Lucki(k)Ly

The Queue

I am getting sicker by the minute.

I am standing in a very long queue at student finance. They tell me my student accommodation approval does not appear on their system. If I do not get state-financed student accommodation, my university life is going to be extremely difficult. I simply cannot afford not to have accommodation. My parents support four households. Money is extremely scarce.

The sun is baking.That early February sun.

I stand there knowing that if this does not work, everything else unravels quietly. No drama. Just difficulty layered upon difficulty.

Then the manager spots me.

She calls me out of the queue and into her office, past people who have been waiting for hours. I sit down and explain that I am being refused accommodation. She prints out my funding confirmation, phones registration, and scolds them for refusing me accommodation.

Just like that.

I was lucky she saw me in the queue.I was even luckier she chose to help me, even though I was at the very tail end of a very long line.

Lucky me.

A Name in a Room

Sometime later, I am sitting in the TV room. Babalwa asks me to go with her to some event at AIESEC. I do not know what AIESEC is. I agree anyway.

The following year, for reasons no one fully explains, the previous committee does not organise elections. Someone says there is no need. Someone mentions my name. A motion is made. I become the Local Committee President of AIESEC, an international organisation present at some of the most prominent universities in the world.

Just like that.

I revive the local chapter. It becomes one of the best in the country. I make my first trip outside KwaZulu-Natal. I was not meant to go. Someone else becomes nervous about the long journey and offers me their place. That year, I cut my leadership teeth. It was one of the best years of my university life. I learned what leadership feels like when it arrives before certainty.

I was lucky to be invited. Luckier to be trusted.

Someone said my name. And that was enough.

Almost Going Home

I was broke. I had one night of accommodation left. I sold my prized DVD. I was dry and out. I was preparing to return home with broken dreams and shattered confidence. I could already imagine the laughter. The story they would tell about me. Bright at school. Went to the city. Failed. Returned to the villages to join the masses of unemployed people.

A month earlier, I had met a childhood friend. Later, I found out where he was working. I packed most of my things and went to see him.

He was sorting DVD returns. I waited. A friend of his arrived. We spoke. He asked where I was staying. I told him I was staying nowhere. He offered me a place while I sorted my things out.

So I did not go back home. I stayed.I fought another day.

I was lucky to meet Lucky the previous month.I was lucky to meet his friend.

It was my lucky day.

I do not know what would have happened had I returned to the villages.

Lunch That Changed Everything

Years later, I am sitting at Wilsons Wharf. We are having a celebratory lunch. A client I had helped with accreditation has been recommended successfully. There is relief. There is joy. She asks her friend to join us.

She takes me aside and asks if I am the one who helped her friend get accredited. I nod. She asks for my number.

Soon after, I am meeting the CEO.

Years later, I am the Head.

I was lucky she was there for that lunch. I was even luckier she spoke to me while her friend stepped away to take a call. Because of that moment, I experienced some of the highest and lowest points of my career.

I was lucky.

The Visa Problem

I am pacing up and down. Everything feels too good to be true. Paris. Enrolled at La Rochelle. All of this during the Rugby World Cup of 2023. All the money paid. All the preparation done.

If I am lucky, my passport and visa will arrive in Durban on Monday. We are flying on Sunday. Johannesburg is not an option. By the time I arrive in Sandton, the visa office will be closed. They do not open on weekends.

This is it. Wait. The dream is not over.

A call comes in. Someone in my travel party is already on her way to Sandton to collect her passport and visa. We are on the same flight. She can collect mine too, provided I sign the required papers. I sign immediately.

Later she calls. She has my passport. She has my visa.

And I jet off to France.I have a jolly good time.

A lucky escape.

On Luck

When I look back, I can count many moments where things fell into place, often after much struggle and sometimes with very little effort. I often hear successful people speak about luck at the breakthrough points of their lives. Almost all of them mention it.

Yet luck does not arrive on its own.

I worked hard to enter university. Then luck arrived as accommodation. I said yes to an invitation I did not understand. Luck answered with leadership. I worked hard on accreditation. Luck appeared as lunch. I prepared for a journey. Luck arrived as shared timing.

It seems luck comes when you are already on the dance floor. Luck is preceded by actions and choices. Each day, we strain forward toward what we believe is our calling. Some people never ask these questions. Perhaps that is lighter. Others carry the burden of destiny. Some never find meaning. Some are never lucky enough to look.

We are lucky to have experienced many deaths of the ego. Lucky to recognise the walking-dead mentality and resist it. Lucky to understand our mishaps and pains as our Dark Nights of the Soul rather than endings.

Sometimes luck disappears.

In those moments, I shrug and say, hard lucky, and keep walking until luck remembers me again.

Afterword

This memoir essay was inspired by a conversation with my nephew. I mentioned luck. Three hours later, a gentle voice said, Luck is the title.

I was lucky we spoke about luck.

Author’s Note

This essay reflects on how luck often appears not as chance, but as recognition: being seen in a queue, being named in a room, being present when timing opens a door. Like the other essays in this collection, it is less concerned with answers than with noticing the moments where persistence and circumstance quietly meet, and a life bends without announcing that it has done so.