The African Taxi

The African taxi is a mixture of socialism and capitalism and is eco-friendly almost by default. They are nothing like a London cab, or New York taxi, although we do have this model, they can be spotted hanging around the airport and in the city centre. The real African taxi is an evolution from that dinosaur, the city bus. They are much smaller and more often they have started their working lives on the far flung island of Japan, of all places, before migrating to Africa.

The whole process has been guided by economic forces that follow the protocols of greeness and saving the planet by recycling.

The big city buses died out through mismanagement and the advent of a more efficent service by these smaller commuter vans that moved faster, were more economical and were being driven by free enterprising spirits, in the form of motivated drivers and their touts. These vehicles are relatively modern for Africa, but were already past their "safe life " on the densely populated island of Japan. Or, more likely, the Japanese government wanted their city dwellers to spend more money, by buying new machines, in an effort to keep their stagnating economy moving. Either way, they were eagerly purchased on line and shipped over to a second life in Africa.

While european cities have bus lanes, African cities have bus lanes that are just created out of thin air, sometimes in the face of on coming traffic. Money is made by getting a full taxi through the log jam traffic, as fast as possible. Safety is a secondary consideration, if one at all, and the passengers are usually a consenting majority, until things go wrong. A bit like African politics.

But first a full compliment of passengers is required, this is up to the touts, aka firemen, who stoke the taxi with people and collect the loot. A full compliment means absolutely full, bursting at the seams, so that the fireman himself, gets to ride on the back; like the footmen on carriages in centuries past, albeit at greater speeds.

For a traveler, this might mean boarding a parked taxi and then going nowhere for up to half an hour (depending on the hour and the number of people wishing to go in the same direction). Once the full compliment is reached, the taxi takes off at break neck speed as if the hounds of hell have just appeared.

Funnily enough this situation is a simile to our own process of moving custom made garments, from Zimbabwe to the UK and, from there, to the rest of the world. Like the taxi we can only send a viable number of orders, to the UK, in our equivalent of the taxi, which is an air cargo shipment of about fifty kgs. We have to consider the cost of the air cargo, plus handling and the carbon cost, of course, so we wait for the "taxi" to fill up.

This means a client ordering a "made to order" garment may be the first person in the " taxi " or the last and that difference can be months!

One day in the future, we may have a " taxi " leaving every week.

Here is to that happy thought :)

In the meantime, as with the African commuter, all good things come to those who are prepared to wait and perhaps in some parts of the world things are going a bit too fast?

After all life is a journey not a destination.

p.s. more about carbon and planting trees to off-set its effects in my next blog, we are doing something positive!