– The time I was walking home at night from campus. I was walking towards Main road down one of the side roads. As I neared Main Road I saw a taxi whizz by on the Main Road pavement. A robot taking too long perhaps? I remember stopping, blinking a few times, and saying, nah I did not just see that. And my brain replying, oh yes you did, right past Pick n Pay.
– Another time on the freeway behind varsity, we were driving late at night towards Rondebosch, the only car on our side of the road, and we saw a taxi zooming the wrong way down the freeway that heads towards Cape Town. Me thinking, thank gawd we not on that side of the freeway!
– Another time (at band camp) – boyfriend and I -sitting in a taxi in Claremont waiting for the guy who collected money in our taxi to finish beating up the guy from another taxi. They were throwing eachother up against the taxi. I was all for climbing out the window and running away, boyfriend wanting to get into the fray and pull these guys apart. He made me stay on the taxi.
– The time I was wandering the streets (Main Road again) in the dark at some ungodly hour of the morning, trying to get to varsity, and I accidentally got on a taxi to Manenberg. The guy shouted something, I have no idea what (well, I guess he must have shouted “Manenberg” really, makes sense, but that is not what I heard. What did I hear? I have no idea, whatever I wanted to hear I assume). The taxi stopped, I got on, the guy (he looked very doubtful) asked me “something something”, I guess he was saying “Mannenberg? and I nodded, again hearing whatever it was I wanted to hear. As the taxi was about to turn off Main Road, the guy asked me one last time with much skepticism and disbelief in his face, “Manenberg”, and I finally clicked, and muttered “Gawd, no, I better get off here.” (Not that I have anything against Manenberg, but it is quite far away from where I was meant to be, and me alone, and in the dark…). I was lucky that between the two of us there was one brain. The one whose brain it wasn’t never did go to Manenberg.
– memories of being squished into a taxi meant to seat surely no more than 14 or 15 people? In the mornings they squished in at least 20, I remember semi standing, semi perching on some poor guy’s knee with another guy’s unidentified body part in my face, thinking how the hell am I going to get off this taxi?
– The (many) times when the taxi drivers would race eachother down Main Road. This was NOT fun. Ok, maybe just a little bit, they drove REALLY fast, but there was a small part of me that thought I was gonna die each time.
In a city where there is a freeway that drops off into midair, anything can happen on the roads.
Spindrifting South African seamonkey. 