Losing your independence as you age is hard.
You may have been a successful business person, fought in a war or brought up children under incredibly difficult circumstances. You reach an arbitrary compulsory retirement age of 60 or 65 and you are suddenly looking at the 4 walls in your home, lost and bereft.
If you live in South Africa where our public transport is poor, you probably obtained your drivers licence at 18, purchased a car as soon as you could afford it, and for 40+ years you drove yourself to the shops, to church, the doctor or visited friends.
To keep yourself from going crazy, you continue to take yourself out and about until you realise that the cost of living is skyrocketing and your savings are rapidly dwindling.
Your car is aging faster than you are. Perhaps you used to have a company vehicle and all the maintenance and fuel costs and insurance were covered by your employer.
You can no longer buy a car on hire purchase because you may not live long enough to fulfill the contract. Purchasing a second hand car is a minefield and unless you have a trustworthy mechanic to assist you, it is likely you will end up with a dud.
You plan future shopping expeditions more carefully, visit friends less and the isolation increases. One of the main reasons you go to the shops is to feel like you are still part of the real world.
Reluctantly you reduce your car insurance from fully comprehensive with car hire and all the bells and whistles, to Balance of Third Party Fire and Theft or take the risk and cancel your insurance altogether.
If you live alone with no family or shops close by the fear and loneliness can be overwhelming.
If you have opted for communal living, depending on your financial situation, your communal retirement home can be super luxurious with buses to transport you to doctors and shops or at the other end of the scale, a room and a shared bathroom. Meals may or may not be included in your rent or levy.
So, how do you survive without transport?
Your children and other well meaning folk have told you to use UBER or other driving apps to take you where you need to go, and to order your food from your local supermarket online and have the goods delivered.
Huh? What on earth are they talking about? Anyway, you can’t afford the data to use the apps and they are far too complicated to learn at this stage of your life. Not to mention the additional costs.
Even if there is a shop in walking distance, oldies are afraid they will be mugged or get run over crossing the roads. You make it to the shops but how do you get your groceries home? We have 2 four-lane roads to navigate as we totter to our closest shop.
A local church sends a minibus to take some of our residents to a shopping mall once a week for 2 hours which is a big help.
Even though our eye-sight is no longer great and we are getting deaf and our arthritis is preventing easy movement, we will cling to our vehicles as long as we can.