The Lovely Road

Big City Life

2007-06-21T09:56:00.000-07:00

It was always the first thing we'd look for, in tacky souvenir shops, at airports and greasy bus terminals, or stashed somewhere in the seat pockets of an overpriced hire car. Just as often, it had to be the microscopic and misleading pages of our dog-eared Lonely Planet - once, memorably, a hand-drawn scribble, displaying such a flamboyant disregard for scale that we gouged out a fair chunk of Turkey on a motor scooter, complete with pot-holes, gravel roads and insufficient fuel and lighting.

Maps. So began every new adventure - my chin on Richard's shoulder, his finger tracing paths through the towns and cities spread out on his lap. Planning our conquest with loud voices. And eager feet.

There are a million small ways to possess a city. I've seen the sun rise over Cape Town. I've watched it drop spectacularly into the Atlantic, from a winding cliffside road, and from a picnic rug on a quiet beach. I've gazed at crowds from coffee-shop windows and lost myself in the silence of inner-city gardens. I've made friends with "the locals", and conquered the dancefloor at a handful of nightspots.

But I still feel as if, somehow, I've been cheated of this place. I've never wandered the "Mother City" - I've been whisked from point to point, my vision blurred behind tinted glass and other people's solicitude. And I don't know the rules here. And I don't know the dangers. So I have no way of knowing if it's safety or paranoia that makes my friends so careful.

On Thursday, a group of us take the train down the Cape to Simonstown, to see the penguins at Boulders Beach. We drink thermos tea in the rain, and finally bail out for fish and chips in Kalk Bay. Shivering at the station, overtaken again by a sudden sunset, we listen with grim expressions to the inevitable cancellations over the loudspeaker. As if on cue, Nick's phone rings.

"..."
"No, we're not, it's been cancelled."
"...?"
"Kalk Bay"
"...! ..."
"Ja, the girls are with me."

And so it is decided - we can't catch a train after 5 o'clock, we must find ourselves a spot out of the wind and wait, while Matthew drives the 40 minutes or so from Rondebosch to pick us up. It's a kind thing to do - it's a natural thing to do, here - but I find myself scowling into my glass of cheap wine, snapping at people and silently fighting back tears in the back seat of the car. It's been a long week of waiting around for lifts, and freedom of movement came with a hefty 500 rand pricetag for my trek out out to Tableview on Tuesday. I feel caged, and resentful.

The next day, full of bravado, I bully Julie onto a train, and the worst that could happen, happens.

I'm robbed.

I lose my bag, with all my cards, my phone, my Lonely Planet (oh no!) and a fair bit of cash. The strangest thing is watching him run - so slowly - down the carriage, pull open the doors, while rows of people do ...nothing. It's not until afterwards that I recalculate the "worst that could happen", living for a moment in the mind of someone who checks first for weapons, before chasing after a silly girl's bag.

After a merry dance through police stations with disconnected phones, banks without international phone numbers, and an interesting exchange with the Austrian High Consulate, we give up on South African bureaucracy and message Dad to cancel my cards. A few restorative coffees and a well-deserved ice-cream, and even my dear Frenchie is philosophical about the whole affair.

Because here's the best bit. It's happened. We dealt with it. And the teeny tiny shameful part of me, that gripped my bag that little bit tighter when an unfamiliar black man passed me on the street, that part of me that was nervous, in certain parts of town, despite my speeches about living in fear, despite the loud and self-congratulatory conversations with Riona, that part of me that still thought, somewhere deep down, that my stuff really mattered? Well, even that part of me has nothing to be afraid of now.

And, for next time, my Cape Town is waiting...

Paint!

2007-06-10T02:52:00.000-07:00

I had promised Jason I'd get the kids to create some backdrops and random decorations for the photo exhibition opening on Monday. Grocotts Mail (the local paper) had donated some sheets of newsprint, so I bought paints and coloured cardboard and reluctantly dragged myself out of bed and down High Street on Thursday morning.

Things That Stain + scissors + crazy children - adequate supervision =

This.

And this.

And this.

And this.

(Siphokazi, Peter, Xolisani, Caroline)

I am so lucky.

On Strike

2007-06-07T13:39:00.000-07:00

South African teachers have been on strike since Friday. The Teachers' Union is in stalemate with the government over proposed wage rises - South African public servants want a wage rise of 12 percent, while the government is still refusing (in the case of teachers) to budge from 6 percent.

Current basic monthly wage for teachers in South African public schools starts at R7000. That's exactly $1144.19 Aussie dollars per month, according to the current exchange rate. 1650 rand per week. I could spend half that in an ordinary week, without having to be too imaginative, or even too self-indulgent - and I don't have to think about rent or even food...

There have been demonstrations on High Street, and around Amasango - explosions of rhythm and music that seemed positively celebratory. Toyi-toying. In my first months here, 'toyi-toyi' was one of those words that slipped past me - so seemingly embedded in the South African understanding of political action that it wasn't ever - couldn't ever be - really explained.

I asked people:
"Toyi-toying? Um, I guess it's like stamping. You know, making noise." (I guess it's also, like, a verb)
"It's just what you do at a protest."
"Oooh. Toyi-toyi. You mean just causing a ruckus."
Pauline's-adorable-cousin-Nick even went so far as to give me an impression. Which looked alarmingly like an Indian dancer trying to destroy an anthill.
"And you sing ...stuff. I can't do it here."

How to describe a toyi-toyi? Well, it clearly involves stamping. And shouting. Slogans, and various inspirational words in English and Xhosa. But there's also threads of familiar and unfamiliar songs, and moments when the crowd unites in phenomenally tight harmonies. And there's a rhythm, of feet on the asphalt, of hundreds of hands hitting thighs in complex, interweaving beats. There's a joy to it, that I've never witnessed in a rally at home - a kind of glory in defiance.

I stood watching the crowd in High Street on Friday, fascinated and distracted. When I finally made it to Amasango, Jo was in the office, and the yard was almost empty - just a few boys, acting wild and ropey, and the two security guards. I drank coffee and stood around, mostly, while the kitchen staff doled out lunch and the odd piece of clothing to the trickle of children in and out the door.

"Where's Jane?" I asked Joanne.
"Oh, she's striking. She'll be here in an hour."

Mama Jane is still on strike. Which really doesn't change much. She has been at school doing paperwork, listening to problems and trying to manage the educational, medical, spiritual and legal wellbeing of her current and former students. Every day this week.

Her take on the situation?

"It's a great chance to catch up on some work before I go away."

Weekend Snapshots

2007-06-04T17:00:00.000-07:00

A winding road, a farmhouse, white pillars and friendly oaks (still green).

Firelight through bright tangled hair, bent over papers. A tall boy folded in a chair. A fat daschund dozing on the rug.

Steep hills, distant snow, and a melted sky (pink and blue).

A table set with red napkins; red balloons and trailing streamers.

Fresh bread, gathered eggs, yellow milk. Porridge. Yoghurt set in a jar.

A brass-knobbed bed, with a pink counterpane.

Three girls standing up in a bakkie (ute), with matching homemade scarves, and cheeks red from the wind, backs to the mountains, squinting in the sun.

Oh, and a lot of cows.

The Gathering

2007-06-04T15:55:00.001-07:00

It's quiet now. Most of the volunteers have left. Jo has slipped away to bed, and Jason stands in the kitchen, towering in bare feet, clutching his hot water bottle and staring blankly at the kettle. Jane's laugh wavers out from the lounge room, and I hear American Farrah's brassy voice cutting over the more subdued accents of Meg and Bridget, and the Dutch girls Ellen and Riette.

Quietly - so quietly! - I begin to sort the piles of dirty crockery; into mounds of stickied pans, splashed glasses, an overbalancing bowl of cutlery. We're not supposed to be washing up, but Riona soon sneaks in with a tea towel, and we find a little space, a little silence, in the chaos of the kitchen, to discuss and debrief. To try and understand what happened tonight.

What happened tonight was

last minute shopping and a
late rush into an already
crowded kitchen,

chopping boards,
onion tears,
elbows,
rosemary, cold
from the garden,

doorbells

white sauce,
reggae,
laughter and
last minute instructions,

Introductions, and
pretzels, scattered on the
kitchen floor.

