A night in the bush.

The car drew to a halt. It was pitch black outside the environment of the vehicle, its radio heater and lights, it's sandwiches and a flask of tea were on the back seat. We were carrying our hermetically sealed world from Matatiele to Johannesburg with little thought to the surrounding environment, the villages and the people who lived metres away from the strip of Tarmac.
The headlights had, for over an hour been piercing the dark as we drove, threading our way between the koppies. Occasionally the beam would pick out the eyes of some small animal caught in the light, frozen with fear as this monster rushed at them out of the night. Pulling a trailer we felt the sway of the car as it rounded each bend is weight throwing the rear of the car out of its normal path as we ploughed on and on with only our destination in mind.
Suddenly the swaying became more acute something was wrong, we had had a puncture. Slowing to a stop I got out of the car with its jangle of modernity blasting in my ears, the radio playing the interior lights casting a glow all around I saw that the trailer tyre had punctured. A bit of a blow since we hadn't a spare. Marie you take the car on to the the next town see if you can get it repaired whilst I wait here with the trailer.
As the car roared off I was left in the silence of a different world, a world to which we were ignorant, modern convenience having blinded us within our self centred universe.
Slowly as my senses adapted, and my eyes accustomed themselves to the night I began to take stock of where I was. The road at this point had cut through a hill and I could see its dark sides rise to my left. To the right the ground seemed to fall away gradually.  I could make out no special features other than some rounded shapes which I couldn't quite discern .   What did feature was that beautiful African Bush tranquillity,few sounds and a lovely aromatic smell of a still warm earth.
As the time drifted by my acuteness to sound sharpened and my eyes began to accommodate the gloom. It was so peaceful so un-hampered with the bustle of our modern environment that I was spellbound awaiting the dawn. As the first light leaked into the sky the earth and my surroundings began to take shape.
We had stopped alongside an African village set back not more than a hundred yards from the road and as I stood there I could have been from another planet. Their world was swinging into timeless action a slow purposeful piece of human theatre being enacted as it had been every morning for years,for generations. Women emerged from the huts, (for that's what these strange shapes were seen in the dark as only shadows) lighting the fire, gathering the water, making the first meal of the day.
Africa waking up from its slumber, its concern, of staying alive, immemorial and so much in rhythm with a giant of a continent, it's rudimentary life and death struggle well away from the tinkering of the White man and his economic drive to change everything.
They saw me there but I was no threat and they had more important tasks on hand.
Eventually my car returned the tyre fixed and the journey resumed but I will never forget that early morning encounter with another way of life, it's form and purpose-fullness, the peace and the quiet, the sense that you were part of the world, part of the environment and not just a bit player in the chaos we call life.