Felicien the cab driver.

Today, I met Felicien.

I’ve mainly been using cabs to get around Cape Town. After paying the cab fares from Midtown to Park Slope, I’ve become jaded to overpriced cabs–as far as I’m concerned, they are just another overpriced, necessary, evil (and occasionally very convenient) method of public transportation. Over here, it’s 10 ZAR per km after the 2 ZAR initial fee.(1)

During these trips, you get to meet really interesting people. Like New York, a lot of the cab drivers are foreign. Felicien is one of them. He’s a refugee from the DRC. He’s been in South Africa for about 8 years, but only spent the last 6 months in Cape Town. His cab is kinda crappy. There’s no sugarcoating it. It was an older foreign model–I’d guess early 90s or so. The inside was dingy and it smelt like cigarette smoke. Still, Felicien works 24/7. Literally. He’s always on call. In fact, during our ride, he put our lively conversation on hold so he could figure out where his next client was. He says its necessary to work that much in order to support his family.

Felicien and I got to talking and he described the problems refugees face in South Africa. They don’t get the same rights as South African citizens (though they are constitutionally given such rights), they never feel safe as South Africans can be highly xenophobic, and all figures of authorities–even police officers–seem to hate them. Social programs, public services and health clinics are a joke as far as he is concerned. It was all really sad. It’s great to see South Africa in this time of transition, but it’s a sobering reminder of how long it takes for a robust, vibrant, equitable democracy to come about. America’s come a long way and we still aren’t quite there–and we’ve been 200 years in the making.

It’s always nice to be reminded of how good you’ve got it.

(Anyways, as part of a happier ending, he gave me his mobile number and I’m going to try to see if we can provide him with some services. Either way, I’ll be sure to continue to take Felicien home and help him get some food on the table for those kids.)

Footnotes:
  1. Which comes out to about 2 USD per mile–very close to typical New York City rates. [↩]