What is your life worth?

I thoroughly enjoyed my travels to South Africa. We had a five to one rand to dollar ratio working in our favor, the country is beautiful, and the people were amazing. For the most part.

One of our most frequented places was the mall. I know ... how lame. However, the mall was visited mostly for its grocery store and for a burger place. The burger place was the only place that offered yellow mustard to go with your food. We henceforth called yellow mustard "American mustard". Also, if you ordered a burger and fries you got a free pitcher of beer. Once or twice a week we would head to buy some groceries and snag a burger and pitcher.

One evening we headed to the mall for some groceries. The standard fare of twenty-five rand was paid to our taxi driver. We grabbed a bite, bought some toys for the kids at our disability center, and bought some groceries. Loaded down with bags, four - two guys and two girls - of us waited for a cab to come pick us up.

When he arrived I began to go through the show of negotiating the price. On the meter the ride always took 22 or 23 rand. You aren't supposed to tip taxi drivers in South Africa (according to the locals), so we always offered up 25 rand and the drivers were happy and we made it safe and sound. This man decided to trick the foreigners. He pulled out a paper that said going to the university was fifty rand. He said it was official and was amazed that we had not heard of this before.

Since I didn't drink beer at this time I had my wits about me. I told him that our offer of 25 rand was good or he could put us on the meter. He argued some before relenting to the meter and warning us it would cost sixty rand on the meter. I replied "we will see" and we loaded the cab's trunk and took off. Still in the parking lot I noticed the meter was off. I informed him of this and he began haggling again. My response was "You either get twenty-five rand or you stop the car and let us out now." He shut up and drove.

After pointing out the "shortcut" - ie the only way home that made sense - that he was amazed we knew, the man started to be more reasonable with his prices and eventually dropped the price to thirty rand. I again told him that he had chosen twenty-five rand when he did not turn on the meter. Not another word was spoken until we got to our destination.

We made him stop at the bottom of a hill just outside the guard post at the university so he could not see where we lived. We hopped out and he opened the trunk. As we got out our bags I handed him exactly twenty-five rand. I said "thank you." He said "What the fuck is this?"

Me and the other guy told the girls to keep walking with the bags. "Twenty-five was the deal man" my friend said. "We agreed on thirty!" he screamed, which is funny because that never happened. We started to walk away when he said something that made us freeze: "Is your life worth five rand?"

We spun around. My friend offered him some coins in his pocket to call it even. Worth about 3 rand probably. We did not want to die .. FOR THE EQUIVALENT OF 87 CENTS. He refused to take the money and said "I have ways to get my money."

At this point I just turned and walked away. My friend came with me. I honestly waited for a gun to go off. We made it to the security station and informed them we never wanted that cab or its company to make it past them. They agreed to bar them from doing so. We went home.

We later saw his cab parked at the bottom of the hill once or twice. Just waiting. On those days when we were trying to walk to get food, we turned around and changed our plans. 5 rand. 87 cents. It is life or death.

Sidenote -- I know what you're probably thinking. Why didn't you just give him thirty rand when he blew up after dropping you off? Why did you wait until he basically threatened your life? Well, he tried to take advantage of us because we were foreign, got caught, and still ended up with more money than he should have. Basically ... fuck him. Would I have died for that much money ... no. We did try to give him more after he flipped out. In the end, he was just crazy. Maybe the lesson is "Don't stand on principle with an insane man" or it is "I safely made it home sticking to my guns, so there is no lesson, just crazy cabbies."

(No run today, resting my knee .. slightly swollen still from this weekend)