Hitching

Friends and family members might worry about what I’m going to tell you, so I trust you will keep this as our little secret.

Occasionally, when I’m driving around South Africa, I pick up hitchhikers. Lest you, too, get bent out of shape by this practice, let me assure you that I have rules that I never (at least rarely) break when offering someone a ride.

I only stop for women, and it has to be during daylight hours, in parts of the country that I know and at times of the day when the hitchhikers are either looking for a ride to work or home from work. I only break these rules if I see someone by the side of the road and intuitively feel like they need a ride and won’t harm me. Like a few weeks ago when I was driving to Kimberley.

It was getting dark and there was a man with his thumb out who looked as though he really needed a lift. He was trying to get home to Kimberley, nearly an hours drive by car. Eventually he could catch a passing mini-bus, but it could take him hours to get home to his wife and children. That much I gleaned from our conversation, but that was about it since he spoke Xhosa and Afrikaans and just a smattering of English. Fortunately, hand signals for directions are universal and I was able to deliver him to his door once we drove into the city limits of Kimberley. He offered to pay me something for the ride. When I refused his offer he repeatedly shook my hand, hugged me, and said – in about the only English that I could clearly decipher – that God would bless me. He was still waving as I drove off in search of the guesthouse I was staying at.

OK, so I might have broken one or two of my rules. I don’t know Kimberley at all, it was getting dark and the hitchhiker was a man. Still, it worked out all right in the end.

A few days later I was riding in a car with a friend who was driving through wine country. We had passed dozens of hitchhikers clearly, in my mind at least, looking for a ride home from work. I asked my Capetonian friend if he ever stopped to pick any of these people up.

“No man, are you crazy? You will end up with a knife in your neck.”

Well that was a bit more graphic than I would have liked to hear. Since then, I haven’t offered anyone a ride. Truth be told, I haven’t picked up a hitchhiker since then because I no longer have a car. I returned my rental car and am back to relying on my own two feet or public transport to get around. But what to do when a destination is too far to walk to and the other options for transportation aren’t all that great?

My friend and director of the Zwane Community Centre, Spiwo Xapile, invited me to join him at his home village of Malungeni in the Eastern Cape of South Africa for a few days. Spiwo and I flew from Cape Town to East London. At the airport in East London we picked up a car and Spiwo drove more than three hours to Malungeni. As I had to return to Cape Town before Spiwo, we needed to figure out a way for me to get from Mthatha, the largest town near his village, to East London where I would catch my return flight. Spiwo said I had two options. I could take a mini-bus, often overcrowded and slow; or I could do what the locals do and hitchhike. Always one to do what the locals do, you know which choice I opted for.

Spiwo found a piece of paper and, using a blue marker, wrote the letters “CE” on it. I know, “CE” doesn’t make sense to me as the abbreviation of East London either, but Spiwo assured me it had something to do with an old spelling of the city and that he was not intentionally sending me somewhere I didn’t want to go.

With the piece of paper in hand, Spiwo drove me into Mthatha where we parked along the N2, the national highway, and we took turns holding the sign along the side of the road – waiting for a car to stop and pick me up.

Ten cars went by, then 20. Five minutes passed, then 10.

Having told Spiwo about my experiences picking up hitchhikers and my friend’s warning about how they could kill a driver, Spiwo said, “Bhuti, man. I’m not sure about this. Hey, a white man hitchhiking in Mthatha. Black people are afraid to pick you up because they think you will stick a knife in their throats.” With that, Spiwo laughed and laughed as car after car whizzed by me whilst I held my pathetic sign.

After 15 minutes, about the time I was starting to feel like a 13-year-old Nancy boy who was always picked last when choosing teams in gym class (not that I haven’t gotten over that), a car stopped. A young black couple, en route to East London in a Toyota Yaris, offered me a lift. I said a quick good-bye to Spiwo, hopped in the car and we were off … for about three kilometers.

Then we stopped and a young girl of 16 piled in the backseat and a middle-aged woman followed. With the hatchback now filled with luggage, the young girl sat with a bag on her lap, the older women with a purse on her lap in the middle, and me with the woman’s suitcase on my lap. Hardly a word passed between us hitchhikers, but the couple in the front talked and laughed all the way to East London. I choose to look out the passenger window and not at the speedometer, which often exceeded 160 kilometers as we passed vehicle after vehicle on the single lane road.

In what must have been record time between Mthatha and East London, the couple delivered me to my destination – a Kentucky Fried Chicken where a friend would be meeting me. They didn’t want to leave me until my friend arrived, but I assured them I would be fine and gave them 70 rand, about $10, for the two and a half-hour ride.

So, I guess I actually have two secrets that I trust you will keep. I occasionally pick up hitchhikers and I occasionally hitchhike myself.

