Taxing Ride

Just some story I thought of, nothing to read here... Move along.

Durban, Friday afternoon. It's rather late. Be advised, this is not the pretty part of the city they tend to show in the ads. This isn't the part of the city next to Moses Mabhida Stadium or uShaka Marine World, you know, all those tourist attractions they tell the world exist in your city like there aren't any other types of places which are less-marketable . This is the gritty underbelly of Durban, the side of the city that is downplayed. You're in a spot that makes you feel rather uncomfortable. Your destination is the taxi rank next to the Victoria Street Market. You're on the other side of the Market so all you have to do is pass through the cacophonous establishment known simply as "eBerea".

You just got off a bus on the side of the street that is surrounded by buildings. You notice that you're right in front of a butchery which lies amidst a myriad of other stores but stands out because of its overly colorful branding. There are lots of people in there, and it isn't the most spacious of places but alas, you don't really care, all that's on your mind is that you ought to get home. You continue with your journey after the less than timeous pause to collect your surroundings. Looking around, you see the multitude of people that the marketplace crawls with. They all seem so busy. They're all rushing somewhere - either coming from somewhere or going somewhere else. They are all seeming very hurried because even though it isn't quite dark yet, it is rather late in the afternoon. You're not entirely sure what time it is but also wouldn't dare consult your cellphone for it, at least not in such a place... You've heard the stories, you know what happens in these areas even during broad daylight - or at least you like to think you do.

Although you have no real reason to feel endangered you somehow do as you approach a busy traffic light that will soon display the dark green walking man allowing you to cross the street. This is a busy one-way street. There is a string of vehicles currently making use of the road - rush hour. Taxis weaving through the traffic with the conductors singing their less-than-rhythmic song of advertising the destination of the taxi. But back to the pavement you find yourself on - here, there is blaring music from every direction imaginable, courtesy of the illegal street vendors selling seemingly random products - "nice socks", you even silently think to yourself. You would have said that out loud but remember that you're not the only one out there, with you is a growing gathering of the busy-bodies, waiting impatiently for the green man. Just as you see them, they also see you and you do not want to appear as being strange to strangers. You see them - on this side of the street and even across it. Towards your right, you see an old lady donning a traditional apron and a worn out silk doek. You see the fatigue drawn along her slightly wrinkled face, she is expressionless. In complete contrast, towards your left, you see the young-looking group of nurses in uniform who look excited for some odd reason. You wonder if its due to an enthusiasm for work - since they're still young and inexperienced, they look 25 at oldest - or maybe they're looking forward to knocking off and being able to let their hair down a little... Oh well, you'll never know for sure as the speeding never-ending stream of cars grinds to a halt in the face of the red light. The green man appears as a catalyst to stir everyone into action. You walk with a great degree of purpose and forget about the old lady or the young nurses, the worst is yet to come, you silently think to yourself.

You're finally walking through Berea where the noise of the busy city street is dwarfed in comparison to the utter chaos that prevails within. The vendors here all sit calmly listening to their specific choice of maskandi, which oddly enough has to be at full-blast on huge amplified speakers. Take into account that at any given time there may be a minimum of 50-or-so vendors, each partaking in the dubious practice of listening to music out loud, and you start to wonder if the utter overload of sound you're exposed to won't damage your hearing. As you proceed, you notice that every shop in the building isn't the conventional sort of store you're used to. This is indeed a sort of mall except here, you find every type of muthi under the sun being sold. There are headquarters which are attributed to traditional healers in this vicinity, as a result, lots of things in the environment seem rather bizarre to you. You see the many herbs and incense being sold store-to-store. There are also many plants being manufactured into the various types of medicines by the aging shamans. Then suddenly, a galling sickness takes hold of your entire body. You feel your stomach being pulled in different directions from within itself, your knees are struck by a weakness which resonates throughout your entire body... you start to feel yourself sweat and run out of oxygen. You have just passed a shop where you've seen the dried carcasses of snakes and monkeys and other wild animals being hung for display. This is ominous to you. You saw a few young children play with one of the dried snakes in utter disbelief. You know the significance held by snakes and monkeys in the traditional context, you feel even more endangered. In a state of sheer panic, you start walking faster because the irrational bout of fear that's filled your body seems to be needless - everyone else is just carrying on, its just the same-old-same-old to them. Its mind-boggling how the people maintain such an efficiency about their strides even in passing such abominations. But, as suddenly as that chilling episode had begun, you pull yourself back together and as you look ahead, you see the second traffic light leading you across to your intended destination. Your walk through the marketplace is about to reach an abrupt end... And not a moment too soon.

