You must keep on strolling like Jesus

JESUS of Nazareth was a stroller as evident, for example, in the parable of The Sower.

You need either to stand still or amble along to observe the detail of a peasant farmer working the land, a cloth bag slung across his shoulder. The action of abandoning seeds freed from a clutched hand into the ground.

The only time we read of Jesus resorting to non-pedestrian means of movement is on the occasion of his celebrated entrance into Jerusalem.

This was on the back of the small donkey who, as GK Chesterton would have us know, had “One far fierce hour and sweet” when “There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet.”

Yes, okay, he also went by boat but even then, he once walked on the water. And there was that moment of levitation of his ascension.

But generally, he strolled all over Palestine.

Ko, stroll saam. It was sometimes an instruction if it came from the older boys on our street. It could involve being the lookout while they raided the loquat trees at Valkenberg Asylum.

Our disappointment at not being chased was substituted with the lies of how we almost had been. How we had jumped into the waters of the Black River, mocking our pursuers who were reluctant to wet their uniforms.

But only the ones who could swim would tell this version of An Escape from Valkenberg story.

The rest of us could only add our muted “yes, it’s true” or laugh knowingly to try to authenticate a wobbly lie, like the hidden voices in the chorus of an Eoan Group opera.

I was once deployed as the courier for one of Garden Village’s Don Juans to the home of the Kleins.

My mission was to enquire if the daughter of the house, Diana, was home. Ma Klein replied, “Ga’ hou jou self ougat by ‘n anner deur!” as my 9-year-old self was va’doeked down a garden path in Beatty Avenue

But strolling on the whole was a leisurely meander to some place which you were not in a hurry to reach.

The joy was in the slow walk, taking time and not being weighed down by the burden of chores.

During the winter school holiday, even the act of collecting wood for ‘ma Bessie’s Dover coal stove was a strolling mission into the Ndabeni Industrial Area.

The toffee factory at Sunrise Circle was our dream destination: someone in the village once came home with a heavy, sticky ball of toffee allegedly sourced from a dumping site next to the toffee factory.

Deep down in our hearts we knew that this was fake news and that finding a treasure of sweets in that way was the proverbial pot of gold – it ain’t gonna happen. But still we went there, prisoners of our adolescent hope.

Okkie van Sensie and, to a lesser degree, Eddie Michael, captured our imagination in the way that he literally stepped up strolling to a skills-based art form.

Here was a man, gyrating hips and all, striding with purpose but still enjoying it both as a participant competitor or walking to and from work. His walking shoes were his taxi.

The thought of running for pleasure never occurred to us. Running suggested menace was afoot, so to speak. If someone ran past you it inevitably meant he was being chased by someone intent on harming him. You might join him if the fancy took you.

Once I had just got off the bus from Bonteheuwel at the stop outside the old Monaco Bioscope, when I sensed a gissing of danger all around me, like live electric-wire falling into water.

I moved, slightly, to my right. A pick-axe handle swished past me, hitting the ground with a woodsplintering crash. I ran without querying the identity and the motive of my assailant.

I ran from Halt Road to Connaught Road, eventually easing up to a jogging pace near Fortieth Street.

I am pleased that President Cyril adheres to the strolling pace of our people because, as he seems to know, only “The wicked run when no one is chasing them” (Proverbs 28.28).