A life teaching commotion.

A few nights back my friend and I were chatting by the roadside coming from a funeral; A car appeared in our direction with their light in high beam. I had my cycling light with and as per usual I flash motorists to flag them down to dip their headlights, so they dipped their lights and I turned down mine too, however as they encroached us they switched to high beam again and so I flashed them down again until they halted right next to my friend and I.

A woman winds down her window and burst at us shouting "What are you doing? Can't you see you're blinding me? What if I swerved into a pit?" to which I calmly said "You have your headlight in high beam ma'am, I'm flashing to say dip it" this lady is not having any of it so she jumps out of her car charging and throwing tantrums on top of her lungs "Are you a car?" "Are you special?" she goes on and on saying all sorts of things and I am quiet at this point waiting on my chance to speak. My friend, knowing me and that I don't just apologize, he interjects the lady softly and says "I'll apologize on his behalf, uphambanisile" the lady refuses his apology and goes "he's not even remorseful, he's quiet and won't apologize, he's arrogant". I then calmly try to explain myself and she cuts me right there shouting "what if I drove into this bridge" which to me didn't make sense because had it actually been a car or cyclist would you have driven into a bridge or simply dipped your lights? But that was just me and my thoughts. Two grown men who appeared to be drunk then jump out of her backseat whilsts she's shouting and the whole situation intensifies, they charge at me asking the same questions and saying all sorts of things and spewing ill profanities, they push me down and I get back up calmly without any sort of retaliation, I could smell alcohol in their breath and at this point the main character Ricky then takes charge and I start reciprocating the energy, I start shouting back telling them to not do that and that the woman's car had only one light which is already a hazard. These men attempt to manhandle me and push me down again, my friend gets between and goes "no we can't do that Sir" and meanwhile the woman is still shouting and assassinating my character as though I am some repeating offender if some crime. As a bystander you'd think we had issues from the past but it was the very first time in my whole life I've ever interacted with this woman. She goes "You think you are a responsible person but you are not iwe Ricky, I read your comments in the residential group, you have no respect for elders and you are arrogant, you think you are intelligent with your English but you are not" then one of the men she was with says "Fuck you, mhata!" Which translates to a woman's genitals. The other man goes "machende, urimbwa iwe" which translates to "testicles, you're a dog". As they are spitting these profanities she tries to retract her brothers but they continue spitting shona profanities which I've never heard of and I can't even recite, I in this very moment am also charged and warning them not to say "Fuck you" or swear at me ever! At this point if the men tried to assault me again or push me I was ready to give one a taste of my knuckle as the situation was fast getting out of hand over a flashing on lights, their alcohol induced tempers were flaring and you could hear it in their voice, but, being conscious of the environment and that this woman I can't recognize in the dark is possibly a distant neighbor, I avoided a lot of things and decided to phone a nearby elder to calm the situation which was clearly going to put me out of character really fast. It was around 10PM, it was already too late and the man was already in bed. I know how annoying getting out of bed is especially if one is an unclothed sleeper, so I phoned my elder hoping he wasn't already rotting in bed nor half dressed and told him it's just road rage situation. 

Meanwhile one of these men tried to take me a picture and I immediately shut his phone and instructed him not to even try that, he was lucky he didn't attempt it again because I was so charged and ready to snatch his phone and shatter it to the ground, but I remained contained in this situation waiting on the elder to arrive even under my youthful impulses to go from zero to hundred in a split second.

