When I think about public transportation, the words honesty, trust and math skills don’t immediately jump to mind. But as with many of my experiences during the last six months, I’m learning that good things can often be found in the most surprising places.
Since I am currently without a car or old red van (the vehicle of my youth as many of my friends will fondly remember), my main form of transport these days is none other than the infamous South African taxi. Now when I say taxis (also called kombis), I don’t want you to picture a yellow cab that you can ride in for extremely high prices (though we do have that type of taxi as well). I want you to picture a crowded and lively 15-seater white van with lots of windows. These taxis range from nicer, newer vehicles to those on the slightly battered side. I was once shocked to find a TV inside one of the more spacious taxis. I’m pretty sure the other passengers wondered why the American was so excited.
Unlike buses, taxis don’t come or leave at scheduled times. Depending on the taxi rank, you can usually always find the one you want, but if you’re trying to get somewhere during their non-busy time, you’ll probably have to wait for the taxi to fill up.
I’ve often received strange looks as I’ve climbed aboard. Once, a woman actually leaned over and asked me if I was scared to ride in a taxi. The fact is that white people generally don’t ride in them. Besides myself and the other volunteers in my program, I’ve seen less than a handful of other white people using this type of transport.
One thing that has continued to both amaze and unnerve me is the way the taxi drivers accept passengers’ fare. Unlike the machines that bigger public buses have, money is passed up to the driver by hand. Sometimes he has an assistant who will help him gather and give change back, but in my experience, it has most often been only the driver who is handling cash and coin. This would be less worrisome if he wasn’t also navigating his way through traffic at the same time. What has surprised me even more than these drivers’ ability to steer with a handful of coins though is how the money makes its way up to him. Each row gathers the Rand (either coins or bills) necessary to pay the fare and passes it to the front of the taxi. Rand passes through several hands on its way up and yet I’ve never seen anyone try to pocket someone else’s money.
At first, I was wary of giving my money to someone I didn’t know. We’ve been taught from a young age that trusting strangers is usually a bad idea. But in the beginning, I often had to do just that as I figured out the system. I had to rely on the person next to me to give me the correct amount of change if I used a larger bill to pay the R6 fare. I had to trust that they weren’t going to cheat me.
Coming from a culture where (and let’s be honest here) the majority of us use a calculator (perhaps even the one on our cell phone) to do even basic math, I still marvel at how quickly people on the taxi can hand back change and figure out how many fares can be paid with a large bill of R50, for instance. Finally, grade school math teachers everywhere are vindicated! There are situations when calculators aren’t practical!
While it’s true that taxis don’t have the best reputation in the world of public transportation, my experience has been mainly a good one. Seeing qualities like honesty and trust, as well as fairly impressive math skills, in the average taxi has proven to me that there are always new things to learn, even in my daily commute.
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