Red wine, white wine,
conversations
cross-legged,
on couches,
or straight-backed dining chairs.

And the silence in the room,
as each spoke,
bashful, nervous
full of joy,
and the moment of recognition
the glance,
the slow warm knowing

that we are here
together.
That we came, for the
same reasons.

What happened that night was a beautiful coincidence. What happened, was that the conversations, the shared experiences, the plans and suggestions, eclipsed even our wildest hopes of what might be born out of such a meeting. And that cherished schemes, much discussed between Riona and myself, were suggested over and over again from different angles, and arrived at by different paths.

What happened, it seemed, was something that everyone wanted to happen. Something that needed to happen. Something that was meant to happen.

And I understood just a little of the certainty that Jane radiates, when she says:

"I am a person of Faith."

Dispatches from the Amasango Knitting Circle (2)

2007-05-20T10:31:00.001-07:00

Updates from what shall henceforth be known as 'That Week'

2007-05-20T00:07:00.000-07:00

Eric is mending well - he avoided us for most of the week, tensing up and refusing to make eye contact when we touched him, because (as Riona put it)
"We remind him of hospital."
But Friday saw a change - he came to find us in the garden at Eluxolweni, and edged his way out on a branch of the peppertree to sit beside me. Later, he quietly took my bag, and my hand, refusing to relinquish either for the course of the long walk back to town.

Mango (there, I said it. It was Mango, bright-eyed, sharp and charming Mango) - Mango spent two nights in gaol. The house father at the Eluxolweni Shelter is bringing a case against him, as Eric's legal guardian.

Back at school, he was a storm of paranoia and barely contained rage. I stayed away for a few days with a nervous migraine - and a shameful, unconfessed fear of facing the children again. When I saw him again he was full of angry questions.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Who is telling lies about me?"
I wanted to avoid him, but Riona made the decision to include him in the Drama class, and his desperate eagerness broke my heart all over again. He is a child after all - a disturbed and violent child - but a child. It hurt, in strange and unexpected ways, to know how important our approval is to him.

Jane has applied on Mango's behalf to a correctional school in Queenstown. Other boys have flourished under the increased
discipline and supervision, and his influence is too disruptive - and his troubles too deep - for Amasango to help him any more. I caught him lately in one of his odd truthful moods, and we talked about his "name", and how the move will give him a chance to reinvent himself - away from the drug market our fellow students loyally maintain in Grahamstown - away hopefully, from mandrax and dagga and booze - and most importantly, away from the streets.

Xolisani has been talking about moving to Queenstown, too - but Xolisani is a different character altogether, open-hearted, cheeky and implausibly innocent. Mango is his best friend, the reason that he left the shelter to live on the streets, and now the two of them seem to be clinging together more than ever.

I found him outside the pub on my mid-morning Saturday milk run, slumping vacantly, and steered him to the supermarket for water and sugary energy drinks.
"My head is hot," he moaned, and repeated (and repeated) a long and confused story about a man giving him gin in a plastic bottle when he asked for water.
I marched him up African Street, our slow and circuitous progress marked, every few steps, by the same questions and accusations:
"Where is Riona?"
At Rhodes.
"Why?"
She is studying.
"Where is Bridget?"
At Rhodes.
"I see you last night. You are drunk."
No, we don't drink like that.
"You are drunk. I see in your eyes, you are always drunk. Not me!"
(mad laughter)
(pause)
"Where is Riona?"
...etc.

This was not the first time I have seen children drunk, or high, since I've been here, but it shocked me, and burst, in a sudden realisation, my growing disgust with the student culture here at Rhodes. It's easier, back home, to disconnect a drunken night, or a casual joint, from the trainwrecks of other people's lives. Here, the student market makes growing dagga a plausible source of income in the township - and brings the price down. Here, students thoughtlessly dole out spare coins to drug-dependent children. And clearly it's funny when you're pissed out of your mind, to give spirits to a spindly-thin teenager. At least, no-one seems to be surprised.

According to Jason, I have forfeited at least 4 cows worth of my popularity because of my alcoholism - but Jane has contacted people at the shelter, and Xolisani has been accepted back - he is fed and cared for, and warm in this frightening Grahamstown wind.

Riona and I shared a wonderful brunch with the wonderful Jane, and she is organising meetings for us to voice our concerns about the conditions in the hospital and the behaviour of Rhodes security on that Saturday. We discussed new schemes and projects, and set a date for the inaugural meeting of the Amasango Volunteers Support Network. And I realised, having faced the most traumatic test of my time here so far, that I really, truly want to stay. There is so much more that I want to begin at Amasango, and I can't say goodbye to the children - not yet. So I am staying. I will be moving out of res on the 24th, to Jane's house, staying there for at least another 10 weeks of school, until the very end of September. Visa-wrangling and negotiations with Macquarie Law Department begin as of tonight - wish me luck!

Other Lives

2007-05-17T04:39:00.000-07:00

There are instants when I'm caught off guard - unexpected things, like watching coffee granules dissolve in the bottom of a just-rinsed cup, a momentary scent of sap - and all of a sudden I'm hit with a rush of longing. I want to be home. I have sudden, unbidden memories of the strangest, most ordinary things.

Traffic lights on the corner of Hyde Park. Grim (neo-brutalist!) concrete overhangs with a ragged fringe of posters. A sunny bench, a white dog and an olive tree. A pile of papers on a cafe table. A half-cold pizza and a view of the ocean. Sun on sandstone. Latte glasses and ashtrays, cynicism and Saving The World. Sand between my toes.

And there's a sudden grief, too. Not because these things that are Home to me have changed, although even in a few months, many have. It's this odd sensation, of experiencing what I think of as my life, as a memory. And I feel so terrifyingly removed from that life, and from all of you, sometimes it wells up in my throat like an unreleased scream, and I don't know what to do with myself. I'm afraid, you see.

I'm afraid that the white South Africans who look the other way and sing loudly lalalalalalala this is not happening in my country this does not exist lalalalalala, I'm afraid that they might be right, in one thing. That if you acknowledge the Other South Africa, if you accept that people live...as people live, if you meet the eyes of that ugly truth, and you stare it down... then there can be no such thing as normal life anymore.

Dispatches from the Amasango Knitting Circle

2007-05-16T03:14:00.000-07:00

I know that you're keen to find out what has become of your wool and needles, but I can't find anything to write, when my partner in crime has captured the entire experience so immaculately - enjoy!

'The Unbreakable Thread'

The Good Stuff

2007-05-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

It's been a long hot dusty Tuesday for Joanne, Jason and Riona, and we're trudging back to town for our ritual debriefing, and a crucial drink. Benathi, a sweet-faced, gentle eight year old, has taken up the habit of wandering back with us - slinging an arm, with some difficulty, across my shoulder, the way the younger boys seem to love doing, and positively strutting up High Street. The two of us play private games on the way - we zoom like aeroplanes, or mime driving (the week before, I had the singular joy of screeching through the supermarket behind him, collecting apples and milk, and beeping politely at the cashier when we were done). This week, though, I decide to try something different. After some consultation and in-depth sign language, we do the Monkees walk all the way to the cathedral.

In class, the Grade Ones and Twos mob me, with hard little hands and small, sticky embraces. Riona's latest project has been listing the parts of the body in English and Xhosa, so, naturally, this is the first thing that they want to canvas with me today. (At least they've started asking me "u Riona?", as opposed to "where's your sister?" or simply shouting at me about the "other one", which I'm interpreting as progress in the whole separate identities thing). I stick sheets together, trace the outline of a brave volunteer, and soon there's a pile of children battling for control of the marker pen, mouthing out the difficult words, while I scribble the English equivalents upside down. Older kids wander in, shoving and shouting as they always do when they think something exciting is going on, but by this stage we're finished, and glad of someone taller to hang our proud handiwork high on the wall. I stand in front, and play a perfect round of 'Simon Says', in English, no less, that spreads out the door and into the yard.

