A fan and a (really) long commute

               
               School is out right now for the end of the first term.  In South Africa, the public schools go year round with 4 quarterly breaks.  (I am aware that the proposal of a similar system is a topic which has stirred many riveting debates in the American schools).  With schools being out, we Peace Corps Volunteers are free to experience South Africa through travel and work on community projects.  To this end, I ran in the Longtom Marathon last week for charity (I really appreciate the support & will write about it soon!) and have been working to complete the art project which is described briefly below in another post.  Other days during these breaks are spent doing what I did today: errands. 

 

                I live approximately 70 kilometers from town.  That’s about 40 miles.  I know this because I saw it on some government document at the primary school where I work.  The document was describing the remoteness and seclusion of the school as a means to emphasize the hardships in getting supplies, quality teachers, nutritious food, announcements, etc to the school.  The problem with this documentation on paper is that 70 km doesn’t sound terribly far.  And relatively speaking, its not.  But this is the type of distance you have to feel and not imagine.  Today I felt it.

                The week before the aforementioned Longtom race, one of my most cherished possessions angered me.  It died.  What I thought was a healthy fan died of sudden motor ischemia less than 3 months into its valued existence.  Granted, running a fan at constant three speed in a dust-blanketed tin box room off an overstressed power strip is an obvious requiem for such an appliance.  Still I had high hopes for it.  At 500 rand (about $55 dollars), it was one of the most expensive things I bought for myself here.  I even passed on a small fridge which is commonplace among volunteers and opted for this seemingly quality fan instead.  When the fan smoked to its untimely death, I located the receipt and even found the box which my host family had mysteriously kept.  I was definitely going to return the fan to the store.  Here in South Africa, this is not a common practice.  I don’t know if it is just an American tradition to return things (I’m imagining the day after Christmas), but it’s definitely not the norm here.  However, I wasn’t going to just eat this purchase without incident.  I was determined.

I dismantled the dead fan and stuffed it into the box complete with duct tape.  The fan and box were rather large.  Just imagine a big metal box fan in a large retail cardboard box.  The kind a store clerk has to lift from the storage shelf after you identify the display model that you like.  I had purchased the fan from a store in the nearest town of Polokwane back at the beginning of 2009 (dead heat of summer here).  On the day of said purchase, I found myself in town with my supervisor who has a car.  Its incredible how much I have taken cars for granted.  You exit a car, walk through a parking lot, go in a store, buy something, walk through the parking lot, and drive home.  Done.  And at 70 km, a drive in a car takes about an hour.  Even counting the 15 km through the unpaved and treacherous roads of the rural villages.  But my supervisor doesn’t live in my village on weekends or during school holidays and I have only seen 2 cars in my village other than his.  Alas, I am resigned to taking the bus and combi as standard means.  Generally I find this not too much of a problem except when lugging something heavy.  And today I was lugging the fan.

The bus leaves my village of Phoshiri once a day in the morning on weekdays.  It is supposed arrive in Phoshiri at around 8.  So today, I awoke a bit before 7.  Around a quarter to 8, I gathered my things including this big-ass boxed fan and scooted out the door.  (So we have a 7:45am departure time for the record).  I walked the 10 minutes to the bus stop with the fan and an empty book bag (I had to buy groceries as well).  The bus arrived on time around 8 and I boarded it to head to the next village over where I could catch a combi (a taxi-van-thing that seats about 18 people) to head into Polokwane.  When I boarded the bus, there were only about 10 passengers since Phoshiri is one of the very first ‘stops’ along the route.  I crammed the fan between my uplifted legs and the seat in front of me and felt good.  I was off. 

The bus stops at about every 10^th house as it passes through the villages.  In mornings, everyone gets on and nobody gets off.   Everyone rides until the last stop of Lebowakgomo where combis can take you most places.  It fills to capacity rather quickly.  And then keeps filling.  I found myself once again amazed at just how many people could actually fit on the thing.  Old women and men hanging on to the metal seat frames as the bus lumbered over the dirt mounds constituting a road.  Young girls with babies strapped by towel on their backs.  And everyone was talking.  Loudly.  It’s quite a scene.  Much more social than any metro bus I have ridden in the US or elsewhere abroad.  Strangers talking to strangers unabashedly.  And since the whole swell of conversation is in lightning fast Sepedi, I can only make out bits and pieces.

The fan box was being crushed primarily by my contorted legs and the metal seat frame directly in front of me but the young boy perched on his mother’s lap in the seat adjoining mine was pounding the top of the box and this was definitely adding to the disintegrating boxiness of the fan’s packaging.  I cringed at the thought of my lugging this thing across Polokwane (whenever I got there) and lumbering up to the return counter hoisting such a banged up piece of merchandise.  The bus ride lasted 2 hours.  Actually 10 minutes shy of 2 hours but still, at a distance of approximately 15 km, this was definitely not a swift means of travel.

The combi filled in Lebowakgomo (as is custom before a combi departs) surprisingly quickly and we made the ~55km trip to Polokwane rather uneventfully.  After deboarding the combi and awkwardly traversing across overly-crowded streets to return the disheveled box and its enclosed malfunctioning contents, I realized it was 11:50am.  4 hours total.  This is where that bit about underestimating the ease of a car comes to mind.  If a fan (or similar appliance) were to malfunction to an owner of a motor vehicle, this trip would have taken less than an hour. 

As it was, I was a sweating mess with a half day gone and I still had the return trip.  After printing some forms, grabbing lunch, and picking up some groceries, I made the same trip in reverse.  Although the return trip was a bit easier without the fan, it actually went less smooth as the wait for the bus verged on an hour and the combi took longer to fill going away from the main town.  Still, I felt spent and any energy I had to conjure up annoyance or bewilderment had passed.  I rode in relative peace.

 

Buoying up and down the lumpy dirt paths with the hundreds (literally) of other passengers on the bus home, I realized how much of a challenge a chore such as getting groceries is to the people with whom I live in the village.  What was a somewhat bemusing and curious day to town for me is a bi-weekly occurrence and duty for most of the people in Phoshiri.  When all was completed and the bus trudged into Phoshiri, it was dark.  It was nearly 7 pm.  I had spent just 3 hours in Polokwane and a full 8 hours commuting.  And traveled 80 miles total!  It is a small wonder that those ‘fortunate’ members of families who do find employment in the cities are gone from their families for months at a time. 

And as a bit of an aside, someone on the bus ride home vomited in the aisle.  I didn’t see the projection, but the increased volume of speech and awkward maneuvering of passengers in the aisle halfway through the trek alerted me that something was a bit awry.  I had just assumed it was someone making a fuss because younger riders were sitting while some elderly passengers were standing (a fuss over such a thing has occurred).  When I made my way off the bus as one of the last passengers on the last stop of Phoshiri, I saw the fresh vomit blanketing the aisle and chuckled.  I asked a familiar woman next to me if it was “dijo” (food) and I made the vomit motion while saying “lawla” (ill).  Then we laughed together on the nearly deserted bus.  8 hours of cramped traveling amid sweat, dust, & now vomit to return a broken fan.   That ‘remote’ tag line from the school form makes a lot of sense to me now.      

~ by Andrew Bernish on April 6, 2009.