Fearful Journey

FEARFUL JOURNEY

She slept for almost 14 hours.  That in itself would not have been a problem, except that she was the co-driver, and supposed to keep me awake.

I was 20 years old when I had to drive my first long distance journey from the northern province of Gauteng to the most southern city in South Africa, Cape Town. I had finished my time in the Air Force and was on my way to become a student at the University of Stellenbosch. Because you were only allowed to get your driver’s license when you turned eighteen, I had never driven any long distances on my own. My mother suggested that I should take Ouma1 Dolly with me to visit my aunt in Cape Town. Apparently, she knew the way and would guide me along…

We left at twelve o’clock at night and it did not take long to realize that I was in deep trouble. Within the first forty minutes, Ouma Dolly argued with me about the way we had to go, and being respectful of her experience and wisdom, as well as her being my grandmother, I followed her counsel and took the wrong freeway to the south. In fact, the freeway did not even go as much south as what it turned out to go west southwest. Satisfied that her counsel had been followed, Ouma Dolly promptly fell asleep and only woke up briefly at five o’clock the morning somewhere in the middle of the Free State province, while I was trying to find our location on a map.

There was no radio in the vehicle, so I brought my portable stereo along, to kill the long hours of driving. Because of the angle it was standing on the seat, the batteries did not make contact and I was therefore resigned to listening to the constant rhythm of Ouma Dolly’s peaceful breathing for hours on end. I gave myself over to singing all the Afrikaans2 folk songs that I knew, which was precious little, in order to make Ouma Dolly feel right at home when she woke up. In the end, I ran out of songs and she still did not stir.

By midday we arrived in a town called Beaufort West. Left in the middle of the karoo3 for decades, this little town served as an oasis for the weary traveler. After a brief refueling stop I announced to Ouma Dolly, now awake because of all the commotion, that she would have to drive for the next two hours because I had been driving for the past twelve. I had carefully calculated when to ask her to drive and had come up with this solution because it was the shortest distance between towns and the road was practically straight. What could possibly go wrong?

She got into the car and at first I did not suspect that something was amiss. I was slightly apprehensive because I had driven with her before and all of those trips were potentially life-altering experiences. All she had to do was drive around a traffic circle that led into the town, turn left, go down the main road and out the other side. Easy, I thought.

Ouma Dolly remembered to step on the clutch before she turned the ignition and the engine jumped to life. She then proceeded to step on the gas and pushed the pedal all the way down because the vehicle would not move forward. The engine whined and roared, but Ouma Dolly kept trying!
“Ouma!” I yelled above the roaring scream of the engine, “Let go of the clutch!” My head nearly landed in the back seat and I was sure I was going to have whiplash as the little yellow Volkswagen jumped forward and then stopped almost immediately. Visions of her driving and cars swerving out into oncoming lanes in order to avoid hitting her, flashed back into my mind. Within a split second, panic set in and I knew I was in deep trouble!

For the last seventeen years of her driving career Ouma Dolly had driven an automatic vehicle and even then, she was really bad at it. She had caused multiple accidents and even made an illegal u-turn on a freeway. All these facts came racing into my mind like runaway train on a collision course.

I steadied myself and proceeded to remind her of the finer details for driving a manual vehicle. After nodding and agreeing, with the odd irritation in her voice, she stepped on the clutch and turned the ignition. As before, she stepped on the gas and the engine started whining racing like a trapped monster.
“Ouma, the clutch!” I screamed again. The next moment she lifted her foot and the little yellow car jumped forward like a bucking bronco. It made one, two, three lurches, as if sucking in air, and then we were off. We raced around the traffic circle and turned into the main road. The engine was screaming and Ouma’s foot was jammed onto the floorboards.

“Ouma! Second gear!” I hollered, “Second gear!”

She stepped on the clutch, changed gears and without taking her foot off the gas pedal, let go of the clutch again. Now we were hurtling down the main road, engine whining and pedestrians staring at us like the circus just came to town.

She did not notice the red traffic light at first. Neither did she hear my anguished cries that the light was indeed red. With a few yards to go, she did however notice that the cars in front of her were not moving and that we were gaining on them, fast! She took her foot off the gas and jammed it onto the brake pedal. The Volkswagen screamed to a halt and jumped a few times as she forgot to step on the clutch pedal, again. Naked fear rose up to stare me in the face. By now, I was praying almost audibly.

The light turned green, and as before, I had to remind her to take her foot off the clutch. We must have set a new land speed record for a small vehicle in first and second gear, going down the main road of Beaufort West. If anyone did not see us, they surely heard us coming. We reached the other side of town in record time and I made her pull off the road next to Club Lipstick.

It took a little while to recover from the initial shock, but it would take years for the fear of driving with her again to subside. I re-explained the details of driving and how in fact there were five gears in the engine. That might have been a mistake. We took to the road again, our wheels spinning on the gravel and kicking up dust until we reaching the tarred road surface. We obliterated the speed limit and made good time as we high tailed out of there.

At this juncture, it might be good to mention that the speed limit in South Africa is a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour, which is 75 miles per hour. We also drive on the left hand side of the road like other old British colonies. Neither of the two little facts made much impression on Ouma Dolly, as she jammed her foot down on the gas and gradually worked her way up to fifth gear. I took out my sunglasses and a pillow to try and get some rest for the rest of the journey that I was going to drive. My eyes however, kept on turning towards the speedometer and couldn’t help noticing that the needle creeping from 75 miles an hour to 85 and all the way 90 miles an hour. That in itself was not the main problem! On this dual carriageway, the oncoming traffic was sharing the road surface with us and they were flashing their headlights at this yellow car that was floating all over the road. Although the road was straight, Ouma Dolly managed to use both lanes at 90 miles an hour.

I tried numerous times to slow her down, but later resigned to the fact that ‘she was older and had more experience’. Being respectful of my elders, I did not argue anymore. I must have fainted, because when I
woke up, we were hopping and jerking our way into the next town at 20 miles per hour, in fifth gear. When the car finally stalled there was no end to the relief that flowed though me.

The rest of the journey went well. Ouma slept the rest of the way and we managed to complete, what should have been a fourteen-hour journey, in a mere eighteen hours!

After her holiday in Cape Town, Ouma Dolly flew home to Gauteng where she promptly told my mother to never let me drive all the way to Cape Town by myself, because I had slept almost all the way.

1 Ouma means Grandmother or literally Old Mother.
2. Afrikaans is one of the eleven official languages of South Africa. It was derived mainly from Dutch.
3. The Karoo is a semi desert area in the Southern parts of South Africa