Little kids in smart white shirts on the side the freeway

I drive every day to work along the South Coast freeway approximately fifity-seven kilometers each way. Its a long drive and there many experiences that are normal to this daily trek.

1) There are often accidents I drive past. Sometimes horrific...
2) I never get used to the driving around (or over) the carcasses of dogs that have recently been killed.
3) There are always speed-traps with uncomfortable looking speedsters getting tickets from officious traffic police.
4) There are always vendors selling avocadoes and mushrooms. Vendors that I am much too scared to stop at; as there was an employee from where I work who was murdered when he stopped to buy an avocado by thugs hiding in the growth.
5) There is a very strange looking character who covers himself in oils and traditional Zulu clothings and sprints on the side of freeway into the flow of traffic (this is a normal sight in the morning).
6) There is another character also covered in shiny glistening oil who does a very funny walk alongside the flow of traffic. He has very frightening scarring on the side of his body. The first time I saw him I got terrified that the scarring was recent, that maybe he had just escaped from some kind of torture and needed immediate assisstance. But then I saw him the following day, and the day after, doing the same funny robotic walk.
7) There are shacks stretching into forever in which I can see signs of normal lives. Washing hanging up, people chatting.
8) And there are always children walking incredible distances to get to school.

Unimaginable distances.

Today there were two little children walking alongside the freeway. I had no idea where they started from or how far they were heading. As far as my eye could see in all directions there was no habitation or schools. The one child looked about 6 years old and the other one 9 years old. Although ths is not an abnormal type of sight for me to see on my drive to work; my mind always has trouble seeing this - as it is so foreign to the privledged world that I grew up in. And these children were particularly small. They also had such tidy neat clean smart white shirts on. Sparkling white button-up shirts. Smart grey school pants. Socks pulled up neatly. Shiny black shoes. Whoever had dressed them, obviously had taken great pains to make sure they were smart and filled with the confidence that comes from dressing well. But they were so small. Too small to be alone in a shopping center. Too small to be alone crossing a street in a suburb. But here they were, walking the freeway. It felt so sad.

The other night on television news there was a report on how scholars in a particular school in a rural area have to ford across a heavily flowing river every morning (and the previous day one scholar had been eaten by crocodile in this exact river) to get to school and then home again later.

I am not sure how one can expect any (but the truly exceptional) of these children to succeed at the level that one needs to move into the bourgeosie - if they have to face such trials and tribulations just to attend school.

And the schools themselves are not properly supplied. Today I discovered that there were bizarre difficulties faced at a school in the capital of Gauteng.

As my father and I tried to explain to Robbie yesteday. The world is not fair.