Day 48: We don't expect much, so everything is great

I was slightly livid when I went downstairs, bags and blankets in hand and ready to load, to find out that there were only four of us going in a baby SUV that seated seven. I was more livid when I found that we had purchased the deluxe version of insurance and even more livid when I found out that we had rented the car for five days when we only needed it for three.

I had already been ignoring my wallet’s plea to sit this trip out. I thought, Okay, yes, I’m going broke; but this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience! When will I ever get to watch the Swazi king pick his fourteenth wife?! I have to go!

So after I found out all of the above, my wallet let out a shrill scream of agony. And I almost let one out, too. Begrudgingly, though, I piled my bags and blankets into the back of the car and went around to find my seat in the back. It was about 11 a.m. before we pulled out of Tuksdorp – really having no exact idea where we were going or how to get there – and started on our way to that very vaguely known destination.

Our car was a manual, so our only capable captain was Madison. We, unthinkingly, allowed the only guy in our car to be her left-hand navigator. Carmen was the back-up navigator, and I was in my own world during the entire trip. (That’s what Africa has done to me. In all other circumstances involving a road-trip, someone else driving, and needed navigation, I would have been either a backseat driver or the navigator – but only since I can’t drive a stick, otherwise I would be driver. But in Africa, I don’t care about anything. I don’t care how long I have to sit in a car. I don’t care if we get lost. I don’t care if we get in a near-wreck. I just sit happily in my back seat day-dreaming or reading or closing my eyelids.)

It felt good to be in a car again. We all agreed on that. It has a certain freedom about it. And living in Pretoria makes us long for that freedom. Although we were driving on the wrong side of the road in our minds, it still felt like home to be driving ourselves where we wanted to go. It felt like home to be cruising along the highway for miles and miles and miles. Even if we were miles and miles and miles away from home.

Me and my wallet were still kind of fuming for a while. We tried telling each other to relax, that everything would be fine, that we would be able to work out the budget and still go on a great spring break. But nothing seemed to be helping. So I enlisted the therapeutic help of Elizabeth Gilbert. And for another hour or so, I sat in my own world of words – trapped and jumbling about in a box that was taking me to another land – and that did the trick. Liz calmed me down, and after I finished Committed, I was perfectly happy and smiling again.

Meanwhile, as I was still reading my book with a half-smile on my face (it was just too good!), our male navigator led us in the wrong direction – several times. Back-up navigator Carmen was struggling to find where we were on the map after she decidedly took over navigating. Because I was so ensconced in my book, I really have only a faint recollection of being lost. But I believe we were on the wrong track for a little over an hour. All I could hear was cursing and questions like, “What road is this?!” and “How do we get to N11?!” and “Dear God, where are we?!”

I quietly and calmly informed the frantic others after several wrong exists and turns and whatevers that if we would like to stop somewhere so that I could pee and so that someone might be able to ask for directions, I would greatly appreciate that.

So we did that. And I peed, and Matthew asked for directions.

Somehow we then found our way again. We were able, then, to turn on the radio and begin our jam. It isn’t a road-trip without a mixture of oldies, classics, country and hip-hop. That is exactly the amalgam of music that our South African radio gave us. We all sat belting out the songs together. Shania Twain’s “Man I Feel Like a Woman” came on and the Americans sang with all the attitude Americans possess. We were giddy that SHANIA TWAIN was playing in SOUTH AFRICA. Songs like that came and went, and we let our voices be heard.

The drive was pretty – a kind of dry Saharan beauty about it. The expanse was colored with browns and golds and pockets of green. Some fields were charred from fires. There were valleys and hills and forests. The animals were not your standard cows and horses, although they had those too. There were antelope and ostriches, a meercat crossing the road, some goats and sheep, among others. Signs told us to beware of domestic animals, which, unlike pedestrians, here have the right-of-way on the road.

The highways in South Africa are not continuous. They go through towns and require you to meander your way through those towns to, at some point, pick up the highway again. For every town we traveled through, we went some wrong way in trying to find the highway that we had just been on. Signs are unclear or sometimes inexistent. We often never knew which road we were on or where the one we were on was taking us. It was mostly guesswork, and I’m surprised we ever made it through. But we did and we carried on, through more landscape and good songs.

