Ticket – South Coast Herald

London has the red double-decker bus, India has the motorized tricycle developed in Japan in 1930, China has the fastest train in the world; up to 600 km / h: We have the minibus taxi!

The minibus taxi was first legalized in the 1980s and makes about fifteen million commuter trips every day. (For those interested in statistics, the industry has around 200,000 mini-taxis, 300,000 drivers, 100,000 taxi drivers, and the industry also benefits from 100,000 car washers and 150,000 salespeople at the various taxi stands).

South Africa has a large working class that lives mainly in townships that are scattered across the business districts. Taxis start taking passengers into town early in the morning, and at around 4 p.m. they start driving workers back home.

I had decided to move to the coast after my retirement and I bought a ticket to Durban on board a Greyhound bus. I am a widow, my chicks have grown up and have flown and I was finally able to fulfill my lifelong dream to live permanently in the sights and sounds of the Indian Ocean in KwaZulu-Natal.

When I got to Durban train station in the early evening, I asked one of the taxi drivers who was waiting for a fare where I could find cheap accommodation for the night for a hundred rand and he offered to take me to a local hotel drive.

I spent an uneventful night in a neat functional room. The next morning after showering, I packed my things in my little black zippered bag on wheels and asked at the front desk how I could travel to Port Shepstone, a bustling seaside town that I remembered from our family vacation in nearby Umzumbe.

A lovely little African receptionist said, “Mam, you can take a taxi to the train station and a train from there”.

I smiled in thanks and went out into the mild summer coastal air of Durban and looked around for a taxi. Since I didn’t see any, I went back into the hotel and asked the young lady if she would show me the taxis. She escorted me outside and pointed to a white station wagon parked across the street.

“Over there, Mam, the minibus taxi will take you to the train station for R8.00”.

I carefully approached the open sliding door of the vehicle, peered inside and asked the very tall African at the wheel whether he was going to the train station?

“Yebo, that’s me. Come in. When we are full, I’ll take you there. “

I climbed into the station wagon and sat by a window. I put my little black case on my lap and waited and waited and waited in the searing heat for my journey to begin. One by one, a group of people climbed aboard until every seat was occupied, and then the taxi pulled away with a bone-numbing jolt.

I sat like a mouse, afraid someone might notice my brown hair and pale skin and throw me out of the taxi! We must have stopped ten times and started skipping passengers and inviting others in before the driver yelled “station” over the harsh African music!

I got up, made my way through a selection of bags to the sliding door, and landed on a cracked sidewalk. I could see the train station across the street and made my way to the concourse. Reluctantly, I approached the ticket office and asked the clerk for a ticket to Port Shepstone.

“Oh, sorry Madam, there are no more trains going to Port Shepstone, but you can buy a ticket to the last stop on the line and take a taxi from there”.

I bought the ticket for twelve rand and wondered why traveling in KZN was so cheap. I went down the hall as instructed, went down a long dirty flight of stairs and through a dingy, urine-smelling tunnel, I came to a platform where a stopped train was waiting, and got into a compartment. I waited and waited and waited until at some point some schoolgirls got on and I asked them when the train was leaving?

“They chirped in about twenty minutes.”

I let out a sigh of relief as we set off with a clang, bang, and screeching, tortured steel. I sat glued to the dirty window; I didn’t want to miss my first sea view! Ugly, filthy factory walls slid through the window, overgrown paper, and bottle-strewn edges of grass filled my view. I was completely deprived. Where was the sparkling blue ocean that snaked onto the sandy beach I remembered long ago?

Then the sea came into view through my tear-streaked eyes! I asked the school children to warn me when the train was approaching the terminus so I could get ready to get off and find a taxi for the last leg of my journey.

When the children got off at their stop, they said: “The next stop is the last, Mam.”

When the train came to a stop at the next station, I grabbed the handle of my little black suitcase on wheels and stepped onto the platform. I followed the other passengers over a steel bridge that spanned the railroad tracks and when I reached the other side; I asked an African lady where I could take a taxi to Port Shepstone.

“Wow, follow me.”

She led me to a waiting station wagon. The burly African driver gave me a long, penetrating look, as if he couldn’t quite understand what a middle-aged white woman is doing all alone, pulling a small black suitcase on wheels behind her and in the middle of rural Kwa Zulu. Natal takes his taxi.

“Sit in the front seat with the suitcase he ordered, you have to pay R 20.00!”

I held my suitcase on my lap and waited expectantly for the next leg of my journey to begin. The driver waited for the minitaxi to be full and we made our way to what I thought was Port Shepstone. Not so! He drove to a busy African market place, where his passengers disembarked. He turned off the engine and said, “Wait here, we’re going to Port Shepstone in twenty minutes!”

I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears. For sale were pins, roots, bags of flour and cornmeal, razor blades, cigarettes, fruit and live chickens. African music boomed over the high-pitched voices of vendors selling their wares, taxis howled to lure passengers, and I heard goats bleating in the distance. I closed my eyes in disbelief and must have nodded off, exhausted to the extreme.

I woke up with a start; the taxi driver had returned, turned the engine on and honked the horn. Passengers approached the taxi and got in, soon the taxi was full and we drove off, I didn’t know where.

We drove through rural KwaZulu-Natal on bumpy, dusty roads. Monkeys jumped from tree to tree and small children tended goats and sheep. My eyes could barely see the emerald green color of the trees, the wild foliage, and the lush sugar cane that could see as far as the eye could see. I leaned back in my seat, in awe of the spectacle.

Eventually we reached an asphalt road and I saw a sign saying Port Shepstone 30 km. The driver accelerated and we raced towards my destination. When Port Shepstone came into view, with its iconic black and white lighthouse guarding the coast, the driver asked where I would like to get off.

“All over town,” I replied.

When he dropped me off across from a mall, I saw the well-known “Wimpy” sign and decided to regroup over a burger and a cola there. I paid the driver the requested sum of twenty rand and he drove off, thanks for a safe journey rang in his ears.

I sat down at a table and caught the attention of a few girls sitting next to me. “Sorry, I said, could you refer me to a cheap hotel for the night?”

“Sure Mam, do you see the taxi over there …”

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