I take the train to work, every day. And home again, every day. It's affordable, moderately reliable, not entirely uncomfortable and, most importantly, gives me some time to read.
Yesterday I took the 17:02 train from Cape Town on the Wynberg line. It was packed, because the 16:56 train had been cancelled. But packed is not an adequate description. There were so many people in the train, I'm surprised my feet could touch the floor.
Crowds are stressful. It's difficult to be surrounded by lots of people. But today I didn't mind. I was in a surprisingly good mood, and not even the heat of people pressed up against me could get me down.
It occurred to me then, in that full, hot, noisy train, that I was surrounded by the full diversity of people in South Africa. There were people of all shapes, sizes, races, genders, languages, occupations, ages. Some were uncomfortable, some seemed oblivious to the jostling of the crowd, some were distracted by phone calls, some were reading books or newspapers or playing games on their cell phones. There was a family of Swedish tourists with a little girl who was holding a big bunch of red balloons.
All in all, it was a wonderfully diverse group of people, together simply because we were travelling in the same direction. But it was more than that for me. It was a true representation of the people in this country, both locals and visitors. It was not organised, not arranged to be representative or politically correct. It was just a group of people being people in the same place. And I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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