Welcome to London

I’ve been playing Monopoly for the past few days, bouncing through Waterloo, Bond, and Piccadilly.

Before leaving, I asked my brother for some advice. He laughed. “You have no clue what you’re getting yourself into.” Too right. Gumtree is what he offered. Hey, to be fair, he did throw me more tit-bits, and laughed some more, but gumtree was the important thing. It’s the trademe of London. And so with little fanfare, off I went.

The red-eye from Cape Town left me dehydrated and sleep-deprived. What better way to enter one of the greatest cities in the world. I had disappointingly converted my Rand to Pounds before I left, and when I arrived, I disappointingly converted my remaining US dollars. I had left the Kwacha, and Shillings alone, they wouldn’t even touch that in South Africa. I didn’t even think about my Zim dollars.

Let’s get the basics over with. London. Eight million or so, drab, cold, wet, concrete, grey, thanks for asking. Just add ‘home’ to that list for a while. I took the tube from Terminal four to Paddington station, amazed at how subterranean the developed world had become. It wasn’t difficult to get to my backpackers, the Mapesbury Hostel, and with a simple transfer or two, I was staring at my new home for the week. A four-bunk room, empty juice cartons on the floor, and an assortment of clothes thrown around like a bomb; it was like being nineteen all over again. With my thirty kilos of worldly possessions thrown into a corner, I was light-footed and eager to explore.

If you had to be proportional about your London experience, you would talk mostly about the tubes. Perhaps you’d begin animatedly, and mention the intercom system, the ease of jumping on and off the stations, the escalators which go on forever, and the stairs you always seem to be climbing when you’re off. It takes about an hour to get over it, by which time you’ll realise that these musty and sweaty sardine tins will be your life for the next few years. It’s also about then you’ll notice that London thrives on that other social phenomenon: queues.

The pinnacle of human development is the queue. Millennia’s of civilisation produces a person who can stand directly behind another to gaze vacantly, and step forward unconsciously onto the footprints of their predecessor. This is performed in spirit-quashing silence. If you live in the city, this will be referred as ‘normal’. Depressingly so.

I went to Piccadilly Circus to explore. I bought a coke for £1.99, which on my coke scale makes it the most expensive coke I’ve drank. Let’s quickly remind ourselves:

New Zealand - NZ$2 (US$1.45)
South Africa - R5 (US$0.70)
Zambia - Kwa2000 (US$0.50)
Zimbabwe - Z$5,000 (US$0.25 at time of purchase. It’s probably quadruple that by now)
Tanzania - Tsh1,000 (US$0.80 )

And now add:

London - £1,99 (US$3.94)

And everything here costs crazy amounts. My handy rough guide is keen to point out that this is one of the most expensive cities in the world. Hoo-bloody-ray. Stalls outside were selling half-price tickets to the West End. Stomp, Chicago, Mary Poppins, Lion King. It’ll set me back a cool £30, cash I should be saving for important stuff, but let’s face it, I’m not going to resist for long. Queues stretch away in every direction. There are a dozen stalls offering cut-price tickets with dozens of people neatly lined up, suffering in silence under the rain.

I continue to wander, and find myself blinking often. I don’t think much of it and continue walking, drinking in the visual. Then the migraine begins. My eyes feel hollow so I stop to close them for a second. Down went the eyelids, and immediately I am sucked into the oblivion. I opened them with a start. My body had been complaining, and was finally turning the screws. I return to Leicester square, and join a queue at the Odeon. It’s for the latest Pirates movie, not that it matters. Taking my seat, the house-lights already dim, I quickly lose focus. The feature begins, as I sink into the darkness.

Jack Sparrow wakes me with a bang, and my head clears. I control my body and take stock, remembering in an instant my past month. Amidst high seas and whirlpools, I am taken through dusty roads in Kabwe and to the reef around Zanzibar. I zoom through Pretoria and Cape Town as cutlasses clash in front.

I am in one of the largest cities in the world. I am homeless and unemployed, a minnow in an ocean, and I need to begin swimming soon. The clock is ticking.