This morning was all about killing time before we boarded the bus bound for George. Having walked for what seemed like miles down the esplanade, we arrived outside the local Wimpy and had a hearty cooked breakfast to set us up for the journey ahead. By the time we had walked back and watched the hordes starting to gather for a street festival, it was time to board the bus.
It all started so well, the bus was a modern double-decker; we found ourselves a seat upstairs at the front with generous leg room and settled in for the 10 hour journey. What we hadn't expected, was that for the about seven hours of the ten we would be preached to incessantly. I have no problem with anyone choosing to be religious, if you feel that it brings something that is missing from your life, then good for you. What I cannot abide, is having it forced down my throat continually, especially when I am using a public service!
Under the banner of good, wholesome, family, entertainment, we got to watch a succession of programmes each more depressing than the last. Why not ignore the televisions you may say? Well, when the volume is set to such a level that trying to drown it out with your own music is impossible, it makes it very difficult to ignore.
Intercape make a big song and dance of their fine safety record, driver training programmes and continual vehicle maintenance and for that they should be applauded. Especially considering the safety record of most other African transport. But did they really need to effectively re-write the Lord's prayer to include “please protect our passengers as we travel along South Africa's roads” and then lead us in prayer? I personally would rather trust to the driving skill of our assigned driver, than consider that my fate is in the hands of a supposedly omnipotent being!
What made the journey especially offensive though was the subject matter of the supposedly family friendly films and programmes. We were treated to the tale of a young girl who self harmed and made multiple suicide attempts until she found Jesus. This was followed by the life story of a young gang member who having already shown himself to be a thoroughly unpleasant person, suddenly saw the light at the very point he was about to take the life of a rival. Neither of the stories had any great moral about repentance; in the case of the gang member, he seemingly took great delight in the telling of his antics.
Following the real life stories we had a movie about a woman suffering from early onset Alzheimer's; another with a cast of the most stereotypically bigoted people you could ever wish to encounter and a third about a young gang member who discovered he had a terrific voice which lifted him from the American mean streets. To be fair, the final one was at least a little uplifting! Obviously in each of the films somewhere along the line finding Jesus made everything alright.
Even more worrying was an advert for a film about the violent rape of a young woman who, upon falling pregnant from the assault, decides that with the help of her faith she will raise the child and redeem the rapist who she now bizarrely loves. Can anyone see anything wholesome and family friendly about the programming, because I certainly don't.
I could go on forever and to some it may seem that I have already. I will just leave it, that it has to be the most unpleasant, cringe worthy bus journey I have ever undertaken and we still have the return journey to look forward to!
Finally at 10pm they turned the “entertainment” off and we got a little rest before Debs friend Georgie met us at about 11:30pm. Pleased to have escaped the journey we had a brief chat and then hit our beds for the night. It has been a tiring, trying day.
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