The traffic report came on: “…massive pile-up on Gillooly’s Interchange. All lanes closed to traffic. Please make way for emergency vehicles. Expect a 30-40 minute delay. Motorists, plan your routes accordingly. And now, for the news at 2….”

“O kak,” thought Toni. The accident at Gillooly’s wasn’t surprising. Just a regular afternoon on one of the worst designed interchanges. Three highways merged into one. Motorists on the far right who needed to exit at the Van Buuren off-ramp had only 400m to cross seven lanes of traffic to the left to reach the off-ramp. Those coming off the R21 on the left wanting to get onto N3 on the far right to merge with the M2 going into town similarly had to cross seven lanes of traffic in a few short metres. Toni had read somewhere that Gillooly’s was the busiest interchange in the Southern Hemisphere and in its heyday, was an engineering feat.

“Whoever designed that should be shot,” Toni mused, certain that the original engineers 40 years ago couldn’t have imagined the volume of traffic on the main highway linking the north of the city with the city centre. They certainly hadn’t planned for daily multi-car crashes.

Her internal dialogue started again. None of this is going to help me now. If I get on the highway at Eastgate, I’ll never make it in time.

I could go through the suburbs of Kensington, Bez Valley, Berea, Yeoville, Hillbrow and reach town that way.

No way, that’s probably the least safe way to get there! Berea and Yeoville are totally crime-ridden. I’m asking for a smash-and-grab and I doubt this dinky rental has protective window film.³ Then in Hillbrow, the taxis will bring everything to a dead stop. And I need to cross Bree Street to get to Braamfontein. Isn’t that still closed due to the gas pipeline explosion two years ago? When are they ever going to fix that?

No, going through the city isn’t an option. You could pick up the M2 at Cleveland Road.

Yes, yes. That’s a better idea. Instead of trying to get to the M2 via the Gillooly’s chaos, I could just go through Malvern. It’ll take me five minutes.

Feeling chuffed with herself, Toni quickly checked where she was. Still in time to cut through Kensington and back into Malvern. She indicated left and turned up one of the little side streets and wound her way back through leafy ones.

“Let me go past the old tennis club,’ Toni thought, “see if anything is left standing.”

Heading up Mullins Road, Toni thought again of all the friends who had lived there but were now gone. Some had emigrated to Australia, Portugal, England. Others had moved to the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, to Sandton, Randburg and Rivonia. Only one of her childhood circle had moved to Cape Town. But yet, Cape Tonians complained constantly about all the “semigrants” from Johannesburg!

Turning right into St Frusquin Road, Toni remembered that only two friends remained in the area. One was Janet, who had lived on St. Frusquin but moved away to lecture at a university in a different province. A few years later she returned to care for her ailing mother. After her mom died, she isolated herself in the house during Covid and never left it. Despite several trips home, Janet always made excuses.

Janet’s house was sandwiched between two criminal holdouts. One house with grimy windows and tattered curtains sold drugs of every variety. The police apparently knew but turned a blind eye. The house on the other side had been transformed into what appeared to be a car repair shop. Janet said it was a “chop shop” that cannibalized stolen cars and sold them for parts.

Toni passed by Janet’s house. “If only I had time, I’d pop in to say hello.” But then she’d have to leave the boys waiting outside their school. Instead of slowing, Toni sped up a little. She drove past the drug den, the chop shop, and her old friend’s holdout, feeling sad for her classmate who had left, came back, and now, could never leave, surrounded by memories of a past that would never return and imprisoned by a house that nobody would buy.

Toni had reached the top of the hill. The old tennis club used to be tucked behind a grove of trees. Not only were the tennis courts gone, Toni noticed with a slight shock. The trees were too – cut for firewood, no doubt. Flo had also told her that the club house had burnt down after squatters invaded the property. Tin shacks filled the space where the club house once stood.

The ghosts of the past spoke again. Do you remember how after tennis every Saturday, the Italians would bring out the vino, formaggio and salami, always accompanied by fresh bread? They would reminisce nostalgically about their Italian childhoods in faraway villages, their lives as immigrants in South Africa, the factories they’d worked in, the businesses they’d started, the families they’d raised. Do you remember how proud they were of their kids, the first in their family to go to university? All that was left now, was an elderly man gasping for air and railing at the state of the country, while his wife prayed rosaries for the safety of her daughters.

I used to find their storytelling to be both romantic and deeply sad, as if they wanted to go back to that perfect place of their childhood, but knew it was gone forever. Now, I feel as if I’m them. Looking through a grove of imaginary trees for something that has long been erased from memory. Does there come an age when we stop looking forward towards an expectant future, and return to the womb of our childhoods, sanitizing it of all the uncertainty we felt then and repainting it in nostalgia and misplaced perfection?

(…to be continued…)

Footnotes

3. A smash-and-grab is when thieves smash the window of a stationary vehicle that is stuck in traffic and proceed to steal anything they can grab in less than a minute before running away through the traffic. The term was apparently coined in South Africa in the early 2000s when a company developed special smash-and-grab film that could be applied to car windows to prevent criminals from properly smashing the window.

 

Transadaptation Volume 7 – Via Ellipsis – Continuation of Uncertainty, Instability and Extremes Transadapted

January: An Unexpected Trip Down Memory Lane – Sarah-Leah Pimentel (South Africa)

February: Blow-up – Veronika Groke (Austria)

March: Futuros Murguistas – Alejandra Baccino (Uruguay)

April: The Nomenclature Man – Paulius Limantas (Lithuania)

May: Amanecerá y veremos – Adriana Uribe (Columbia)

June: Finding Light in Yerevan – Armine Asryan (Armenia)

July: The Last Judgement – Nadia Silva Castro (Brazil)

August: Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Worm? – Narantsogt (Natso) Baatarkhuu (Mongolia)

September: Second Steps – Jonay Quintero Hernandez (Spain)

October: New Normality – Svetlana Molchanova (Russia)

November: Pandemic Love – Li Xiakun (China)

December: Beyond Comprehension – Rahaf Konbaz (Syria)

 

Background – Context

Transadaptation Volume 6: Meaning? – Uncertainty, Instability and Extremes Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2025)

Transadaptation Volume 5: Of Flowing Vicissitudes – Life Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2024)

Transadaptation Volume 4: Material Dissent – Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2023)

Transadaptation Volume 3: Evanescent – Young Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2022)

Transadaptation Volume 2: Conceived – Childhood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2021)

Transadaptation Volume 1: In the Middle – Prelude to a Contemporary Transadaptation, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2020)

Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)

La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)

The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)

L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)

From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)

Emblems and stories on the international community

Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world

 

Credits

Left column (top to bottom): 1. South Africa – Shopping – van Blerk (Shutterstock); 2. Capetown, South Africa – Residential – Travelview (Shutterstock); 3. Johannesburg, South Africa – A family – Carlo Kaminski (Shutterstock)

Middle column (top to bottom): 1. Kakamas, South Africa – Die Pienk Padstal – Grobler du Preez (Shutterstock); 2. Karoo, South Africa – Roadside padstal – mehdi (Shutterstock)

Right column (top to bottom): 1. South Africa – Transport – rawf (Shutterstock); 2. Ruiterbos, South Africa – Boerqi Bistro Padstal – Roger de la Harpe (Shutterstock)