A Taxi Cab Like No Other

The favourite part of my day is surprisingly not relaxing with the other PAHRO volunteers in CyBar after work with a pint of Black Label draft or “chowing” my host mum’s delicious chicken curry, but my morning journey in the taxi. At home I hate morning travel. I hate pushing my way onto the Underground and spending half an hour tucked under someone else’s armpit. The way the doors jerk and roll as someone squeezes onto the super fast cattle truck rushing through the belly of the city. But in Cape Town I really enjoy going to work because its during my morning ride that I really feel that I am in Africa! I love flagging down a taxi and squeezing in between traditionally built ladies wedged between bags and buckets. I love the way the drivers’ mate rides with his head out of the window screaming Wyyyyyyyyyyyynberg or Cape Toooooouuuuuuunn at everyone we pass. I love the way that everyone passes their money up to the driver and the way one of the “mamas” passes me my change. This would never happen at home. For starters you wouldn’t be allowed on the bus unless you had bought your ticket in advance. For a city where its not safe to ride around after dark this trust sums up for me the paradoxes of life here.


Before I arrived in Cape Town I thought I had seen it all on London’s nightbuses. Seriously. Drunken football fans singing “We’re forever blowing bubbles” while downing cans of beer. Students with straggly beards wearing ripped jeans talking in posh accents about how they found themselves while smoking dope in Indiah on their gap yars. Girls in short skirts and skimpy tops throwing up chunks of kebabs every time the bus lurches around another grey corner on a drizzling London night. That was until I came to Cape Town. But you really see all manner of life in the taxis! Guys in blue factory overalls jump out on the way to work, while girls rearrange their headscarves with bangled arms. Children in smart brown uniforms (with brown shoes and tights!) much on dried snacks. The ladies with the buckets shout at each other in the klick klick of Khosa and wave their arms around and laugh with toothless smiles. On my first journey alone, when the workers were striking, a young woman roused the troops of women who were clapping and singing in Khosa. I’ve ridden up front with the driver, I’ve squashed myself in the back. I’m forever being spoken to in Afrikaans. I shrug. “Ma ma where are you from? Where did you learn to speak?…You like my country?” I’ve had a neighbour around my age from a few streets away tell me everything he knows about Germany - it took me the entire journey to realise he thought I was from Germany. We pass one of the PAHRO projects – Bonytoun, a young offenders institute. We pass a military base. I see the street vendors selling cheap ciggies and sweets on their makeshift market stalls made up of cardboard boxes and old fruit crates. I am in the bustling hubbub which is Wynberg and the end of my ride.


However, what I love most about my Taxi ride is seeing Table Mountain rise up before me as we swing around the corner of Plantation Road. I love seeing the misty tablecloth rise and swirl over the rocky crags that stand like a sentinel over the city. One of the things I love most about South Africa is the huge open skies. The way the sky seems to go on and on forever as if the world is a picture frame and the sky a canvass stretched over it. I love seeing the sky and my day anew spread out before me as I ride to work. And it makes me feel a little sad that the people here only enjoy it from beyond the window of a taxi, a train or a car. That is my prayer for South Africa that everyone is able to feel as free here as I do on a London nightbus.