Of stranded GIRLS...

Tumie Modise | Monday July 13, 2015 15:05

That notwithstanding, even though the story may have been just an excellent piece of fiction, and credit to whoever hatched it, reality is that such incidences do happen in real life, and in this country. The whole issue here isn’t so much about two imaginary damsels in distress having being stranded in Durban, it is more to do with some female’s over dependence tendencies on males, or to put it more bluntly, on total strangers!

Assuming that the story is indeed correct, what happened is still nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, most females, under oath or in a confessional booth, would reluctantly confess to having been in a similar situation in the past, only that their adventures didn’t make front page news!

According to these unknown sources, like most young females, Christmas had come early for the duo.

An all-expense paid trip to Durban to the annual Durban July fell on their laps, straight from heaven to that horse race which has nothing to do with horses at all; but has everything to do with men and girls competing with race horses for attention on the day and in the process competing for the best dressed prize. Not surprisingly, one never mentions horses when they get back from the prestigious Met, no one ever shares pictures of horses, while most don’t even know what a horse race track looks like!

While the rest of us can only dream of attending the Durban July someday, our girls beat us to it when two knights turned their dreams into reality and took them to Durban.

Now Durban is very far, unless you take a flight there, most people travelling by road would prefer to lodge somewhere there on the way for a night then continue with the journey the following morning.

Overnight stops make travelling more exciting and I imagine the girls and their very generous hosts did the same somewhere along the way.

Now for a regular Motswana, well unless you are on a church trip, consuming alcohol is very much part of road trips and usually a cooler box would be the very first item to be loaded in the boot and incidentally, this is the real reason we now have ‘booze buses’.  Anything else is secondary; if the boot is full then someone would have to make way for the cooler box and miss the trip altogether- that is if the luggage is not sacrificed instead. It is just like that.

The story, real or imagined, goes that on or about the last day of the race, the gentlemen decided to part ways with the girls.

The parting, we are told, was neither amicable nor dignified. If this story was about my age mates, the story was never going to make headlines.

Because my age mates and I have gone through similar situations in the past, situations we created and easily evacuated ourselves from!

The thing about today’s kids is they don’t make them strong, smart and assertive anymore. What we have is now a bunch of whining spoilt brats, kids who can hardly think for themselves and who think, unfortunately, that the world revolves around their little manicured fingers.

My age mates and I were tough and streetwise back in the days and to our credit, guys are wiser nowadays.

Years ago when I was these girls’ age, I once easily got myself out of a similar situation. Because my folks are likely to read this piece, I will not go into the full details except mention that my then best friend (she still is) and I once leapt out of a moving vehicle before disappearing into the night as our host’s car slowed down at some intersection in some town.

It became evident that our hosts had ulterior motives and because we even grew up in an era where it was fashionable to harvest human body parts, evacuating ourselves became our only option! Hours later we were back home, safe and sound.

The worst mistake girls often make is to always assume that all males are, for lack of a better word, stupid.

If the countless number of stories we hear about Orapa are anything to go by; of girls being ‘stranded’ at the gate and being later ‘rescued’ by total strangers who ‘just happen’ to be passing by, it’s clear that our girls need life and survival skills.  Because gone are the days when all you gave back after a failed relationship were old black and white studio photos.