I know there is some danger involved in this and I would never recommend that anyone else do it. Still, I like living in a world where you know you can count on a stranger to give you a lift when you need it.

Saying Good-Bye is not the Hard Part of Leaving

At the end of the month I will leave Cape Town and begin a slow trip back to the U.S. The hardest part about leaving a city I have come to know so well is not saying good-bye to friends and those we work with in the townships. Before long, I will be back here again, picking up with everyone where we left off. No, the hardest part is telling the people who have come to depend on me, in part, for their income, that I will no longer need their services.

I’m already in the process of closing up the apartment where I’ve stayed for the past few months. One day a week, Veronica has made the long commute from the township where she lives into Cape Town to clean my flat. It’s an efficiency apartment that I could have easily cleaned on my own, but helping to create a few jobs while I’m here seems like the least I could do to repay a country that has been so hospitable to me. Besides, coming home to an immaculate apartment, with all of my clothes crisply ironed and hanging in a closet, is a luxury I will miss when I’m back in Minneapolis and cleaning my own house.

This morning I told Veronica that this would be the last time I would need her to clean for me. Veronica took the news about as well as someone, who desperately needs the 200 rand I pay her each week, can. That’s less than $30. Not enough to survive on here, especially when food and gasoline costs are escalating rapidly.

Friends who own a popular guesthouse in Cape Town introduced Veronica to me. They will continue to look out for her and find her work when they can, but with winter setting in and few tourists coming, it’s going to be a challenge for them to help her. A few weeks ago the lens of Veronica’s eyeglasses broke. Losing me as a client makes it less likely that she will replace her glasses anytime soon.

Later today I’ll get my haircut and tell my stylist that I probably won’t be back. She won’t miss cutting my hair. “You have Japan man hair,” she tells me. I take that to mean that my hair is very straight. I know it is a challenge for her to cut. She will, however, miss having a regular customer once a month. There are days when my stylist has only one client. She is trying to find a job waiting tables at night, but the bad economy and the lack of tourists make that an unlikely prospect.

I only rent a car here when I need it and after this week I probably won’t need to have my own transportation. Before returning the rental to Avis, I will take it to be washed. The man who washes my car gets 10 rand, about $1.50, for doing so. The company that owns the car washing service keeps the remaining 35 rand it charges for a basic wash. As surprising as it sounds, the car washer will miss the 10 rand he earns and the 10 rand I tip him when he washes my car.

By the end of the week the only service person I will have left to tell I’m leaving is the man on the street corner in front of my apartment building who sells me the Cape Times newspaper every morning. I give him seven rand for a paper that costs 6.50 rand. It’s not much, a .50 rand tip every day, but over the course of a year that comes to about $20. A man’s got to sell a lot of newspapers to make that up.

On the 30th Anniversary of HIV/AIDS

It seems appropriate that today, what is recognized as the 30^th anniversary of what was to become the AIDS pandemic, that I’m in South Africa – the country that is home to more people living with HIV/AIDS than any other. Much of the media coverage on this anniversary has centered on the remarkable advances in the treatment of HIV/AIDS. It’s good to pause and remember just how far we have come from those early, very dark days when people were whispering about the “gay cancer.” It’s also important to acknowledge that not everyone has advanced equally on this issue.

Recently I was, what a surprise, on a two-day train journey, traveling from Pretoria to Cape Town on one of the luxury rail lines. At breakfast in the dining car one morning an elderly woman, a widow traveling by herself back to her home in a wealthy suburb of Cape Town, sat at table across from where I was sitting having coffee. We exchanged “good mornings” and talked about the train trip. After a few minutes we introduced ourselves and Violet asked me to join her at her table.

The septuagenarian was intrigued by my train travels and the places I had visited along the Shosholoza Meyl route. Violet provided colorful commentary and historic information about some of my stops along the way. Eventually, she said, “But what brought you to South Africa in the first place?”

I explained how I first came here, with board members from Open Arms in 2000, to attend the International AIDS Conference in Durban. Before arriving at the conference we spent a week in Guguletu learning about the impact HIV/AIDS was having in that township. I got no further than that before Violet interrupted me and said:

“You might find what I’m about to say callous, but be that as it may. I don’t give a cent to AIDS. Never have. Never will. You have to understand that those people have a sex drive that is different and they can’t be educated. We had no AIDS in Newlands (Violet’s neighborhood) until the black workers brought it in with them. AIDS is just a way of thinning the overpopulation. It’s actually not a bad thing. Now, orphans – that’s another story. But putting orphans with AIDS on medications. Absolutely not! Then we are going to have to take care of them for years. No. I have no interest in AIDS.”

