Society thrives on acts of kindness and crumbles from acts of unkindness.
Kindness is the easy part. In the hustle and bustle of getting Hetty the GSA 1200 repaired I forgot that only one small tech thing was not repaired — the fuel gauge.
Trust me, I am a good Eastern Cape person, I know all about work-arounds.
I used my trip clock and lots of calculations to work out how much fuel I had in the tank. It is 521km.
That is precisely when the bike ran dry, on the NEX, during rush hour, up a hill, right where the lead-in lane from Beacon Bay joins the double lane, like, it was busy.
Bumper to bumper.
The moment she went uuurgh, I knew. I had run out of fuel and memory cells.
I had enough speed to coast suddenly to the yellow line and there I stood, calling friends.
Interesting that, but in a small town, suddenly friends started arriving.
Some were trapped in the far lane and on the school run so they gave me a startled toot.
Sir Gerald appeared from nowhere, pulled to the side, edged out the door as traffic whizzed past, and checked out the problem in person.
By then I had phoned Vix and if you ever want something done, give it to this cherry.
She was on it like a scone-nit. We were due to swim Orient in our non-competitive build-up to do the 5km Bellbuoy off Pollock Beach and so she headed straight back to me.
But what is this? A biker pulls up. He is wearing a Lycra track racing tee and has a daughter in a helmet and Stirling blazer on the back of his Kawasaki Versys.
He asks about the problem, I tell him it’s all under control and he vanishes schoolwards.
Shem, my China of Save Nahoon cannot save himself this morning for Kev too has problems — a bakkie tyre he had plugged yesterday has decided no rock n roll today and has gone all unplugged.
Anyhoo there I am parked and parking off when out of the corner of my eye I spot the rich blue of the Kawasaki Versys and there is my saint in bike armour.
Nicholas Moshesh is looking down from the upper NEX.
He hops over, downclimbs, does the traffic jive and hands me three litres of fuel.
I call ahead and Vix is at the beach with a round tin full of fuel.
No ways. I have old friends and new friends.
This is why we love this place: it’s big enough to call itself a city and small enough to call itself a community.
If I was in Cape Town in this traffic, how many upturned, indifferent noses would there be?
I felt such a sense of homecoming, but it’s back to work Deloris.
Nicholas is the product of a Makhanda farmer with an Afrikaans name and Mrs Moshesh.
The couple had three children, two of them twins, and then the father married someone else.
Nicholas got divorced, felt a bit down so he did what any self-respecting oke would do; he built himself a house and filled it with three or four bikes, mostly for adventure riding and he gets out often on backcountry rides.
The difference is that he built in a “squatter camp” outside Gonubie where he says life is lakka and everyone knows who he is.
His daughter, he says, loves her ride to school.
Who wouldn’t?
My daughter laughed when I told her she would be inheriting the bikes, until we rode pillion on the last leg of the 2024 Grandads Army-Aybantwana for the Children Trust Heritage Ride from Thomas River to Reef Cafe.
Joh, she smaaked it but then it was back to her real life. Though, the magic carpet is waiting, dear child.
Other acts of kindness; the technician who renovated this very bike, Barry Canning, just announces he will ride Hetty to my door.
Then there is Deloris, the infamous naked bike KLR 650.
I have been eating myself from the inside out about getting the bikes serviced and renovated and finally I could take it no longer and Vence and team came and started to try and get her beat back up.
But the battery, it was dead. Who was I gonna call? Hetty was in for repairs, so I tried Allmans Agencies. Yah, they had one.
But I lived in Gonubie. No, we will deliver, said Dale, and so waar, an hour or two later there is the delivery bike, with battery in the hand of a clean-shaven elderly wit oke. Who is this guy?
He is a retired police colonel whose son works at the agency and when a delivery rider became unavailable over the busy period, the colonel stepped in — and hasn’t got off the bike since.
But the battery did not fit by two centimetres. My fault as the number had worn off from the shaking and rattling.
Dale said the new one would be there by Friday — I had a deadline — and come the day, Dale was on the line and the battery was on its way.
This time it’s a tall guy, also clean and lean, who tells me he is a reservist for the Israeli Defence Force for fun and cleans up all the tanks when they come in.
I hold my tongue about Palestine and the genocide, and he tells me once the machines are cleaned and repaired they are placed in a “giant condom” — a massive humidifier bag, which is plugged into the wall and there the war machines sit, all lubed and ready to rumble.
Could I get one like that for Deloris whose wiring is all rusted and crusted?
But that is fixed now and she is back on the road causing trouble.
But what of random acts of unkindness? Littering, one of the most complex problems.
Why do it?
It’s “ingrained” is one suggestion, to which I add yeah, when you grow up in communities which are trashed round the clock, that state becomes normalised.
I find that so sad.
I know many fight this appalling maelstrom — humble homes are spotless and clothes are clean.
But when the streets run with fresh water and sewage, and the waste is not picked up properly, and the streets look like Mordor, I imagine hopelessness and disassociation step in and tossing your packaging on the street or out the window is all you can do.
If there is no bin and no system, it takes a smart, determined person to fight this deliberate disorder.
For there are resources, but they are not being spent in our trashed areas.
I think about this every time I see those unmarked white refuse trucks rumbling along, replacing our municipal trucks with private tenders … for water, for lights, for sewage … it’s all about the tender.
And then there is just obstinacy.
A blind refusal to help, or serve, or do anything but the bare minimum.
That one, especially if it comes with a side of snarling disrespect, is a problem.
I have no words for the filthy rich who swan around smashing their extravagantly expensive booze bottles in the beach car park or race their swanky cars onto beach sand only to get stuck.
Trying to be a good person is a sublime skill we should market for this is how we have had to learn to live in this metro, always on the lookout for rejection or worse, while keeping a smile on your dial.
Now I don’t think it is healthy to pretend that working with dysfunction, especially when it is driven by corruption, is a positive act.
It’s actually a form of collaboration, borne of pragmatism or survivalism, but when the system gets going, please don’t yell out from the spinning cage that you want to get off.
You are firmly embedded and are going to have to think your way out of the knot.
Getting back to being good is a daily struggle and I want to pay my deepest respects to those who still manage to perform random acts of kindness.
These deeds show that you actually care about humanity.
It’s never good enough to bark “phelile”, or “it’s not my problem” or “voetsek”.
Yes, it is a battle, but I believe the skebenga within, when not fuelled by booze, drugs and negative addictions, can be told to sit in the corner and let the adults work this out.
Nobody is perfect, but few, when they think about it, are perfectly evil.
Thanks to all my friends for giving a damn. I will always try and return the favour. Daily Dispatch
