Everybody Is Carrying Something

2026-08-11

🔑 Everybody Is Carrying Something

🌧️ A Morning at City Deep

The rain is coming down hard now.

It is washing across the windscreen in sheets, while water drips steadily from the roof above me.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

That is the sound of the morning.

I’m sitting in the Ford Ranger at City Deep, watching the Johannesburg market continue doing what markets do.

People arrive.

People leave.

Trucks load.

Forklifts move.

Vegetables disappear into vehicles.

Umbrellas appear.

Coats are pulled tighter.

And somehow, despite the cold, the rain and the miserable weather, life continues.

I came here to work.

Instead, I found myself watching.

And thinking.

And remembering.

And somewhere between a puddle filling with raindrops and a trolley being loaded with cabbages, I realised something:

I’ve been a journalist for years without really calling myself one.

📰 The Journalist I Didn’t Know I Was

During COVID, I decided to study journalism.

I wasn’t necessarily planning to become a professional journalist.

I wanted to improve my website.

I wanted to understand writing better.

I wanted to understand how information should be presented.

And, frankly, I enjoy studying.

So I did the course.

I completed the journalism diploma with 91%.

The certificate is still sitting there waiting for me to claim it.

But the funny thing is that the qualification itself wasn’t the important part.

The important part was what happened afterwards.

I started using it.

Every day.

PlebWare became more than a website.

It became an ecosystem of writing, technology, research, observation, storytelling, software, Linux, Christianity, humour and life.

And today, sitting here at City Deep, I’m suddenly seeing the connection.

A journalist observes.

A journalist asks questions.

A journalist records.

A journalist distinguishes between what is known and what is assumed.

A journalist looks for the story beneath the event.

And an editor takes that raw material and asks:

“How can I make this clearer?”

Perhaps that’s why editing comes naturally to me too.

Years of being a webmaster taught me something important:

Nothing is ever quite finished until you’ve looked at it again.

Write it.

Read it.

Question it.

Edit it.

Improve it.

Publish it.

Then discover three things you should have changed.

And edit it again.

That’s the life of a writer.

🥬 The Market Writes Its Own Stories

This morning, I watched a man climb onto the back of a bakkie.

One trolley arrived.

Then another.

Cabbages.

Carrots.

Lettuce.

Green peppers.

Tomatoes.

Boxes were lifted.

Bags were thrown onto the back.

The load grew.

Then the man disappeared to fetch another batch.

No dramatic music.

No news cameras.

No headline.

Just another working morning at City Deep.

But that is exactly where the stories are.

A forklift disappeared around the corner pulling two small trailers.

The trailers were carrying orange bags.

I couldn’t see what was inside.

Perhaps pumpkins.

Perhaps something else.

It doesn’t matter.

I didn’t know.

And that’s important.

A journalist shouldn’t turn a guess into a fact simply because it sounds good.

So I watched it disappear around the corner.

And the market continued.

☔ Johannesburg Under an Umbrella

People were walking everywhere.

Umbrellas opened.

Coats were pulled tighter.

One woman had wrapped something around herself like a blanket.

Another carried bags.

Another person balanced goods while making their way through the rain.

And everywhere I looked, people were carrying something.

Boxes.

Bags.

Vegetables.

Stock.

Responsibilities.

Lives.

That’s when my thoughts moved beyond City Deep.

Because there are many kinds of loads.

🧱 The Weight of R150

Last week I was reminded of that reality when I heard about James, a Christian brother who lives in Springs.

He works at a printing shop.

His income is approximately R150 a day.

We’ve spoken before about what R150 a day actually means.

On paper, it is an income.

In reality, it has to fight against everything else.

Transport.

Food.

Household expenses.

Unexpected costs.

Life.

And life has a nasty habit of producing expenses precisely when you don’t have money available for them.

R150 isn’t simply a number.

It represents a person’s time.

A person’s labour.

A person’s energy.

And sometimes an entire day’s survival.

💼 When Qualifications Don’t Protect You

Then there is Francois.

I’ve known him for roughly three decades.

We used to gym together.

He recently lost his job after the family-owned bottle store where he worked went bankrupt, changed ownership and was taken over by new owners who didn’t retain him.

Now he’s dealing with the consequences.

