Progress, show some respect!

I visited a con artist yesterday. ‘We are selling nice food here. Come over to see,’ the man said. ‘And since you owe me (an apology), be ready to buy me a large burger when you get here.’

That didn’t sit well with me. So I removed the R50 note in my wallet and headed to Bedworth Park, penniless. I wasn’t going to let Progress to con me without a fight. The guy can sell you a stone when he’s in great selling form.

I found familiar faces there. Progress Sondlane, Desmond Mashele, Respect Sondlane and a likeable guy who preferred to introduce himself by his surname – Vilankulu. Did you note the first names? Yes, the parents in Bushbuckridge and surrounding areas give their boys names like Surprise, Knowledge, Sensible, Excellent and Salvation.

I was not necessarily thinking about this when I was shaking their freezing cold hands, but when my hosts started re-arranging their surnames into “sond-lane”, “masheley” and “villain-cool,” then I knew why great Tsonga names like Ntsako and Khensani were enjoying second class status in the country of their birth.

Those entertaining fellas talked about facebook, the country, politics, books, etc. I did more listening and less talking. I thank Progress who did the most talking, much to the irritation of his brother, Respect, and Villain-cool, who both teamed up to command him to "learn to listen.” As soon as Progress started practicing some listening skills, we seemed to make great progress indeed.

Respect would pull out of the circle to go sell a packet of chips to a customer. Whenever he returned, he’d respectfully (no pun intended) ask to interrupt us, and then take us back to a point we were discussing when he left. How rude is that? He also kept suggesting that I have nodded to his point of view, which for him it meant that he damn well had a right to carry on interrupting us after selling another packet of chips, or a white loaf of bread. That is how brave Respect is. He debates with friends whilst making money. This is a man who sold his car in order to finance the very food business his progressive brother was forcing me to support by buying him a large burger.

And then there was Desmond, who kept referring to his profession, IT, every now and then during the debate. The guy is passionate about his career, I tell you.

Vilankulu is that man who, after commanding Progress to “learn to listen”, the courage which we really appreciated, deserted us for a lady who’d come to buy a loaf of brown bread. Because I could overhear, the poor lady was made to answer silly questions like ‘between white bread and brown bread, which one do you like?’ Ag!

We closed the shop and called it a day. Thank you for a great afternoon, guys.