Sunday, November 21, 2010

My Pet Peeve

The thing about driving in Pretoria is that when you stop at a robot (traffic light) you will be hounded by street hawkers trying to sell you anything from a medical poster of the digestive system to inflatable life jackets. For someone like me who sees driving time as an opportunity to rehearse my music, this is at best amusing and at worst irritating.

There is a new breed of street beggars, though, that really get to me. They will stand in the street with a trash bag and offer to take any rubbish from your car - for a small donation, of course. If you politely decline, they'll stick their face in your window and look really pathetic. If you keep ignoring them, they'll drop to their knees and start crying.

You may think I am being cruel and heartless, but these are the same people who pretend to be crippled the next day and come up with all sorts of crazy gaits and torn clothing to convince you of their infirmity and poverty so you'll give them money.

I suppose I need to readjust my expectations and count on my driving time to be interrupted with these diversions, but when I regularly make a 25 minute drive across town and am approached at every single robot... it becomes a bit taxing.

And then - every once in a while - you'll come across a really creative beggar:

3 comments:

thatlarkin said...

Sorry Annie, this has nothing to do with this particular post, but I do love the blog. OK, this is weird, but my ex-wife and kid live in Durban. She is jonesing for Tostitos but coming up empty. Are they sold ANYWHERE in South Africa. I'd like to find a way to get them to her a bit more cheaply than the hundred bucks it's gonna cost me to ship. I'm contacting US bloggers in various parts of SA with this strange informational request. THANKS, John

Anna said...

There aren't tostitos here, but you can get corn chips if you look really hard - DisChem has them and any Pick n Pay Hyper will have them. I think they're called Banditos?

Anonymous said...

If Tostitos is what came up on Google images, then I think Fritos might be more what John is looking for. [my favourite]