I’ve been thinking about promises the past while…
I was on my way to fetch a friend at a small Xhosa village and the directions were somewhat whimsical. “Go towards the school and on the way you might cross a bridge. If you do cross a bridge, there will be a turn-off just after the bridge – or before the bridge, I’m not sure. I don’t know if it is to the left or to the right, but that is the turn-off you must take … if you have found the right bridge.”
It was late in the afternoon and a thick mist had rolled in to muffle the sound of the pouring rain. It seemed I was driving on a drenched moon, I could see no more than 7 or 8 meters ahead of me and the terrain that scuttled in and then out of my event horizon was pitted and deeply scarred. It was probably just as well that the deep ruts and even deeper craters were obscured until it was too late to take evasive action, because had I seen what lay in wait I would almost certainly have turned back. Indeed, there were times that my 1992 vintage Honda slithered down hills broadside and on its belly like a greased salamander, my arms braced against the steering wheel and the wheels unable to reach the deep bottoms of the ruts.
Stopping to ask directions from four rather portly ladies walking in the rain, I discovered that they spoke no English and they that I spoke no Xhosa. A couple of gesticulations later, they all managed to squeeze into the car and I drove them to their destination. When they got out at the other end, it may have been the suspension rebounding, but I could swear that the car heaved a sigh of relief.
After three hours of wandering the forgotten reaches of the Eastern Cape and with the defeated sun about to skulk over the horizon, I accidentally happened upon the school mentioned in the directions. After a forlorn phone call a guide was dispatched to show me the rest of the way.
Take a bow Nobuhiko Kawamoto! When I bought my car you were at the helm of the company that made it, and you promised me quality and reliability. Now, with a quarter of a million kilometers registered on the odometer and after driving 1 250 kilometers through the scorching Karoo and then dragging the dirt clad beast through oceans of mud and torrents of driving rain in desolate reaches that would make a 4×4 tremble, you delivered yet again on your promise. You haven’t been CEO of Honda since 1999, but your promise holds firm and I salute you!
eeeish? NO Xhosa? I thought I was in trouble! I can speak a smattering – the kind that no doubt has the ‘true-bloods’ sniggering politely into their aprons in a fascinating parody of face wiping.
I do truly want to get hold of a language course, so that I’m able to share more freely with the Homelanders.
Unitl then – the Xhosa are mercifully patient souls, with hearts as big as the continent, so I’m generally suffered with grace while I stumble over the words ;-)
honda 4×4!
Hah!
I remember taking this very same Little Engine with you to find a five star restaurant at the top of some skyscraper in Cape Town. We planned to conceal the battered “Hellmobile” just around the corner from our destination, but when we drove into the valet line of a nearby hotel to ask for directions, we found we were in the right place, and could not avoid the car being valeted, cracked windshield and all.