SA Rocks

Tea and Biltong with the Queen: Sliced? Or would you rather just gnaw on that one, Ma’am?

I Spy, the number plate game and the lowest common denominator in music may not be everyone’s first choice of how to spend ten hours, especially when you’re the youngest child and the primary source of amusement for your older siblings. Throw in some stale egg sandwiches for “padkos”, maybe an harassed parent or two, and you have all the ingredients for a South African tradition. My family even had a “volksie bus” to make our epic journeys in – the back window covered in stickers from the places we had visited. My brother and sister each got a long seat to stretch out on and I got the crumbs-and-sticky-juice-spills floor – but even the 30 hour drive from East London to Windhoek has a special place in my heart.

We don’t leave the car trip behind us when we grow up. It just changes style a bit. Now you can drive or your mates can, and suddenly everyone has a Golf to squeeze into, and a perfect excuse to ditch Friday lectures and drive to Cape Town for the weekend. Next you find yourself a member of the 9-5 working club and the drive to work even has an impact on where you want to live. In a country with an outmoded transport system, cars (our own, taxis, friends’ cars – all included) can become a home for landmark occasions, a license more significant than the fake gold keys of your 21st.

And you can’t beat eighteen months of public transport to make you yearn for a little car time: Buses and trains that come and go without concern for your timetable, the foul tempered driver, the crazy person drooling on your shoulder, freezing in winter, baking in summer, with ever present body odour and screaming babies… I’d swap that for clutch-foot cramp any day of the week!

We live in a BIG country, and as a result we take distance and cars for granted. Here in Scotland, my office only provides parking for the senior managers, and you can drive across the country in less than a day – a lot less, but it is seen as a far distance, an unnecessarily long drive. In fact you can fly from Edinburgh to Glasgow, which is around 80kms; although, if you drive it’ll take you over an hour with the traffic, or 50 minutes on the train. Sigh! Now I’m a small town girl, but it only means I’m more familiar with the receding horizon of country roads. This in itself is not unique – I’ve no doubt other ex-pats will identify – but it is an aspect of home I really miss, an unofficial South African tradition.

From my first month in the UK, I’ve been planning how I’m going to be a tourist in my own country when I come home – the current version involves driving a convertible from Jozi to iKapa through the interior during mid-Summer, stopping only in one-mangy-dog villages and staying only in BnB’s run by little old grannies who think decorating involves doilies. I don’t know when I’m going to have the chance – so you go ahead, but, please, take it easy on the roads.

Similar Posts:

• Things you wouldn’t think you’d miss: Language Barriers
• Things you wouldn’t think you’d miss: the Pata Pata, Click Song* rhythm of my home
• Things you wouldn’t think you’d miss: Rainy days in…
• Things you wouldn’t think you’d miss: Kulture club
• Things you wouldn’t think you’d miss: all for one

Popularity: 2% [?]