"So, Xolisani? You know he's in totally love with you? Every time you turn around he blows kisses at your back." Jason has a special relationship with some of the older boys - as an older guy, he can offer them something that Riona and I, and the other (predominantly female) volunteers can't, I suppose. It's good to be in with Jason, because Jason gets all the gossip. Over cider and scones, he announces that Xolisani has been asking him how much it would cost to buy a cow (in Xhosa custom, lobolo, or bride wealth, operates as a sort of reverse dowry - the groom presents the bride's father with cattle).

In the chaotic dustbowl of the playground, I sit and watch the girls play jacks with collected stones and chips of asphalt. I think of my Nanna, and wonder what she would make of Amasango. Sinovuyo cannons into me for a high velocity hug.
"Where have you been?" I've missed him in Grade 1/2, and it's worrying - grief-inducing - although not always surprising, when the kids disappear for weeks at a time. Then it dawns on me.
"Have you moved up a class? Grade Three?" He nods, bemused at my delight. I give him a unilateral round of applause.

This week, the Drama class takes us to Shamwari game reserve. Riona and I whisper on the other side of the door while the class consults inside. No happy-snapping tourists ever fled from quite so many ferocious - and alarmingly attentive - animals. We tousle with brilliantly observed monkeys and baboons, run screaming from a leopard and a scene-stealing mother dog, and take refuge in a 'tree', where we encounter a hilariously inventive giraffe. Later, we are quiet quiet as Riona leads the class through a trust exercise for the first time. Nobody falls, nobody is dropped, and nobody makes trouble. At the end, we each take a bow, and receive a well-deserved round of applause and a chocolate.
"Chocoleti e-dansi mon," sings Mango "Chocolate is dancing!" We groove our way across the playground, sucking caramel off our teeth.

"Lydia! Lydia!" I'm making a tired and dispirited trip to buy milk, when I hear my name, at full volume, from the other side of the street. All of a sudden I have company, grubby, ragged, energetic company, radiating goodwill. They hold out their hands, and for the first time, I get the ridiculously complicated handshake just bang-on, eureka, that's-the-trick right. I pre-empt the issue of money with my usual spiel;
"Now you know I don't buy food during the week..." but before I'm halfway in, someone stops me with a smile.
"We just want to say hello!"

It's a good day when Sinethemba and Siphelo make surreptitious bunny ears at me. It's a good day when children who have never spoken to me before - the shy ones, the difficult ones, the ones who are reluctant to trust - slide under my arms, swing on my hands, call me by name. It's a good day, when a boy shouts at me with hatred in his eyes, and eleven year old Janine strokes my hair, and says (so mature and motherly!)
"Don't worry about him, he's always like that." Or when I'm barefoot in the yard, and one of the older boys taunts me;
"Sisi, where are your shoes?", stamping on my feet, and sixteen year old Xolisani steps in between us and offers me his arm, as if I'm an Edwardian lady with a parasol.

The jubilant noise and energy of an abandoned classroom, packed with children (and one uncoordinated volunteer), dancing and drumming well into their break time.

The sweet, implausible silence - the terrible, terrible concentration - of a little circle of knitters, labouring, row by row -
"Behind, Around, Through, Off, Behind, Around, Through, Off..."

And finally: on a torn, dirtied scrap of feint-ruled paper, written in pencil cursive that radiates effort,
'Dear: guys, I like to say Happy Mothers Day guys, with Ldia, Riona and Bridget'

What Happened

2007-05-15T01:09:00.000-07:00

Something bad happened on Saturday, and the hours on either side of that something have taken on the liquid-solid uncertainty of syrup, and I don't really know anymore how things should have ordered themselves, or how to calculate the gaps in between. I'm not making sense.

Let's try again.

Something bad happened.

Friday; I was tired, I was late and the kids were resentful, in their restless, potent way - bending fences with the force of quieted aggression. Jane was shuttling between the hospital and the Magistrate's court all day, so one of the teachers took charge. Friday smells, of dagga, body odour and tangy piss.

In the playground, Agnes, a French volunteer, called me over. She held out a vicious little knife, and a distressed explanation: One of the boys had agreed to give it up for the course of the day, but expected her to return it at the gate. What should she do?

"If anything would happen this weekend..." And she trailed off. No need to say more.

I took it, I hid it in a drawer in Jane's desk and, of course, the boy was after me in a moment, ricocheting through the office with accusations and demands. He cornered me by the desk, tried to pry open my hands - the security guard had to drag him out. And I blurted the whole story to Mrs Cartier, and she nodded in sympathy, and I felt a childish wash of relief - it was out of my hands, somebody with authority was here, someone kind, someone grown up, someone who wasn't me. And then she handed the knife to the security guard and told him to give it back to the child.

Friday night; the same boy called my name on my way home. He was angry to see me out for dinner, after I told him I was sick, but he charmed my friends, as always, with his bright sweet face and quick English. We joked around for a little, and as I was leaving he showed me the knife again, tucked into his shoe.

Saturday.
Saturday.
Saturday.

Saturday; early afternoon, I balanced on Riona's windowsill, while she giggled her way through a shopping list. It was a bright and golden day, so I trailed the long way across campus, under the glorious autumn-crowned trees. Somebody called my name on the steps below the clocktower, and I ran to greet the boys from the shelter, who were massed on the front lawns.

Jason had brought them there - they had been filming for a project he is working on - but Jason was nowhere in sight. When I finally found him, he was pale and rattled, deep in conversation with the same troubled, articulate child. And getting in deeper. He shrugged me off, so I went to sit under the trees with some of the other boys. We flicked twigs at each other and shredded blades of grass, in a calm and quiet, sunny Saturday way.

Saturday; was sudden movements on the grass, bodies tightening to a worried knot, someone running.

Saturday; when I realised, fuck fuck fuck, that's blood, that the boy standing, alone and bewildered, on the pavement, had been stabbed. And I said so, with terror and disbelief in my voice, I said

"He's bleeding" and nobody did anything, although nobody seemed very surprised.

Saturday; Jason's hands were shaking, so I took his phone, and I called Riona and told her to get Bridget, get the car, and come quickly, that someone had been stabbed. And I believe that I did so in a very calm and matter-of-fact way, because I can still hear my own voice, as though it was someone else's.

And then a lot of time seemed to fold itself into the space of a few minutes, while

I handed the phone to the boys to type in the number of the Eluxolweni shelter

Jason called the police

the children moved in strange patterns and clusters

the boy with the knife came back through the trees

I ran to the security guards standing on the steps, and told them to follow him, told them what had happened, begged them silently with my open eyes and open mouth to do something

I watched them run back towards the buildings

and come back, with buckets of water, to wash down the sacred pavements of Rhodes University while a child stood, shaking, bleeding, safely on the grass,

I realised that I was afraid to touch him, and was ashamed

I coaxed him to a bench, and made him sit down,

another boy took off his shirt and balled it up, and I showed him how to hold it to his arm

with stupid, bouncy, energetic miming "...Tiiiii-ight, now! That's right!" Yippee, hurrah.

I stroked his warm brown shoulder, struggled to clumsily hold him, and felt him shaking against me

I noticed that his back and arms didn't bear a single scar

All this, while Riona asked no questions, ran upstairs, grabbed blanket, wet-wipes and Bridget, and came sprinting through the Drostdy arch, so fast that her hair streamed out, and that is quite something to see on a blue Autumn afternoon.

Saturday; we drove to Settler's Hospital, mounted the curb with a sickening crunch. Riona led the way through dark and dirty corridors, no more than a lethargic finger for direction from the staff at the door.

I huddled with Eric and Samkelo in a series of wrong queues, while Riona argued with hospital administration about paperwork, paperwork, paperwork, in this mess of a place, for a child with no parents, no home and certainly no identity documents. A seventeen year old with a learning disability that brings him closer to ten, frozen in shock and terror. I wiped his face, and held a wet-wipe to his nose like a toddler:

"Blow."

Saturday; the corridors of that place were lined with a parade of gashes and seeping bandages. There were smells, and splashes of dried blood on the floors and walls. One doctor, two nurses, in a dim room full of clicking steel. The whole building seemed unnervingly old.

