"Wynberg!"

The minibuses here in Cape Town are so wacky that I thought they deserved their own post. At my induction I was told that I would need to hail the minibus in order for it to stop, much like a bus at home. The reality is that there are no bus stops. The driver sees a white person on the street and actually hails them instead, shouting "Wynberg!" out of the window (Wynberg being the destination where the train station is) presuming that you need to go there. Many a time I have been walking along the road minding my own business only to have "Wynberg!" shouted in my ear from a passing minibus driver.

Once you're inside the minibus, you're subjected to really cramped conditions and the concept of personal space does not seem to exist in Cape town. I took this picture recently when sitting at the back of one:



It looks like that woman is sitting on my lap but don't worry, it's not THAT cramped!

The minibuses themselves are either very old or very run down, possibly a bit of both. They fill up with the smell of leaded petrol (unleaded doesn't tend to be used much here) and the insides of the buses are battered and bare metal.

Fare collection is also strange. You get in the bus and pass your 5 rand forward through the crowd to the person sitting in the front next to the driver (usually me) who then has to count the money, calculate that it is the correct amount for the number of passengers aboard and then pass the money to the driver. In a country of such poverty, being on board a minibus seems to bring out absolute honesty in people and the fares are never short.

Driving standards are variable here and crashes are common. There have recently been other problems however and I was told a story about two rival minibus companies who were at such loggerheads over business that they resorted to using machine guns to attack each other's buses during operation. I should point out that this was in a rougher area and my "Wynberg!" route is quite safe.