Poetic Adventure at the Taxi Rank

Last time I went close to Johannesburg's Joubert Park, I got mugged twice on one day. I've avoided it ever since then, but today, through an accident, I went there again.

Anna sent me a sunny SMS, inviting me to a poetry slam in Newtown, the 'cultural precinct' in the west part of downtown Joburg. She was going with a group of kids from her church. Sure, I said. I had nothing else planned, knew the area well and was comfortable going there. At the agreed time, I was in Newtown, which has a wide sunny grass park and a lazy feel about it - but there was no sign of Anna. I phoned her, and one of the people she was with - Fifi - said they would come to where I was and pick me up. I waited about 15 minutes, but there was no sign of Fifi. I phoned again, only to be told that Fifi had just gotten into a taxi to come to me.

Wait a minute - a taxi??? But aren't we both in Newtown? "I'm not sure", said Anna. "I'm in the Drill Hall. By the taxi rank."

Half an hour later, I was about to give up and go home when Fifi and her friend Thandi found me. They were black kids, from Midrand, in their last year of school. We got into my car. "Can you show me where we are going on a map?" I asked. No, they said, they couldn't. But they would guide me there. That was the real start of the adventure.

We set off down Bree Street. Suddenly the road ahead was blocked with minibus taxis. "Turn left!" commanded Fifi. Feeling a little like a Duke of Hazard, I did. More taxis, lots of hooting horns. "Turn right!" said Fifi. "The taxis will let you through". I turned rights, and was instantly walled in by a group of taxis, none of them moving. "How about locking those doors?", I said.

The taxis cleared slowly, a right turn and a left turn and then "That's it!" said Fifi, "that's the Drill Hall ... where the rastafarian is!". A prominent red, yellow and green hat was bobbing on a balcony on the other side of one final intersection, like a beckoning flag marking our destination. As we inched forward, Anna's directions proved accurate: the Noord Street taxi rank opened to our left. But the intersection ahead was clogged with stationary taxis going through a red light. Gridlock!

Joubert Park, the site of my muggings, lay just ahead. Any minute, my paranoid mind though. Any minute, they are going to see that I am the only white person in the whole damn taxi rank, and they are going to hijack me and rob me of this beautifully aged Ford Escort! Panicked and angry at the same time, I began to drive like they do in Kenya: blared the horn relentlessly and pushed my way through the taxis blocking the intersection, waiving my hands zestfully at the taxi drivers. Miraculously, it worked: I forced my way around the corner, into a decrepit enclosure, parked the car and put on every alarm, immobilizer and crook lock I had at my disposal. Then suddenly, with Fifi and Thandi, I was in the calm of the drill hall, where Anna was waiting for me. "Anna!" I hissed at her in greeting. "This is not Newtown!"

The drill hall is a converted factory: a room with floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides, facing the taxi rank. There is more information on it here. About 50 people were gathered there; mostly young rastafarian men or creatively dressed women. The sun shone hot through the windows, taxi horns blared, an alarm went off, at one stage ... was that a gunshot or a taxi backfiring? But somehow the space itself was an oasis of calm creativity and peaceful people. And the poetry? It was excellent.