I wasn't allowed in, to hold his hand, so I tried to hold his gaze instead, but that was hard, and heartbreaking. His eyes were blank, and drawn to the floor, as he scrunched himself to take up the smallest permissable space. Riona began to sing, in a low sweet voice.

"Oh sisters, let's go down, let's go down, do you wanna go down, oh sisters, let's go down, down to the river to pray."

Saturday; we balanced Jason on the phone with the police officer solid in the corridor. We gathered around the van in silence, while poor, terrified Eric gave a nod, yes, that's who stabbed me, and I struggled and looked away from the familiar face of the angry child staring through the wire.

Saturday; we crouched between bunks in a dusty dormitory at the shelter, and listened to fifteen versions of the same story, non-comprehending, in Xhosa, laughed with the boys and shared our own shock and fear and anger, in neat and manageable words. We took some deep breaths, had a musical group hug which disintegrated into pushing, shoving and laughter, and lingered in the hall, while one after another of the boys claimed a last hug, or a promise to see them soon. Eric, in a clean shirt, bundled himself in the corner of the room, still looking away, still shaking.

And that was it. Back to res, where a cocktail party was in full swing, the courtyard and the girls made beautiful by candlelight and sequins. And the music so loud it felt like a punch to the guts.

Welcome to Africa (3)

2007-05-05T07:32:00.000-07:00

(thanks Mum...)

Cape Town International Airport

Inadvertant Cruelty

2007-05-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

There's a woman in some of my Law classes who doesn't seem to mesh with the other students. It's partially because she's a little older than most of us, partially, perhaps, because she's Afrikaans, in the most English-dominated department of a very English university. Like me, she has been dropped abruptly into a pre-existing network of friendships and alliances - unlike me, no-one seems to be interested in making the experience any easier for her.

She's newly married, and moved from her home in Bloemfontein to be with her husband in Grahamstown. Small talk is not her forte - conversation sometimes feels like drowning. It's not that she's unfriendly, just sort of clammily unhappy. At the breaks she smokes a private cigarette and avoids the crowd around the tea tray.

Two days ago she showed up to class with a black eye - a big one, which spread vibrantly across her cheekbone. The class was sitting outside for the break, warming in the late-afternoon light, and happily disentangling ourselves from the week. She was wearing a purple top so I made some stupid crack about accessorising. Weak, I know.

She explained that her washing machine was in her kitchen, that it had flooded, and she had slipped. I barely noticed the unnecessary detail of her answer to a question I hadn't even asked. I laughed, and told her:

"You should come up with a better story."

A better story means pirates, ninjas, hand-to-hand combat. A better story means making a joke out of your poor damaged face. Her instant, galvanised response was:

"But it's true!"

And I wish, oh I wish, that I hadn't been looking at her face as she said it. I'd be glad to have missed the sudden terror in her expression, the quick, defensive rearming of her eyebrows and her teeth. I wish that I had stammered something more convincing in response.

I wish that she didn't have to feel ashamed.

Flashback

2007-05-03T01:57:00.000-07:00

It's Saturday night. I'm sitting at an outdoor table, gripping a longneck of imported beer and bantering with Gugu, her friend Yola and a very new acquaintance who has just dubbed me his 'future wife'. I've been quite the centre of attention tonight, which is a nice change from the way the Rhodes boys so briefly and transparently size me up, before their eyes slide on to the next "poupie" in line. Could be my cute-as-a-button cardigan, or my Aussie charm, but I'm guessing it might have something to do with being the only white person I've seen all night.

I'm in a shebeen. In the New Brighton township, outside Port Elizabeth - a place that is already well-etched in my newly South African consciousness. Notorious, even. I'm already thinking of ways to work this into conversations back home, just in case people need reminding that I am an Independent Traveller, Seeing The Real South Africa, Oh, And I Have Black Friends, Too.

A grey kitten runs between the legs of the dancers, and I let out an involuntary squeak of adoration. Yola turns to me, with a serious look on her face.

"He's a runt you know. Probably won't live long. It's rough out here."

And we both cackle so loudly that we almost compete with the kwaito music pumping from the outdoor speakers, the crash of breaking bottles and the din of hundreds of people shouting to each other in a small yard.

200 words for 'wow'

2007-05-02T16:36:00.000-07:00

There are sad limitations to the vocabulary of a storm. Because lightning doesn't just flash here, jagged and predictable, it conquers the whole sky in shocks of blue and pink, and great, shuddering splashes of white that linger on the retina like a slap mark. A South African storm is a spectacle - the world's greatest electrical circus - and all I can do is gasp and clap and settle in for the show.

On our last night in Midmar, Julie, Riona and I sat out on the back verandah with a bottle of wine to stare at the sky. Pauline and her family live on a reserve in the flat Midlands of KwaZulu Natal, where the horizon is generous and uncrowded, and it feels like you could see forever. We watched the storm wreak glorious havoc on the other side of the dam, untouched by even a drop of rain for twenty minutes at least, before finally the wind hit the rushes at the end of the garden, the taste of the air changed subtly, and we caught the first raindrops on our tongues. After a week of perfect weather, it was a despicably poetic farewell.

So, a belated postcard from my travels - empty wineglasses, artfully abandoned on the concrete steps, two girls dancing in a zebra-proof garden, a tree, a dam, and a sky full of lights.

Wish you were here.

Full Disclosure

2007-05-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

I nearly lost $4000 yesterday.

I'm living in a town where roughly 80% of the population is unemployed (although, of course, that 80% lives in the other Grahamstown, on the facing slope - as far as is possible, or even imaginable in this little valley, from the hallowed arches of Rhodes University... but that's a story for another day). In a place where property crime is rife - motivated by drug dependence or plain old survival - you'd think I could come up with a pretty punchy story about my fiscal close-call.

Ha.

What happened was that I stopped checking my Macquarie email, oh, sometime in early December. Forgetting, of course, that while my terribly helpful coordinator would occasionally reply to my yahoo address the International Office has this bizarre policy of only sending official emails through studentmail. Apparently I was supposed to have enrolled. A while ago. As I discovered at 4am courtesy of my wonderful Dad, who tried to impress the urgency of my imminent disqualification through my fog of sleep and my horrid mucusey sick head. I may or may not have abused him and hung up. It's all pretty hazy...

Anyway, in glorious anticlimax, I am still a proper and official student, I still have my grant and I wound up having a lovely - if somewhat feverish and very possibly delusional - chat with the head of the International Office.

And you can all relax now - surely patent proof that South Africa hasn't really "changed" me at all ...

There and Back Again

2007-04-29T12:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, it's been a while and I'm sorry.

I haven't been trampled by these...

or these...

or these...

... I've just had a particularly thrilling few weeks of gallivanting, and a correspondingly busy homecoming.

Two, now. On Monday, I farewelled my darling parents (and best-ever travelling companeros) at Cape Town International Airport, and flew to Port Elizabeth, for the drive back to Grahamstown. The road stretches for almost two hours through grassland and hot sun, across endless game reserves, before it begins to climb and slice through steeper and steeper hillsides. Then there's a bend, and you can catch a brief glimpse of the Settler's Monument before the town spills out before you. Imagine me, anticipating the turn, shifting in my seat - and then! - laughing aloud. I'm glad to be back.

... and also glad to be back on the air. More soon, I promise - until then, I'll leave you with one more image:

Ten to fifteen boys, ranging in age from 7 to 16, ranging in cleanliness from standard issue grubby to ...well, never mind. They're crowding me, pushing a bit, but this time there's no malice, and I happily sway and elbow my way to the classroom, where Riona greets me with a squeal. And ten to fifteen boys, ranging in age from 7 to 16, wiggle their index fingers on the crowns of their heads, wriggle their noses like rabbits, and, believe it or not, they hop.

Welcome home, indeed.

Zebra Crossing (KwaZulu Natal)

2007-04-16T22:31:00.000-07:00

So Long!

2007-03-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

I'm away for the next two weeks, and not a moment too soon... I have been having nightmares about being stuck in Grahamstown while the erratic public transport system of the Eastern Cape collapses under the fleeing masses of students.

