No time for the Derby when up a mountain
For many years I’ve asserted that no selfrespecting soccer fan misses the Soweto Derby. Well, I missed the Derby this past weekend, writes Matshelane Mamabolo.
|||Johannesburg - For many years I’ve asserted that no selfrespecting soccer fan misses the Soweto Derby for anything. You are either at the stadium, watching on the television or listening to the radio.
Even if you’re at a funeral, you sneak away to your car or have your phone on silent and follow the game on social media. I contended, however, that those who bury their dead on Derby day risk not having anyone attend the funeral.
Well, I missed the Derby this past weekend. And for the first time I didn’t even bother to check what was happening.
Not that checking would have done me any good for I was out of range of any possible means of knowing what Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs were up to.
At around kick-off for the country’s biggest clash, I was high up in the Drakensberg Mountains nursing sore limbs and trying to warm up my soaking bones.
I had made it up to the top of “Rolls Royce”, the part of the mountain that looks like the famous automobile when you’re at the grounds of the Drakensberg Boys Choir School. Saying this feels surreal!
But I completed Outward Bound – the annual big hike for Grade 9s and their dads – and lived to tell the tale. Of course Sibusiso Vilani will probably find this pretty lame. “The Drakenseberg is small fry.” The man who has conquered Mount Everest will say. No doubt the likes of Sello Hatang and Penny Lebyane will also laugh at my gloating, the duo having been to the summit of Kilimanjaro.
One step at a time dear brothers and sisters, I’ll say to them. After all, a 40-something-year-old asthmatic with a crocked left knee should be able to climb up over 2 000m high.
Well, this one did and loved every minute of it. Ok that’s a bit of a fib because upon arriving at base camp on Friday afternoon and seeing the 3km or so hike up to the summit awaiting the next day, I seriously considered sitting it out. And a few sober dads did.
My son, a beast of a boy who throughout the weekend surprised me with his incredible fitness – at one stage he ran back to help carry his struggling roommate’s bag –told me he’d understand if I didn’t go up. But I wanted to go up and the climb was actually not that hard. Not so coming down.
Having been among the first to get to the top I was with the strugglers on the return, the pain in my left knee ensuring I trudged down. And then it started pelting down, with lightning. But somehow I made it back to the camp, swearing I’d never go up that mountain again. As I write this though, the competitor in me is asking “why not do Kilimanjaro next?”.
Well, as long as the PSL doesn’t schedule the Soweto Derby on that weekend.
The Star