A Phone, Fifty Rand, and a Reminder That Good People Still Exist.
2026-09-16
The Phone That Came Back.
A Routine Trip That Nearly Became a Disaster.
This morning, what should have been a simple stock exchange at Yarona Cash and Carry in Crown Mines turned into a small real-life drama.
I had returned stock that had been purchased incorrectly, received the refund in cash, and went back into the aisles to find the correct replacement.
I even had the correct product image open on my phone.
I showed the image to a man who was helping me locate the stock, then placed my phone on the shelf while I sorted out the paperwork, put the money away, and prepared to pay for the replacement.
And then I forgot about it.
I paid for the replacement stock, collected the change, and walked away from the till.
Then it hit me.
Where was my phone?
The Moment of Panic.
I rushed back to the aisle.
The phone wasn’t there.
My heart sank.
I found the man I had been speaking to earlier, and he immediately helped by phoning my number.
The phone rang.
And rang.
And rang.
Eventually, somebody answered.
“The phone is at reception.”
I was off like a rocket.
Two Ladies Had Found It.
When I arrived at reception, there it was.
My phone.
Safe.
Two ladies had found it and handed it in.
They could quite easily have walked away with it. Nobody would necessarily have known where it went.
But they didn’t.
They handed it in.
One of the ladies jokingly told me that I owed her a cold drink.
I had R50 in my pocket.
That R50 was not spare money. It was supposed to go towards my prepaid electricity.
I actually couldn’t comfortably afford to give it away.
But standing there with my phone safely back in my hand, I felt compelled to give it to her.
So I gave her the whole R50.
She had asked for a cold drink.
I could have given her less.
But in that moment, R50 felt like the right way to say:
Thank you for doing the right thing.
There Are Still Good People Around.
We hear plenty of stories about theft, dishonesty and people taking advantage of others.
But sometimes the opposite happens.
A phone is left unattended in a busy shop.
Someone finds it.
Someone hands it in.
Someone answers when the owner calls.
And a very relieved owner gets his phone back.
No police report.
No dramatic investigation.
No technology required to track it down.
Just two people who found something that wasn’t theirs — and did the right thing.
Captain Gemini’s Reality Report.
This wasn’t a story about losing a phone.
It was a story about almost losing one.
And more importantly, it was a reminder that we shouldn’t allow the bad things we hear about people to make us forget the good things people still do.
That phone could have been stolen.
It wasn’t.
It could have disappeared.
It didn’t.
And somewhere in Yarona Cash and Carry today, two ladies quietly did the right thing.
For that, they deserve more than a cold drink.
They deserve a sincere:
Thank you.
And perhaps there is another lesson here.
Sometimes doing the right thing costs something.
Sometimes gratitude costs something too.
That R50 was meant for my electricity.
God knows that.
But God also knows why I gave it.
I simply felt it in my heart to do so.
Sometimes the best news isn’t happening in Parliament, on television or on social media.
Sometimes it’s sitting quietly at the reception desk of a cash-and-carry store in Crown Mines.
Captain Gemini.