I got over being shocked by comments like this long ago. It doesn’t even make me angry anymore. Rather, if I have the energy, I try to use this as an opportunity for a dialogue. Since I had been living well on a luxury train for nearly two days, I had some energy this particular morning and started to explain the complexities of HIV/AIDS. That in addition to it being a global health issue, that homophobia, racism, gender and economic inequalities had all played a role in the spread of a disease.

“AIDS is, after all,” I said, “a disease.”

At that, Violet raised her hand in a gesture that indicated she had heard enough.

“Bless you for what you are trying to do, but I have no interest.”

End of conversation.

I wished Violet a nice day and returned with my cup of coffee to my original table.

I had heard it all before, but Violet was especially harsh. Most critics, even if they think it, don’t actually say that children with HIV should be denied medication because it’s too costly to pay for drugs the rest of their lives.

Sipping coffee, watching the landscape pass me by in the dining car of the Rovos Rail, I thought about some of the people I have known who have died of HIV/AIDS. John. George. Jimmel. Charlie. Chuck. Mary. Martin. Beauty. Anneline. Gloria. Nombulelo. Lundi. And five-year-old Sibongile. At least Violet didn’t have to worry about society paying for little Sibongile’s medication for years.

It’s been a hell of a journey these past 30 years – or maybe it’s just been hell. People like Violet haven’t made it any easier.   

Everyday Acts

It’s easy to change the world, for the better, if you want to.

I’m not talking about creating a permanent peace in the Middle East. That’s best left to statesmen. Nor am I suggesting discovering a vaccine for HIV. Perhaps a scientist in a lab somewhere will eventually do that.

You don’t have to speak truth to power and put your life on the line like Aung San Suu Kyi or Nelson Mandela. You don’t need to live in exile like the Dalai Lama or cast off worldly possessions and wash the feet of the poor in Calcutta like Mother Teresa.

But you can’t just wring your hands and moan and groan about the sad state of affairs. You can’t say, “when I have more time, I’ll volunteer” or “when I’m financially secure, I’ll make a contribution” or “when the kids are grown, I’ll get involved in my community.”

None of us gets to take a “pass” on making the world a better place. We can’t leave that to the saints and the martyrs and the heroes while we idle away our fleeting time on earth watching television and surfing the web.

We all have to do something.

And we have to do something today.

And everyday.

To make the world a better place.

And it isn’t difficult.

It can start with common courtesy and civility. A “please” and a “thank you” go a long way in improving other people’s days.

How difficult is it to pick up a piece of trash on the street and dispose of it?

We can use less water, eat less meat and just consume less in general.

A hand-written note, placed in an envelope, stamped and mailed to someone who is struggling may have more of an impact than any of us realize.

We can speak out against prejudice and injustice and stand up to bullies.

Share whatever we have in abundance – our time, money, creativity, compassion, love – with others who may be lacking these gifts.

These everyday acts, done with intentionality, by every person, every day, would do more to positively impact the world than all the saints and martyrs and heroes could accomplish in a lifetime. And it starts today with you and me.

Dichotomy = Philosophy

It’s easy for me to hop on the Shosholoza Meyl, spend a day sweating in the heat of the sitter car, eat the dried meat and liquefied ice cream hawkers sell on the train, drink wine and beer with the drunk passengers, arrive in a dorp, find an off the beaten path neighborhood where I’m assured a guard dog “will eat any perpetrator” who tries to break into the house where I’m staying, walk into a stranger’s home in a township, turn over an empty five-gallon bucket, sit on it and listen to stories of poverty, racism, AIDS and tuberculosis, and at night share a room with grasshoppers and a bed with ants – which is a luxury compared to the occasions when I’ve realized, too late, that I have slept with bed bugs.

And then there are the times when I’m at some stop along the train tracks and I simply can’t bear the thought of getting on another sitter car, eating awful food and sleeping in an uncomfortable bed one more night as I continue on my journey.

I want to be back in my bachelor’s flat in Cape Town, that still smells of the lemon-scented cleansers Veronica used when she last cleaned my apartment, flip a switch that always turns on lights, plug my iPod into speakers that blast Lady Gaga or Adam Lambert tunes, walk into the kitchen, put a slice of fresh, whole wheat bread into the toaster and then slather the darkened result with thick swipes of peanut butter and pour a glass of ice cold milk, sit on the balcony, watch joggers run on the promenade along the sea as the light of the day disappears into the ocean, take a long, hot shower, brush my teeth with water that I know won’t make me sick and slip between the clean, crisp, white sheets of my double-sized bed and sink into sleep while listening to the reassuring white noise of the traffic on the street eight floors below.

Taking the sitter car is a social experiment for me, not a necessary mode of transportation. If I’m feeling tired, sweaty or a bit ruffled from third class travel, I can pull a credit card from my pocket, upgrade to a prestigious train and be back to my comfortable life in Cape Town within 24 hours. Few, if any of my fellow passengers on the sitter cars, can ever indulge in an extravagance like that.

