Hitting reverse gear

For those of you not familiar with car guards, they are the people who ‘look after’ our cars while they are parked outside businesses, in parking lots and at outdoor or sporting events. We need them because it was happening too often that when you thought you’d forgotten where you parked your car, it was actually on someone’s  shopping list in Mozambique and was already on its way to the border, while you stood laden with shopping, facing an empty parking spot.

Car guarding started off in an informal way, with entrepreneurs taking tips in exchange for looking after your car. It was a way for the unemployed to feed families or drinking habits. Now they have been rounded up by people who knew a money making opportunity when they saw it, and who had the education to go to shop owners and register their services and then employ people with less education to work in the lots. Each of these people now pay for their lumo vests, and a sum of money to the business owner before they can work at looking after cars. Each guard is assigned an area in the parking lot, and the newbies are assigned to the outer reaches where few people park because they don’t want to walk in the heat to get to the shops. These guards often don’t make enough money to pay for the fees to work the day.

colours of the car park

White people are really not suited to this job, because having no skin pigmentation means melanomas, and I have yet to see a guard using sunscreen, even though I always offer advice to them about it. White car guards look like people stitched into leather skins. Car guards may be locals or from other African countries. Sometimes you may be greeted by the beautiful French Congolese accent, Shona accents from Zim or Portuguese from Mozambique (hang on a moment, should we be trusting them to guard our cars when Mozambique is hauling several cars over the border as we speak?). Anyway, car guards are ubiquitous in South Africa, they are beacons on every street corner and in every parking lot, and they are part of our days and nights (if one is brave enough to park outside at night).

my local car guards... wonderful men from the DRC after a long day in the sun at ...................

 

 

I admire them and tip them (most times), and being unemployed myself, often think I may end up as one. If I did end up as one, I would know how to help people to reverse, and I would know which people to allow to reverse unaided. And in some cases, judging by the skills of some drivers, I would actually do the reversing for them. However, with all the compassion in the world, I do not want to be told how to reverse when the sweat is pouring down my face, and even though I said I was fine, the guard has just helped me pack shopping bags into the boot of my car, and the packet with the strawberries and eggs is now under the packet with 6 kgs of dog food (this only gets discovered only when I get home), I want to t get out of my car and say, ”Listen dude, I’ve been reversing for 30 years now, and although there are many things I need help with (directions, finances, making order of my life) reversing is not one of them. Move away from my car or my tyres will clamp your feet to the tarmac”.

Another thing is I don’t need help with is finding a parking when the lot is half empty. They swagger out in front of you and, as though conducting the orchestra through a Strauss waltz, show you where to park. I never park where they tell me to, it is my small rebellion. Sometimes I’ll be waiting for someone to leave a parking so I can take his spot. I wait for the car guard to show him how to get out of the spot, then, with a great sweep of his arm he shows me the parking space, as though I’d been daydreaming and he had discovered Antarctica. For fek’s sake, I have been waiting for 5 minutes while the car moved out of the spot. WHAT DID HE THINK I WAS DOING? Did he think I had stopped to watch his “how-to-reverse” skills?

back, back, back

flappy, shouting … “BACK, BACK, BACK”. Sometimes they even stand directly behind the car and start flapping you out, so the only way out is over them: it is tempting, really, really tempting.

Now, I believe most car guards need empathy and respect for doing what they do and for the reasons they do it. My heart goes out to those so far from home who cannot stay in their war torn countries. However, there are some who can turn a parking lot into a veritable circus arena. I have seen women guards having cat fights over tips or lanes (they are very territorial). I have encountered guards so drunk they see two of your car and allow one to be stolen. I have seen sober guards watch while a car is driven out the lot (and not by its owner). I have also seen two car guards show two parkers how to reverse into each other. I have had a guard see me waiting 10 minutes for someone to leave and then wave a new-comer into the spot- this has caused a form of parking lot rage that I am not altogether proud of. I know it is JUST a parking, but in Durban’s heat, when the lot is full it is not JUST A PARKING. Car guards also will not take to task those female 4x4 owners who only use their wheels for shopping or to take their children to school, or to do lunch. These vehicles are often sprayed with mud by some sharp business man advertising, “we will spray your off road vehicle, so the world thinks you’re an authentic, rugged adventurer”. The guards cannot stop these selfish painted gals from parking across two spaces so nobody bangs their cars. This makes me so mad, and I always tell the guards people shouldn’t park like that just because they are rich, and they always smile and nod and agree, but they are just humouring me. I wonder if double space parkers tip better.

Although I’d dearly love to reverse out of my parking unaided, I would miss these guards if they weren’t greeting and grabbing and waving and in my way in the parking lots. They are part of our country’s workforce, and certainly part of the Durban scene. They work in the blazing sun, or heavy rain, in parking areas all over South Africa, they add colour and frustration, and every one of them has a story to tell… if you’d only ask.

It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.
~ Muhammad Ali ~

P.s. What sort of person rushes off to the car park to take pics of guards who are very suspicious of their intentions, while everyone stares and wonders? What is becoming of me? Am I turning into a BLOGGER? gasp!