Cabbie - Dawn...

Waking up at an ungodly hour… as usual….

As much as I hate it, I have to admit I am used to it by now. I gently nudge my wife to break her meager few hours of slumber… and crawl out of bed and tiptoe to the tin door so as not to wake my little boy.

Outside the world is still dark… the only light comes from the orange halogen that illuminates this small hellhole… home to me and thousands of my betters.

I yawn… trying to ease into the hassles of the day and hear my wife also emerging into the silent pre-dawn behind me.

We head towards the communal tap… dutifully spraying out the white foamy water that is the life blood for the vermin who depend on it. And already a queue is forming… other unearthly creatures like me and my wife that have to meet this strange hour that was never meant to be known to man.

A few minutes of patient waiting, in silence for me and in non stop chattering with the other women for my wife, bring us to the tap. We waste no time… there are many more in line… we cannot take forever. We take turns to squat under the tap and shower… or at least rid ourselves of last nights sweat… and that’s what shower passes for here.

After this daily pointless ritual, my wife fills the water jug, the last remnant of what we had received on our inauspicious wedding… apart from the four tin walls and one roof… and we head home to our little sultry cubicle of poverty.

I dry myself and change into the clothes that I shall have to wear for the next fourteen hours… as my wife lights the tiny kerosene stove and begins to cook our supper. My nine year old son still sleeps, snoring gently… the image of peace and contentment.  Against my wife’s better judgment I have decided not to let him start working with her in her small shack of a tea stall.

The fact that school saves us the expense of one meal each day helps… but more importantly… I don’t want him entering this way of life until he must….

I don’t want him to enter our way of life….

My meal is prepared… I pack it in a small polythene packet and bid farewell to my wife. She will clean the house then wake and dress our son and send him to school before leaving to open her tea shack.

I walk across our slum to the main road and board an almost empty bus… the first one of the day. I get off at the cab stand and knock on the shuttered window of the small booth that stands in the middle of rows of lifeless yellow machines.

It creaks open revealing the pasty face of the middle aged man who has made his workplace his home… he sees me, grunts while still half asleep, checks a roster and hands me the keys while greeting me with the first words I hear in the day… “Twenty five thirty nine”.

That’s the number of the taxi I have to drive out today.

We don’t have any fixed vehicles; we drive whatever car that is allotted to us on a first come first serve basis. All the cars… all thirty-eight of them, belong to our master… we drive his cars taking care not to damage them as that would involve a huge fine and loss of employment… and pay him nine hundred bucks at the end of each day.

It doesn’t matter if you haven’t made that much… you have to pay him the money for renting out his car. I try to keep at least half that much in my pocket as I go to work in case business turns out to be slow.

I don’t want my bones broken for being unable to pay up….

All in all, our master is not that bad. As I walk over to cab number “twenty five thirty nine”, I know it will have a half tank of gas….

Considering how the price of gas is rising every single day… this is a better deal than paying two hundred bucks per day but having to buy your own gas.

I unlock the door, get in the drivers seat… pause for a second to enjoy the last moment of peace I shall have till I get back home… and turn on the ignition.

Today I am already carrying eight hundred… but I still need to make a lot more… I have plans….

My day has begun.

Next Chapter