Neighbourhoods are places where friends look out for each other, and where strangers can work their way into your life in the strangest of ways. Even then, they can teach us something about the walls we put up between ourselves
I am privileged to belong to a warm and connected neighbourhood community. After once hearing it said that your quality of life can be measured by the communities you belong in, I have realised that I am very well, even wealthy, in the glow of my neighbourhood. We know each other.
For many years I’ve felt happy in my home. It’s a grand dame of a house, always certain to inspire a flush of admiration, which is very cheersome for me. I am house proud. That’s a good habit, my mom would say.
The old house has seen a lot. She needs constant upkeep. It takes work to keep her in shape.
In this neighbourhood, we still have corner cafes, not hipster hives but orderly little stores on the odd corner. If one shop has no milk or eggs, I go to the other.
Outside one of them I met a local, quite a while back, who I’ll call Yaya, because that is his name. Ja ja. A dodgy character, one could quite safely say.
He walked past my house the other day and remarked on the front fence, suggesting it would benefit from a coat of varnish. I had to agree. I have not painted it in 17 years. Not that it looks bad, it could just look better, and last a lot longer.
I agreed to let him come and give it a ‘light sand’ at a certain hour on a Friday afternoon, and was impressed when he showed up on time, to the minute. I paid him for his work and then cleared my mind to make a time we could meet for the follow up, the big paint. The wall is porous, and cannot repel a drop of paint. It needs to be very carefully applied, paint.
We decided on 8:30 on a Monday morning, and I was a little irked when he arrived nearly an hour later. I had pretty much everything ready, save for some sandpaper to do the few parts he’d missed, and some mutton cloth, to wipe away the excess residue of the lovely 100% natural product I was doing to use to seal the wood against the elements.
Although this sounds arrogant, I was giving Yaya a chance. He needed one. I asked if he could go to the local hardware store, four blocks away, and get the goods, while I attended to my mother, staying with me briefly. I slipped him a blue note, and well, that’s the last I saw of him.
It was too much I guess, too much temptation. Sure, he could have painted with me and gotten much more than that, and years of future work into the bargain. I wasn’t sure if he would return, but at least he had the chance to. It didn’t matter. But I did see myself reflected in his eyes, about making a choice, a choice that could not be made. Was it inevitable? I don’t think so. I’m not sure.
To add another layer to this tale – I decided to paint the fence myself. The coating was like honey, thick, tedious and difficult to apply. I put the ladder inside the gate, for although I sing the praises of where I live, it is no Eden. I went inside to fetch some turps to thin the paint and some water to drink.
On the pavement I left my masking tape, the paper I had taped to the wall below the fence, two expensive tins of paint (one of them open with a brush in it) and two other brushes besides.
When I emerged minutes later all was gone! I scanned the street and saw two gentlemen on the corner, fifty yards away. “Hey,” I called, instinctively, “You can’t steal my (expletive deleted) paint! Give me my (expletive deleted) paint!”
The men stopped in their tracks. They nodded to each other and sheepishly turned around, and moments later were unpacking their rucksacks outside by gate, with my paint and brushes, neatly folded into some newspaper. “Sorry,” one of them mumbled, “We thought you left it outside, and didn’t need it.”
“With the paint open!” I declared. “Really? Come on, you knew I was painting. Even the fence is wet with it.”
They were nice guys who took a chance. Kind of like the chance Yaya took. Working men without work. Probably with mouths to feed. Anything not bolted down is fair game.
I used to be like that. I would feel nothing for lifting something I liked, taking things from building sites or the back of supermarkets. In my youth I could shoplift myself into a stupor.
I’ve changed. I’ve learnt to respect other people’s things as if they were my own. And these people have taught me that. For that, I thank them.
And I still love my hood. That people can turn around and say sorry. Which is what Yaya will tell me when I bump into him next time, I’m sure.
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