A moment in a drive through town

I spent a recent holiday visiting my grandmother and my uncle, who live in a beautiful, quiet village called Tyeni on the banks of the Mbashe River near Clarkebury.

I travelled to the Eastern Cape with my sister and her husband, who gave me a lift on their way from Kokstad to East London. They dropped me off in Dutywa near Mthatha and, upon arrival in a town I have always driven through, I stopped to examine its details and made some notes on my phone:

I’m feeling very far from my regular life this afternoon. I’m at a fourday-old taxi rank in a little town called Dutywa, halfway between Mthatha and Butterworth. I’m en route to my grandmother. I’m in one of those lorry taxis that are usually packed with everything from packets of mealie meal, live sheep and people’s lives inside Ghana Must Go bags, which in this region are called “ooNo Problem”.

I’m sandwiched between an elderly driver and another old man wearing a reflector vest, a scotch print shirt and brown chinos. His shoes are off and the car reeks of feet that have walked in the day’s 37° heat. He’s pretty friendly and we spent the first hour of our acquaint- ance talking about history.

My uncle, who is responsible for our travelling in this way, is in the back of the mini lorry, captivating the passengers with his oratory.

When we arrived at the rank, he said, holding my hand: “Mtshana, you are always writing about how black people live from your comfortable life in Jo’burg. Come and see how black people live.”

This place is indescribable and it would be a shame for me to try when I have only been here for twoand-a-half hours.

Moments after my uncle took my hand, two police cars, with flash- ing blue lights, came into the small rank, where the police harassed vendors, who were used to trading at the main taxi rank until recently when the police swept them out. Nobody flinched but the flies.

At that point I needed to use the toilet and naively asked my uncle where it was. He looked at me and said: “Where would there be a toilet when these people’s heads are still spinning from being relocated?”

We then walked around town until we found a municipal toilet. It costs R1 despite the fact that it’s a public building. People get arrested for relieving themselves in the street and so some resort to petty thefts just to be able to use the toilet, among other things.

I squatted over the toilet, which wasn’t bad and looked up to read the graffiti on the door. “Ningamaxelegu maspala waseMbhashe” (you are filthy Mbhashe municipality) and “Imisunu yenu rhulumente” (fuck you government) are two that I remember.

We walked back to the vehicle and waited for it to fill up, which it did eventually. We are now on our way to Tyeni at the exhilarating speed of 50km per hour.