A tale of vetkoek and nostrils
IF I told you that we all have some evil lurking inside us, I hope you won’t throw a tantrum, disagree violently and carry on like a bull at a rodeo. However, in the unlikely event that you’re one of those delusional people who think Mother Theresa, for instance, was of pure heart and never looked at one of her sisters and thought: “I swear, if Sr Mary-Benedict says one more Hail Mary, I’m going to roundhouse-kick her in her Adam’s apple”, consider this. As a rule, human beings are blind to their own weaknesses.
I bet Hitler went to the grave struggling to understand how he could have been so misunderstood. Ditto Idi “Big Dada” Amin. No, silly, I’m not suggesting that we all have a genocidal maniac just beneath the surface. I’m illustrating a point.
And what’s the point, you ask. Well, I have an incident from 30 years ago weighing on my conscience. I guess I started throwing names such as Hitler and Amin around just to create some perspective around my sins. And when I tell you my story, you will have no choice but to admit that it was more of an accident than my evil heart at play. Besides, I was only 11 at the time.
One of my Std 5 classmates was a boy with the face of a rock rabbit. His name was Johannes. I didn’t like him much. This was mostly because his mom spoiled him and he always had ample “carry money”. They call it “tuck money” these days. Johannes could afford to purchase two large amagwinya (vetkoeks) stuffed with American polony and cheese wafers every day, while some of us had to be content with mom’s Marmite sandwiches.
What used to grate me about him is how he’d buy his amagwinya and then hide behind the toilet block so that he wouldn’t have to share with anyone. I once asked him for a piece of vetkoek and he tore off a piece small enough to stuff in one nostril. I know this because that’s exactly what I did with the morsel. Just to prove my point. And this just three days after I’d shared an entire quarter of my fish paste sandwich with him.
So you can imagine how badly I was looking forward to the day of the comeuppance headed in his direction. And boy, did it come his way. It came in the form of The Great Pencil Inquisition of 1983. What happened is that when Miss Ngcobo asked us to draw a locust’s cephalothorax and abdomen during biology, I discovered that my new HB pencil had disappeared from my school bag. I went into immediate witch-hunt mode and ordered a bag search when the lesson was over.
Even though I was the youngest in the class, I operated under the protection of the big fellows. You’d be surprised how much clout Marmite sandwiches could buy you in my hood. So, imagine my excitement when the biggest boy, Demetrus, fished out a redand-black HB pencil from Johannes’s bag.
“That’s my pencil!” I shrieked triumphantly. My best friend, Goodhope, backed me up: “Here’s the tooth marker you put on it!” And that is how it came to pass that I exacted my revenge on Johannes the Scrooge. By the time the Great Pencil Kangaroo Court of 1983 was concluded, Johannes had been exposed as a thief. Justice was done and my pencil returned.
Now, if I told you that when I got home and found my red-and-black HB pencil with a tooth marker next to my rubber sling, right where I’d forgotten it that morning, you might forgive me for an “honest mistake”. However, if I tell you that I took the evidence and hid it away with my Scope magazines, you’ll probably judge me quite harshly. And I deserve it.
If you think the point of this column is to point out the dangers of jumping to conclusions, you would be wrong. If you think it’s about honest mistakes escalating out of hand, you would be way off. And if you think it’s a way for me to seek some catharsis by fessing up to the evil inside my dark heart, then you do not know me at all. The moral of this column is: if someone asks for a piece of your vetkoek, it’s probably prudent to give them a bigger piece.