My rainbow nation of random strangers

I plopped my basket of groceries at the counter at the Pick n Pay. It had been a long day, one of many long days, and I had nothing left.

I was feeling bedraggled. As I started to place my groceries on the counter, I looked up to greet the cashier. She was staring at me.

 “Hi,” I said. The cashier started crying. It was my turn to stare. She got off her stool, walked to me and hugged me.

“I pray for you every night,” she said.

Farieda, the cashier, had read a story in the local knock-and-drop about our daughter Rachel’s battle with a life-threatening bone marrow condition.

We had gone public about it because we wanted to encourage people to join the South African Bone Marrow Registry.

After Rachel became ill, our family and friends rallied to our assistance with comfort, love and warm casseroles.

Rachel’s school held a fundraiser to help us cover the medical costs. The medical community – doctors, scientists, nurses and lab technicians – were all in our corner.

But as Farieda's hug reminded me, it was also a community of strangers who showed up.

That's the thing about community: it finds you in the most ordinary places. A supermarket aisle, a knock-and-drop newspaper, a prayer whispered by someone you've never met. And, as I found out a couple of years later, even with muddy hands at the end of a blocked road.

Shortly after the hard Covid-19 lockdown was lifted, when we were still wary of each other, Cape Town was rocked by a massive storm that ripped roofs off houses, overturned trucks and lifted kilts.

A day after that storm, my friend Chris Whitfield and I decided to take advantage of the small window to leave our homes. We went for a cycle around the back streets of the southern suburbs.

We turned onto a road which had been blocked by massive trees that had come crashing down during the night. There were more branches than you could shake a stick at strewn across the road.

There was no way through. As we started to turn around to head back, a car pulled up. A tow truck driver and an assortment of walkers arrived at the same time from various directions.

There were some awkward shrugs as the group of about eight of us stared at each other through the branches. Then someone moved a branch, someone else gave a trunk a shove, and suddenly all of us were pitching in to clear a path.

It was like a perfectly choreographed flash mob, or one of those Rainbow Nation Castle Lager TV adverts from the early 1990s – you know, where Frank's buddies were helping him get to London to realise his soccer dream.

We set to work moving the tree. Whenever I felt tired, I'd say to myself, "C'mon, guys, this is for Frank..." and I'd get back to work.

After about 30 minutes, we had cleared a lane, leaving enough space for a car to get through. Although our work was done, none of us left.

For the second time, we stared at each other in silence. And then someone snapped a branch and threw it to the side of the road.

I like to think a cheer went up as, once again, we all descended on the rest of the tree and moved, shoved, and yanked branches, stumps, and trunks out of the way, happy to be enjoying a rare bit of sunshine between the storms and community camaraderie during a pandemic.

Eventually, the road was cleared.

As we surveyed our work, someone suggested a “team photo”. After being socially isolated for so long, it was wonderful to feel part of a team again.

I learnt then that community isn't something you necessarily join, so much as something that shows up just when you happen to need it most.