A sleeping giant
I went to watch this year’s blockbuster disaster movie ‘San Andreas’.

We see the world’s number one dad earn his title as the character played by the Rock. He goes on a mission to save his daughter after an earthquake so big it will make you think the city of San Francisco was built on a waterbed.
It was a good movie, but with films like that a person always leaves the cinema thinking of what would happen if you were swept up in a real life disaster. I can only imagine what the people in Haiti or Japan went through in just the past five years. What about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina (that sounds like a nursery rhyme).
Would most of us be so brave as to sacrifice our own comfort and needs for the greater good or at the very least one other person?
Well, if we cannot give a little bit of ourselves on an average day, I doubt that would change. I am not talking about organised charity campaigns or fund raisers, I mean letting a mother and her child cross the road without getting impatient or speeding past a zebra crossing.
How about sponsoring someone that two rand they need to buy lunch at the shop to save them a trip back to their car and look for loose change under their seat? The movie did have the biggest scumbag as the girl’s stepfather for the audience to judge him and say things like, “I will never do that in real life,” or “I can’t believe what a jerk this guy is. I will never stoop so low.” Well if you were contemplating your mortality while lying next to a huge slab of concert that was 10 cm away from crushing you, then you too might do a few jerky things like run for your life.
Here in Emalahleni we seem so angry at the government, and at Eskom, and at all the crime that we forget to be decent people and end up scowling at people just for thinking of having a nice day.
When I give someone a space in a queue of traffic I also feel like a life-saving action hero with chiselled guns.