Once I rode the No. 14 public bus from ‘piazza’ to ‘ ‘Kaliti’. I happened to sit on the thin metal of a chair right in front of the back seats which were all occupied. Incidentally, they were all occupied by female passengers. They were talking and raised one issue which astonished me very much. It also reminded me of one similar topic which I encountered in other public bus. I will be narrating their discussion. But first let me tell you about the other encounter.

I was riding bus No.9 going to ‘Bole Medehanialem’. Luckily, I had secured a seat. A young lady in her late twenties was standing adjacent to my seat. A young man was standing next to her. No sooner had the bus been moving than the young lady started murmuring and started getting very angry. She then glared and hooted at the young man. Feeling embarrassed, the young man quickly moved to another place. She apparently was annoyed by the very inappropriate way of the passenger. He was rubbing against her. I asked her what riled her that much. She began telling me about a previous experience. “Once I was waiting for this same bus. An old man came to me and asked me whether the bus had already left. I replied I was waiting for it. He then started to chat with me. When the bus arrived he bought two tickets and gave me one ticket. When I gave him my share of the fare, he insisted on not taking it. Seeing his appearance I didn’t suspect anything and got on the bus. As soon as the bus started moving, the old man began caressing me. Unable to control my temper I turned around and slapped him across his right cheek. Shocked the man then got off quickly way before his destination.” Another time, on another bus, I heard one middle-aged woman mumbling to herself. A guy next to her asked her whether a thief had attacked her. She replied that a thief was much better. “A thief you can protect yourself against by watching your pockets, how can you protect yourself from all those male passengers who try to rub against you inappropriately all the time? “She asked bitterly.

Back to the discussion of those ladies in the back seat which prompted me to write this article. One of the ladies brought up the subject of how she advises female passengers not to give up their seat to elderly people because one could never tell who they would be standing next to in the bus. The other ladies seated next to her then began relating their own experience and those they had heard from friends.

A young lady among them, in her late twenties, told them what her friend said to one such guy once. When a man old enough to be her father had made an attempt to paw her, she reprimanded the man saying, “I can’t believe I have to be suspicious of even someone old enough to be my father”. Another lady who sat next to her began cursing movies shown on TV putting all the blame on them. She said that she stopped watching movies due to all their vivid content.

As their discussion got hotter and hotter, it began attracting guys who were standing around them. They too added their comment on the subject. One guy commented that in America a male is taken to court for staring at a female lustfully should the female lay charges against him. Another lady spoke of an incident on the bus where she saw a woman’s dress smeared by the secretion of a man who had stood next to her in a crowded bus. A lot of opinions were voiced which I can’t remember all, but what kind of a problem is this? Should we call it a mania? I invite psychiatrists to shed some light on it.