At Least We Have Good Weather: A Life of Love and Loss

Chapter 37

I've told the story a dozen times. I replayed it in my head 100 times more...but the events of Wednesday the 14th July 2010 will forever play on my psyche.

I get criticized a helluva lot for my "negative" attitude toward South Africa and its problems. I always have spoken out about its shortcomings and I've accepted that I just won't be one of those people who love the country despite its problems.

I once wrote a blog about how much I hated SA...and I didn't even go into the crime aspect of it. But I listed very valid facts about why I didn't want to remain in the country. I got so much hate mail from that, I decided to stop writing for a while, because people, for the most part, didn't allow me to have an opinion, and instead idiotically made the article about race - a term that was never even referenced on one single occasion. The blog was written back in 2009, but year after year it continues to be the most read and commented on blog I've ever written.

In 2010 though, even I got caught up in the excitement of the World Cup, and despite my undying support for the national team, I was still critical of the faults outside of the sports show piece. Ok, now to be fair, I considered my national team to be Mexico, a tradition for me since 1986, and since they just happened to be facing South Africa in the opening game, I was deemed public enemy number one. But I stuck by my guns.

Come the close of a very successful World Cup, we had showed the world what we could do, and an incident-free global event surely meant crime and safety in SA was over-hyped by the media...right?

After the pomp and circumstance of the closing ceremony, the nation begrudgingly began preparing to resume life in South Africa as normal.

Well...on Wednesday the 14th July, I went to work as normal, had a normal day of irritations, and had the normal end-of-the day headaches. I decided to leave work early at 4pm, because the headache was just too much to bear.

The drive home was normal. The congested traffic was normal. The idiots causing dangerous situations because they were texting while driving was normal. My rising anger was normal.

I arrived home at 5.15pm, opened my driveway gates and pulled the car in. Switched off the car, began closing the gates. All normal things I did on a daily basis.

Then perhaps the most normal of all things about living in South Africa happened.

From the pavement, a man (I call him man for lack of a better word), came charging at me with a gun pointed towards my head.

He immediately forced open the gates I was closing and pressed the gun against my head. I took a few steps backwards and stepped awkwardly, falling into the flowerbed, ending up halfway between the driveway and the garden, in plain view of anyone driving or walking past my house.

The gunman started going through my pockets, taking the car keys, mobile phone, my bank cards, driver's licence etc. He kept asking where the food was. Presumably, he thought that I was coming home to open up the house for the evening and was looking for house keys so he could further plunder my pirate treasures.

I stared straight at the guy with my Bruce Banner anger beginning to rage, and whilst my transformation into the Incredible Hulk was just mere moments away, suddenly a second gunman ran into the drive way, opened the second gate I had already closed and took the car keys from his partner.

My mom, who was home at the time, came out to see why it was taking me so long to park the car in the garage, again, as was the normal procedure. Opening the door, my dog, sensing something was wrong, came charging at the guy who was holding the gun on me.

As he turned the gun on my dog, I attempted to get up to "do something stupid" and wrestle the gun out of his hands, but at that, my mom came into view and saw me with the gun to my head and started screaming at me to just give him what he wants. He suddenly turned the gun on her saying "come here, mummy, come here mummy", a phrase which still haunts her to this day.

At that point I backed down, not willing to rush him into taking a shot at my mom, who spun on her heels and ran back into the house, tripping in her panic and crawling on her hands and knees till they were bleeding, fearing the second gun man would come after her. She made it inside, locked the door and called for help.

The two gunmen, now also in fear of my dog who was standing over me in a protective stance, decided to make do with what they had robbed me of, got in MY car and sped out the driveway and drove off into the sunset, complete with my laptop, external hardrive and personal belongings. Basically, the sum collection of everything I had worked on for the last 12 years. All my photos, all my writing and all my memories were taken, just like that.

A normal day in South Africa.

If I wasn't angry before, this certainly tipped the scales. I got the people who told me to "focus on the positive", or encouraged that "it could have been worse", but thankfully, "you got lucky". I even had one girl tell me that this was bound to happen to me because of my negative attitude, almost as if I got what I deserved, which sparked a raging online debate amongst my friends.

How could I even respond to that? It made me even angrier. Yes, things could have been much worse: murder, rape, and tragedy. But this should not have even happened. I should not have been attacked in my own home.

It was 3 days after the World Cup, where everyone was supposed to be united. Hah, instead it was my 4th incident in 8 months.

It was the LAST straw.

My number one priority now, was getting out the country. I wanted to live and work somewhere where the value of human life was understood, and for me, that was NOT in South Africa.

I began the process of looking elsewhere, hitting brick walls in every direction. Fate controlled my life, even if it wasn't my destiny.

With no sleep for 5 straight days after it happened, I was a shell of a man again. Not because I needed therapy, or counseling, but because I was desperate. I was desperate for a second chance at life, before it ended. I still see that guy running towards me every night when I close the gate, and I still freeze with fear for a split second when someone comes running past me without reason.

I received an outpouring of support from international colleagues, who were genuinely concerned that this happened to someone they knew, more so than from locals who just saw it as another incident or, perhaps just another unlucky day in my very unlucky life.

I guess my only explanation is that sometimes, bad lives just happen to good people. But I've seen it all and been through more, and the incident just became another one of my scars, another one of my stories.

If 2010 was a video game, I had just lost my first life while trying to finish the level, but never in a million years would I have thought that I was still to lose two more...