I woke early on Monday morning to a dark house with no power (having been knocked out the afternoon before). I was taken to the main bus terminal in downtown Johannesburg, where I would take a bus to Louis Trichardt, Limpopo Province (not too far from the Zimbabwe border).
The bus was scheduled to leave Jo'burg at 9:00 am, and scheduled to arrive in Louis Trichardt at 2:00 pm.
We did not leave until about 9:30 am. I was ushered to a bus that I was told was mine, and the man loading luggage asked where I was heading. "Louis Trichardt," I say with some confidence that I was finally on my way.
The man looked at me as if I were speaking some unknown language (sometimes in South Africa I feel as if I am). He asked to look at my ticket and insisted I was supposed to be on another bus. I was in the right line. They inspected my ticket. This is a bus they directed me to. He was boarding other passengers with the same ticket as me. After standing there awkwardly like an American, and after he took another passenger's luggage, I insisted he load mine.
I sat next to a young man who had been standing behind me in line, and I tried to strike up a conversation with him. I figured if I could endear myself to another passenger who was heading in the same direction as I was, then I'd have less chance of being stranded somewhere where I wasn't supposed to be. I felt more and more comforted as other people in our queue filled the bus, but sitting on the other side of the bus was a man that I distinctly remember seeing from a different line. I tried to put that out of my head. Maybe he just looked very very similar, with the exact same luggage.
It was not long before we arrived in Pretoria, and stopped at the Pretoria station. I thought I was on my way. My ticket distinctly listed Pretoria as the first stop. I was on the right bus. A few passengers disembark, and then some concession guys selling drinks and snacks (and one guy trying to sell watches) enter, and I buy a Coca-Cola. The guy I was sitting next to says he's going to the loo, and so he leaves. He comes back a minute later asks me where I'm going, and says I need to get off… apparently I wasn't on the right bus, after all.
The scene outside was a madhouse. All of these passengers that had boarded in Jo'burg were now getting their luggage in Pretoria. I felt a little comforted that I wasn't the only one confused, but that the native South Africans were also confused, and some visibly angry. (Perhaps, because I wasn't expecting a smooth ride, I took this with a little more ease.) I got my luggage, and ended up talking with another South African. I never got his name (or I did, and forgot it), but he was planning on visiting the States in a year or two, and upon hearing my voice asked if I was an American and then asked me questions about America.
The stranded passengers were all pretty much together, and I found out from them that apparently we were scheduled to disembark at Pretoria and board another bus all along, but no one but the bus company knew. Our bus that was supposed to be waiting for us was still in the shop, being made roadworthy, and it was still going to be another thirty minutes before it would pick us up.
I've learned that African time is much slower than regular time. The seconds and minutes seem to stretch and last a bit longer in the Southern Hemisphere.
So, eventually, the bus comes, we all board, and more than an hour behind schedule, we are on the road again. Roadworthy must not mean the same thing it does in the US either, because this bus rocked back and forth to the point I felt seasick, and even at the slightest incline the bus slowed down to what seemed like 10 kilometers an hour. One of the passengers asked at one point, "Should we get out and push?"
I decided to sit by myself this time near the rear of the bus, and take pictures as we went along. These can be found in a previous post.
After a few hours we made a pit stop for a few minutes. I spent a while outside talking with the South African I talked with in Pretoria, when he noticed a huge screw lodged into the side of one of the bus's tires. I told him I would've preferred if he hadn't told me that was there. He showed the bus driver, and the bus driver shrugged. Nothing he could do about it until after he had finished his route.
Almost to punctuate his indifference, not more than twenty minutes on the highway again, we pass by a stalled bus and stranded passengers standing in the median.
But thankfully nothing worse than rocking back and forth and slow ascents travailed us.
A woman sitting directly in front of me at one point offered me a stick of gum, and I accepted. Upon hearing her voice, I asked if she was an American, and she was. Amber was the first American I had run into in my time in South Africa so far. She was from Washington State, and this was her second trip to South Africa. The first time she had been in Cape Town, but this time she was going to work with a small non-profit organization that worked with health education (mainly dealing with HIV/AIDS prevention for children) for nine months or so out near the Zimbabwe border.
We discussed our different experiences in South Africa, and eventually a couple native South Africans started talking with us, asking us about America, and the differences between here and there. I found it interesting that one of the South Africans asked if America was how it was always portrayed in cop films, with all the gun violence and gangs running around. It seemed odd to me that America seemed more unsafe to her than South Africa (after having seen all the extra security measures South Africans go through for peace of mind).
On the way, I saw a giraffe standing not far from the highway, but it passed by before I could get a picture of it (the bus not being on an incline at the time).
I finally reached Louis Trichardt at about 5:30 pm.
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