Hey You!

DemonSpawn

Date:
25/05/2005

I'm thinking it's time to tell you all about traveling the public transport in South Africa. It's been three weeks. I rode my bike into a car that long ago. I suffer from withdrawals every second I'm away from my beloved Veronica, (the bike), and it's coming winter here. This means that we have beautifully clear, sunny days with that cheesy blue sky you see in the movies, and absolutely no wind. All I can think is, it's such a perfect day for a ride. I'm having issues. It sucks.

So, since Veronica has been out of commission, I have been relying on lifts to Varsity and taking taxis back home, because I can't for the life of me figure out how to get to Varsity in the morning using public transport. And besides, I always get up way too late.

Now, you guys overseas may think that a taxi is a sedan which takes one or two people in the back, and charges a fare from a timer. We have those, too. But they are mostly for larney ou's. I mean, rich folks. The taxis I take are like big bumble-bees with enigines. Minibusses. I don't know how to explain it to the outlanders, so take a look at the pic.

You would never guess it, but you can fit a whole bunch of people in there. Today, we fitted sixteen plus the driver, bringing us to seventeen, in total. They're made to take twelve. But hey! The more the merrier, right?

Normally I sit near the side door, so I can get out easily, because I'm the first to get out. It doesn't matter whether you take the taxi from Varsity to the first corner, or all the way into town, which is more than a few km's. It costs R3. I don't mind. A still water from the vendor costs me more. Today, I sat in the front.

Now, that's not bad, as long as there is a fare collector. You see, people don't pay as they get in, they get in, and then pay on the way. It works on a lot of trust, although it's pretty easy to spot the person who hasn't paid, because everyone sends their money forward to whomever is collecting the fares. If you don't see your neighbour taking out money and handing it to someone else to pass forward, then they haven't paid. And the driver knows exactly how much he should get.

Like I said, there is generally a fare collector. But sometimes a fare collector quits, gets another job, gets sick, or dies, in which case you have to make do with collecting directly from passengers until another collector is found.

Except people don't always give exact change. So if you get a Humanities student in the front, this may present a problem, as far as the mathematical issues are concerned. We're not big on Maths.

The thing I keep on wondering at, is the way the right change keeps getting back to the right people, even though you just pass it back to whichever hand is willing to take it. You see, mostly people will do their own maths, by and large. One person will give a five, and someone else will have a one and a two, so they give that person the two and pass the five and one on to the front, calling “two”, meaning a fare for two people.

And then you get the twits (like me) who insist on giving a twenty for one fare. Today I was sitting in the front, and there were two of us that needed R17 change. And I was collecting. It took me ages to figure out the change, because I had been working on an essay for the last three days that had become the bane of my existence, had just handed it in, and was not in “think” mode.

Anyway, let me recap, (since that is the habit of people who have been writing essays all their life, which feels like I have); you're sitting in a minibus, and you are being handed notes and coins with people saying “one”, “four”, “five”, “three”, etc, having no change until you get coins, and having to remember all the people (numbers) you have to get change to. Not pleasant. But cool in its own way, because it sort-of reassures me that humanity still exists, and corruption does not affect everything.

The making-the-brain-work-again-part wasn't the hard thing, though. Being first a driver and then a rider, I feel an obligation to shout at cars that blatantly disregard the obvious, like robots, (traffic lights), and the like. So this time, I'm sitting in the front, carrying on a conversation with the driver about how baaaaad women drivers in SUV's are, and someone cuts across traffic when the light is late orange, (there is a distinction between early and late orange), and parks right across our lane. At which point, I go off on a tirade about drivers in general should be shot on demand, when they deserve it. The driver looks at me like I'm a funny animal, and carries on waiting for her to move.

He says he drives long distance as well – Jo'burg to Durban, East London to Cape Town, that sort of thing – but I can't believe how well he handles traffic. I promise to anyone that's listening that if I had to drive a minibus in traffic all day for five years, as he has, I would be forced, at some stage, to ram my taxi into some offending Merc's bumper, just to see the look on her face when she hears I'm not insured. Hah! Take that, bitch! That'll teach your husband to buy you a drivers license for your birthday! Now you're in the shit, and I'm getting a new spray-job!

Except that's what I was waiting for on my bike, and I never had my learners – it lapsed through no fault of mine own!- and then look what happened.

There is something to be said for becoming legit... And taxi drivers actually rock.

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