Forty Litres of Bunny Chow Batter and No Cash to Buy the Flour

The booking came in on a Monday and it was the kind of thing I had been praying for since I started the stall. A big food and music weekend on the edge of town wanted me there, all three days, and they wanted me to cater a hospitality area on top of my normal stall. It was more work than I had ever taken on. It was also more money than I had ever been offered at once, and I said yes before I had even worked out how I would do it.

I run a small food stall. Mostly bunny chow, some vetkoek, a curry that my aunt taught me and that I have quietly improved without ever telling her. It is a one woman operation with occasional help from my cousin when his back allows. I built it up from a single gazebo and a borrowed pot, and it feeds me and pays my rent and most months there is a little left over.

The gap between yes and Friday

The problem with a big booking is that it is all cost at the front and all reward at the end. They would pay me after the weekend. But before the weekend I had to buy flour and oil and meat and spices in quantities I had never bought before, and hire a second gazebo, and pay my cousin, and put down a deposit on a bigger gas burner. All of that had to happen by Friday. The money to cover it would arrive the following Monday.

I sat at my kitchen table on the Tuesday night with two lists. On one side, everything I needed to buy. On the other, what was actually in my account. The gap between them was not enormous, but it was real, and it was the kind of gap that can kill an opportunity stone dead. I had the order of my life and I could not afford to fulfil it.

I did the sums four different ways hoping the answer would change. It did not. I needed cash for a few days, cash I would comfortably pay back the moment the festival money landed, and I needed it fast.

The options that were not options

My first thought was to ask family, and I did make one phone call, to my brother, who would have helped if he could but who was in a tight spot of his own that month. My second thought was one of those quick loan things that advertise on every lamp post, and I got as far as reading the fine print before I put the phone down. The numbers frightened me. I did not want to solve a three day problem by signing up for a three year one.

The one thing I owned outright, the one thing that was genuinely mine with no debt attached, was my car. A solid, unglamorous, fully paid for hatchback that I use to fetch stock and haul the gazebo and get to markets before the sun is up. It was, in fact, the most valuable thing I owned.

I mentioned this to a woman at the wholesaler, almost as a joke, and she did not laugh. She said her nephew had been in a similar bind and had gone somewhere to pawn my car as she put it, borrowing against the value of the vehicle for a short stretch. I said that was no good to me, because I needed the car every single day of that festival to fetch and carry. How could I hand it over.

The part I did not know

She explained the part I did not know, which was the part that changed everything. She said the arrangement her nephew used let him pawn my car and still drive it, that the car stayed with him and on the road while it stood as security for the loan. I genuinely did not believe her at first. In my mind pawning something meant it went behind a counter and you got a ticket. The idea that the car could keep working for me while also unlocking the cash I needed seemed too neat.

But it was true, and once I understood it, the whole knot in my chest loosened. My car could be two things at once for a few days. It could be the vehicle that hauled forty litres of batter and a mountain of stock to the festival, and it could be the thing that had made buying that batter possible in the first place.

I want to be careful here, because I am not a person who takes borrowing lightly. My mother raised me to be suspicious of debt, and she was right to. But there is a difference between borrowing to paper over a hole in your life and borrowing to bridge a few days between a cost and a certain payment. This was the second kind. I knew to the rand what was coming and when.

The Friday

I sorted it out on the Thursday. The value of the car covered what I needed with room to spare, and I took only what I actually required, not a cent more, because the size of the thing you can borrow is not the size of the thing you should borrow. That is a lesson my aunt taught me, alongside the curry.

Friday I loaded the car until the back sat low on its springs, and I drove to the festival grounds with the windows down and my heart going like a drum. I set up two gazebos. I fried until my arms ached. The hospitality order alone kept my cousin and me moving without a break, and by Sunday night I had served more people than I serve in a normal month.

The money landed on the Monday, exactly as promised, and I settled the loan against my car that same week, before the interest could do anything I had not planned for. The car was mine again, free and clear, and I had a profit in my account that was larger than anything I had ever seen there.

What I understand now

I used to think that being careful with money meant never borrowing at all. I have changed my mind, a little. Being careful means understanding exactly what you are doing and why, borrowing only against something you truly own, taking only what you need, and having a clear and near date when it comes back. It is the difference between using a tool and being used by one.

That weekend paid for a proper trailer, which means I no longer have to load the car until it groans. But I keep the hatchback. It is still the most valuable thing I own, and not only because of what it is worth. It is the car that believed in the biggest order of my life when my bank balance did not.