My superpower

Extension 9 by day

So this week I discovered my superpower. It is the ability to navigate unfamiliar township roads in the middle of the night.

The first time my superpower manifested I was the navigator, not the driver. And we were weaving our way through Extension 9(*), a newer area of the township. Which of course means rows and rows and rows of RDP houses. Painted much the same colours, all with similar wire fences. At 10:30-11ish at night. With only those horrible orange lights to guide us (Why do we still have those lights? they are horrible. Come on, 15 years of democracy and we haven't replaced them???).

We were giving someone a lift home. So it's all fine and dandy, she directs us to her house. Until we drop her off and we have to find our way out of this forest of identical houses, which we have weaved in and out and around to get where we are. In the orange dark. It was like something out of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.

So we held our breaths and did a U-turn. And at this point my new found superpower kicked in and I directed us home. It was quite instinctual, "no don't turn here, it's the next left," "okay, carry on straight here." I think my subconscious mind must have been taking very careful note of our path on the way in.

So we lived to give lifts another day.

Two days later I found myself offering another girl a lift home. This time in Extension 4(*). And this time at about 12-12:30 at night. Ext 4 is marginally closer than Ext 9, so you might have thought it would be easier to drop her off. But no. It was a rainy night and when we got into the township the rain had somehow morphed into this thick mist, so in some places you couldn't even see the houses on either side of the road. It was just you in the car in the orange glow.

Again, things are fine and dandy until we dropped off the girl who needed a lift. Of course, she just tells us to go back the way we came. Ext 4 is not an RDP section, thankfully. But we could literally only see a few metres in front of us as we drove, making it completely impossible to note landmarks.

At one point we got to a junction and the friend I was driving with was adamant we should go strait. Again my spidey sense kicked in and I don't know how I knew, but I knew we had to go left. With visibility so bad it was tickets if we chose the wrong direction. And I don't even know who we could have phoned for help if we got lost. But in the face of my friend's insistence on strait, I followed my gut and turned left.

And some way down the road we saw two familiar donkeys. And we new we were on the right track :)

So yes. Again, we live to give lifts another day!

I wonder if there is a market for my talent?




(*) The lesson of the week is that any part of the township that does not have a name (like "Joza" or "Fingo"), and is instead "Extension XXX" is going to be *far* away.