Good samaritan..

[Fuzzy317]

I have had Good Samaritans help me. I try to be one when I can.

I try to be a good samaritan by helping with pet transports.

[Ally Cat's Mommy]

You may or may not be aware of this, but car hijacking (usually very violent) is rampant in South Africa.

About 8 years ago I went to a rather unsavoury part of town to pick up a birthday present for my hubby. (It was some off-road gear that I needed to pick up from a bike shop). As it was a typical Saturday morning of running errands, I had all 3 kiddies in the car with me (they would then have been around 3, 5 and 6). When I had loaded my purchases in the boot, and strapped all the kids back in, I climbed in, locked the doors and suddenly a red Golf pulled up in front of me and a white SUV behind me, boxing me in.

It was almost like slow-motion.... One guy got out of the SUV and started walking towards the front passenger door. Just then someone knocked on my drivers-side door. I turned to look and there was a REALLY scruffy looking biker/mechanic standing next to the car. I cracked the window open and he said "Lady, it looks like we have a little problem here. How about you and the kids come into my shop for a little while...." THEN I noticed he has a HUGE spanner in his hand, and two other guys were walking out of the workshop also carrying "weapons". As soon as the hijackers realised that this wasn't going to be an easy job, the front car pulled off, and I just rammed the car into gear and took off as well.

I never went back to say thanks to the bikers in the workshop, as I have never again been able to bring myself to drive into that part of town.... but I am pretty sure that they saved my life that day!

(Just a side note to this - typically what happens is this - as security systems in cars improve, it is harder for thieves to steal parked cars, so they tend to take cars by force whilst the righful owners are driving them. Of course this occasionally happens with children strapped in the back seat - with horrible consequences.)

This is one of the reasons we decided to leave South Africa. My husband also had his hand slashed open by a would-be robber who the police were trying to aprehend in our yard (we arrived home in the middle of it). We realised how "hard" we had become when we managed to avoid another attempted hi-jacking, and didn't even call the police, just had the car repaired and went to work like usual!