A TAXI OWNER. PHOTO | FOTOSEARCH
I recently went to South Africa on a work assignment and was met at Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo Airport by a gentleman called George for the transfer to my hotel.
George is a Bulgarian who came to South Africa in 1994 aged 28 with just $500 in his pocket. He had just left the army after being tired of the growing sense of helplessness and poverty in a struggling economy following the collapse of the Soviet Eastern Bloc at the tail end of the last decade.
He landed at Johannesburg’s airport and asked the first taxi driver to take him to the cheapest hotel he knew. That hotel ended up being in Hillbrow, a rough, crime ridden Johannesburg suburb where his was the only white face for miles around.
Armed with his $500 and ten or so words of English, which included “cheap hotel”, he walked around the neighbourhood and bought a map so that he could get a layout of the land, as he wanted to figure out what he could do to earn a living.
After walking for several blocks that took him beyond the confines of the dangerous Hillbrow zone, he found a butcher’s shop owned by a Serbian.
Speaking Russian, which was a secondary language for former Eastern Bloc countries, George was able to find out that there were other Bulgarians who were working as food delivery riders for Nandos.
“I only knew two things: the map of Johannesburg and how to ride a motorcycle,” he said with a chuckle as he proceeded to tell me how he found that his country mates, ten in number, all lived in one house and welcomed him with open arms.
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