FRED KHUMALO: Hitting the road
As I begin to drift to sleep, soggy sarmy in hand, a demon appears and says: ‘Why in the hell are you walking, you’ve already written the book?’
It’s 5.45am, Monday. I’m at the Yale Street entrance to Wits University. I start walking. I hurtle down Jorissen, which vomits me into Bertha. I cross the Queen Elizabeth Bridge. On Simmonds Street I’m in town proper. At Anderson I bear left, turn right at Kruis. When we hit the corner of Kruis and Salisbury the city has changed its character.
It’s 6am but the denizens of the area are sitting on beer crates on the pavement, quaffing beer. Three women, hair in disarray, sleep-deprived faces covered in smudges of cheap make-up, want to offer us their bodies: "Come on, bhuti, very cheap." A huge sigh of relief as we hit Heidelberg Road. No adrenaline-crazed taxi drivers and delusional prostitutes here...
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