Trains, Techno, and Tricks

The trek to work is never dull. The commute begins with a mini-bus ride full of gospel music, techno, or if we are lucky, gospel with techno undertones. We crowd in, entirely too close to people we don’t know, but yet, with enough room to dance in place and get pumped for the day ahead of advocating and fighting for refugee rights. From the mini-bus we head to the train, where we are met by unabashed stares. Sure, we all like to stare and people watch, but usually when someone catches you staring, feeling caught, you immediately avert your eyes and pretend you were looking at that object above their head that doesn’t really exist; not here. There is no shame. Eye contact is made, but the eyes aren’t averted, the hard stares continue uninterrupted for the entire 40-minute ride. Then there is the proselytizing. Briefly our attention is taken away from the uncomfortable stares and focused on the promises of the Bible. These guys are good. Everyone on the train gets saved daily. Then we arrive in Wynberg only to start the trek all over again six hours later. This is the standard daily commute; always interesting. Yesterday, though, had an added bonus. Things started out normal enough. Robbie and I got on the train back to Cape Town, accompanied by Uncle Billy (who we named), one of those uncomfortable stare-ers who somehow manages to find us every day on the train. We sat down, started having a good light-hearted conversation about our past failed relationships, when a woman stood in front of us uttering something unintelligible. Assuming she wanted money, we told her sorry, we didn’t have any. She continued to stand uncomfortably close and repeated her self—she wanted to see our train tickets. We pulled out our tickets and showed them to the woman. She told us we were in the wrong place, we needed to move to third class; we thought we were already in third class. Hesitantly, we got up and made the move down the train. She continued to approach others in the train, telling several people they needed to get off the train and move to the appropriate car. The train reached the next stop and some people exited to make the move, while she herded the rest of us further telling us we still weren’t in the right place. And then people started to catch on. We were in third class the whole time. This woman didn’t work on the train. She was just a random woman, bored, finding a way to entertain herself on the long ride home. As people started to deny her she looked nervous; she had been found out. She gave us a side-way glance and she ran towards first class. She ran fast. I couldn’t even be angry, I had to give it to her, it was a pretty creative way to spend her ride home. And that was our commute; never dull.