This commotion was so loud that two neighbors came out, and two guys from far across the stream also came to the situation, plus the elder I'd phoned. This elder is my friend's father who has also been such a good father figure to me. When he arrived, these men were still charging and the woman still assassinating my character saying I do not have parents that's why I behave like this, I was quiet at this point knowing someone was coming. The elder (my father's friend) arrived and said a few words after reading the situation and asked me to apologize to the woman, that's the only time I then apologized but she was not having it still, she said I have been refusing to apologize the whole time and only apologizing now, she continued shouting and her brothers unashamedly spitting more profanities even in the presence of other neighbors, one said "mukomana uyu anofunga kuti anemachende" and his sister tried to retract him again, we all just kept quiet. After a few minutes of soft talking and me apologizing again, the situation was contained and they drove away. The elder gave me a good lecture and said "I don't know who is wrong and right kodwa mfanami icala lengula ingubo..." and advised me on how to procedurally handle an apology to avoid future hostilities and to sleep with my heart clean. The other elder asked "what was the purpose of flashing the car Ricky, this is not you" to which I explained why and realized then that it was not necessary as a pedestrian, I could've simply looked down or aside, although this was a hard pill to swallow and I felt I was without fault I eventually admitted that I was wrong.

My friend said to me "I hope you have now learned what people really think of you here Ricky" and we had a chuckle and I said "Yea man, loud and clear, this is not about no flashlight."

This encounter really enlightened me the most about people, you will learn from such occurences that people you don't even interact with have got tea for you regardless of age or gender, and a simple mistake or misunderstanding will tell you everything you need to know about your presence. That woman made me feel like such a terrible terrible person yet I'm the one that suffered the most damage, the one who was pushed down, the one sworn at, the one whose character was assassinated and whose orphanage type of settlement was attacked. If you didn't know any better you would think I swear at people in my daily life, you would think I am the community's worst resident, you would think I am a thief and sleep with my neighbor's daughters, you would think I am always locking horns with people in my community, yet this was my very first encounter in years! If you didn't know any better you would walk away from that scene with an ugly idea of me by the way that woman addressed me together with her brothers. 

The woman said she would tell the whole community about my behaviour that night by putting it into the residential platform. I am a service provider in my community, I have also carried out some community services and I've emerged as an opinionated guy, my name is well known so I understood why she would want to put this occurence into the group in bid to defame me, but I wondered where such a resentment emanated from especially from a Christian. So, out of guilt, I chose to be the first mover and quickly wrote down an apology onto the platform as soon as I got home. Unfortunately for me I went overboard with my apology and narrated the whole scenario out of a writing compulsion to build context, this sounded like I was justifying myself unfortunately and I actually made matters worse by mentioning the profanities that were said to me word for word, you don't do that on a public platform, but it was a learning curve for me. So she gave me a phone call at 4AM shouting again and asked me to delete the "nonsense useless apology", I found the apology already deleted by our chairperson.

The following day I went and asked my elderly neighbor to apologize to this woman for me on my behalf, at this point I realized I was the bad guy, my neighbor apologized on my behalf and I can only hope the woman received it well. My friend's father also gave me a call that morning and invited me over to his home where he lectured me further and advised me about how to conduct myself henceforth. I learned a new Zulu phrase "Iso lixhotshwa libhekile" which translates to The eye gets disturbed whilst it's looking, which means we make mistakes whilst we're looking and are aware but never see the mistake/damage/danger coming. A very wise and discerning man who has for a long time been a father figure and contributed to my perceptions and thoughtlines. He really mocked me on the way I wrote out my apology and the delivery and showed me how I had washed dirty linen in public and raised a woman's petticoat in the air for everyone to see, which wasn't my intention but it is what it is. I learned much from that lecture that I think sometimes problems come into our lives so we can learn something and become better people henceforth. 

This year I encountered quite a lot of social ills some of which I didn't write about but I've introspected very much on myself from the ones I've meditated on by writing. You know when you have a trail of social misunderstandings you begin to feel like maybe you're the problem, that you are a terrible terrible human being, so you just let things happen to you, you let people shit on you and keep your composure and understand that reciprocating that energy would become catastrophic. I now understand why people with great responsibilities are quick to apologize, the executives the pastors the leaders establishments and organizations, there's just so much to lose over a piece of badly cooked chicken or an expired product or a poor service. There's no time to try and deal with such issues at the expense of productivity and progression. I understand now why leaders don't engage mainstream discourse or political conflicts, it's so easy to be taken the wrong way and crucified.

Icala lengula ingubo ngempela.