And unfortunately, some people are blaming him for the business failure.

That seems deeply unfair without evidence.

A person losing his job because a business failed does not automatically mean that person caused the failure.

And Francois isn’t some unqualified man without options.

He has accumulated an extraordinary number of certificates and qualifications.

His LinkedIn profile is practically a catalogue of achievement.

Yet qualifications don’t pay the bond when the salary disappears.

They don’t automatically pay the car insurance.

They don’t pay life insurance.

They don’t buy groceries.

They don’t keep the lights on.

He has a bond of around R300,000 and a whole collection of financial obligations.

And suddenly, the question isn’t:

“How qualified are you?”

The question becomes:

“Where is the next income coming from?”

That’s a frightening question.

🧼 The Economics of Dishwashing Liquid

And then there are the smaller decisions.

The decisions nobody puts into a financial report.

The decisions that happen inside ordinary homes.

Should I buy washing powder?

Or dishwashing liquid?

The laundry can wait another week.

The dishes cannot.

So you buy the dishwashing liquid.

That’s financial hardship.

Not necessarily starvation.

Not necessarily homelessness.

Sometimes it is simply the constant mathematics of deciding which necessity gets priority today.

You look at what is available.

You look at what is running out.

You look at what can wait.

And you make the decision.

Then you do it again tomorrow.

And again next week.

That is what financial pressure actually feels like.

It is not always dramatic.

Sometimes it is sitting in a shop aisle holding two ordinary household products and deciding which one you can afford.

🥤 Two Litres of Perspective

I’m sitting here with a two-litre strawberry daiquiri-flavoured sparkling soft drink.

Non-alcoholic.

Something I received from the shop last week.

I’ve been keeping it in the vehicle so I can stay hydrated while working.

There is less than a litre left.

So I’m nursing it.

Not because it’s some great luxury.

Because wasting something when resources are limited doesn’t make sense.

Even something as simple as a bottle of soft drink becomes part of the mathematics.

Use what you have.

That principle keeps appearing everywhere.

🛻 The Battered Hyundai

Across the market I noticed a battered Hyundai truck.

The front end looked as though it had taken a hit.

The bumper had apparently been repaired.

The bonnet—or something around it—hadn’t received quite as much attention.

The fiberglass canopy was cracked along the top.

There appeared to be a substantial opening underneath.

Rain would probably find its way inside.

And yet the truck was still there.

Still working.

Still part of the market.

It reminded me of something.

Sometimes we don’t repair everything.

Sometimes we repair what must work first.

The bumper gets fixed.

The canopy waits.

The vehicle keeps moving.

Perhaps human beings aren’t much different.

🔵 The Blue Canvas

Today I’m carrying a blue canvas.

It isn’t elegant.

It isn’t sophisticated.

It isn’t a permanent solution.

But it works.

My stock needs protection from the rain.

The back of the Ranger is partly sheltered.

So I don’t need the canvas immediately.

I’ll wait until there is more vulnerable stock.

Then I’ll cover it.

That’s another lesson I’ve learned:

Don’t solve tomorrow’s problem before tomorrow arrives.

Watch.

Assess.

Adapt.

Act when necessary.

It applies to rain.

It applies to business.

It applies to technology.

And sometimes it applies to life.

🚘 The Man With His Lights On

At one point I noticed a man loading his vehicle.

His headlights were still on.

He disappeared.

I thought about going over to warn him.

Perhaps he would return before the battery became a problem.

Perhaps somebody else would notice.

Perhaps the vehicle would be gone before anyone said anything.

But the thought itself stayed with me.

Because sometimes helping somebody doesn’t require money.

Sometimes it is simply:

“Hey, brother. Your lights are still on.”

🌍 Everybody Is Carrying Something

And that’s when the whole morning began to make sense.

I’ve been watching people carry things.

But perhaps I’ve really been watching people carry life.

The vegetable worker carries boxes.

The forklift carries stock.

The driver carries goods.

The woman carries groceries.

The worker carries an umbrella.

The unemployed man carries debt.

The worker earning R150 carries responsibility.

The person choosing between washing powder and dishwashing liquid carries the burden of limited resources.

And every one of us carries something nobody else can necessarily see.

Some carry financial pressure.

