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suicide on wheels
Entry 73 of 79 | show all | print this entry |
With over a week to go before the first-ever graduation ceremony of the Khotalang Educare Centre, I decided to use the time to make a side-trip to Swaziland, with a diversion en route to Pietermaritzburg in order to pay for the train trip I would take later on, since they wouldn't accept credit card payment by phone.
The fast way to Swaziland would be via Durban (or Johannesburg) involving one change of buses. But I wanted to take the shorter (but slower) route across country, using the minivan combies that always run between neighbouring towns. Although none of us knew the exact route that would have to be followed, it was clear to me (though not to everyone), by a kind of taxi-mathematical induction, that since there is always a way to get from a place to the next place, there must be a way to get to anyplace. "You can't get there from here" was a joke, after all.
Pietermaritzburg, where I spent the first night, was just big enough to have a bookstore that was just big enough to have a couple of books that I wanted to read (I was getting desperate). From there, a cross-country route to Dundee was marked as scenic on my map, but disappointingly the taxi went back to the freeway. The next ride was to Vryheid, and most of the way it was dangerously fast on the two-lane roads. If anything unexpeced happened, there would be no margin for evasion. Then on the way to Paulpietersburg, with a young driver who looked as though he hadn't smiled for years, it started to drizzle, and we were reaching 150 km/h in an overloaded, poorly maintained vehicle with loose suspension, bald tires and dodgy brakes. I was afraid to say anything in case it might provoke the driver to prove himself by going even faster. There was one particular long curving descent on which I confirmed a resolution I had been considering all afternoon: If we negotiate this curve and reach our destination, I will go back by a different route and never take a combie again.
But I would have to push on to Mbabane by whatever means was available. At Paulpietersburg the next taxi was occupied by three men who had clearly been drinking (this was late Friday afternoon at month-end). I decided to look for a place to sleep and continue in the morning. And by chance there was a very nice bed-and-breakfast for $20 just down the street.
The other thing that you can't help thinking about is that if 19% of adults aged 16 to 50 are HIV-positive (and surely it would be higher among taxi-drivers), and medication is not available, and you take half a dozen taxi rides, you are putting your life more than once in the hands of someone who has no reason to expect to go on living much longer.
On Saturday morning I was still apprehensive, but the ride to the border was okay, and then it was two more buses to Manzini. I spent a night there and then to Mbabane for two nights. I found Swaziland quite touristy and mostly catering to a slightly higher class of tourist. There are lovely places to stay for $20 or so, but not much to do. This was my first time in Swaziland, but when I was in Lesotho years ago it was a popular destination for expatriates, exchanging the cold, austere mountains of Lesotho for these warmer, greener, softer hills. I see that it would have made a nice break, but on the whole I much prefer Lesotho.
Going back I took the Baz-bus (a tourist bus service) to Durban, where I spent a night in a noisy backpacker place, then the double-decker intercity bus to Harrismith, then a combie to Phuthaditjhaba as usual. For some reason the combie drivers on this route were always fairly sane. One more combie ride back to Harrismith, and hopefully that will be my last. Let me re-phrase that: ... and I'll walk away from it
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