This is the dichotomy of my life. I’m a person with sitter car proclivities living my Premier Classe life. It used to drive me nuts, until I realized it isn’t an either/or world.

Few of us are Mother Teresa. We simply won’t discard the trappings of the modern world and walk with the poor every moment of our lives. Few of us are Donald Trump. We have no interest in creating an empire where success is measured by how much stuff we have.

Most of us live within the broad expanse of this either/or world. We aren’t saints, but we aren’t sinners either. We want to make the world a better place, but we want to do so from the security of our home. We’re willing to occasionally take the sitter car of the Shosholoza Meyl to be exposed to things we didn’t know existed, but we are grateful to have the ability to generally travel through life via the Premier Classe.

There is nothing wrong with this dichotomy if…

We accept that much in life is the luck of the draw. By virtue of being born white or male, many of us are afforded opportunities that historically have been denied to people of color and women. Too many of us are accorded power and privilege that we did not earn. The least we can do is to acknowledge that fact.

There is nothing wrong with this dichotomy if…

We realize that any success we enjoy is built on a foundation laid by others. There are no “self-made” people. All of us have had help along the way. Our leg up might have come from a stable home life, an encouraging teacher, an empathetic religious leader, an anonymous donor who left her estate to a college which allowed us to receive financial assistance for our education, a government program, an employer who took a chance in hiring us early in our career. Beware of people who claim to have made it on their own, solely pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Someone had to have given them the bootstraps in the first place.

There is nothing wrong with this dichotomy if…

We value what we have. Most of us in the developed world have enough. We have a roof over our head, food in our bellies, and drinking water that isn’t going to kill us. Many of us have access to health care that extends both the quantity and quality of our years. We have cars and cellphones and refrigerators. Some of us have money in the bank and can take a vacation once a year. All of this makes us financially richer than the majority of the people in the world today. Actually, it makes us some of the richest people who have ever walked the face of the earth.

There is nothing wrong with this dichotomy if…

We truly understand what hard work is. Someone said to me recently that they work much too hard for their money to throw it away by making a donation to charity. Really? I responded. Do you get up long before dawn to walk to a river to fetch water that you carry back to your village on your head? Do you send your children out to scour deforested areas looking for enough kindling to start a fire to cook a meal and provide warmth? Do you toil on a small piece of sun-scorched land with a pointed stick hoping that some of the seeds you planted will actually bear fruit so you can survive another season? Do you walk out of your country with all of your possessions on your back in search of a better life elsewhere? And once you get to that “promised land,” do you face xenophobia and work two or three jobs that no one else wants so you can send money back to your family who remain in your home country? We in the developed world may work hard, but that’s not the same as having hard lives.

There is nothing wrong with this dichotomy if…

We give back. All of us, from the Mother Teresas of the world to the Donald Trumps, are charged with making this a better place than we found it. We have a responsibility to care for ourselves, our families and our communities. At this particular period in history, when we truly have become a global village, we have a duty to care about what happens in the impoverished townships of South Africa and the sweatshops of Asia as much as what happens down the street from where we live. More than caring, we must act by sharing our time, talents and resources with the rest of the world. “To whomever much is given, of him will much be required.”

The dichotomy of my life has become my philosophy of life. Enjoy the gifts you have been given and share those gifts with others.

If I have enough money to occasionally take the Premier Classe train, and I do, then I have enough money to make sure that someone who is poor and ill eats today, or a child who wants to go to school is given that opportunity.

If I spend some of my time helping others and if I push myself to see and experience things that are completely outside of my comfort zone, I won’t beat myself up for occasionally taking the posh train – and enjoying every second of it.

It’s not an either/or world we live in. It’s an “and” world.

We can have good health and strive to make sure poor people with HIV/AIDS have access to life-extending medications.

We can have access to clean drinking water and work to reduce the morbidity rates of children who die from diarrhea.

We can get a good education and insist that this great societal equalizer is available to all.

We can have a fabulous dinner at our favorite restaurant and ensure that no one goes hungry.

We are surrounded by abundance, yet we see only scarcity. Sometimes you have to get off the Premier Classe train and get on the sitter car of the Shosholoza Meyl to realize that.

I See You

Monday nights I take a meditation class offered through the Buddhist Centre in Cape Town. After class, I walk the 45 minutes from the city center to the apartment where I’m staying in Sea Point. Along the way, I try to practice whatever message was taught that evening.

One Monday night my task was to try see everyone who passed me as persons, with no judgment as to what they looked like or what they might be doing or saying. To simply look at their faces and, in my head, say: “I see you.”

