Far too far into my study abroad experience in South Africa did I come to an uncomfortable realisation: the only tangible contributions I had really made to the local community here at Stellenbosch were excessive alcohol purchases and utterly fruitless essay submissions.
Following this unfortunate epiphany, I decided to up my efforts. I volunteered weekly at a local primary school in the settlement adjacent to Stellenbosch called Kayamandi. What was initially an altruistic ambition, born in part because of guilt, was soon fatally undermined through an unexpected – though not uncharacteristic – surplus of cluelessness and competitiveness.
Whilst my fellow volunteers benevolently besieged the classroom to aid the youths with their maths assignments, as a numerically-impaired history student I was all too aware of my arithmetical (in)aptitude. Cursing my lack of foresight, I made a dash for the door so as to plot how best to be more of use than hindrance.
As I stood feigning thought outside, a couple of the school’s energetic nine-year-olds, on their lunch break at the time, happily accosted me and handed me one of the school’s BMX bikes. Only too glad to find safer ground compared to the treacherous sums indoors, it wasn’t long before I found myself hunched over the little chariot at the start line of the school dirt track, lining up alongside these helmeted infants.
Buoyed by the fact that my competition were not yet old enough to have acquired a full set of adult teeth, only confidence exceeded the adrenaline coursing through my veins. Not even hubris could derail victory here, thinks the two-wheeled hare, chuckling cocksuredly to himself as he surveys the surrounding tortoises.
The only tangible contributions I had really made to the local community here at Stellenbosch were excessive alcohol purchases and utterly fruitless essay submissions
11 races – and defeats – later, the goodwill that had initially inspired me to embark on this community engagement programme had now evaporated in the afternoon’s 36-degrees-Celsius heat. In race 12, by now shamelessly rejecting the rulebook, I took an early lead thanks to some extended limb action on the first bend.
Whilst still congratulating myself on having used my age advantage to violently destabilise my prepubescent opponents, I duly ascended the third ramp on the track. It was during this unnaturally brief defiance of gravity that my lower pedal caught the peak of the mound and sent me skidding laterally askew in what was an abrupt and somewhat hostile reacquaintance with the ground.
My juvenile rival then did the honours of consummately riding over my rib cage before he too exchanged a hasty greeting with the deck.
Having resisted an instinctive desire to unleash some of my most colourful Saxon slang on his young eardrums, I limped over to check if the ten-year-old in question was still conscious. It was one thing to be outclassed mathematically by primary school students – to then be outclassed vehicularly was frankly devastating.
Ego extinguished – and, as I trudged from the impoverished township back to my pampered university accommodation, very blind to the irony of my self-pity – my first day of volunteering drew to a premature end.
A couple of the school’s energetic nine-year-olds, on their lunch break at the time, happily accosted me and handed me one of the school’s BMX bikes
Whilst in a (potentially Nurofen-induced) self-reflective mood later on, I privately concluded that my debut performance at the primary school homework club was of minimal benefit to anyone in the community. Not least because all that I had really imparted them with were several scabs and a broken BMX bike.
However, my weekly quota of societal damage distribution was not to end there. An impromptu camping trip 200km north of Stellenbosch a few days later – a change of scene largely induced by a desire to avoid processing the carnage at the primary school – fostered ample opportunity for more disarray (vehicular or otherwise).
South Africa is amongst the more hazardous nations in which to find yourself on four wheels. 26 out of every 100,000 people die on the roads (the global average is 18). The fact that many citizens simply pay a bribe so as to be awarded a driver’s licence, rather than actually passing their test, is likely a contributing factor.
Indeed, one friend of mine broke down in tears when informed that she had failed her test, only for the examiner to then overturn his decision – which she herself admits was an unprofessional attempt to reduce his sense of guilt. It would therefore not be outrageous to argue that South Africa’s arbitrary adjudication of driving licences is one factor that probably impinges on the safety of the country’s roads.
The fact that 58 per cent of the country’s road deaths are attributed to alcohol use points to drunk driving being an equally concerning correlation. To provide context, Ireland’s rate of drunk driving deaths, high amongst Europeans, is 39 per cent. Again, a toxic combination of lax law enforcement and the abundance of bribery means that the inebriated take to the roads with a greater sense of impunity and immunity than most drivers around the world do.
It was one thing to be outclassed mathematically by primary school students – to then be outclassed vehicularly was frankly devastating
Whilst paying my dues at Hertz, and with these statistics ringing in my ears thanks to the cascading concern of my mother, the thought did cross my mind just how conducive to chaos these roads were. Not least because it really is not uncommon to hear of a contemporary who was involved in, or knows someone who was involved in, a serious accident of sorts.
However, in a vein of blind resolve similar to that which led to the blood-and-sweat-spattered chaos at the primary school just days prior, I shortly came to the conclusion that I would be exempt from any more vehicular engendered carnage that week.
Such delusion was swiftly shattered when some unforeseen, and soon to be unrecognisable, four-hoofed mammal leapt in front of our onrushing Polo.
‘The deposit!’, I lamented, in a somewhat frugal display of bestial empathy – a reaction posited in stark contrast to my passengers’ acute concern for the wellbeing of the now blighted buck. In response to them drawing parallels between my indifference to Stalin, I argued that their sympathetic sentiments were shielded by their ignorance of financial details on the national car rental database.
Indeed, it is likely that this incident would have rattled me more were we not eight hours into what is normally a two-hour car journey. That, and the fact that two hours earlier the gods had already thrust another chainsaw into the bowels of the Polo’s deposit. This previous incident involved a rogue and abnormally large tyre abstractly situated in the middle of the motorway – and our involuntary contact with it, which had threatened to shave the remainder of our life expectancies.
Such delusion was swiftly shattered when some unforeseen, and soon to be unrecognisable, four-hoofed mammal leapt in front of our onrushing Polo
With the depleted Polo only fractionally more functional than my now disfigured fiscal future, we eventually arrived at a campsite on the beach (“campsite” being a generous term for what even those three infamously blind mice would have struggled to mistake for any Garden of Eden). After a solid hour of crawling through biting wind and suspended sand, and stamping pegs into unholy angles, we had erected a tent with the structural integrity of an Atacaman igloo. However, our attempts to imbue our architectural endeavours with a more traditional Eskimo theme were not wholly in vain. A byproduct of our engineering ineptitude was the inadvertent importation to the abode of the aggressive Atlantic storm from outside.
Rarely has a week which began with such positive intent spiralled into a week littered with such unforeseen turbulence. Even so, whilst I don’t guffaw at that series of events to the extent that my siblings do, I concede that a more competent individual would probably do a better job of volunteering at a local primary school – never mind constructing a tent.