Luckily, I'm being rescued - Gugu is whisking me off to her home in PE for a few days of proper family dinners, long mornings over the newspapers and longer afternoons on the beach, before we head to Cape Town, where I'm meeting up with, oh, most of the people I know! Then to Durban, and Julie, Riona and I are having the grand tour of Natal with Pauline and her lovely family.

I promise you long and glorious posts and many pictures when I get back!

Three Bags Full

2007-03-29T09:03:00.000-07:00

I like knitting. Apart from the fact that I am incurably fidgety, I love the texture of wool between my fingers, the regular and deeply satisfying metallic click of the needles. And, of course, that glorious sense of achievement at the end of each row; measurable and easily marked goals, layering up with a click-click-click.

The scarf that occupied my first month here is a long and autumn-coloured narrative of lazy afternoons and midnight tea and rusks. Tight bunchy sections remind me of nights spent reading journal articles from a glaring screen, and the dropped stitches are exclamation points of laughter or emphatic, self-righteous moral rage. As a cruel friend put it;

"It must be nice to have a concrete reminder of all the hours you've spent not studying."

The scarf that I'm working on now is my pride and joy, a textured chequerboard, in (almost) perfectly even rows. I have spent surreptitious, oh, hours! in unravelling less-than-immaculate sections - all my latent perfectionism channelling into one length of knotted wool.

But about a third of the way down its current length, things get a little hairy for a row or two. There are gaps, snarls, tripled stitches, and stray loops. And, as aways, there's a story.

It had been one of those mad and poorly planned mornings - I had over-exerted the snooze button, which meant that I raced to class, unshowered, with electric hair and my bag empty - except for my precious knitting. Without a wallet or phone to fret about, I decided to head straight to Amasango after my lecture, hoping to catch the tail-end of the marimba class. Instead, I milled around in the dirt outside Jane's office, surrounded by the usual flurry of children, waiting for Riona, and the key to the Grade Six classroom.

It was one of the boys who spotted the needles in my bag. Soon, my knitting was being passed around, stroked and worried by grubby fingers, the long needles forking absurdly between small brown hands. So I showed them a few stitches. Slowly. Click, click, click. In the next fifteen minutes, we knitted a laboured row - me leaning down, sticky in the sun, and winding the wool between ten different sets of small fingers. Then they passed it among themselves, poking, knotting, grinning up at me with proud white teeth, demanding praise.

I thought about redoing the rows. Tidying them up a little. But Riona wouldn't let me.

"It's part of the story", she said.

And next term, the Amasango children will start making tangled threads of their own. Sarah is collecting needles and spare ends of wool from the New House girls, and Riona and I are farewelling Fridays with sweet sorrow. It's so exciting to see the kids so enthusiastic, and I love the idea that these children - who have almost no material possessions - are going to make something for themselves!

If anyone wants to mail me some odds and ends of unused wool or big, easy needles, respond to this post or email me and I will give you my address and see if I can coordinate a mass package (postage costs to South Africa are something very very nasty).

On Race

2007-03-25T04:27:00.000-07:00

I'm still struggling to process my conversation with Gugu yesterday, and to make sense of the clinging guilt which has crept up on me since. It's sickening, as always, to feel so impotent when my friend is hurting - as she was, of course -

"I wasn't expecting that," she kept repeating.

"It's been so long."

"It's never happened to me here before."

Hugging her, swearing about it, and later, sitting in Sisa's room and plotting elaborately how to catch them out, one thought kept circling back like the queen of spades.

How am I supposed offer sympathy? This has never, will never happen to me.

And I hate how obvious it is, I wish I could keep my skin colour in my wallet like a membership card, instead of wearing privilege and, oh, too many years of complicated associations, open to the sun and anyone's eyes - anyone's interpretation.

Rainbow Nation?

2007-03-24T04:39:00.000-07:00

Last night, my friends Gugu and John got turned away from a semi-full restaurant at 8:30, even though there were tables available and the kitchen didn't close until 10.

I don't really know what to do with this information right now, except that I'm so angry I needed to come back to my room and cry.

Zim, Zim, Zimbabwe!

2007-03-24T02:47:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday, South Africa celebrated Human Rights Day with a full public holiday. At Rhodes, there have been events going on all week, starting with a candlelit vigil on Monday evening, and culminating yesterday with a march across campus protesting human right violations in Zimbabwe and condemning the ongoing abuses of the Mugabe government.

I almost didn't go.

Human rights should be so straightforward. What is happening in Zim is ugly, it's cruel, and it violates basic principles of international justice and rule of law. I know these things with a clarity that is painful. There is nothing uncertain about my stance on a regime that carries out bashings, intimidation and worse on its population. But I hesitated. After all, I'm white. And when I talk to white Zimbabweans, the outlines of human wrongs slide out of my easy grasp, and it's hard to be sure what I'm standing up for anymore. Because I have no such clarity of opinion on the unjust seizure of land that was unjustly possessed to begin with... I am wary, and too-conscious of my patchwork understanding to have an opinion at all...

So, this week I found myself actively discouraging a friend from organising a demonstration, partially, truthfully, because I was alarmed at her naivete, knowing too well how easily these things get out of control, but mainly because she is white. Her friends are white. What kind of a rally would it have been? This week, I set aside all my frenzied self-conscious egalitarianism and made a political decision - to join the march - because I knew the organisers. And I knew their skin colour.

So I pitched up, and we milled around, like any other protesters, and we made some noise, like any other protesters, and we marched through the university to the sound of drumming and clapping. I caught sight of faces in the crowd, and was surprised, in the best possible way, and humbled by their presence - against my prejudiced expectations - and, for many, in defiance of intimidation and dangers within the university and to their families at home. There is a pro-ZANU PF contingent at Rhodes, and a number of the protesters had been threatened. A mixed crowd of South Africans, Zimbabweans, Black, White and Coloured sang the Zimbabwean national anthem (and I have never found any patriotic display so beautiful, or so appropriate).

And the speakers shouted about the right to freedom of speech, and our responsibility to speak up for the voiceless within Zimbabwe. And about how Zimbabwe had done the same for all South Africans suffering under apartheid. That was when I cringed inwardly at my dilemma earlier in the week, and I realised again, with the full force of shame and joy, that sometimes doing the right thing is incredibly simple.

Heavy Days

2007-03-19T07:50:00.000-07:00

I'm grabbed, as I walk through the gate, by a leering teenager -

"Give me a hug, sisi-"

"No."

I step back quickly, and the other boys laugh.

"Don't rape!" They exchange a few words in Xhosa, grin at me. I feel like crying. At least one of the boys is a weekly regular at our drama classes. It's the respect and the love I get that keeps me coming back...

In the Grade 1/2 classroom, there's a mad static edge to everything this morning. As soon as the teacher leaves the room, the kids are out of their seats. One child is deliberately kicked in the head (I am not joking) and two of the older boys knock over chairs, wrestling in the middle of the room. I have no idea where the teacher is, I don't want to leave in case things escalate, but I can't get involved and I know there's no point calling security to resolve such an everyday squabble. So I sit, cradling a sobbing eight year old and try to ignore the chaos descending on the rest of the class.

Nkukuleko - the tiny boy who bit me last week, because he thought I was ignoring him - climbs up on top of the filing cabinet, half a metre from the roof, and stays there for the next twenty minutes.

Trying to keep calm, I flail my way through a couple of games that get sadly lost in translation, and try to hold their attention with a feverish rendition of 'Give Me a Home Among the Gum-Trees', complete with actions. Xhosa children seem to respond particularly well to music and dance, and they are great mimicks, as Riona and I have discovered...
I draw a kangaroo for them, then spend the rest of the morning drawing on demand, and teaching them to play Mr Squiggle.

It's alarming how little opportunity there is for the Amasango children to create something, anything... What's also alarming is the fact that they have no paper or coloured pencils, no board games or abacuses, that their English reading books include 'Tom and Jane' circa 1940 and 'Employment Opportunities in the Water Industries', and that between 8.30am until I leave (early today) at 12, they have copied out six (six!) maths problems and have been otherwise left to their own devices.

