Sunday, September 21, 2008

Pliz hulp

Tattered Beggar sits outside the plate glass window of a suburban bank branch.:
"Hulp meee pliz"
"Hulp meee..."
When a coin lands he mumbles something only semi-intelligible:
"tank too, may yussus bless you garbeshe, help me pleez"
As people pass he has a pathetic mumbled conversation with himself.
"Manish babelas nitrogen mfundi baaskap nee wat..."
Another coin gets tosseed into his hat, he squints at the giver
"I need to go Braaspruit, the tsotsits, 5 rand , just for the bus, tomorow I come your house master, I pay, even sis rand I pay you... "
A cellphone rings. From under a pile of rags the beggar extracts and flips open a state of the art cell phone and answers in a clear lucid voice, completely different from the one we have heard from him 'til now.
"Shasta, how 're you doing...yes I'm about to knock of work now....nah..that'sa dump. Lets do cocktails at the diplomat...ok, 5:30? 6:00...ok 6:00. See you ."
He flips it shut, closes, the phone puts it under the rags, takes a moment to suitably discompose himself and then begins again:
"pleesh...halp me"


Johannesburg sports:
Some Dutch tourists drive up to an intersection where a horribly twisted spastic child drools through the window at them.

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