That’s easier said than done on my long walk home, especially when some nights I’m asked if I “want a lady,” or if I want a man “to make you happy,” or if want to score some dagga. Usually I’m a total failure at these kinds of meditation things, but on this particular night, I was in a zone.

I walked down Long Street “seeing” the characters that come out at night on this colorful strip of restaurants, bars and backpacker lodges. I cut over to the Fan Walk, a pedestrian walkway installed for the Soccer World Cup, crossed a pedestrian bridge above Buitengracht Street, made my way through De Waterkant, the gay village, and down to Main Road where I gently refused the illegal offers being presented to me.

Maybe this meditation thing was really beginning to work for me. I was relaxed and just flowing down Main Road, heading home, oblivious to everything except my mind silently greeting each person who passed with my evening’s mantra, “I see you.”

I didn’t, however, see the boy who appeared from nowhere and was suddenly tugging at my arm.

“Please, baas,” he said as he held onto my wrist with one hand and made the universal sign for being hungry by bringing his other hand to his mouth, “Five rand?”

Annoyed that my concentration had been disrupted on my first good night of implementing my meditative practices, I broke free from his grip, gave him a firm “No” and kept walking. That didn’t deter the young beggar who continued to follow me asking for money or food.

Clearly, this meditation thing was not working after all. As long as I didn’t actually interact with the people I was passing, I could “see them.” Once one of them attempted to engage with me, I became dismissive – acting as if this dirty, thin, barefoot boy at my side was invisible.

And then I saw him. I really saw him. Not like the exercise I had been practicing since leaving my meditation class. And I realized that I had seen him before. Almost every time I walk this section of Main Road in the evening he panhandles me for money, except it was later than I had ever seen him out before.

I kept walking, but for the first time I said more to this kid than just, “No.”

“Why are you out so late?” I began my questions.

“I’m hungry, baas.”

“Where are your parents?”

“My mother is dead. I don’t know where my father is.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m eight, baas.”

“Where do you stay?”

“Over there. In the park” he said pointing towards the new stadium that was built for the 2010 Soccer World Cup at a cost of $600 million.

“By yourself?”

“No, there are other kids. Sometimes older people, but it’s just kids.”

“Do you go to school?”

“No,” he said, with a look on his face like ‘I can’t believe you are asking such a stupid question.’

Coming up on our left was a convenience store that was still open.

“Come on,” I said to the boy, “I’ll buy you some food.”

I walked into the narrow entrance of the store with the boy slightly behind me. I was moving past the candy bars and chips to the back of the market where I hoped to find something a bit healthier when I heard the man behind the cash register pound his fist upon the counter and yell, “Get out of here, boy! I’ve told you before, don’t come in here!”

The outburst stopped me in my tracks. The boy was gone. I knew, however, he would be waiting for me on the street. As annoyed as I had been with the boy for breaking my concentration, I was now enraged by the storeowner’s behavior. I opened my mouth to say something to him but nothing came out. Instead, a thought popped into my head, “see him.” “See the man behind the cash register.”

I refuse to accept that this man, or any rational human being, truly does not care about homeless, hungry children. No doubt this man has children of his own and probably grandchildren who he dotes on. He has, however, probably just been worn down over the years by the endless needs in society that no one person can ever address. He couldn’t possibly be this callous. And really, how different was he from me? Every time I am asked for money on the streets of Cape Town I say no and keep walking. Like this shop owner, I have turned away hungry children. I might have not gotten angry and yelled as he just did, but the outcome was the same. I chose to not do anything.

My eyes met the man’s behind the cash register and a thought just appeared in my mind. I thought, not consciously and not judgmentally, “I do see you.”

At the back of the store I picked up a loaf brown bread and a bunch of bananas that would be overripe by morning. That wouldn’t matter. I expected the fruit would be devoured quickly. In the cooler I grabbed a jug of orange juice. The man behind the cash register could not have been nicer to me as I paid for the food.

The second I stepped out of the store the boy was at my side and no sooner had I given him the bread, bananas and juice, he was gone – running across the street to the park near the stadium.

In one interaction, late at night in a convenience store on Main Road, I had seen all of the ills of the world in a single exchange. A skinny, homeless, orphaned, eight-year-old boy had been chased from a store because he was begging for food. But I saw more than that.

I saw the boy. I saw the shop owner. And I saw myself. 

Party Train to Jozi

It’s understandable, really. Passengers board the Shosholoza in Cape Town before 10:00 on Saturday morning. Most travelers are going all the way to Johannesburg and they won’t arrive at their destination until sometime Sunday afternoon, more than 26 hours after their departure; and only then if the train stays on schedule. There is nothing to do in the sitter cars of the train. There are no movies to watch and it’s difficult to sleep in the straight-backed seats. So passengers do what they do on a weekend in confined quarters with nothing to occupy their time. They drink.