Walking back across the railway tracks, I am nearly run over by a small herd of goats (apparently livestock wandering through residential streets is an indicator of a developing country). Somebody's donkey has defecated on the steps of the cathedral. On my way home, I'm hassled by street kids, yet again, and it feels so wrong to turn them away - I'm so tired of the same argument, and the same promises... Tomorrow they'll go to school, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. I hate having to battle them, and I hate walking away, still so unsure if I've done the right thing.

Some days, the best intentions have sharp edges. Some days, muddling through without doing anything actively harmful has to be achievement enough. I go crazy counting up my daily sins of omission, and every moment I spend at Amasango I find myself more torn - between longing to stay, and throw myself into this project with the energy and absolute devotion it would take to make any real changes, and the sheer mad urge to pick up my petticoats and bolt, because my efforts now feel like raindrops in a cracked pot.

St Paddy's Day

2007-03-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

Rhodes University apparently ranks second worldwide in alchohol consumption per capita of any tertiary institution. Little wonder, then, that the whole campus seems pretty enthusiastic about St Patrick's Day. New House started celebrating early, with a mock-up ceili in the common room on Thursday, which was great fun - lots of feet and elbows and Riona standing on a chair, shouting at us in Irish.

Riona is a strange and wonderful person. When she talks about Ireland, I catch myself calculating how long it will take me to pay off this trip when I get home. Having worked in peace centres in Dublin and Derry, she has an intimate and incredibly comprehensive perspective on 'the troubles'. Still, nothing she has said, and nothing I can write could ever sum things up as sensitively and profoundly as this does. We watched it last night on Jeanie's bed, all five of us in tears.

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Beach Music, Port Elizabeth

2007-03-17T05:30:00.000-07:00

On my first morning in South Africa, I wandered up the chain of connecting beaches and boardwalks to Summerstrand, to find myself a cafe and some breakfast. Along the way, I encountered giant seagulls, oversized, stranded jellyfish, a couple of drunks and a group of people in white robes, singing acapella harmonies as they made their way down the beach to the rocks. Even then the wind couldn't drown out their singing.

A Brief Update

2007-03-11T16:21:00.000-07:00

In which Lydia dozes off - for no more than a minute - wakes up - panics because she is convinced that she has middle-ear damage - then realises, no, that's still the alarm.

Welcome to Africa (2)

2007-03-11T15:34:00.000-07:00

It's a Sunday night. A quarter after midnight. Riona and I have tiptoed upstairs after a late night chocolate run, to catch Nina streaking down the corridor - shrieks and giggles ensue, swiftly followed by a curt shushing from someone further down the hall. I still have work for the next day, so I make mysef some tea and settle in front of the computer ...and someone hits the fire alarm.

So we race downstairs, bumping into each other and changing direction. Nina wraps herself in a doona and takes the opportunity to flash the first years on the stairs. We wait outside while the roll is called, and the alarm screeches on.

And on.

And on.

It's a Sunday night. Half past twelve. Sarah and Vasti have run back upstairs for cigarettes. I'm sharing a blanket with Gugu. We huddle in a pathetic little encampment on the front lawn, waiting for the house to stop screaming.

It's a Monday morning. A quarter to one. A man rides up. On a bicycle. He cycles in a polite circuit around us, dismounts and announces, in heavily accented English, that the electrician will arrive at six am. He hops back on his bicycle and cycles off.

At time of writing, the alarm has still not stopped. Stay tuned.

70 centimetres

2007-03-10T12:01:00.001-08:00

That's all that stands between Queensland's Big Pineapple, and fame, fortune and the noble title of "World's Largest Pineapple". 70 centimetres, and, well, this:

Student Exchange: The only way to see the REAL South Africa.

But where does Superman change his clothes?

2007-03-09T05:19:00.000-08:00

This appears to be the South African take on a phone booth.

A Happy Bulletin

2007-03-08T16:33:00.000-08:00

This past week has been many kinds of wonderful...

On Monday, I was a guest on RMR (the local radio station, operated mostly by Journalism students from Rhodes). I played a bit of Aussie music (hurrah!) and babbled about the Rhodes experience with the lovely Maryanne, giggled rather too much and danced around in the studio.
Back at Res, Riona and I plotted and planned Drama workshops to run the following afternoon at Amasango. Midnight saw us overgesticulating and jumping on the furniture. My sugarplum faeries that night were full of laughter and hope, and brought dreams of social change.

On Tuesday, my reading group did a presentation on mental health and race for the morning History lecture. My section had people out of their chairs in a twenty minute long debate, and after the class, Carla (my lecturer) asked if we could extend the presentation and do it as a lecture for her first years at the beginning of next term (!!)
After the class, I shared a lively lunch with John and Gugu, and bolted across campus and down High Street to Amasango School, where Riona and I had the time of our lives running warm ups and playing games in English and Xhosa (the older children translated) in the dusty train-yard.
We walked back to campus with a group of Amasango graduates from one of the township high schools, who, we discovered, had toured in physical theatre performances run by the same marvellous group that put on 'Eco-Wolf', and secured a promise that they would teach us and the children the Eastern Cape 'Gumbooti Dance' next week.
My latest effort at absorbing Xhosa culture involves convulsively hopping up the street (which is perhaps a step up from wandering around res making clicking noises)

On Wednesday, my boxey little room became Grand Central Station, my borrowed kettle had a great workout and my walls soaked up a lot of laughter. I discussed plans and booked planes for the two week April vacation, and daydreamed about Cape Town and the nature reserves of the Drakensbergs...

On Thursday, I was given the best hug that I've had since leaving Kingsford Smith Airport. In the evening we had formal drinks with the head warden of our hall, which involved marvellous pastries, lots of wine and my red high heels. When I got back to res, there was a poem on my door.

On Friday, I posted on my blog, drank Milo, and went to bed.

The Forgotten

2007-03-07T15:40:00.000-08:00

I've been told, by a particularly wonderful teacher, to think of written history as a long conversation:

The colonisers speak, the colonised shuffle, clear their throats in the background, then charge forth and challenge. The women, stifled between the lines and in the margins, suddenly swell in strident chorus. The silent, the silenced, the ground-down and the absent bodies of literature claim their space; all speak, or are spoken for.

It's a lovely analogy, and one that I've shamelessly plagiarised in many an argument. I used it again this week, to explain to a struggling 17 year old, why he should work at his written English. He got the idea pretty quickly. After, being excluded isn't exactly something new for a kid who's been on the streets for half of his life.

Grahamstown is full of them. They haunt the High street, and the network of lanes and roads between the supermarket, the university and the Rat and Parrot Hotel, leaning against trees and dangling on the steps of the magistrate's office in small groups. It's always the younger ones who approach you - or, at least, the smaller ones - it's hard to judge age among children that have been stunted by malnourishment. I don't know how to compare them, if height and size are out, and I'm thrown by their hardness - that knowing edge, sharp and ugly in even the youngest of them.

"Sisi, some money, some food, please sisi..."

These kids are hungry. They are also flying on glue and burning away the hours with dagga every chance they get. Not so strange really - after all, they have a lot to forget. Some of them are orphans (AIDS), and more have run away or been forced out by their mother's new partners or by the arrival of more children in already overcrowded homes. Many have been sexually abused and almost all have been subject to physical violence. Most of the boys keep their hair shaved close, and it's easy to see their scars.

Apart from the drug problems, giving them money or food is problematic because it neutralises the only real incentive for them to stay in a shelter. Most children's shelters (like the township schools) have very high rates of drop outs, and the services are already so under-resourced that there is little reason or opportunity to keep track of the ones who decide to disappear.

These are the forgotten population of this country. Forgotten, by the time we reach the supermarket. Forgotten when we buy our Nescafe, our Quik, our Smarties (Stand Up for Child Rights! Boycott Nestle!). Forgotten by the feminists, the post-colonialists, the radical historical activists who write marvellous juicy articles on the mess and muddle of Africa. In the long discussion of history, children hide under the table, unseen and unheard.