Construction workers watched us pass and made us stop because the highway had become one-laned in some places, so cars had to go in opposing directions in intervals. Most of the workers, we noticed, were standing around and listening to iPods or MP3s and watching everything happen. And most of the workers were women, who, at most, waved a flag around.

But once we passed the construction, we came upon a mountainous scene – with incredible, enormous mountains and massive valleys. It was in every sense defining of the word majestic. A fog had lain across the landscape, so that everything was bathed in a gray tint. The backdrop of mountains was just barely visible. Little shacks were lined along the road, just before the valley dipped down, and we thought how incredible it would be to wake up to that view every morning.

As we drove along, tall and lanky pine trees stood like soldiers in an assembly to our left and right. They were replaced along the right by lush green trees with yellow budding tips. They were the most beautiful trees I think I have ever seen. Signs cautioned, “CRIME WARNING DO NOT STOP.”

We were all taken by the beauty of everything, despite foreboding signs. Evening was quietly falling on us. The sun melted into orangey flames. We were still clinging to the hope of getting into Swaziland before it was dark. We were definitely close, anyway.

YEAH RIGHT.

At 4:30 p.m., after five and a half hours of driving, we finally arrived a few miles away from the border. Trucks had their own lane, and cars had no lane. The people of Africa – at least in the south – don’t know what a line is, and they certainly don’t know the concept of first-come-first-serve. Well, they at least know it in a different sense: first-cut-first-serve. So while there is a legitimate and official lane for cars to remain in, legitimate and official mean nothing to these people. This, in other words, means there is nothing but stand-still chaos when southern Africans are asked to wait in line.

The highway that leads to the border is two-laned. There is a going-to lane and a coming-from lane. This two-laned set up, however, somehow turned into five lanes. There were four lanes going to and one lane coming from. Those cars in the legitimate, official lane were joined on both sides by cars in the made-up, unofficial lanes – the cutters. At one point, as we were encouraging Madison to drive like a South African, we joined the ranks of the cutters. I kindly asked another driver if we could cut back into the official lane, and he kindly let us. But that was the end of our cutting, and we maybe cut less than 20 cars. It still didn’t get us anywhere close to the border.

So we sat.

And we sat.

For a good two hours.

Without moving.

At all.

Carmen and Matt left the car to walk around and see what was going on. They bought some drinks at the little store on the side of the road. But we mainly sat there waiting for absolutely nothing. There was no one in sight to direct the traffic of the unlawful cutting cars. People were mad, people were honking, people were singing Jesus songs, people were yelling, people were peeing on the side of the road, people were crazy. There was absolutely no order, no fairness, and no system. It was a whole-scale bureaucratic failure. Some random men who were waiting in line got out of their cars to direct the traffic and to ensure that all the cars in the official line were not letting in cutters from the unofficial lines. They directed each official line car to be, literally, bumper to bumper because cutters were aggressive and, give them an inch, they’ll easily make it fifteen feet.

The police man made a minimal attempt to enforce fairness by sending two cutting cars back into the official line where they had come from. But that was the end of that, and he soon after was nowhere to be found. When another police man came, Carmen got out to ask him if he could make sure that these cutters didn’t get in. He explained that he wasn’t a border patrol officer, he was simply there to ensure no accidents occurred. Well awesome. Glad you could help.

Furthermore, we witnessed the very reason why there isn’t any order in this country.

Because the cops don’t work for the state; they work for themselves. Anyone with money can pay a cop and get his or her way. We saw this happen. We watched as people exchanged words and papers with cops and then go right on in. It was more and more evident the closer to the border we came. Cops are crooked creatures in this country. They’re just men with authorized guns and a uniform. They do what they want, on their terms, oblivious to any notion of rule of law.

Meanwhile, we watched a bar fight, which was occurring at the bar on the hill to our right. A man – probably 6’6 or so – was strangling another man, much shorter than the former. We were actually terrified that we might witness someone die. The most incredible part of it all was that as I was watching those men fight, and as I was thinking one of them might die, I didn’t even have any ounce of shock in me. The man’s death would have been an expected and inevitable outcome.