From the look of the carriage I enter when I board the Shosholoza in Touwsriver, five hours into the journey to Johannesburg (affectionately known as Jozi), the party must have started as soon as the train pulled out of the Cape Town station – if not before. Empty brown bottles of Castle lager litter the floor of the carriage as do cans of Black Label. It’s a mess, but at least the empties weren’t thrown out of the window of the train once the last swallow of beer was swigged. That’s a common occurrence. Cans and bottles, broken and intact, along with other rubbish, line the train tracks along the route of the Shosholoza.

It smells like the morning after in the carriage where I’m trying to find a vacant row of seats to have a bit more space on my three-hour trip to Prince Albert Road, and it’s not just because of the spilled beer. There is a sweet aroma too, coming from the bottles of red wine being passed around for people to fill their glasses. One woman, sitting by herself, sips a golden liquid from a pint of Klipdrift brandy.

There are rows of seats with no passengers sitting in them, but I pass by them because all of the passengers seated near the vacant rows are smoking. As I near the end of this particular carriage I realize that there will be no escaping the cigarette smoke, so I take a seat in what I hope might be the quietest spot in a very rowdy car.

The two rows in front of my selected seat are vacant and the three men sitting directly behind me already have the squinty eyes and the half opened mouths of partiers who are on the verge of passing out. Once the train pulls out of the station at Touwsriver, I figure that the alcohol, combined with the motion of the train – however bumpy the trip might be – will lull them to sleep. I was wrong about that.

People who say that Americans are loud have never been on the Shosholoza on a Saturday afternoon in the summer. Sjoa!, now those people are loud.

One man, the drunkest of the lot, begins every sentence with an English expletive which is the only word clearly enunciated in his slurred sentences. Between the drunken, boisterous talking, and the various ringtones from cell phones, and the one-sided conversations of people screaming into their phones to be heard over the yelling and the noise of the train heading northwards on the tracks, I couldn’t fathom how the woman sitting in the first row of the carriage, with a baby nursing at her exposed, full breast, could truly be asleep, but she was. That says it all about the strains of motherhood. If you can sleep in the party carriage of the Shosholoza, you must be exhausted.

If the new mother can sleep, perhaps I can at least read. I pull The Quiet Violence of Dreams by a South African writer named K. Sello Duiker, from my backpack and open it to one of the early chapters. The protagonist, Tshepo, is institutionalized in a mental facility in Cape Town. He longs to be released or to escape so he can return to his life outside the institution. When reading about the sedated patients and the quiet gardens, while sitting amongst the cacophony of sounds and the bustle of activities on the Shosholoza, I’m convinced that I would trade places with the disturbed hero of the novel.

After reading a section, and realizing that I will need to reread it because I haven’t retained a thing that has happened in six pages, I return the book to my backpack. Maybe that’s why so many people don’t read on the Shosholoza. It’s not that they can’t read or don’t have books; they know it is next to impossible to concentrate at certain times on the train.

Since I boarded the Shosholoza at a town where the train station was closed, I haven’t yet purchased my ticket to Prince Albert Road. Usually, train employees, easily identifiable by their lavender uniforms, go from car to car after pulling out of a station, collecting payment from new passengers. I have yet to see an employee. Maybe they are avoiding the party car.

To kill some time, I decide to go in search of a ticket seller. I don’t want to get off the train at my destination and find there is someone collecting tickets as proof of payment. That is, I figure, how stereotypes are born. I didn’t want to become a topic of conversation amongst train employees about “rich Americans who try to get away with not paying on the third class train” when the reality was that no one came to collect my money.

Passing from car to car on the rough ride north in search of a ticket seller, it’s hard to distinguish those who are drunk from those who are sober when walking the aisle. Everyone staggers and grabs onto the nearest headrest to stabilize themselves on the jostling train. At the end of the car, through the door that separates the sitters from the toilets, the small space between train cars is packed with passengers standing and smoking and looking out of the windows at the barren, yet magnificent landscape of the Great Karoo.

An inebriated man in a white Billabong t-shirt, stained with red wine, asks me in Afrikaans if I have a bottle opener. I don’t, but when the mountain of a man standing next to him, who is blocking my entrance into the next car, hears my accent, he lights up.

“Are you a priest, my bru?”

“No,” I respond, “I’m not a priest.” (If you only knew, I think to myself.)

“My bru, I need a priest. I just got engaged to this woman with the miniskirt. See her there? Just there with the little, little dress. We need to get married, my bru, so we can honeymoon in Jozi.”

The intended, who has a look on her face like I’ve-never-seen-this-man-before-in-my-life, rolls her eyes. I wish the couple well. They both laugh and the human mountain moves just enough for me to squeeze by so I can enter the next carriage.

