Five Minutes of South Africa

I'm sitting in my car at the scruffy petrol station on the corner by the squatter camp, on my way back from dropping the kids at school. The courteous pump attendant is filling the car, washing the windscreen and checking the oil. My mind drifts after my eyes. Various groups of men and women wait patiently and good-humouredly at the roadside, standing waiting for a taxi or a bakkie to pick them up for work, for a lift to town. It seems to me to epitomise the slower pace of life, Africa time, where you can't be in a hurry, because who knows whether you'll have to wait an hour for a lift or a minute. Patience is a survival necessity, patience and acceptance. A good lesson for me, as I always seem to be in a hurry, always two minutes behind time on the school run, too time conscious altogether.

I look above the heads of the people and through a gap in the trees to see a cloudy sky with the sun piercing through to pick out the rocky face of Table Mountain in the distance, its benevolent eternal steady energy embracing us from afar.

Three people stroll into view, two men and a woman. It looks like they're on their way to work in the bottle store, which is still locked up. The tallest man is wearing a black beanie, black top and jeans, on his back he carries a bright pink rucksack, Barbie ingenuously beaming her candyfloss smile to the world. I smiled in return, trying to imagine a big man anywhere else in the world unselfconsciously going to work with Barbie hitching a ride.

The pump attendant takes my card and smilingly says that they're going to have to open a car wash here. I look down at my clay-encrusted car and give the usual answer that there's no point, as we live down three kilometres of dirt road and it'll be just as dirty again by the time I get home. I realise that some of the patience of the people and steadfastness of the mountain has communicated itself to me, at least for the time I've been waiting as he strolls unhurriedly to process my card. I've been reflecting instead of fretting at the delay and taking away a few bright images as souvenirs.