He didn’t die though. After watching for too long, some other men broke up the fight, and the smaller man bounced back up to stupidly get in his last word before turning back into the bar.

Cars were still at a complete halt. The only movement was the new coalition of cutters coming to cut the first cutters. It was like a breeding ground of cutters, a breeding ground of inefficiency.

I don’t remember when it happened, but at some point we all kind of just broke down. We absolutely did not car that we had been waiting in line for almost three hours when the others who had gotten here earlier only waited for an hour. We didn’t care that people were cutting. We didn’t care that this was inefficient.

Frustration melted into pure hysteria – and we all laughed, and really didn’t stop laughing, until it ended. It was funny that we took an extra long route to Swaziland in the first place – five and a half hours when it should have been only over four. It was hilarious that we were just one car in a line (or multiple) of several hundred cars. It was hysterical that we were witnessing the absolute chaos that crossing an African border could be.

So Matthew turned on his iPod and grooved to his own music. Carmen smoked a cigarette outside and peed in the bush. Madison turned off the car and commentated on the events. And I sat in my corner with my headphones on and bobbed my head to Maroon 5. We were happy. We were content. We were stuck. And we were dealing with it. I loved everyone in our car at that moment. No one was fuming with frustration; no one was carrying on and complaining, whining that we had been in a car for eight unnecessary hours. No one cared.

After four hours waiting in line, we began to move forward. Eventually we were close enough to see everything and to watch cars being admitted forward. We were giddy with delight – this was it! We made it! We were going through to Swaziland! Finally, finally, finally!

The police officer waved us forward after all those hours in the line, and we surged on through the gates where we stopped for a woman to hand us a piece of paper. Let it be known, that there were four lanes of cars and ONE lane through the gate.

And then there was a line of people.

A long line of people.

“Wouldn’t it suck if we had to wait in that line of people, too?” someone in the car asked.

“Yeah, I would be so pissed. We better not have to get out of the car.”

“Oh, I doubt it, those are probably the people that got dropped off by the buses.”

“Yeah, we probably just drive through and give them our passports there.”

The lady hands us the papers, makes note of our tag and the number of passengers, and then motions us forward.

“Why are the cars parking, guys?”

We ask the lady if we, too, have to park. She nods, annoyed, and motions us forward again.

So we drive through the gate and into a parking lot, where we quickly find a spot to park. And as we drive through we see just how long the line of people is, and, well, we all want to die. We all hate life again. And we are all very much not happy and giddy anymore.

We are pissed.

And we are cold.

And we are standing, waiting in another long line of hundreds of people.

As I’ve said before, time in Africa is different. Maybe it’s a Southern Hemisphere thing, but when it gets to be dark (which happens around 6 p.m. here), time jumps ahead two hours. So when it’s six it feels like eight; when it’s nine it feels like eleven. So as we’re waiting in line at 9 p.m., we have 11 p.m. frustrations and fatigue.

And then, at around 9:30, we get our 11:30 second wind. Matthew and I are standing behind Madison and Carmen, and we, suddenly, think everything is funny again. We’re moving through the line slowly. We’re watching an officer in the window doing absolutely nothing but staring off into space, and we think he’s hilarious. We think everyone is funny. We think we’re funny. And we’re giggling and carrying on.

As we get closer to the doors to the border officials, something happens.

It starts with me. I suddenly can’t breathe. I am overwhelmed by the inability to suck in good air. My lungs are caving in. I’m silently choking. My eyes are watering, my face is scrunched up like something horribly sour flew into my nose and mouth. I look at Matthew and he looks at me. I can’t breathe.

There is something rotting and dying behind me, and the smell is killing me too.

The man is straight African, and I know this because he is all up on my grill. I have no personal space with this man. He is defending his place behind me, unyieldingly. I move forward, he moves forward. And all the while, as he breathes, his breath is making me green and blue in the face. I can’t get away from this smell – this rotten smell of body odor and halitosis. Matthew knows exactly what the problem is by the look of angst on my scrunched face.

