The perils of the daily taxi commute

IF you thought skipping a red traffic light is the worst thing a taxi driver can do, think again.

While many commuters complain about road rage, most pray for their lives daily.

A taxi ride is an uncomfortable roller-coaster ride that shunts you from side to side, leaving you breathless and silently screaming the Lord’s name with your hands frantically gripping the seat handles.

Taxi commuting is fraught with bizarre moments that make you question your own sanity.

Apart from their ‘unique driving skills’, some taxi drivers do not allow you to speak any English. If you dare, you are in trouble.

And as if that’s not enough, you still have to deal with the driver’s tantrums over his fares. If he feels like it, he’ll stop right in the middle of the highway just because the money is R1 short.

Whether you are on your way to work or for an interview, it is of no concern to him..

For those who don’t know, in a taxi fares are passed on from the back to the front.

If you are seated at the front you automatically become the driver’s accountant. You collect and count the money of all the passengers.

Passing money can be a daunting experience though, especially if you have small, wrinkly hands like mine.

Passengers always begin staring at them as if I’m about to pass on a deadly infection.

It’s even worse when the passenger behind you grabs your shoulder for attention – inevitably leaving a dirty smudge on your clean white shirt.

People’s change automatically becomes your problem.

If you dare say something, there is always that lady with a long weave (interlacing strands) and nails who will share her opinion.

Not only will you spend the next hour discussing that missing 50 cents, but verbal attacks such as ‘why do you sit in a front if you can’t count’ will come from all sides.

I can still take all that though, even when people begin sniffing me as if I boarded with a dead rat in my pocket, or being squashed in the back seat with an overweight woman who can’t stop bragging about her new curtains.

I have even learned to tolerate the smell of a combination of cheap fragrances, because it’s taboo to have windows open.

If you dare open a window, you get a death stare from weave lady who is talking to her boyfriend on the cellphone.

But, of course, it can’t be a proper taxi ride without at least one young woman, plastered with thick makeup, thinking she is the planet’s hottest mama.

She keeps fiddling with her phone and chewing the life out of her gum.

With all the commotion that happens daily in taxis, there is only one thing that really gets to me.

It’s that large auntie who occupies a seat-and-a-half and won’t stop eating fried fish.

Not to mention the child on her lap who gets a thrill out of kicking you with his tiny shoes, rubbing all that dirt onto your favourite pair of pants.

And the large auntie will just smile with chewed food bulging at the side of her mouth, look at her child, look at your dirty trousers and say; ‘I haven’t received my change yet’.

And when she realises how angry you are, she would smile again, spitting out bits and pieces of chewed fried fish and say; ’Haibo nana! Don’t play with an uncle’.

Taxi rides are not for sissies!

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