Keeping an Eye on Things

From Great North Road

By Kenneth Miller.

Large work crew gangs from the Public Works Department during the 1950's were a common sight along the red dusty corrugated trail known as the Great North Road.

Day in and day out, they would toil as they filled in the deep ruts and holes where unsuspecting motorists would drive into, never to be seen again. In the rainy season the road became a sea of red mud, which was truly the Red Sea.

All too often, when the bwana overseeing the crews would seek out companionship with his bottle of Cape brandy, or to inspect the road ahead, the crews would down tools, seek shade from the broiling African sun and listen to the monotonous singing of the cicadas. Productivity would drop.

One bwana with superior management skills decide to keep an ever watchful eye on things by placing his sparkling glass eye on a rock to watch over the labours of the work crew. Productivity never faltered, until the day one of the work crew saw the light and came up with a solution that would allow the crew to return to their old ways.

On the next occasion that the bwana removed his sparkling glass eye from his flushed wrinkled face, he left confident that the ever watchful eye placed on a strategic rock overlooking the red dusty road would keep a vigilant lookout on the activities of the hard working crew. He was blind to the fact that when he departed, one of the crew members would circle the rock that cradled the eye, and when behind the eye and confident that the eye could not see him, he blindsided the eye and placed a large tin can over the eye, thus blocking its vision. Life for the work crew returned to normal as they once more sought shade from the broiling African sun and listed to the monotonous singing of the cicadas.