I need to cough or gag, or I need an oxygen mask, stat. I can’t move anywhere because he follows like a ghostly, deadly smell lingering above and around me like a thick fog.

I MIGHT DIE HERE!

The crowd is moving in around us – it’s no longer a line the closer we get to the magical doors. Everyone is crowding around, trying to push their way in.

ALAS I find a pocket to fill where he cannot follow me. I step aside, and the man with the smell of horror and death moves in behind Matthew, whose face immediately turns a shade of green and whose eyes immediately turn red with sickness. He looks at me like he wants to cry, and I, free from the killer smell, smile and laugh. Matthew coughs and groans in agony. He moves forward, and the man follows.

“OH LORD!” he says, “Oh LORD, OH LORD, OH LORD!” And then he coughs some more, while I laugh like a hyena.

This is Africa, baby. This is Africa in all its stench and disorder. This is the farthest thing from America that we could ever come across, and, in so many ways, it is glorious. We are lodged between bodies, pushing to get into the doors to get across the border. The police man are standing at the door and refusing, with mischievous smiles, to let anyone in until a line is formed. Men are yelling, arms and fists pumping in the air. African dialects are murmuring and shouting. People are shoving. We are like scared little white chickens mixed into a medley of mooing bulls. We don’t speak the language and we could get run over by some hoof.

In a surge we move forward, as people are pushing their way into the doors. We get nearer and nearer to the magic doors before a police man shuts them on us. We stand, again, in wait, among the mass of angry and impatient bodies. Someone tells us that there is a government workers’ strike, and therefore there is only one person on duty.

The policemen look smug behind the doors, laughing with each other at the impatient people. They have the gun. They have the authority. They have the power. And they’re not afraid to use it.

We all look at each other and someone throws out the idea of leaving.

Everyone’s ears seem to perk up. Yeah, maybe we should just leave. Just get our passports stamped for Swaziland and then turn around and go home.

“If we’re not in there by 10:30, I’m going home,” Carmen says.

But why don’t we just go now? Is this even worth it? We’re all standing around bouncing back ideas, bouncing around secret wishes to just go back home and see if everyone else is wishing the same thing. There is an almost definite consensus. In fact, we’re laughing already at the story we would have to tell about the time we drove the Swaziland, reached the border and turned back.

Anyways, who knows how long it will be anyway. What if people get mad, what if the cops fire off a gun or something. We could all see that happening. People are still shoving us around, Carmen is getting nauseated, we’re all tired and annoyed and excited about the prospect of turning around once we got so close.

And did we mention that we weren’t sure where we were going to go after we did get across the border? Undoubtedly, the reserve we were going to stay at wasn’t open anymore – it was way too late. No one had answered our calls earlier. Setting up camp in the dark would be a hassle – even if we could get on the reserve. And what if we couldn’t? We’ve have to park somewhere and spend the night in the car. No one was really willing to take that kind of risk in a foreign country in the bottom of Africa.

We looked around at each other, eyes imploring and subtly delivering individual votes.

“Okay! Let’s go home!”

And that was that. We got out of the crowd, took our pictures of the office, the line, and our story, loaded ourselves in the car, and made our way out and back toward Pretoria.

Once on the road, we spent a good while laughing hysterically. There was absolutely no regret among any of us in the car. We were thrilled that we had driven five and half hours, waited in a line for about that long again, and then turned around to go back home. And we were thrilled that it was something we did together – Carmen, Matt, Madison and me. There couldn’t have been a group with a better attitude about it all.

We stopped to get some gas, some dinner (which we had all been planning to have in Swaziland after we set up tent – how naïve we were) and some dessert (because we deserved it). It was about eleven before we were on the road again. With our bellies finally full of things other than car snacks, we began the journey home, this time with clearer and shorter directions. Mother Madison, whom we called MOM the entire way there and back, drove us safely through the dark and foggy night. She deserves an award.

We arrived home just before 3 a.m., unloaded our unused belongings from the car, and parted ways to find our own beds in our own rooms.

And it was wonderful.