Rector’s eNews 05: 12 February 2025

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Thirty-one years ago, I was driving with the then Headmistress of DSG Junior School, June Lester, to Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha) from Grahamstown (now Makhanda). As we came close to Nanaga which is more or less a half-way house between the two, she slowed down and turned off the road.

“I am going to get you the best pie you have ever had,” she said. We went into what was then a small farm stall and she pointed to a pie with an L on the top. It was one of their special lamb and mint pies and, without doubt, it was the best pie I have ever had. When I came to pay her she looked at me disdainfully. “No, it’s a gift of course. But you buy a lamb and mint pie for someone else next time you are passing here.”

Three weeks later on the same trip, I did so, and passed on the “tradition” of the lamb and mint pie purchase.

Fast forward from 1994 to 2005 and, over the Christmas holiday, my family and I were down in the Eastern Cape. I was travelling up from Gqeberha to Makhanda with a friend and, as we approached the Nanaga farm stall (now a massive edifice with a garage on a new site), he slowed down and told me of his intentions to buy me a lamb and mint pie because somebody else had bought him one. The tradition had continued! The pie he bought me in early January was as good as the first one I had had and now the onus is back on me all these years later to keep the lamb and mint pie tradition going by buying one for someone next time I am in the Eastern Cape.

On Monday, I told this story, inter alia, in assembly and this week is our Random Acts of Kindness Week. To try to kickstart the idea of randomly giving to someone, several boys were handed a Tex chocolate bar and Mr Sibusiso Ncamani was also a recipient. He got two as he had an awful Saturday, having experienced a blowout on one of his tyres on his trip to Durban. But he now has two acts of kindness randomly to perform!

There were 30 packets of chips and 30 Tex bars in the Rector’s Reception and boys were invited to come to collect these under oath that they would pass on an act of kindness to someone else – not necessarily a chocolate or chips. Those chips and chocolate bars vanished in 4 minutes and so, hopefully, there are many who are the recipients of acts of kindness in the school this week.

It costs so little to be kind in this world and one does not have to spend money to be kind. One could say something encouraging to a person who is down, one could help someone with a simple task, one could try to solve a problem for another person. In a world where we are often focussed on ourselves and what we want out of life, it is important for our own well-being to be kind to others.

And I am being kind to you by telling you the secret of the Nanaga lamb and mint pies. Buy one for a friend if you ever go past Nanaga; I promise they are the best.

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