needs be, call the police.”

While she is the sweetheart of the elderly commuters, her favourite passenger, she said, is a little girl.

“She is about five years old now, and I’ve been carrying her on the bus from she was a little baby with her mother. I always look out for her and her mother in the mornings. She is a very intelligent girl although she is tiny. She calls me ‘Auntie Tash’. She is the reason why everybody knows my name,” she laughed.

As she effortlessly manoeuvred the bus around the sharp corners she has navigated for the better part of the last six years, Forbes smiled. She paused at a stoplight, as a handcart vendor made his way to her window and held up a $1,000 bill. She had already made the change he was requesting and the exchange was seamless.

Beyond her excellent customer service skills, what most people notice about “Tash” is how well she carries herself on the job. Although her shift starts at 5:45 am, and she has to help her 14-year-old daughter to get ready for school, Forbes’ white Oxford shirt and black skirts are always crisply ironed and not a curl on her pixie cut is ever out of place.

“It’s just how I was brought up,” she said, as passengers disembarked the bus at the Half-Way-Tree Transport Centre, resting her artfully polished fingers on her stockinged knee. “My mother always bought me pretty clothes, and I always loved to dress up, so I just grew up into it.”

Forbes occasionally goes out with friends to events when invited, but she prefers to stay home and catch up on sleep, as her job can be very exhausting. She watches church services on television to maintain her spirituality and spends time with her daughter, who is as trendy as her mother.

“I always tell myself that the sky is the limit,” she said, as she pulled into the Chancery Street bus terminus for her lunch break. “I use that as a motto on a day-to-day basis when I think of my personal goals, as well as my business goals.”

Forbes still hopes to have her own business eventually and being on the roads daily has helped her to zoom in on a niche.

“I always considered having my own vehicles on the road and perhaps having a few transport contracts for them, do rentals and things like that, and maybe still do some driving on the side,” she mused, sharing that she always wanted to learn to drive trucks. “But for now, my passengers are really what keep me going. Just to see how their faces light up when they see that it’s me driving the bus — that’s priceless,” she said.