These are the children that I work with at Amasango - four-foot-tall teenagers and 8 year old boys who give me the good old up-down look; rough, tough kids, who crave for attention and affection, so much so that they follow me around the yard like Mother Goose. These are desperately undersocialised kids, who pull knives on each other in the classroom, who will physically attack their teachers, and who have bitten my hand to get my attention. And it is wonderful. And they are wonderful. And this is easily the best thing that my life has brushed up against. Ever.

Amasango Career School for Street Children

2007-03-07T15:30:00.000-08:00

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds

e.e. cummings

Welcome to South Africa

2007-03-05T13:02:00.000-08:00

Reasons I Love Snail Mail

2007-03-05T12:45:00.000-08:00

Grahamstown from the 1812 Settlers' Monument on the hill directly above the University.
Even in a photo as teeny-tiny as this, it's easy to see the different housing zones of the town (it's even easier at night - the town sparkles and the cathedral is lit up, but the far right hand side of this shot is completely dark)
And my oh my, that African sky...

Thank-you Mummy, I love you.

Things that are mildly amusing...

2007-03-03T06:46:00.001-08:00

Explaining why my best friend would send me a message wishing me a happy Mardi Gras when
a) neither of us is religious
b) neither of us is French
c) it's a Saturday

ORGANIC ROOIBOS IS BETTER

2007-02-25T13:08:00.000-08:00

Just a very quick note to toast a new semester for all my dear ones who will find themselves back at uni this year: here's to happy honours students, fabulous final years, peaceful Post-hole-Diggers - a marvelous year for those of you brave enough to be diving into a whole new course, or returning after a hiatus, more successes for those still pottering along somewhere in the middle, and, most importantly, to my brilliant, bold and beautiful baby brother - who sets foot on campus as a student for the first time today - may this year bring you adventures and unimagined joys, may you bend your mind around unexpected ideas, learn in unexpected ways, from unexpected people and challenge everything ...including yourself.

And I will try very hard to take my own words to heart... Today's lesson comes from Carmien Teas ('Natural Pure - Direct from the Farm'): When it comes to recreational beverages, ORGANIC ROOIBOS IS BETTER. Trust me. I can vouch for it.

Distraction

2007-02-24T08:59:00.000-08:00

My window faces west - at the moment, to a miraculous African sunset. It's been crazy blazing hot today (top of 39, with 30% humidity) with a warm summer storm late this afternoon - I can still smell the steam off the bricks outside. That angry sun and those pert clouds are clashing on the horizon now, purple and orange above the bleached hillside of the township... Can you blame me if I'm finding it a little hard to focus on Public International Law?

Hug an academic today!

2007-02-22T10:53:00.000-08:00

So, I think I've worked out why the Law Department are so warm and fuzzy - and so apparently (implausibly!) cohesive. The Dean of Law teaches Negotiation and Mediation. Three cheers for instituting free morning and afternoon tea for students and staff, every day, for personally interviewing every first year, for taking 'our Australian' on a personalised tour that involved introductions to most of the maintenance staff and both panic buttons, and for arguing for 20 minutes with a class full of grim rationalists that fresh air and bushland are human needs.

That's what the comment button is for

2007-02-21T15:08:00.000-08:00

I'm hoping someone, somewhere will have something to say about this last post...

You can also use this fantastic function to send me messages of love and appreciation, or even better, fun facts about your dear selves and the exciting things you are up to...

See! I do love technology.

Food

2007-02-21T13:15:00.000-08:00

I've just spent the past hour surfing pro-ana/pro-mia sites for my history class (Health, Dis-Ease and Society: ghoulish creature that I am, I find disease and treatment a particularly fascinating arena of cultural crossover, social stigma and political and economic inequity). In the past hour, I've also consumed a pack of smarties, half a bag of sunflower seeds, three rusks, four cooksisters (amazing Afrikaner syrupy donut-like pastries - like loukoumades, for those in the know) and a tomato, which gives you a pretty fair idea of how disturbed I was by the content. I don't want to join in the disapproving chorus - I am trying very hard to accept the rights of anorexics to take part in a community that doesn't pathologise them - it may be that medicine, (like humanitarian aid, as I am daily realising!) suffers from a self-defeating and seemingly unavoidable paternalism.

I'm sorry. These sites disgust me all the same. It's particularly hard to stomach the notion of self-advancement through starvation in a place where "violating your body with food" isn't always an option for the vast majority of the population.

This particular assignment comes at an interesting time for me. One of the side effects of living in a house full of 18-20-something women is that your body and eating habits become the subject of seemingly endless commentary and scrutiny. (Even this seems to divide along racial lines, oddly enough, with the black girls openly commenting on my body, while the white girls focus on what I do or don't eat) I have caught myself, too often, making jokingly self-abusive comments with the other girls in that strange and sick mode of female camaraderie that revolves around discussion of our bodies. There are posters around campus about 'First Year Spread', and the exchange students all fret about our altered eating patterns and perpetual snacking. It shames me to realise how many of my conversations in the past few days have revolved around food - more than anything, in compaining; about the ridiculous timing of meals, about the peril of the common-room vending machine, and most of all, about the food.

I hate the res food. It is lukewarm, overcooked and usually involves either synthetic meat or melted yellow cheese, which are both deal-breakers in the potability stakes as far as I'm concerned. The res food is also cheap, paid in advance, and thrown out when I choose not to avail myself of the culinary delights of Jan Smuts Hall. It's interesting how your dietary pickiness so swiftly becomes a political decision - and yet another source of the guilt and confusion that seems to haunt me here - when the route to the supermarket, or to any of the local restaurants is staked out by street kids and pan-handlers, all asking for money 'for food'...

The other night, Farrah (American exchange student) and I shared a meal with a trio of street kids that we recognised from the Amasango Career School, where we both start volunteering this week. (and oh my oh my they are gorgeous boys, so smart and amazingly determined and disciplined - at 15, 12 and 11 (and all under 5ft), they are already battling to quit dope and glue-sniffing, and told us proudly that they chose to beg because there was more shame in stealing. One wants to be a social-worker, one a soldier and the third a designer) The kids wolfed down two pizzas, and wrapped up a third, piece by piece in napkins to share among the other street-kids. They know, after all, who will eat the food they are given, and who will sell it to another child in order to buy drugs.

So, there it goes, my last cherished cushion for my middle-class guilt; the big macs and ten minute conversations with people who ask me for money. I walk around Grahamstown as a second-guessing cynic, very confused and sad. And I'm still not sure which is worse - handing out drug money to make myself feel better, or denying people, not only (perhaps) a meal, but the dignity and human agency to decide for themselves what they want or need.

...which is just what Ana &co.are on about, I suppose. There seems to be a point - or perhaps a critical mass - at which people become problems. Unfortunately, I don't think its really all that easy - or helpful - to act in someone else's 'best interest', on their behalf...

Small Pleasures

2007-02-18T11:36:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of things about South Africa - and about Rhodes - that make me uncomfortable. It's difficult to adjust to college life - the constant company and forced dependance are already starting to grate. The borderlines of race and class are very confronting, and hard to negotiate even as a stranger. White South Africa is also very conservative compared to Australia - misogyny and homophobia are a social reality at Rhodes. It's not always an easy place to be.
All the same, I am truly beginning to love my life here. Here are a few things that have made me happy in the past week:

