The slow drama of a tortoise crossing the road
A tortoise in the road turns a Karoo journey into a lesson in misplaced urgency. For a few minutes, speed loses its authority and there is a small tear in space and time.
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Naomi Roebert
You are driving through the Karoo with a plan and a vague sense of momentum that feels important enough to defend. The road is long and hypnotic. Speed becomes an agreement you make with yourself. Then the agreement collapses.
There is a tortoise in the road
This reptile has no interest in your schedule. It is not startled or impressed, but fixed beady-eyed on the promised land beyond the tar. It, too, has somewhere to be.
The moment everything slows
Brakes are applied and your body leans forward slightly, as if proximity might accelerate the outcome. The tortoise lifts its head to assess the situation and continues at precisely the same pace.
Cars gather behind you, a bakkie and an SUV (a Hilux and a Fortuna, obviously). The road is now an amphitheatre, and you are all spectators drafted into the same unscripted event.
Nobody hoots of course - that would be obscene. There's a tortoise crossing the road.
A crash course in relative importance
The tortoise moves with the confidence of a thing that has survived ice ages; entire empires came and went without its input. Its shell bears the record of negotiations made with the world. Every step is deliberate and unwasted.
Your phone buzzes but you ignore it. Your schedule has been temporarily dismantled, subsumed by a moment of greater import: a tortoise is crossing the road.
Intervention fantasies
Someone gets out of their car. There is always someone who wants to help. They hesitate and remember half-heard advice about not turning the tortoise around. A brief discussion follows.
The correct move, when intervention is necessary, is to lift it gently (it might hiss now, from within its shell), and place the tortoise on the side it was heading toward. Do not rush or redirect but respect the internal map that has guided it this far. Better still just to wait for it to reach the other side. After all, a tortoise is crossing the road.
The strange intimacy of waiting
There is something disarming about strangers waiting together for something so unapologetically slow. Conversation starts and someone jokes. Someone else shares a story about a tortoise rescued years ago that now lives behind a shed, stubborn and indestructible.
For a few minutes, strangers occupy the same mental space in the road-time continuum. The Karoo has issued a pause to which everyone must comply.
The tortoise does not care
The tortoise reaches the centre line - a small victory. It pauses, not for effect, but as part of its method. The shell catches the light as the legs reset and movement resumes. The road is not a route but merely a surface.
Eventually, the tortoise clears the road. Engines start and the people disperse, returning to their separate trajectories.
The tortoise crossing is a small manifesto. Accept that progress does not always look impressive while recognising that Karoo wildlife operates on terms that predate and will likely outlast yours.
Aftermath
Later, you will struggle to explain why you were a little late. You will say that there was a tortoise crossing the road, and oddly, you will be understood.
Somewhere beyond the road, the tortoise continues. It has conquered the terrain and reached its destination (for today, at least). So have you. The mistake was thinking that you had to get there in a hurry.
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Naomi Roebert
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