Way back in the days when I was in secondary school, I did something I would not normally do one day and I walked home for my lunch break, about half way home I heard a woman screaming, shouting help me, help me, somebody. In front of me just up the road from where the screaming was coming, another of my school goers in the same year walked on by, just kept walking. I was curious as to what all the screaming was about and by the time I reached the road that this guy had just walked past without a second glance I found very clearly that just on the corner of that same road there was an old man outstretched on the pavement and a woman in panic standing over him. The man was dying.

I didn't know any emergency CPR or anything but I went up and asked the lady what had happened, checked the man for a pulse and for breathing. He was still barely alive, I couldn't understand why in the whole road nobody had come out of their houses to help this man or the woman stood over him. I couldn't see how my school colleague could have walked by without batting an eyelid. Together me and the woman knocked on peoples doors to ask for someone to call an ambulance, as the lady herself had no phone. Then, and only then did people respond, the ambulance arrived and the man was taken to hospital, where although he died, he did die in a bed peacefully.

My concern to this day was that, if someone might have got there first or helped out earlier, would he have survived? But even more so why nobody did?

There were enough people in the houses, the houses had windows, surely someone must have noticed her standing there scared for the man's life. This is one thing I don't like about human nature, and that is ignorance. I got back to school and explained what had happened and that is how I found out he'd died but the family wanted to thank the girl who got him to the hospital safely. I didn't much care about my part in it, I just wanted to know if he'd survived or not.

I know one thing, I hope nobody passes by me if I'm lying dying in the street one day, but then shouldn't everyone care for each other in this way? Whether we know the people involved or not, surely we should all try to help each other in such situations. How can we not do? It seems so very wrong to not do.

The only thing I know is that day still haunts me, to think that nobody seemed willing to help that man, but the woman in a state of panic and myself. Given the amount of people that were about, it seems a tragedy of human nature.