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It was on the 19th of December 2016, when my big brother and I departed from our hometown in Pietermaritzburg, Kwa-Zulu Natal in South Africa. The plan was to travel down the eastern coast all the way to the Mother City, Cape Town - to spend New Years there. We had been planning this trip for a long time and we were now on our journey. Before we left, I had been skeptical about how we’d get there, but I trusted my brother who said “Don’t worry man, I got you”. We left home, took a taxi to the local rank and jumped onto another taxi that dropped us off in Mthatha which is a town in the Eastern Cape province. We arrived at about 10:00pm and luckily we managed to get the last taxi heading to Port Elizabeth. We hurried out the taxi with our bags and jumped into the other taxi. As we got in, we were met with a peculiar taxi driver. The music was banging, he was dancing while driving and was just extremely hyper. As we journeyed on, we’d drop off passengers until it was just me, my brother and the taxi driver. We then stopped at a gas station where we got the opportunity to buy refreshments and food, get some fresh air and relax a bit, after traveling for hours. We got back in the taxi, where we saw our taxi driver hanging out with his fellow taxi colleagues. As I am now sitting on the passenger seat, our driver heads on back into the taxi and says “Asihambe bafwethu”; meaning, let’s go brothers.He turns on the car as we see his friend (who seemed a little bit tipsy) coming towards the car. He comes by my side and whips out a bottle of Klipdrift Premium Brandy. I am taken back and in awe as he gives it to our taxi driver, who pours some into his energy drink. My brother and I look at each other in disbelief and shock without uttering a word, but communicating with our facial expressions. We didn’t know what was coming our way. We leave the gas station and proceed with our journey. Matters got worse because we were now following the driver’s friend who was also heading towards Port Elizabeth and also had passengers in his taxi. My brother and I realized that our lives were in danger because our driver is drinking and driving as well as his friend who we were now following. We didn’t reprimand our driver because we knew that it wasn’t going to change anything because he was our only hope left on getting to Port Elizabeth. As we drove on the highway, whenever they’d want some of the brandy, they’d drive parallel to each other and I’d be used to pass the bottle through the window to the other driver and vise versa. This happened for hours on the road until our driver got drunk. Now as we are wary due to the driver being under the influence and half asleep, my brother asks the driver if he’s still okay to drive. He immediately responds and says “NO! Take over my brother”. And indeed, my brother takes the wheel as the driver falls into deep sleep. We try to keep waking him up, but he wouldn’t budge. We carry on driving on the highway and following the other driver. And then BOOM!, he ends up hitting a crash barrier. We hoot at him until he stops and stumbles out the taxi. We get out of the car to see if he’s okay, as my brother shits on him, telling him to wake up and focus otherwise he’ll kill himself and possibly us. We get back into the taxis and proceed until we reach a point where we go our separate ways. Eventually, at around 5:00am, we made it to Port Elizabeth taxi rank. There was no one in sight. Taxi driver still snoring in the back seat. We took our bags out, put the car keys in his pocket and ventured on. Long story short. We traveled 550 kilometres for 7 hours and didn't pay a cent.