The first time I order an Uber, it’s a mistake… named Mohamad.
I’m sitting on the patio at my hotel in Berlin and I’m tinkering around on the app when all my thumbing results in a ‘your Uber is on its way’ then ‘now arriving’ then ‘Martha!’ from a burly Turkish man in a car two metres in front of me who took all of 60 seconds to accept my request for a ride, learn my name and pull up to my door… grinning.
The grinning is all the language we have between us.
My German is a joke, his English is a thing of myth and so we giggle, grin and glance at each other as he drives me to Friederichshain and smiles inconceivably wider when it dawns on him that his has been my very first Uber ride.
I think the fact that I try to pay him in cash helps that theory along.
Linked to your credit or debit card and charged per kilometre, Uber is a mostly cashless cab service that requires you install the app, register, be where you say you are and ready to leave immediately before magic directs the closest Uber driver in your vicinity to your location.
It really does feel like magic.
But what it really is is a horde of lightly vetted people with cars and time who register to become drivers for the company and then accept requests to take you where you want to go.
The 60second arrival is because the app shows them where you are and they only accept your request if they are seriously nearby which almost means the fare is incredibly cheap.
You can then watch a cartoon version of their car drive towards you on your own app which will also show you the make and model of their vehicle, their licence plate number and their name.
So… “Hallo, Mohamad.”
Or Frasier in an Uber XL Hyundai who drives us all the way to Franschoek to catch a wine tram in Cape Town and makes up for our tardiness by overtaking three cars on a one lane road and gets the scolding of his life as I hoarsely realise how completely I can become my mother.
Rafeet who picks my sisters, Mon’s beau and our buddy Rob and I up on my birthday to drive us along the coast to Kalk Bay is a far better fit relative to a life spent consciously avoiding death.
Calm and careful, he’s the kind of driver who acts like an old friend and though his constant chattering distracts a little from the tiny surfers braving the waves in Muizenburg and the sheer majesty of the Cape coast line, I don’t mind much.
The reality is that I’m a big, blathering sucker for single serving strangers with sweet souls and so happiness is my last two Cape Town Uber drivers being just that.
Jan, an elderly Afrikaans man who looks like the kind of old guard cretin I have glared back at in both Windhoek and Swakopmund but who proves to be the obvious lesson of judging books by covers, and Oliver, a young fellow from Zimbabwe who talks Thai massage with me on drive home from Sea Point.
To my thinly veiled suprise, Jan picks me up in a Mercedez Benz.
He’s a sweet old thing who tells me I’m beautiful, asks if I have a partner and nods his head wisely when I say that I don’t.
“I knew it. Not a woman like you. It’s good to be independent. Look at you. Everyone gets married then they want to act like they can’t live without each other. All that drama, those demands, those bloody dinners. All that stress. Enjoy life. Keep writing. See the world. Wow. You don’t look 31. Happy birthday!”
Jan was married once but he doesn’t say much about his wife.
I only know he has one because he mentions taking care of a motherinlaw and his dogs and cats before telling me he likes being an Uber driver because sitting around doing nothing is a death far more horrifying than the inevitable one.
As we pull up to the massage parlour, he wishes me well and a safe trip back to Namibia. He’s been here before and wants to come again soon because he thinks our land is beautiful, peaceful, a little something special.
Jan is great. But Oliver is my favourite Uber driver by an inch.
He has a journalist friend who has been diagnosed with muscular dystrophy and he tells me a little about her when he hears I’m a journalist too but mostly he listens as he quietly keeps the conversation going with questions as light as the wind blowing through the bustle of Sea Point and over the seaside opulence of Camps Bay.
“What is a Thai massage like?”
“Have you been to Thailand?”
“It must be nice in Namibia?”
The only bit about himself Oliver offers is how much he likes being an Uber driver.
He’s been driving a cab for a couple of years and he says that, when you’re a cab driver, you don’t need friends.
