Pink Stilettos. Blue Stocking.

02 | The Motto. (No, not Y.O.L.O)

Note: please read the mini glossary before reading this chapter as it will help you understand some of the South African lingo in here.

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Gaatchie

South African lingo for conductor; not sure it is spelled that way but it’s pronounced that way; plus I can’t find the spelling on the internet.

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matriculate

Graduate from high school, basically.

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Uya dika.

You’re full of it.

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Ek sê.

I say. Also, the way I use it in this context, it would be considered colloquial.

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Haibo.

Exclamation

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Mam Khulu

Older auntie. Oliveira uses it call her grandmother that.

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                                                    T W O

                          The Motto. (No, not Y.O.L.O)

There were only three people in this entire world who used the Y.O.L.O motto: Drake, any person who didn’t realise that they actually only lived once (before Drake pointed it out in a fist bumping rap song) and, of course, South African taxi drivers.

If their driving methods were a judge of character, they’d be considered dare devils. If anything, I considered them a threat to my life’s existence. (Perhaps taking the train would be considered a safer option; I still had to matriculate from high school.) In a taxi, you didn’t just live once: you lived, died and repeated the cycle until the taxi stopped moving. For good. (And that only happened when you’d reached your destination: whether that was heaven or a locatable place on Earth was yet to be determined.)

I had to say, choosing a dilapidated taxi as my mode of transport was most probably not the best idea I ever had; I should’ve at least chosen a Quantum. Then maybe I’d die in style, but no… I was seated on a loose black crate situated right next to a wobbly door that couldn’t even close properly; we had made at least two pit stops just to fix that darned rusted door that was accompanied by a measly apology from the gaatchie who had four missing front teeth and a gold tooth on his bottom set.

“Sorry, ladies and gentlemen,” he had said, in his thick coloured accent that accentuated his R’s, “we are experiencing technical difficulties. But sit tight. We’ll be on our way soon.”