- A knock on my door ... and a 2 hour chat
- Checking my email in bed
- South African idiom: 'Shame', Oh my word!', 'Is it?'
- The way that people greet you when you make eye contact, whether you know them or not (happens to me a lot, I'm a bit of a starer)
- The way that Black South Africans go one better, and actually wave!
- Full cream, unpasteurised organic milk
- Being paged on the intercom
- Being slipped extra portions at lunch and dinner (the sisis take a dim view of vegetarianism at the best of times, and they think I am too thin)
- Cider
- Coffee and cake every day at 11am in the Law Department
- Windsurfing on a dreamy blue day ...and falling off, and falling off, and falling off...
- Having a mud fight while we wait to be rescued
- The lights of Grahamstown by night, from the Settler's Monument above the university
- The pretty sandstone architecture of High Street
- The incongruity of the colourful street stalls, and the wonderful fresh fruit on sale from gardens in the township
- Tea and rusks
- Tea and rusks on the western-facing balcony of my res, at sunset
- My history lecturer's penchant for the word 'vagina'
- Surprise generosities; the offer of a kettle, a Thai food menu pinned anonymously to my door after I'd mentioned I missed it, meeting someone early on a Saturday morning for them to announce that they'd organised a trip to the beach.
- Weird and wonderful wildlife
- Like minds
- Sailing to the very edge of Settler's dam - like sailing to the end of the world, if the edge of the world was framed by palm-covered slopes
- Meeting a gorgeous inter-racial couple. Called Winston and Wesley.
- Driving round town in an antique VW beetle
- Spotting 'HIV POSITIVE' t-shirts around town and on campus
- Bumping into the same people five times a day
- Practising my French with the other exchange students
- Walking to the supermarket several times a day, 'for company'
- Music - including the wonderful jazz band from one of the local high schools
- Desserts sold by weight at 'The Yellow Piano'
- The view from the Arts Major courtyard - across fountain and gardens and all the way down High Street to the cathedral
- Being interviewed for the university radio station. Flirting live on air.
- The shady trees below the clock tower
- Walking to the pub in my pyjamas

Showing Off

2007-02-16T15:06:00.000-08:00

I am trying to pick up a bit of Xhosa, so you are all going to suffer a lesson in pronunciation via the internet. The 'x' in Xhosa signifies a specific click - you put your tongue against your palate and your right back teeth and make a soft click from the side of your mouth. The word should sound like "(click)-ors-uh".

Also, my friend's name is not "Jeen-ie", but "Jar-nie" (with a soft French 'J'). Her ancestors were French Huguenots and Afrikaans is her first language.

These things are important.

Eco-Wolf and the Three Little Pigs

2007-02-16T13:39:00.000-08:00

This afternoon, I dutifully trotted down to the Rhodes University theatre to see a play. A children's play. After all, I believe in supporting student theatre, and I believe in education for social change, and I believe that engaging disadvantaged children - any children! - at a young age is the best and only way to make later opportunities even seem like a possibility... Also, I may just sorta kinda love a good pantomime, I may have had the wonderful company of an equally over-enthusiatic Irish post-grad student and I may have been invited by Gorgeous Tristan The Drama Student, who is a Lovely Boy.

It was, with no reservations, the most exciting and worthwhile experience I have had all week.

Riona and I walked into a theatre packed with wriggling, giggling, highly over-excited children, wound up after the short bus ride from their schools in the township (we happened to come on the same day as the most underprivileged schools - and possibly the most exuberant children - in Grahamstown). We bumped and shuffled our way to our seats - in the middle of a row of black eight- and nine- year olds who stared at me and Riona (a 5'10" flame-haired goddess-type) as if we were celebrities, or possibly just carnival freaks. We settled, we waited, like the sedate and well-behaved young ladies we are, and found ourselves increasingly fascinated by the 80-odd restless children surrounding us. Instead of chatting or shouting, these kids, almost spontaneously, began singing together, and dancing, throwing up bizarre, rhythmic, African-style Mexican waves and eagerly garnering attention and applause from the ushers, the lighting box and from us! A nine-year-old boy in the row in front of us scatted like an over-ambitious Idol contestant (and did a better job of it, too...) They needed little practice or encouragement to participate in the narration - or to run up on stage at the slightest opportunity...

The production, too, was full of music - marvellous, unfamiliar acapella songs - more than I expected, even in a children's show. Music seems to be so much more ...ordinary here. In the two days I spent wandering the streets of Port Elizabeth ("You WALKED in PE?!" screeched Jeanie -apparently it's not as safe as Lonely Planet would have me believe), live music, street music, real music, with singing and dancing and no hats for collecting (and few listeners who could afford to pay if there were) became an hourly reality. Listening to the actors and the children today, I remembered the South African expats I met on my plane trip over who said that they still found Australia too quiet.

Even though the performance was mostly in English, all the songs were Xhosa. The actors shifted easily and often between languages - English, Xhosa, English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Gibberish (greeted each time with happy shrieks) and back to English. For most of the children there today, English is most likely a third or even fourth language, and they are likely to struggle and feel marginalised within the South African education system as a result. UBom! Drama Company (www.ubom.co.za) uses socially and linguistically inclusive performances to encourage children and to teach them about conservation, racism, sexism, diversity.

Riona and I huffed and puffed along today, and blew down the house of straw, the dammed river and brick smoke stack built by the wicked piggies. It took us 20 minutes and a great deal of boogying before we finally left the theatre. And we cried tee-hee-hee-hee-hee all the way home.

and one more thing...

2007-02-14T09:09:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hahdidah (ha!)

2007-02-14T08:59:00.000-08:00

There is a bird here called a hahdidah (spelling...?)
I could go on and tell you that they look like a cross between a dodo and an ibis, or that I knock over my late afternoon cup of tea, EVERY day, when I hear them calling on the roof opposite my window, because they sound like someone shrieking, or that the Smuts boys think that I'm not quite a full box of chocolates after a group of them caught me stalking one of these fascinating birds on the lawns outside my res...
But all that would probably be superfluous.
They're called HAHDIDAHS.

Organisational Genius

2007-02-12T10:26:00.000-08:00

So, I forgot to pack my U{S}B (thank you Catherine!) cable. As well as various articles of clothing, toiletries, books, shoes, rechargers and my Panda. Sadly I own one of four Macs on campus and the only Olympus camera. So you will have to wait for pictures... But I promise I am taking ohsoverymany!

TIA

2007-02-12T06:36:00.000-08:00

Saturday afternoon, I saw 'Blood Diamond' with a group of my new friends - two French girls, a New Yorker, an Afrikaner and a 'Zim'. Afterwards we stood in the foyer, and mumbled comments in that broken and erratic way that seems appropriate after such an emotionally draining experience. Bridget, the girl from Zim, was quite upset, while we foreigners struggled with the reality of emerging from the same 'smart' and 'socially engaged' film we might have watched at home to ...South Africa. Outside the Roxbury Theatre, you can see up the slope where the township spreads right to the horizon - and yet, its so easy to forget in the pretty sandstone streetscapes of Grahamstown and the social bubble that is Rhodes University.

People keep reminding me not to judge South Africa by Rhodes - it's safer here, and more integrated than almost any other part of the country. It's still very strange to hear first years getting excited because they can go out in groups after dark - and they just stare when I tell them that I'm used to walking home after work, that the door is left open for me.

The 'race thing'... well, we've had workshops on diversity in my res (college), and it comes up in every conversation, eventually. Every conversation. It's not hatred that I'm seeing and hearing, just a sort of obsessive overconsciousness. I don't yet understand what 'black' means to my friends - I doubt I ever will. I didn't know what it is to be 'white' until I came here - I've never been made to feel 'white' before...

I don't know what, exactly, I was expecting - but I think outright hostility would come as less of a surprise to me - and probably cause me less discomfort than the unspoken divisions I am seeing. It's not that white girls and black girls aren't friends within the res, but in the dining room, and in Grahamstown's pubs and clubs (all seven of them) whites mix with whites, blacks with blacks, girls with girls, boys with boys. I have not seen a single mixed race couple, and I actively notice mixed friendship groups. One guy told me quite casually that he would be turned away from 'Friars' if he went by himself, because it's a 'white' club. And yet, on a personal level, the friends I've made seem more accepting and much less racist than most people I know at home...

Confusing situation for an over-analytical first world liberal! In the past couple of days, no less than five people have teased me with the phrase 'TIA' ('This is Africa'), and every time I have felt the shock of that flippancy (see the movie if you don't know why). South Africans laugh a lot, and they are careful with their words.

Capricorn (22 December - 20 January)

2007-01-28T21:00:00.000-08:00

With Neptune rising in your technological sector, and Jupiter mooning Venus, Capricorns can expect to spend Monday swearing at your computer, clicking forlornly at your brand-new blog layout and accidentally defacing photos of your nearest and dearest in your tragic attempts at red-eye removal.
Beware empty suitcases and traffic lights, and try to remember that you are going to see your beloved friends and family again (which means stop sniffling and leave that apple-cake alone! )