Some carry grief.

Some carry disappointment.

Some carry responsibility.

Some carry illness.

Some carry dreams.

Some carry faith.

Some carry all of them at once.

Everybody is carrying something.

✝️ The Christian Perspective

That thought takes me somewhere else.

Jesus spoke repeatedly about people who were overlooked.

The hungry.

The poor.

The weary.

The burdened.

The people standing at the edges of society.

And perhaps one of the most important things we can do as Christians is learn to see people properly.

Not as statistics.

Not as economic categories.

Not as failures.

Not as burdens.

Not as inconveniences.

But as human beings created in the image of God.

James is not R150.

Francois is not his debt.

The market worker is not merely another labourer.

The woman walking through the rain isn’t merely another pedestrian.

And the man loading vegetables isn’t simply another customer.

They are people.

People with histories.

People with families.

People with fears.

People with hopes.

People carrying something.

🔥 And What About PlebWare?

Perhaps this is why PlebWare has become what it has become.

At first, I thought I was building a website.

Then I thought I was building an ecosystem.

Then software became part of it.

Writing became part of it.

Voice became part of it.

Linux became part of it.

Stories became part of it.

Christianity became part of it.

Humour became part of it.

And now I’m beginning to understand another part of PlebWare:

Observation.

The world itself is raw material.

The market is raw material.

The broken truck is raw material.

The rain is raw material.

The struggling worker is raw material.

The writer’s own struggles are raw material.

Not to exploit.

Not to sensationalise.

But to understand.

To document.

To tell the truth as honestly as we can.

That’s journalism.

That’s writing.

That’s storytelling.

And perhaps that’s also why the writer inside me has been growing stronger.

Captain Gemini may have been quiet.

Rokio may have been quiet.

CyberCat and Armadillo may have been waiting.

But the writer wasn’t gone.

He was watching.

🌧️ The Newsroom Is a Ford Ranger

The rain is still hammering down.

The windscreen is running with water.

The roof above me is dripping:

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

I’m sitting in a work vehicle at City Deep.

There is no newsroom around me.

No press room.

No television camera.

No journalist’s desk.

Just a Ford Ranger, a bottle of soft drink, a blue canvas, a wet market and thousands of ordinary human beings going about their business.

And yet…

I’m writing.

I’m observing.

I’m recording.

I’m editing.

I’m thinking.

I’m asking questions.

Maybe I finally understand what that 91% journalism diploma was really about.

The certificate may still be sitting on Alison.

But the education is sitting here with me.

In the rain.

🔑 The Editor

And yes…

I’m not only a journalist.

I’m an editor.

That probably came from the webmaster years.

You learn very quickly that creating something is only half the job.

You have to look at it again.

Cut what doesn’t belong.

Fix what doesn’t work.

Question what isn’t clear.

Improve what can be improved.

And sometimes…

You have to throw the whole thing back onto the editing table.

That’s not failure.

That’s craftsmanship.

A writer produces the raw material.

A journalist observes reality.

An editor asks whether the story actually says what it needs to say.

And perhaps the best work happens when all three become one person.

🕯️ Final Reflection

This morning began with rain.

It became a meditation on work.

Then money.

Then hardship.

Then friendship.

Then journalism.

Then writing.

Then PlebWare.

And finally, humanity.

I came to City Deep to move stock.

Instead, I found myself taking stock.

Not of vegetables.

Of life.

And perhaps that is the greatest lesson of this cold Johannesburg morning:

We are all carrying something.

So when you meet somebody today, remember that you probably don’t know the weight they are carrying.

Be patient.

Be kind.

Help where you can.

Don’t judge too quickly.

And when you see somebody struggling, don’t merely see the struggle.

See the person carrying it.

🙏 A Prayer for Those Who Carry Heavy Loads

Lord Jesus, look upon every person carrying a burden today, whether that burden is financial, physical, emotional, spiritual or simply the weight of another difficult day, and give them strength for the next step, wisdom for the next decision, provision for the next need, courage for the next challenge, and the assurance that they have not been forgotten by You; teach us to see beyond circumstances and recognise the human being standing before us, and make us instruments of Your compassion wherever You place us.

🗡️ God’s Journalist
in conjunction with ChatGPT and the Holy Spirit