N2 Adventure

There are supposedly few places more dangerous in Cape Town than the N2 highway at night.

If you believe what you hear, breaking down on that highway is akin to a death sentence. Armed bands of robbers roam the road, looking for hapless drivers stranded on the shoulder. Then they beat them up, take their stuff, and leave them for dead.

That's the conventional wisdom, anyway. The conventional wisdom tends to be a little exaggerated here, but there's no escaping the fact that a lot of people believe it... and their belief has to be based on some bedrock of truth.

Even if the truth is buried very deep beneath the bluster.

So when our beloved Swamp Thing ran out of gas on the N2 a few weeks ago after I had picked my brother up from the airport one evening, I did a quick calculation. One of us was going to have to go for gas. The other was going to have to stay with the car. And since I knew where the closest gas station was, and my brother didn't, it was pretty obvious who would be doing what.

Even as the car was coughing and sputtering to a stop on the shoulder, I was debating the merits of sharing the conventional wisdom with my brother.

Dave had been in the country for a week by then, and had just returned from Joburg, and was starting to gather that some people here are a little nervous about crime.

But did he need to know that he would be standing watch over a car on a much-maligned stretch of road? Did he need to know that some people here would advise that we just abandon the car, expect to never see it again, and file an insurance claim the next day?

I made the unilateral decision that he did not.

And then I left him there.

If anyone has seen a blonde guy who's about my height, or a white VW rabbit, in the vicinity of Mitchell's Plain, could you shoot me an e-mail?

Just kidding.

What actually happened was, I made the decision to leave him there, and through the teamwork of a large group of strangers and a critical contribution from a good friend, we managed to get gas, get back to the car, and get home in one piece.

First, a woman stopped for me the instant I started to walk away from the car to the next offramp--which happened to be our usual exit. (We broke down less than a mile from home.)

She was VERY kind, and gave me a lift almost all the way to our flat. She was perfectly willing to drive me all the way to the front door, but I made her drop me where she could turn around easily.

Then I got our neighbor, Marcus, to drive me to a gas station so I could get a gallon or two of petrol. The gas station was useless: they didn't sell canisters to hold the gas and didn't know where to get any, but Marcus had anticipated this, and he had grabbed his green watering can from the kitchen for us to fill up with gasoline.

Then we drove back to Dave, with me holding the watering can on my knees.

Dave was still there! And there was a man standing with him! And the car was there too!

Marcus and I drove up from the opposite direction, so we had to park and cross the not-so-busy highway on foot. When we get there, Dave tells us that four cars had stopped in the 20 minutes I had been gone. None had been packed with armed-to-the-teeth robbers who were looking to do him harm. Instead, all of them were nice people who wanted to make sure he was getting his petrol problems sorted out.

Let's be clear: this did not surprise me in the least. But I think it would surprise a few of the more crime-conscious people in this country.

The man who stayed was an off-duty cop, who filled Dave's head with his own interpretation of the current status of South Africa's race relations. And though Dave might have been inclined, in a different forum, to quiz him on his beliefs a little more thoroughly, the cop was nonetheless a very good sport, a very dedicated police officer, and a man who clearly had a very strong streak of altruism running through him.

He stayed until we emptied our watering can into the car and got it started again, and then he wished us a good night. There were handshakes all around.

Then we went home and drank some much-deserved wine. Dave, our dedicated car guard who endured the whole thing without uttering a peep of complaint, got the first glass.

There's one postscript to this story: Dave and I were driving around in downtown Cape Town the next day, and it wasn't until we were practically past them that the two people strolling on the side of the road registered on my brain. They were walking with thumbs outstretched, looking forlorn. And they were carrying an empty green watering can.

I didn't stop.