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Going to Lunch in Johannesburg and Other Challenges
By Annetta Holmes

Nipping out of the office to buy a lunch sandwich or burger may be a fairly uneventful occurrence for a Westerner. Not so if you happen to work in downtown Johannesburg.

Working in South Africa’s largest city has its own special problems. Sadly we’re not allowed to use the word “problems” anymore least we offend some gentle-hearted, easily-crushed voice of Authority. So we are confined to filling our dialogue or our writings with euphemisms of “issues” and “challenges.”

Our biggest one in the City of Gold is the litter that floats around her streets; plastic bags hanging from overhead power lines, lightening rods, flag poles and other protuberances. Aluminum cans blocking up the street gutters and discarded polystyrene trays blowing along the pavements.

Our second issue is the street vendors. Like water flowing through a bone-dry river bed at the start of summer, just after sun up, every week-day morning the vendor washes onto the streets. Within minutes every flat surface from intersection to intersection is covered with wares. Food, clothing, handbags and all manner of commodities cramp the sidewalk and shuffle onto the tarmac. Heavy concrete dustbins are wheeled onto the road to warn passing traffic not to trespass in the shopping “aisles.” A truly robust entrepreneurial spirit but alas, the affliction of the lunch sandwich pursuer.

Take a walk along the streets of Johannesburg while you clutch your handbag to your bosom least someone tries to relieve you of it – your bag not the other thing, and you’ll find yourself immersed in litter and “shops”. Instead of looking at the beautiful colonial architecture - buildings constructed from finely crafted blocks of sandstone in the late 1800s - your eyes remain glued to the sidewalk as a collage of rubbish and merchandise stretches before you.

A “stroll” down Commissioner Street, one of the busiest in Johannesburg, soon deteriorates into dancing a jig as you flip this way and that, dodging cold drink cans and avoiding someone’s discarded half eaten lunch laying on the floor a mere metre from an empty dull-grey municipal dustbin.

Who on earth, one might ask, would want to visit the inner city of Jo’burg? Well the week-day commuters to the city have to, it’s where their jobs are and more importantly it’s where the hunt begins, between noon and two, to get a spot of lunch.

Now lunch has two requirements; a hungry stomach and the ability to launch yourself across the streets in search of sustenance. Of course the lunch challenge has a solution; order in. However if you work above tree height in a glass-encased, artificially-aired, florescent-lit cube for eight hours a day then remaining there during lunch break is never appealing no matter how sensible.

The lunch dilemma of going out or staying in only occurs because of periodic bouts with memory loss. Breathe enough recycled air and your brain atrophies preventing you from remembering how it felt the last time you fetched food. Plus you allow imagination to occasionally rule you. In your imagination, as the dinner bell goes off in your head, along side the corresponding rumbling around your midriff, images of soft fresh spring air, a bit of sunshine and a tasty sandwich appear before you. Maybe a stroll down to the Library Gardens and a thirty minute bake in the sun on a city bench? Obviously you’ve confused Johannesburg with some British Midlands city or Central Park.

In reality there is the soft spring air, loaded with pollutants and the Library Gardens, brimming with vagrants. Your mind, all rosy with spring luncheon pictures turns itself to reality. The streets down below your tenth floor office will by now be teeming with people, a large proportion of which are mobile hawkers and sidewalk vendors. Your lunch seek-and-enjoy mission will have to overcome a few obstacles. Eager for a little space and sunshine you slip off your high heeled sandals, pull on short socks then follow those with gum boots in stark white. You take out twenty rand from your purse and stuff the note deep into your trouser pocket. Next you remove your watch, wedding ring and earrings. You lock them away with your handbag in your desk draw. Now you’re ready to go and fetch lunch. Already warning bells should be tinkling. Loudly!

As you step onto the sidewalk you sniff the air then shrink back against the wall to avoid being trampled by a jostling group walking four abreast. The rich scent of “boerewors” (Afrikaans for farmer’s sausage) frying on a Cadac gas stove wafts by from the sausage man a metre from your office block door. He doesn’t have a trading license but neither does the hot dog man next to him. Half a paving block further, between a handbag vendor and faux-Gucci belt salesman, an old woman sits on an up-turned drum, her tongs adeptly turning mielies (corn on the cob) that roast slowly on a grill over the fire she has made on the pavement. The red-hot coals creating a burnt-black shape on the concrete while nearby a tiny hill of maize skins grow larger and larger as her daughter strips fresh corn for the fire....

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Written by: Annetta Holmes
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