Where the sidewalk ends

Your flowers are pretty, but I want my sidewalk back

One thing I regularly see in Jo'burg that I've never noticed in another city is the personal claiming of the sidewalk/pavement by homeowners. Parkhurst is almost comically egregious for this. One minute you're casually walking on the pavement, and the next minute it disappears into a modernist landscaping fiasco leaving you to veer out into the street. Seriously, you can weave back and forth between pavement and street for block after block in some neighborhoods.

Fancy landscaping + safe pedestrian passage?  Well done!

I understand and appreciate the beautification aspect of said landscaping, but Jo'burg is major city with a large population! In other big cities, you can get a whopping fine just for parking your car on the sidewalk for a few minutes. But in Jo'burg, you apparently can claim the pavement all for your very own, sending pedestrians out to the streets to fend with the cars. In a city with a shocking rate of pedestrian deaths, maybe safe urban planning actually begins at home.

Stepping away from the ledge (yay to Yara!)

Well, well, what a difference a day makes! Today at work, apropos of nothing, my coworker Yara and I discovered that we both are in the car-free club. Yara is a hip Mozambican researcher (and hopefully future contributor to this blog) who actually owns a car, but dislikes driving in Jo'burg and simply prefers taking the bus and walking. And man, does she know her stuff! She was 100 times better than the Metrobus call centre in explaining the (many!) buses that could drop me directly in front of Helen Joseph. She even understands the secret language of the bus numbers. We also swapped stories about the weird misconceptions that people who don't ride the bus have about it and its passengers, and about walking in this city: people have slowed down in their cars and asked if she was OK! She even took me with her on her return trip so that I could see where to transfer in Braamfontein. Tomorrow: a new bus adventure begins! And this weekend: no car shopping! I think it was pure divine intervention that we happened to have this conversation on my second day of work, instead of, oh, three months after I'd bought a pricey car that I can't afford and don't want to drive. Thanks, Yara!

She walks hard for the money

Day 1 of the new job! There’s so much to feel excited about: really nice people, a thoughtful orientation, the giddy feeling when people say, “this is Kate, she’s an epidemiologist.” Oh, but then there’s the bad news: I can’t get there.

Yesterday I phoned my buddies at Metrobus and asked them how to get from Killarney to Helen Joseph Hospital. The woman at the call centre told me that there were no buses that could take me. I threw out a few other options, like connecting via Empire Road, and we finally came up with a couple of iffy ideas. The big problem is that I need to go in a southwesterly direction during the morning commute, and northeasterly for the evening, and the system is designed for the opposite direction. I’m literally swimming against the stream.

It probably would have been wise to give the route a test run first, but I didn’t have a chance – fortunately I’d accidentally said I’d be there at 8:30 when I’d actually meant 8:00; turns out I needed every last minute to avoid being late on my first day.

My trip started well by hopping on a southbound #1 bus on Oxford Road. The bus driver had decorated her bus with newspaper clippings of wildlife! Feeling resolute, I exited at Empire Road instead of going all the way to Gandhi Square. Unfortunately, it was further east on Empire – more towards Clarendon – than I wanted, so I had to walk over to the Wits area. This meant navigating the sketchy, tree-lined section of Parktown near that dodgy park. First I encountered a frighteningly friendly woman who started following me after saying hello (good thing I’m a fast walker), and then I was called a “white bitch” by a young man after I didn’t respond to his “hellloooo.” And this was by 7:30!

Still, I was determined to catch a bus near Wits, but kept walking to keep up time. And walking. And walking. Further and further…Yeah, you see where this story is going! Eventually I realized I was going to walk the whole damn way again and reluctantly picked up the pace.

Let me just say that this walk is terrible. Not only is it along noisy major roads (Empire and Kingsway) with a few hold-your-breath-and-run moments, but also most of Kingsway is under construction so that the pavement on each side is completely ripped up to eventually install a pipe or cable. For most of the walk, I was teetering on the curb, as if a balance beam, with a gaping meter-deep ditch to my left and minibus taxis whizzing by to my right. When I finally made it to work, I had to use the serviette from my packed lunch to clean off my filthy dirty feet and shoes before I met my new coworkers! Not a polished start to the new job!!

And guess what I did on the way back? The same. Yep, the old walk-til-the-bus-arrives game that resulted in another 5 miles walked over an hour and 45 minutes. By the time I got home, I was aching and grimy.

There are 2 more work days left to this week. Tomorrow I’m taking an expensive taxi both ways. On Friday I will try one more (quite circuitous) bus option that involves going first to Gandhi Square then catching another bus that goes along Kingsway.

But it’s clear that unless I’m willing to rely on my trusty 10 toes for 10 miles a day, I just can’t get there from here, sadly. So, this weekend...car shopping. I don’t have a clue where to start and I find the very thought completely daunting, but I gotta get to work. To be sure, my pedestrian adventures will continue, but probably (hopefully) not from M-F 8-4:30!