My aunt gives me the phone and my mom is on the other end of the line. She tells me that she has arranged with Mantsho to come and take me to town by taxi. After this I will go to town on my own using a taxi. The following day I come back from school, change out of my uniform and wait for Mantsho to come fetch me. She arrives and tells me what we‘re going to do: I‘m going to buy new school shoes and with the change we can buy a treat. She explains the route to me and off we go. We walk past the Cashbuild all the way to the complex and wait there for a taxi. We get in, pay our fare, which is R3.50, and soon we get off at the taxi rank, cross over to the Shoprite Sentrum, which is now Kuruman Mall. We‘ve got only two stops, Pep Store for the shoes and Shoprite for the treat: cinnamon buns and Tropika juice for each of us. We cross the road again, back to the taxi rank and back to Mothibistad we go. That evening my aunt gives me the phone and my mom asks if I‘m ready to take the taxi alone and I say yes.

Following that are trips to town on my own to go and buy myself clothes or stationery. Long-distance trips to go and visit uncles and aunts in different towns. My mom hands me over to the taxi driver like he is a trusted uncle and tells him my destination. I trust the taxi driver. When I arrive, he waits with me for my uncle or aunt to fetch me, he lets me use his phone to call my mom, he is friendly and kind.

But then I come to Joburg and the taxi driver doesn't speak the same language as me and mocks me for it and refuses to speak Setswana. So I learn isiZulu to communicate my route to him.

In Joburg the queue marshal isn't my friend from primary school who dropped out of high school, but a man who calls his friend to come and mock me when I refuse his advances. He calls me fat and ugly and asks if I really thought he meant what he said when he made a pass at me.