I zeroed the odometer. Apparently any good car has 40 k’s left in the reserve when the light goes on…. A proudly South African story of how Ubuntu beat payday to it.
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Why was everyone complaining about the price of petrol? |
As I left my complex that morning, just going over the speed bump, that red devil flickered to life. The one in the shape of a petrol pump.
I zeroed the odometer. Apparently any good car has
40 k’s left in the reserve when the light goes on….
Apparently my car is not quite good enough. I know from experience that it in fact has 38
k’s left on empty before it jerks to a halt in the middle of a busy road and
the beggar I just ignored has to push me to the side of the road.
On this day, however, I wasn’t going to take any
chances. It was the 24th day in a long month filled with unforeseen
expenses, such as close family birthdays. It was another six days till I got
paid, but tomorrow was Friday and that of course would set the whole world
right. Before then, however, I still had to get to work and the gym twice –
that’s just over 40k’s.
I’d made sure I squeezed the last drop out of my
bank account before they took their pound at the most critical point in the
month a few days earlier. This at great expense of my credit rating. It now
reflected a dazzling minus sixty ZAR (yes, that’s a minus). In my purse I had
R7, 1US Dollar, 8 Hong Kong Dollars and R1’s worth of 5cents – a coin which is
now worthless in the RSA.
Taking care to take my car out of gear when
approaching a halt, or the slightest sight of a downhill, I pulled into the
petrol station with that general feeling of driving an empty dinky toy -
aggravated by the scratching around in my purse. I came to R7 and cursed the
dollars and five cents. The petrol attendant wasn’t much help either, as he insisted
on washing my windows after I told him I had nothing to give him. Then I asked him for no more than se-ven-Rand
and handed him the coins.
He counted. Again.
And counted again.
“I give you R5,” he finally said, as if closing a
deal. Then in response to my confusion: “I
give you a litre – I give you R5”.
Two thoughts went through my head:
One – why is everyone complaining about the price
of petrol if you can get a whole litre for only R5!?
Two – is he going to keep the other R2 as a tip for
washing the window I told him not to and am I going to let him keep it?
I have a childlike trust in petrol attendants –
probably because they look after cars, just like dads. So I figured who was I
to argue with him about his business and I let him fill my car with R5.
“Ok, I give you R5,” said he when done.
Yes I got that. “And what about my R2 change?”
“I give you R5,” he repeated and took a R5 coin
from his pocket adding it to my six R1 and two 50 cent coins. “It makes one litre.”
Speechless. I
drove away in a still basically empty dream car. Big up to Grined (grin-Edd)
from the Lonehill Engen for getting me to the weekend with a large helping of
Ubuntu. #ILoveSA.
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