Smug drivers negect common sense

LIFESTYLE

Marfuka is a fictional character who enjoys a good yarn. He tells stories that capture his life from when he could remember as a small boy to his adult life now closing in on the 60s. There is a twist though as some of these accounts can be tweaked as he juggles reality and his own imagination on what life should be. 

HE goes through his wardrobe and realises that he has run out of clean trousers to wear to work.
The laundry is piling up because the washing machine is down due to some mechanical issues. It has to be fixed or replaced.
In the meantime, the family has resorted to ‘hand washing’ – doing things the old fashioned way. Not to some though as washing clothes by hand is the usual practice because they don’t have a washing machine.
Marfuka knows how to wash clothes by hand, thanks to his mother.
She is heading towards her 70s. But when he was teenager his mother taught him plenty, one of which was to wash his own clothes. The years at the boarding school gave him plenty of practice.
Aside from washing his own clothes he had to also master the skill of sewing by hand. But as he grew up sewing machines became the preferred option. Not that he knew how to use the sewing machine – others did the sewing for him.
Later when he had a family of his own the missus took over. So that is the reason why that pair of trousers were hung on the bed. It hadn’t been touched for a couple of days, which turned into weeks.
No complaints as he had to accept that missus was a working mother leaving the house at 6am each morning so when she got home by 7pm she would be very tired.
Marfuka had to do this himself. He finds the sewing kit, picks out a needle and after some attempts gets the thread ready.
It is a black trousers so he picks out the black thread. Then he gets to work. He starts from the inside. The needle goes right through the garment followed by the attached thread.
Time is against him. Marfuka needs to get to work and this exercise is costing him time. But this task has to be completed. The torn stretch is a bit longer than he thought.
Marfuka then pulls out some of the tricks from his teenage years. He is now pushing towards 60.
Lack of practice has made some of this skill rusty but it hadn’t completely left him.
On the outside Marfuka ensures where the needle comes out is almost exactly where it goes back in. On the inside he stretches it a bit longer along the torn part.
If you cannot visualise this, two things are happening or not happening.
Either this explanation of the execution of this skill is not being done properly or you have never sewn a torn garment in your entire life so have absolutely no idea what this narrative is about.
But that is what Marfuka’s generation was exposed to. They had to do things differently to what our children are used to. Of course, we grew up in different settings so it became a necessity to learn certain skills.
Marfuka completes the sewing and jumps into the trousers and makes his way to the bus stop to get to work. The bus stop is about 500 metres from his house. He knows he is running behind time but he cannot increase his pace.
It is early in the morning but the sun is starting to get hot. He doesn’t want to sweat so slows his pace.
In the afternoon when returning from work and if dropped off at the bus stop, he makes that same walk but this time at a brisk pace. That is exercise he needs at his age.
He can recall when he had a vehicle he had put on weight. He would have friends who would make sarcastic comments that reminded him he needed to squeeze some exercise into his daily routine. At his age it was necessary.
But if you have a vehicle the tendency to drive between points is quite high. You even get lazy and want to drive almost everywhere even if it is a short distance one can walk.
Nowadays he bumps into people he hasn’t met for some time and they comment on how good he looks. Actually, they are referring to his health. He is one of those who has lost plenty of hair.
One time his youngest child – a daughter came across an old photo. She goes ‘I see’ and Marfuka was wondering what all that was about. He eventually finds out that she is referring to his younger years where he had a lot of hair and plenty of muscle as Marfuka was an athlete.
Marfuka was born during that time when singlets were the norm and you came across many who wore them in public.
Back to the vehicle conversation. If you are around similar age range as Marfuka and don’t enjoy the luxury of having a vehicle, do not despair. The amount of walking you are doing is a blessing in disguise. The exercise you are forced to put your body through is good for your aging body.
Marfuka finally gets on a bus that has space. He settles in an empty seat.
The ride is going to be a stressful one. He can tell as the driver shifts into the next gear.
But it is also quite obvious the driver was not taught proper driving skills. Either he learnt how to drive on his own without a proper instructor or he was a reckless driver that doesn’t care about the stress he was putting his passengers through.
Marfuka had to pass an oral test before the policeman permitted him to proceed to the next phase of the course – the actual driving.
They were doing fine until they got to a hill at Hohola and then the policeman ordered him to stop.
He then instructed him to start the vehicle. Marfuka failed the test because the vehicle had gone backwards. He had been focusing too much on his parking skills and general driving. After fixing his hill skills, Marfuka went back for another test and this time passed it.
The bus approaches a pothole and in order to avoid it the driver suddenly swings the vehicle to the right. There were several other bad habits Marfuka had noticed the driver had done prior to this.
His high speed was already putting mostly the female passengers in the bus under duress. Marfuka too, but they kept quiet.
The driver was also shifting to the wrong lane in what in his mind was a smart thing to be doing. Not at all. In fact, it was stupidity of the highest order.
Never ever try to overtake another vehicle if you are approaching a corner. This idiot had just done that.
Marfuka cannot control his frustration anymore so he shouts out to the driver to slow down as he is driving too fast.
The rest of the passengers chime in and some are not so kind with their comments Marfuka cannot repeat here. The driver adjusts his speed to a reasonable level.
When someone is doing 100 km an hour on a busy one lane road, there is not much room for error.
To drive at a reasonable speed is more sensible – you’ll still get to your destination rather than not get there at all.
Marfuka has been involved a number of vehicle accidents and gets very annoyed when drivers are travelling at risky speeds. Of course, this also depends on what kind of public road one is on.
On highways certain speeds are acceptable. But on a busy one lane road it is bad practice to be driving at a 100km per hour or travelling at a faster speed.
Many years back Marfuka was travelling the Hiritano Highway on a 10-seater Toyota Land Cruiser.
They had broken all the traffic rules you can imagine. The driver was intoxicated to start off.
Early hours of the morning they had travelled from Port Moresby to the Central Province. They were returning to the capital as the dawn had turned into a new day.
Marfuka grew up on this highway. The speed they were travelling was pushing beyond the boundaries of common sense.
But the driver was a politician and at times this group of people think they are God. Nobody can correct them.
Marfuka recalls the corner they were approaching. It is a death trap. He had been in an accident at the same place once before when as a young school teacher they were heading for a dance at a nearby coastal village.
He called the politician “tambu” – in-law because he was married to his foster sister. Marfuka could not hide the fact that he was driving at a very dangerous speed so he finally plucked up the courage to tell him that.
“Do not worry tambu, I know this highway like the back of my hand” or something to that extent, was the response of the driver.
This is a very tricky stretch. You are travelling downhill and then there is a sudden turn that has curves. At an outrageous speed, it doesn’t matter how good a driver one is. The laws of motion will take over.
Which is exactly what happened to Marfuka and his “friends”. They were travelling at such a high speed as they went downhill, the curve suddenly appeared. The driver tried to negotiate the turn but instead the vehicle flipped several times.
Markufa closed his eyes, telling himself that if he opened his eyes and saw his father who had passed on years ago – he had joined him.
Thank God, when he opened his eyes – he was unscathed. But his ‘smart’ tambu had a cut and Marfuka felt like putting a fist on that same cut to remind to listen to common sense in the future.
The vehicle was written off and thankfully no lives had been lost.