There’s a dream, I feel
So rare, so real
All the world in union
The world as one
Imagine a world, a world where drug dealers are the saviours and pastors are committing suicide. Imagine a pandemic shining light on guardians with dreadlocks and church leaders crumbling and shaking like leaves. I’m looking for truth, for wonders around the corner. I’m like Indiana Jones on a hunt not for gold, but for unexpected altruism.
For my special day, in these uncertain times, I dedicated my gifts to dates. I wanted all my dearest and lovelies in my life, to take me out on a date, instead of giving me something in a gift wrapper. Like Lockdown bestowed the gift of time on all of us, I wanted to capitalize on this concept, by spending quality one-on-one time with the people I love the most on this planet.
On the day following my special day, already feeling like God’s Spoiled brat, my dearest friend, Milyds took me for a breakfast with a twist. We had to stop off first at this old, run-down, but extremely tidy house in East Lynne. So think East Lynne, it is one of the poorest, drug invested communities in Pretoria, think Streets of London sung by Ralph McTell as the back drop for this scenery.
The small house had this massive side walk, with a vegetable garden. There was this sign, it was this sign that made my friend wanting, needing to stop at this ordinary house, for South African listeners, imagine the Tant Stienie house in Ballade vir ‘n Enkeling. Across the road from the house, the vegetable gardening, with yet another sign was extended with massive, generous, Cinderella carriage size kind of pumpkins.
So the sign... the magnificent sign, that made my friend flung into action. My friend has her own luscious lockdown vegetable garden. All her seedlings grown from seeds, only she can bestow so much love on the smallest of particles that it is now feeding many a families. She thought it well to donate two tomato plants for the vegetable garden.
The sign read – Free Vegetables for all. She grew the anticipation and intrigued my interest and curiosity with every centimetres we approached this mysterious shelter. I had a fervent urgency, think of a 16year old girl, hoping that the boy kisses her, this kind of urgency and longing to meet the keeper of this inn.
I met him, with Rastafarian hairstyle and all, tattoos tattooed across his eye brows, reading Andries and Sophia, with a wide open-hearted smile, almost immediately inviting you in, not only onto his property, but also into his orbit. I have not met someone so open, without any boundaries, without any Alcatraz walls guarding themselves. I asked for a photograph, off course I did – are you public or private, public he said, open-hearted, me feeling like I was standing on the edge of the Kimberley open cast mine, digging for diamonds, and how I found them.
So how do you make your impact, he generously pony up all the information. He is a quite notorious, but also very successful farmer, farming with legal weed. Farm unnamed for security reason, the only information he avoided distributing.
He gave us a tour, a tour of his small gardening project, small in comparison to the photographs he showed us of the actual farm. The photographs looked like the scenes you see on NetFlix, with foiled walls. Every tree in his garden had a love note of the tree’s name. You could really feel his love for his little seedlings. In the corner stood a well-kept, creative inspired Wendy house. Who stays there, my friend inquired. Our security guard. He launched into a verbal appraisal of his successful campaign to keep and guard the neighbourhood.
