We apologize for the disruption in service. Your regularly scheduled program shall commence.

Apologies for the lengthy delay. Our kind landlords offered to let us use their 3G card, but nobody seemed to have the startup disk for the software. Late last night I figured out how transfer the files from one laptop to another and set up the connection. Sweet Hallelujah.

As you can see, our car is purple. P-U-R-P-L-E.

Given our options, however, it suits our needs just fine. The hotel arranged for our driver Sam and another worker familiar with the area (Jenny, I think?) to drive us to some dealerships. The first dealership was where we were introduced to our purple Corsa, but we didn’t want to jump at the first chance. This led us to the seedy dealerships in Brixton. Luckily, our man Sam was savvy to dealer tricks and steered us clear of the lemons. Later that day, without having seen a single other car worth test driving, we returned to seal the deal with dealer Jim, an extremely racist but otherwise helpful guy.

Getting around is not nearly as bad as we had dreaded, but challenging nonetheless. I know from our shuttle excursions through downtown that it’s not a place that either of us hopes to ever drive. Pedestrians dart out into traffic at random, and the cursed mini buses swerve violently in and out of lanes and are liable to come to a screeching halt any time they see a fare. The northern suburbs are of course less frantic, but the general mindset everywhere seems to be hyper aggressive and rush hour is bumper to bumper. As Marnie has noted, this seems to suit her natural driving style just fine.

A few days ago I braved the roads for the first time, albeit a short drive through neighboring Greenside. No one was injured in the process, though I did get hooted at (which is the preferred nomenclature to honk) several times for driving cautiously. Thick skin is quite the asset on the roads of Jozi.