The weight-loss city
The drive from Johannesburg airport to Potchefstroom is sufficient for the visiting Bangladeshi to cotton on to the fact that it is a different world. Potch, as they call it here because whatever your tongue it is likely to be twisted when trying to pronounce the name in full, is 120 kilometres away from South Africa's largest city, and a distance of that magnitude would take a minimum of three hours to traverse in Bangladesh, if you were lucky.
In South Africa, across expansive eight-lane highways flanked by sprawling landscapes of open fields dotted with trees that same distance takes just 80 minutes. Halfway through the journey, which for us was blessed by the setting of a sun that seemed bigger when viewed across African plains, you will realise that personal automobiles are the way to go here, especially outside the big cities. That feeling turned into a full-on realisation a day into our stay in sleepy, laid-back Potchefstroom. With no public transportation to speak of, we asked the owner of the guesthouse to fix us up with a taxi service. She graciously gave us the number of... let's call him Charlie.
With the weekend before the first Test being a long holiday extending into Monday's Heritage Day, Charlie informed us that he was not working that weekend. Are there other drivers? No.
So we walked the 2.5 kilometres to the Tigers' hotel, the NWE Puk Sports Village adjoining Senwes Park. Before starting off we looked up another number online, and having gotten one were feeling proud that we had trumped local knowledge with our data packages. Until, that is, we found out that the other driver was not working in the weekend either. Surely, there must be numbers for taxi services at a high-level establishment like the Sports Village.
“Sure,” said the receptionist when we asked, and returned with the number we had looked up. Upon being informed that we already had that number, she paused and said: “Do you have Charlie's number?”
There are just two taxis in Potchefstroom. Not an exaggeration, not an underestimation. Two taxis in the whole city.
So we walked more than 15 kilometres over those two days and was greatly grateful when Aasif, the other driver that we intrepidly Googled, picked us up from the Village on Sunday afternoon. He confirmed that there are two taxis in Potch and has thankfully since become our guide to all things Potchefstroom.
A side effect of the paucity of taxis was that two days before the Test, this reporter went out on an errand along with Aasif, and halfway through the job there was a call on his mobile and a Bangladesh cricketer asked to be picked up from a restaurant where two of them had gone to eat. There was hesitant agreement on the other side of the line after Aasif told him that there was a Bangladeshi journalist in the car. Since they were in a hurry there was no choice. It was a quiet ride from the restaurant to the Village.
Looks like business may pick up for Charlie.
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