Back on the bus. Vusi is salivating. His heart is thudding. His eyes are wide open. As big as saucers. He’s not going to miss a heartbeat of the action.

It’s coming.

He’s from Africa. The hunter’s instinct runs in his veins. The hunter knows when it’s time to stand still in the bush, and when to pounce. It’s all about timing. About anticipation. And he can feel the timing is right. A black brother is about to pounce. He can feel it.

It’s coming.

Those doubting Thomases back home are in for a surprise. The action he’s about to capture on his phone is going to go viral on the net, thus landing him a reality TV deal with one of the networks. From Lecture Room To Da Streetz: The Intellectual With Afritude. That would be a great name for a reality show. His reality show.

He’s clutching his phone now, ready to put it to good use once the action starts. How do they say in the movies? Camera rolling! Yes, the camera is ready to start rolling.

It’s coming.

Like someone watching a fast game of tennis, his eyes are moving from speaker to speaker – not wanting to miss a word, not wanting to miss the slightest piece of action. They are speaking so fast, these Americans.

“Hey,” one man shouts, “you crazy-ass-cracker, whatchu lookin’ at? Move to the fuckin’ back of the bus ’fore I show you your mother.” The speaker has a face that reminds Vusi of a maggot. If maggots could grow this big. Come to think of it, he doesn’t really know what a maggot’s face looks like. If it has a face. Maybe it’s one of those animals whose face is also its backside? Like an earthworm, which has faces on both ends. At least that’s what he thinks they said in biology class. He never concentrated much in biology class. He knew from the onset that he wanted to be a money man when he finished school. He’s at Harvard not on the strength of his knowledge of earthworms and maggots, whether these creatures have faces or not. He is studying High Finance. No profit in memorising facts about maggots. Therefore, the long and short of it, he doesn’t know if a maggot has a face or not. But, still, this man’s face shouts maggot – that’s how creepy it is. “I’m not gonna say it again: move the fuck back! There’s people wanna get on the bus! This bus ain’t full.”

Four people climb in. One of them is a woman pushing a baby in a pram – or a stroller, as they call this contraption in the US of A. The woman needs help to get her pram on board. But her friends ignore her. To get their attention, she says, “Shiit! Can’t a bitch get some help get a baby on board a bus?”

Somebody – not one of her friends – finally comes to her rescue. Once on board, the grateful lady says to the good Samaritan: “What the fuck you lookin’ at? You ain’t seen a black bitch carrying a baby? Whatchu lookin’ at?”

The good Samaritan is an Asian man who shrinks into himself at the unexpected onslaught from a woman he’s just helped.

Finally on board, these happy citizens of America continue to talk – in voices that pose a threat to the average ear-drum – about what they intend doing when they get home. It’s Christmas Eve, after all. Some last-minute preparations still need to be attended to. For the Big Day, you see. Their narrative, as an observant reader would have surmised, is peppered with short words that start with “f” or “s”, as if these are the only words that matter in the dictionary, or the entire lexicon of civilised humanity.

Some gentleman then opines that, perhaps, just perhaps, it would be preferable to eschew what he terms “profane and impolite speech” in the presence of young children.

To which one of the pilgrims explodes: “Now I can see why they lock black people up. I know exactly why. Black people be talkin’ among themselves, know what I’m sayin’, mindin’ their own bidness, and some cracker be tellin’ them, teachin’ them how to talk. Cracker, I don’t wanna be arrested. So don’t pro-voke me! You been pro-voking me the whole year. The year’s almost ovuh. Is Chrismas tomorrow. And baby Jesus gettin’ born tomorrow. And I ain’t need no pro-vo-cation on Chrismas Eve. Hear what I said? I said: ’Nuf pro-vocation! Get the fuck outta my bidness!”

Tell us: Do you think the man is right to say that people shouldn’t swear in front of children? What do you think of how the ‘pilgrim’ reacts when the man says this?