The next car is as quiet as the one I’m traveling in is loud. It’s filled mostly with older passengers, my age really, and women with young children. Half of them are asleep. One shirtless man is sleeping across two seats with his legs contorted under the rows in front of him. Every third row or so a woman is laying on a blanket on the floor, sleeping underneath her seat, usually a baby swaddled next to her. A toddler is stretched out on the seats above the mother. As I walk through the carriage, I must carefully step over the heads of the sleeping mothers that extend into the aisle. An older gentleman, wearing a nametag from an apostolic church pinned to a blue oxford shirt, passes through the car shaking hands with everyone who is awake. “Peace and life” he says when he shakes my hand. I continue weaving my way through the sleeping women, the playing children and evangelists, towards the next car, still in search of a ticket seller.

“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” is what I thought to myself when I opened the door to the carriage adjoining the quiet car. Barreling down the train tracks on the Shosholoza in South Africa’s Karoo, I never expected that I would walk into what could have been a scene right out of the gay cult film, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

There, directly before me, were four white gay guys. How did I know they were gay? Chalk it up to gaydar. Or maybe it was because the man holding court in the center of all the drinking and men draping their arms over one another, was wearing black, fishnet stockings, a short, black skirt, a chunky bracelet on his wrist and a spaghetti-strapped, fuchsia teddy with two circles of fabric expertly cut from the material to expose his nipples. As hard as it was to take my eyes off the attire, I simply had to see who was so courageous, or so stupid, as to wear this on the Shosholoza. I looked up from the teddy to the thick neck, to the somewhat fleshy, yet masculine face and the closely cropped hair and realized that no one was going to mess with this guy. And if someone did, his friends seemed prepared to come to his defense.

Dance music was blasting from a boom box atop a cooler that was taking up most of the center aisle. Surrounding the cross-dresser and his buddies were a couple of gay guys who seemed ecstatic that they, by happenstance, were on the same train as fellow members of their tribe from Cape Town. The group was animated – standing in the aisles, lounging over seats, moving to the music and laughing. Most of the passengers seated near them seemed to be enjoying the show. A few people had disapproving looks on their faces but it might have been because of the drunken commotion and not necessarily because “the gays” had taken over their car.

There was no way that any of “the gays” could hear me if I said, “excuse me,” as I tried to pass them on my quest to purchase my ticket. Instead, I lightly touched one of the men on his shoulder indicating I wanted to come through. One step into the vortex of men and it was like being at last call at a gay bar. All that was missing was a disco ball from the ceiling of the train car and the smell of popper and it would have been like any gay bar in any city in the world. Except we were in the third class carriage of a train halfway between Touwsriver, where I boarded, and Majtiesfontein, where the gay revelers would disembark.

I made it past the gay partiers and nearly through the carriage when stopped by another passenger in the middle of the aisle. Observing the goings-on further down the car, the tipsy passenger asked me, “Are you getting off with the moffies in Majtiesfontein?”

Now, I don’t always take offense at the word, “moffie,” though it’s comparable to saying “faggot” in the U.S. Knowing the questioner probably wouldn’t understand, or remember my response, I said, “No. I’m getting off with the moffies at Prince Albert Road.” After all, if you really think about it, a town named after Prince Albert would seem like a much more logical destination for “the gays” to go to for a weekend.

Coming up short on my search for a ticket seller, I was turned back at the dining car and had to again run the gauntlet of gay guys, smokers standing between cars, the drunk in the Billabong t-shirt asking me a second time if I had a bottle opener, the man now desperate to get married so he could consummate his marriage in Jozi and the apostolic lay preacher spreading his message of “peace and life.”

When I got back to my seat in my carriage I noticed that the drunken men sitting in the rows behind me had, in fact, passed out. The two rows in front of me, the rows in the center of the train that face each other, had been vacant when I left on my unsuccessful quest to find a ticket seller. When I returned, those seats were now occupied by two young women along with two of the friendliest, and hands down drunkest, chaps on the train. And that’s saying something given the people I had just interacted with.

The new arrivals had been partying in other cars when I stepped into the carriage in Touwsriver. The two drunken men were sitting in adjoining seats facing their girlfriends with me sitting in the row behind the women. Spotting me in the open space between the headrests, the drunkest of the two held his thumb in an upright position and asked, “You alright?”

“Ya,” I said and pretended to return to the book that I had retrieved from my backpack, but he was having none of that. Instead, there was a rifle fire of questions shot at me in slurred English.

Where was I from? What was I doing on the train? Where was I going? Why didn’t I stay in Franschhoek, the exquisite, French-influenced town in wine country instead of going to Prince Albert Road? (“Brother, people get on the train at Prince Albert Road, they don’t get off the train there.”) Would I take a picture of the two men, Marlin and Denzil, the two most comic cousins in the world? How could I resist.

