On the way from Johannesburg to Durban, Leanne Hunt and her husband experienced a moment on the road everyone dreads. But, it also happened to be the kind of moment that lent itself to exceptional kindness:
Free State, South Africa (28 September 2023) — Flat tyres are hardly what anyone looks forward to when embarking on a road trip. But, as we’ve seen before, these and similar experiences can lend themselves to great lessons in humanity and kindness, which was exactly what happened to Leanne Hunt and her husband, John.
Leanne—a fabulous writer who navigates numerous topics on her blog, like being visually impaired (in her words), spirituality, ecology and an impressive transparency as a student of life—penned her recent encounter with kindness.
On a journey to the Midlands from Johannesburg, Leanne and John saw their smooth road trip take a turn.
The standstill of travellers and a grass fire’s smoke on Warden’s outskirts was not the ‘uh oh moment’. In fact, the couple had managed to turn off the highway just in time, deciding to head back before daylight disappeared.
Instead, the dread they both experienced was the fateful flat tyre.
“Sure enough, the back left tyre had been gashed. He delved in the boot of the car for his jack, spare tyre and compressor, and began the arduous task of trying to remove the damaged wheel.
At times like these, my calm demeanour helps. I couldn’t do anything practical, so I sat in the passenger seat and continued knitting the square I was working on,” shares Leanne.
Here, kindness encountered them a first time in the form of a young Afrikaans man who wasted no time in lending a hand to the technicalities that lay ahead.
But as the sun set, it became more and more evident that the expired spare tyre wasn’t going to inflate.
Kindness struck again.
Another car emerged with help on its driver’s agenda, and recognising the first Good Samaritan, the two agreed to find a fix (a strong compressor) for the couple.
Leanne and John sat waiting for the better part of an hour, calmly for a couple at the mercy of strangers. But the first Good Samaritans did not let them down and came back to finish the good deed.
Soon, the spare was inflated, attached and the couple were ready to head to a guest house. The Good Samaritan insisted they let him know of their safe arrival and even promised to help find a spare tyre if needed.
“Expressing the depth of gratitude we felt was hard. Without the young man’s help, we would have had to contact the AA, and the remoteness of our location on a district road would have meant waiting most of the night, and perhaps requiring a tow truck to get us into town. As it was, we were treated with incredible kindness and it cost us nothing,” Leanne wrote, before adding further evidence of the people’s kindness in Reitz from another source at the guesthouse.
Leanne dubbed the not-so-flat after-all experience, ‘a reminder of how life-affirming generosity can be’, and how true the sentiment is.
Often, we think of big acts of kindness as life-changing (which they often are). But, a lesser expressed benefit is how ‘life-affirming’ the little acts of kindness can be, and we think that is just as powerful.
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