You reach the robot and unlike the one from the first encounter, the cars are neatly lined waiting for you and your fellow pedestrians to make their way across the street. You cross. As you reach the taxi rank, you enter a less sonorous environment in comparison to Berea but there are still the annoying screams of various rank-dwellers, in attempts to attract people to the taxi they wish. Some scream "Bhamshela, Bhamshela asahambe bo!", while others campaign with "eShaka, Ballito... Shaka, Ballito - Shaka, Ballito!!", but those aren't the ones you're looking for. For the taxi you seek to board: "Tongaat! OThongathi!!! Woza, woza oThongathi!" screams a fat middle-aged man who sells cooldrinks and chips at the rank. He always seems energetic, every single day - rain or shine - he is there without fail, promoting the Tongaat taxis to passersby and selling them his products with an infectious smile and graceful humility. As you're about to step into the taxi, he asks you if you're going to Tongaat out of personal courtesy - and as you say yes, he offers you a cooldrink or some chips. Although you don't really want either chips or cooldrink, you somehow end up reaching into your pockets and ask for a bag of Fritos. "Two rands..." he says simultaneously to you handing him a heavy coin. He hands you your R3 change and returns to his howl in attempts to notify the public that these are indeed the Tongaat taxis. You walk into the taxi and sit down.

You sit next to the window in line with the driver's seat but a few rows behind it. You hate taxi interactions. You like keeping those at a minimum, so all you want to do is hand your fare to the person next to you (which you always hope is then exact amount so you won't have to wait for change) and put on your earphones for the long-ish trip. You hate being a conveyor of money, so your seat is perfect as people tend to pass the money to the left then send it forward in that sequence. You're just waiting for the taxi to fill up as you play some new music and think of what you'll do when you get back home and eat your Fritos slowly. You start to enjoy them and wonder why you didn't want to buy them in the first place and how the man outside, still recruiting passengers, convinced you to. People start walking into the taxi. This is one of those big mini-buses that take more passengers than the average quantum or "skwele", so it normally takes longer for them to fill up - but today is friday, people are going to their homes. They contrast your expression of indifference. A group of mamas walk into the taxi with a frenzied chatter and laughter and they go towards the back seat. This is why you dislike the back seat - there's not enough space and you always end up being squashed by some old round women. The seat next to you is soon taken by an aging man, probably in the early 50s. He is a dark man of small stature and seems respectable enough, so you pause the music on your phone especially to greet him. This is not something you normally do, in fact you find taxi-greetings awkward and a sign of being overbearing. You think people who walk into taxis and greet people are strange. You're perplexed by their behavior of pandering to people they don't know in order to be viewed as polite and suspect that its based on some sort of personal insecurity. But here you are, greeting this old man... Then as he clumsily greets back, you get the smell of booze in his breath and your earlier perception of him changes instantly. His expensive leather jacket which you were impressed with when he walked into the taxi or his vintage italian shoes are not enough to dissuade you from thinking a little less of him. However, you try not to judge him, it is friday afternoon fast running into the night - people generally drink for no reason at times like this, you shouldn't really be surprised. You quickly dismiss all thoughts relating to the person sitting next you. You realize that the sky has moved from a very light blue, from the time you jumped off the bus, to a rather sterner color - the sun is now gone. The taxi is now full.

You proceed in minding your own business as the taxi starts moving out of the rank into the traffic. The taxi gracefully enters the patient dance of vehicles and the old guy next to you asks you what the fare is. Devoid of the earlier warmth of the greeting, you answer precisely by saying eighteen rands and handing him a wrinkled R20 note. The lights are on and he reaches for his wallet, opens it and starts looking for the required amount. He seems drunker than you had anticipated, you notice how he can barely sit still as he works around his good problem. He has great difficulty finding the appropriate amount of money because in one compartment of his fancy wallet - the one for notes - he only sees R200 notes, as he looks in the other compartment, there's more of the same except with the odd R100 note in between. You are suddenly intrigued by this man. What is such a rich man doing in a taxi, piss drunk? You thought to yourself how that must be at least three thousand rands in his wallet and given that he's piss drunk, he has probably spent a reasonable amount of his initial cash-on-hand already. As your mind wanders, you notice the middle-aged woman sitting on the other side of the mini-paassage in the single seat. She seems to be unsettled by the time the man is taking in giving her our fares so she may combine it with hers and pass the sum forward. She's a nurse too - but she isn't like the bubbly ones from the traffic light earlier on, in fact she looks as if she could mother those younger nurses, so she really doesn't have much to be excited about with it being a friday night. Meanwhile, the man next to me finally reaches into a zip compartment filled with coins and takes out a few R5 coins and hands it over to the old nurse who takes them confusedly. They enter into an intercourse on how the money is short... The drunk man forgot to hand her your R20 note. When he finally does, he asks you how much change is due to you in attempts to make things efficient. When you tell him that two rands are owed to you, he swiftly hands you a R5 coin. You could have taken all of it - but you don't believe you should take anything that isn't due to you. You give him the R3 you received as change from your transaction of the Fritos and the man accepts this gesture by beginning to speak in a slow slur.

