This guy is hungry
Half way up Orange Grove Drive in Harare yesterday, mid lunchtime run, I found a man lying unconscious on the side of the road. I stopped and wondered, what do I do now? My running partner caught up and we decided that diabetes had felled him. Under a hot Zimbabwean sky we tried to flag down some cars to see if we could get something sweet to feed him. A guy driving two foreign visitors stopped and one of the passengers found a ‘seen much better times’ chocolate. The other drivers who stopped didn’t have anything to eat on them but a couple of old ladies gave us $2. A nearby security guard helped us move him into the shade where we patiently dripped water into his mouth whilst slowly getting him to suck on the chocolate. In the meantime the security guard headed off with the $2 in search of some Cascade (orange juice). Our calls for assistance at a house nearby reaped two peanut butter sandwiches and a bottle of cold Mazoe. The man who had collapsed looked like a rubbish picker. He was thin and at first his gender wasn’t clear. The security guard looked down at him and said, ah this guy, he’s hungry. The experience was a reminder about the beauty of collaboration. Two runners, some motorists, a security guard and a domestic worker (the goddess of peanut butter sandwiches) all came together to help a stranger. We’re not in this world alone.