In the right place, at the right time, for the right reason, all of us are in some way connected. Sean O’Connor shares a tale of a chance encounter, a mad dash through the Cape Town traffic, and a random act of kindness to lift the spirits.
After leaving my colleague’s house in my modest car at about 10am the other day, I noticed a woman, unsure whether she could cross the street in front of me. It was a stop street, after all, a good place to cross, but cars have a bad rep for pedestrians.
The woman seemed agitated. I noticed her pursed face, her flickering eyes. Suddenly, my small lifetime’s worth of experience and perspective flooded a narrow channel in my brain, and I acted.
I have hitch-hiked all over the place, and at many different stages in my life – adolescent (sorry mom), teenager, young adult, older adult. I have also offered lifts to strangers, and been mugged by someone I picked up once.
But looking at this harried woman, I decided very quickly to greet her and ask her if she needed a lift up the road.
The very next thing, a hot and panicked stranger got into my car, and was sitting alongside me.
“Where do you need to go?”
She gave a flustered reply: “I’ve got a job interview at the Pick and Pay. I’m so late. I need this job. Oh, I really need this job. But I’m so late.”
“Which Pick and Pay? Where is it?”
We were in Kenilworth Avenue, Cape Town, heading for the snarl of Main Road.
“Table View,” she said. (Table View is very far away. 30 kswith lots of traffic and about an hour’s drive.)
“What time do you have to be there?”
“10h30. But they phoned to say I will be late.”
“They phoned? Who phoned?” I asked.
It transpired that Khetso (not her real name) had been to the Head Office of Pick n’ Pay in Kenilworth earlier in the week, written an entrance exam and passed. She’d returned to the Head Office (from her home in Du Noon, another 30 ks or so) and been told to go to the Pick n’ Pay in Melkbos for a job interview.
Now, I actually needed to go to Table View (near the Melkbos Pick n Pay, I thought) for a second-hand computer part for my son (bless!). So the thought was in my mind after all, sitting there like a little unbroken egg.
I called the seller, living somewhere up the West Coast Road, but he wasn’t available. (At that point I had no idea that he was a schoolboy, thus engaged in his lessons.)
Nonetheless, I had some time on my hands, and petrol in the tank, so I determined to take Khetso as far as the MyCiti bus-stop in Milnerton, which runs all the way up to Melkbos. Not too far out of my way.
I have never caught a MyCiti bus, I confess. I am privileged, see. But why am I doing this? Because it needs to be done, was the simple answer. And I can do it.
I thought it was an elegant solution, the MyCiti bus. Then we whizzed past Milnerton, when Khetso asked if I believed in God.
“All the gods, yes,” I answered, “but I’m not a churchgoer.”
“I will pray for you,” she answered.
I’ve learnt to thank people for their prayers. Prayers are powerful things. Intention, directed, can change the world.
How she had planned on getting to Melkbos? “A taxi along Main Road to Cape Town station, and then another from there to Table View,” she said. Hours and hours of waiting, perhaps she’d get out there by late afternoon. And the manager waiting for her might be indifferent to her plight, or absent, and the job probably gone.
“Did you think that when you woke up this morning you would be driving in a strange mlungu’s car to your job interview?”
“No,” she laughed. “I thank God for sending you.”
Had He? Or She? I’d realised earlier in our journey, back in Kenilworth, that part of the mission revealing itself to me was to just help this woman calm down, and to help prepare for the interview. She was so fraught, so coiled with fear of not getting the job, so I asked if I should ask her a few questions so she could practise for the interview. “Ewe bhuti,” she said.
“So what are you going to say when they ask you why you want this job?”
It turned out that she’d worked in a bakery before, and that’s what she wanted to do again. She’d enjoyed her work, but lost it somehow. Her husband owned a hair salon. She had two kids, a boy and a girl, aged 10 and six. She was in her mid-40s, I’d say.
“That’s all you need,” I vouchsafed. “Experience and a smile. Customers always want a smile.” She smiled. (I know this because at my local supermarket, you are greeted with a snarl at the bread counter, as if they are doing you a favour, and you are really causing a major hindrance by asking for a pie!)
We approached and went through the suburban sludge of Table View. We passed a sign for Melkbos but then the road narrowed and big fast white bakkies loomed large in the rearview mirror. I then decided to call the Melkbos Pick ‘n Pay and find out where exactly they were. Some really friendly managerial person told me that we had to drive off the R27, turn left at the second traffic circle, go in behind the Sasol to Goods Receiving.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m driving my friend Khetso there for an interview. Please expect her shortly.”
We laughed. I joked with her that not only was I driving her all the way there, but was going to help her get the job as well! “I’ll never forget this day,” she said again.
We found the spot – heaven knows how she would have found it, from the rudimentary map they’d given her at Head Office. As she got out the car I asked her for 20 bucks (just kidding!) What I meant to say was, she asked for my number, to let me know if she got the job.
That evening, she phoned. “I got it,” she said.
It felt that I was the one receiving the gift, and that briefly, my life had immense purpose and meaning. Just because I asked someone something. A total stranger.
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