I pulled my camera out and took a photo of the two cousins, arms around each other’s shoulders, baseball caps on their heads, with Marlin drinking a glass of wine and Denzil smoking a Peter Stuyvesant cigarette. Maybe not the best advertisement for Quiksilver, the manufacturer of the logo-emblazoned t-shirt that Denzil was wearing, but then again, you never know. This might be exactly the market that Quiksilver is going for.

“Do you drink wine?” Marlin asked me.

When I said yes, he took the glass he had been drinking from, a lowball with a Jack Daniels’ label on it, gulped what wine remained in the glass, filled it with a Simonsvlei 2007 Pinotage and handed it to me. “Don’t worry. It’s not kak. It’s good stuff.”

With glass in hand, I made a kind of cheers type of motion and took a sip, assuming that the comic cousins would now return to entertaining their lady friends. Instead, they had the women exchange seats with them so that Marlin could hang over their former seats and face me. Denzil took the open seat to my right. They both began talking to me at once.

How much did it cost to replace a roof in the U.S.? Had I met funnier cousins ever in my life? Could I get them a visa to work in the U.K.?

First, I tried, in vain, to explain that I wasn’t British. Then I tried to convey that I couldn’t get them a job in the U.S. either. Finally, I realized that none of that really mattered. The time for a coherent conversation with the cousins was probably a few hours earlier and150 kilometers south of where we now were.

The two women, who had been evicted from their seats, seemed a bit surly that I had somehow taken their men away from them. Knowing that they couldn’t possibly hear over the noise of train, I suggested to the cousins that they should pay some attention to their girlfriends.

“They aren’t our girlfriends” Denzil said loud enough for the two lounging women to hear. “We’re just partying with them.”

There seemed to be a lot of hook-ups on the train. There is enough material in a single carriage to create an entire season of episodes for a primetime soap opera. Couples meet, court, consummate their relationship and break up all on a single trip between Cape Town and Johannesburg. Call it “Desperate Passengers on the Shosholoza.”

A dip in the tracks sent the train and its passengers jostling about. The Pinotage that Marlin held in his hand sloshed out of his glass and onto my shirt and pants. As Marlin reached for the bottle of Simonsvlei to refill his glass, I thanked him for my glass and returned the empty lowball to him. He insisted that I have more. I insisted that I was done.

“OK, OK, OK,” Marlin said. He whispered something to his comic partner and then the two of them got up and left the car.

With the cousins gone, the carriage fell silent except for the methodical sound of the train on the tracks. No one was engaged in loud conversations, no cell phones were ringing and no music was playing. Just silence. It was a respite from the two and a half hours I had spent on the train heading for Prince Albert Road. When I looked at my watch I was surprised to see that we were only 20 minutes away from my stop. The comic cousins, the gay revelers, and all of the other characters on the train had made for a loud journey, but the time had gone by quickly.

Just as I settled in my seat to watch the evening skies of the Karoo pass by the window, Marlin and Denzil were back – this time with a six-pack of beer.

“OK, OK, OK,” Marlin said again, “Black Label for you.”

He took what was left of the red wine in the Jack Daniels lowball and tossed it out of the glass and onto the floor, filling the now empty glass with beer. Having no option, I accepted the beer as Marlin proceeded to pour another glass for his cousin – some of which went into Denzil’s glass, but most of which landed, again, on my shirt and pants.

I didn’t mind. The two cousins had been welcoming and eager to share their hospitality with a foreigner on the train. This was why I was taking the Shosholoza in the first place. To meet people I would never otherwise encounter and to have my belief confirmed that most people in the world are good and kind and often funny – even when pissed out of their minds.

As the train slowed into the station at Prince Albert Road, I got up from my seat and shook Marlin and Denzil’s hands, and the hands of the “girlfriends” who seemed a bit more interested in the cousins now that I was getting off the train. I picked my backpack up from the floor near my feet and lifted it over my shoulder. When I adjusted the straps around each shoulder I felt a wet sensation on my back – which was, up to that point, the only dry part of my shirt. Looking down at the floor I saw a river of beer and wine that flowed from under Marlin and Denzil’s seats in front of me and was only stopped by my backpack which absorbed the liquid, rather than letting it pass by my row.

Marlin and Denzil were right. Not too many people got off at Prince Albert Road. I did, smelling like I had been at a bar all night rather than on the Shosholoza in the afternoon. I would find a place to get my clothes washed and hang my backpack up to dry. The wine stains might never come out of my pack, but worse things can happen when you travel. It’s actually not a bad memory from my few hours on the party train to Jozi.