we seem to be talking on two threads now so i am switching my reply to your other post to here as well
Are you on an estate or independant house -i was just thinking about the car situation because i realise there is little alternative transport you can take - if you had a reliable mechanic could it be fixed so it becomes less unreliable - because i think that is going to be the key to your situation improving - if you are on an estate perhaps a neighbour or one of the security guys can help you find one and that search in itself could be a conversation opener and a way to break the ice with the people actually around you.I can fully understand why you wouldnt want to take an unreliable car across the city so the fist step could be to fix it, and also to look for ways to learn about how you can do some of the maintainance side of things yourself in future - often certain vehicles have online forums which could help, or there are you tube videos etc.
Another solution would be to get breakdown cover if you can afford too, i know over there plenty of people can turn up in a breakdown vehicle randomly, but if you have some-one known to you who you can build up a relationship of trust with, then you will probably feel more confident.
It is early days yet and its natural reaction to want, on the one hand to to stay at home and hide away and on the other to have people around you - that is probably something we all find, regardless of whether there actually are people around or not - What happens in time is that some disapear some re-appear and over time new friendships emerge - sometimes from people we least expect who have hithertoo been more aquaintance than friend, and other times from new people - if you think about it those changes go on throughout other different periods in our lives, - when we go to high school and leave junior school friends behind, when we marry and drift from single friends towards other couples and so it is the same with grief. When you start to feel stronger, and you will,then you will start to fill the time that at the moment feels like a yawning chasm -
Initially i was the same - TV is a noise in the house -it makes it feel less empty, but i wasnt really watching it, I couldnt be bothered with old hobbys, i am normally a bit of an environmentalist/conservationsist - but i just stopped caring, i lost my pasion for absolutely everything - even reading, which i had done throughout my whole life as a way of taking my mind off the real world stopped working. Gradually they came back
I took up crocheting - because i found a bag of my mums old knitting wool in the loft she had also died and i didnt feel i could just dump it - and as knitting and me have a bad history and i watched some-one crocheting while holding a conversation and drinking wine i though maybe it was something i could do with my less than foccussd mind. - some situations present themselves without us seeing them coming.
Maybe if you feel you cant be bothered to crochet for yourself, and often we do feel we dont want to do something for ourselves i didnt even bother to cook for myself for a long time, you could do it for some-one else - neo natal units for example often welcome tiny clothes for premature babies.
Classes -they are possible -there are a lot of free online courses - have a look at futurelearn - they are international, (I have done a couple lead by capetown university as well as UK and an Aussie one ) they are short, require little commitment and cost free - i have done a load of them and in a way, although originally it was done just to fill time, and i chose random subjects that i thought might be a bit interesting and often seemed unrelated they did connect and did re-ignite that passion - and not just passion, but now more educated - therefore more coherent and allowing me to be more confident in what i am saying.
You communicate with other students on the site via comments boxes, and so make contact with other people with the same interests you probably will never meet them in the real world -occasionally people from the same course set up facebook groups to continue contact - i am in a writing group that emerged from that.
Its not the same as getting out there and meeting real people - but i have difficultys doing that -(social anxiety) and your difficultys are largely practical ones, but building confidence is a really good start to overcoming those difficulties.
Durban is indeed beautiful, they were in Capetown last year which was also stunning and before that in Gauteng - which is less so but close enough to other areas which are.They set off on a two year trip through renting out the house there, and using long stay air bnb - as he can pretty much run his business by phone and their daughter was too young for school to be an issue, it seemed the right time - but the idea wasnt just for a long road trip but to find somewhere better to settle and the couple of months in Durban expanding as it has to almost a year now speaks volumes about what that decision is, so i am pretty sure i will be returning in the coming winter.
keep coming back, keep talking, we might be on the other side of the world but you are not alone.