"Hawu, this change... Oh yes, its mine! Dankie. Uyazi... In this day and age, there aren't a lot of kids who would've given me back what's mine. Buka nje, I'm drunk in a taxi right now... You could've kept the change... I know my youngest, Sanele would have..." You agree with the man but remain nonchalant in your interactions with him in hopes that he'll get with the program and let you enjoy your peace. The taxi starts accelerating and the man continues his ramblings to your utter annoyance. This is partially why you dislike drunk people - they have no inhibitions, so they just do and say whatever they feel like, without consideration of their surroundings and others. You detest communication without purpose and that's exactly what this man is doing - he's talking; talking to anyone and everyone who can and will listen in the taxi. He starts babbling on about his family life and how its crumbling. He delves into the details of his pending divorce settlement - which is why he's in a taxi in the first place; even though he has a car, it would seem that the wife is getting that. You suddenly start feeling very sad for this man, and you're not quite sure why. Could it be the sad fact of his midlife crisis unfolding right before your eyes has cost him his family and "normal" life? Could it be that you feel sorry for him because of the self-degradation and humiliation he has subjected himself to by speaking so openly about his downfall? You reason that it could be the latter more than the former. You don't understand how people can do that - how can one just pour their heart out to a group of random people they've never met? You know that you're certainly afraid of bearing yourself to people you know, now imagine those you do not? The thought of you doing that often brings about the cringes you had when you were passing through Berea and saw the dead animals. That's how damning it seems to you for people to put themselves and their business out in the open. You think its a tad bit inconsiderate of them as it makes things in the environment awkward. Already in the taxi, the driver had to turn up the volume to the deafening proportions of Berea, in order to mute out the personal traumas faced by the man.

Nonetheless, the man carried on. He drove himself to tears by explaining his situation. You could see the pain on his face, you could hear it in his voice but couldn't do a thing about it except indulge him with the odd nod before looking out the window to track the progress of the journey home. The taxi is getting close. He mentions that he is to take another taxi to Ballito, that's where he lives. He could have taken a taxi straight to Ballito but for some odd reason preferred two trips instead of one. Its like he wanted to stall out his return home as long as possible. He must've known that the big house he has reminds him of better days - when they all lived together, before they all hated him. Although this man has a lot of money, he still seems like the poorest of souls stuck in perpetual strife. He has lost all that really matters to him, now even the rather mischievous Sanele won't say more than two words to him. No matter how much money he throws at his children and soon-to-be ex-wife, they don't care. They don't forgive. They can't forgive. He can't forgive.
You start to wonder what is it that they can't forgive him for doing, and there's a growing suspense in the taxi as to what exactly he might have done to mess up his perfect life. You infer that if even lavish gifts can't reconcile this man with his family, then the emotional trauma caused to them must have nothing to do with material objects or even tangibles, and everything to do with the act - the cause of this was an injury to their souls. You feel compelled to ask him how exactly this situation came about but as you hear his broken voice, you retain a thread of humanity in not asking him to retell the cause of his demise for your own curiosity's sake. You empathize with him nonetheless, even though you know not what he did, but that in virtue of being human and anything being possible, you too may one day find yourself in a mode of depression and loss that you are solely responsible for - one so intense that it breaks apart the bonds with all whom you love and even the good things in your life like money and the likes can't mask it. You believe that life is only worth living because of the worth we give to the various things within it, and that it is possible that you could lose all those things in one foul swoop like the man. You hope he feels better and can get his life back on track before something irreversible like death lends a hand in his torment. You hope he prays and that those prayers in themselves are answered. But just as you wish his existential angst away, you find that you have reached your destination - the Tongaat taxi rank. As for the man, his journey continues as he is starting to sober up. He staggers from his seat to the door, as everyone behind him watches impatiently, also wishing to evacuate the vehicle. He finally makes it out and to his amazement, the last taxi to Ballito has already left. He is now stranded at the Tongaat taxi rank, but you keep walking. You are headed for home now, nothing can stop you. You're sure he'll have the wherewithal to call a cab because he can certainly afford it. Either way, you don't really care, you figured you can't stop and contemplate everyone's journey because you won't advance in your own.... Keep walking.

Author's Note

Read, read again and peep the messages within this