Community and The Neighbours We Never Knew

The Vanishing Neighbours

It was only a few weeks ago that I had a conversation in the office kitchen, near the coffee machine. I was curious as to why a company on our floor seemed to keep a three-day week. They were in on neither Monday nor Friday.

The lady I spoke to said that they worked from home on Mondays and had Fridays off. As usual, this week I did not expect them in on Monday, but by Tuesday it became apparent that they had gone. The hive of activity that sat between my office and the kitchen became a scene of eerie calm and emptiness. A part of my office community had gone without notice.

Communion and Loss

Earlier in the week, during Communion at church, people lined up for the gifts. My place in the seating arrangement means that I am one of the first congregants to go forward, ahead of others.

After returning to my seat for contemplation and to listen to the choir sing, I could also watch the other congregants go forward for the breaking of bread. A male couple usually sits to the side, on the right as one looks towards the altar, but only the taller of the two went forward.

It seemed peculiar, as they were never apart, and the shorter of them still carried his age well, being a nonagenarian, though I cannot say why we had never exchanged pleasantries in all the time I had seen them.

Comforting the Bereaved

After the Sung Eucharist, I saw other church members go to chat with the one who was present, and it caught my eye that they were shaking his hand and patting his knee. Everything pointed to the premise that something might have happened to his partner, and from these interactions, I had drawn my own conclusions before I enquired of another person.

The old man had passed away during the week, and they were comforting his partner. I had not made his acquaintance well enough to be familiar, yet I felt that we had, even from the distance I maintained, lost a dear member of our community. May his soul rest in peace.

A Summer Barbecue

Our village, which comprises five apartment blocks with shared facilities and a rather cantankerous WhatsApp group of restless people who have not yet found the natural circadian rhythm of silence and peace at a certain time of day, gathered in the communal garden for a summer barbecue.

I was not sure I would attend, as I am not good with crowds, but when my neighbour, one of the organisers, saw me a few hours before the event, I could not excuse myself from the fête. I paid for my ticket and took a bottle of South African shiraz and a bottle of orange juice to the gathering.

Gathering in the Garden

Dressed in traditional and colourful apparel, I was easily the centre of attention, while at the same time hoping to be inconspicuous. This was the first time something like this had been arranged in our decades-long residency of the village, and over forty people came.

From someone who had moved in only a fortnight ago to others who have lived here for over thirty years, I gleaned enough from the conversations I had. I was better off sitting in one place, with people interacting with me, than moving around networking extrovertly, which is a total drain on my mental reserves.

Proximity Without Intimacy

It struck me then how strange it was that so many of us should live so close and yet know one another so little. That WhatsApp group is the perfect emblem of it; we are near enough to disturb each other's peace, yet not close enough to know the names behind the complaints.

We had shared walls, stairwells, and a garden for years, and it took a barbecue for some of us to exchange a first word. Proximity, I realised, is not the same as intimacy, and living side by side is not the same as living together.

What Community Means

What it revealed to me was that we do not do neighbourliness and community enough, at least for those with an interest in others. I once had a neighbour whom I never met and who kept to themselves in the eighteen months they lived next door. Whether a recluse or simply indifferent, one could only be glad they were gone when I learnt of the situation.

I only want neighbours I can check on and who check on me; people who, when we meet in the corridor, would stop to have a chat; people ready to help one another in the ordinary and the more so. They become a kind of family, and that too is what community is all about.

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