In the wind

The south-easter has picked up these last few weeks, and today it flew and bounced and shook the roll-down doors of the factories and warehouses in Salt River with an impatient kinesis that only mirrors the unrest on the otherside of Sir Lowry's Pass. Two workers on their break struggled to light a cigarette: they huddled together, heads bent down, foreheads almost touching, their hands completing the walls around their faces. Creating a vacuum of calm in the bluster of the wind. Oh, the wind. The wind.

I walked in the wind, hunching my shoulders, scrunching my eyes. The broad streets of that part of Salt River were no doubt designed for trucks that weren't running over lunch. It was just me and the few bundles of factory workers wanting a smoke outside. I find the place I'm looking for eventually--the workshop that covered my couches last week--and collect the left-over roll of fabric and a refuse bag of off-cuts. As I stood in the empty loading bay, the roll balanced on my shoulder as I squeezed the refuse bag under my arm, the wind whipped the flaps of my pale green cardigan into my face. I heaved up the roll, shook my head free of its veil and started trekking up Manrose Street to the Main Road.

I had no hands to wave at the gaaitjie who called out to me, but he understood my nod and the van stood waiting a few metres to the left of the intersection when I reached the top of the road. I paused and looked at him, the wind between us, the fabric under and on top of me and he ran towards me, arms outstretched. "Sorry sorry," he said, "I didn't see you properly from down there."
"No worries," I handed him the refuse bag, "as long as it fits."
He waited for me to get in the van and then passed me the roll of fabric over the heads of my fellow commuters. The refuse bag sat on my lap.
"Allright?" he asked me before he tapped the van in a signal to the driver to move off.
"Allright." I nodded in reply.

On Tuesday, on another taxi, the man next to me looked up sharply as the gaaitjie started talking to the front-seat passenger in a language I didn't recognize. He must have though, and he called out a greeting. They met with the familiarity of strangers who share their foreignness. They chatted, the three of them, and at the crescendo of the gaaitjie's story my neighbour leant forward to shake his hand and laugh. I started laughing too, it was just that kind of contagious, serendipitous happiness that pulls at you.
"What language are you speaking?" I asked him.
"Swahili." He answered.
"Cool!"
"Mambo?" He asked me.
"What's that?"
"It means how are you doing."
I smiled, "I'm good, thanks."
The taxi stopped and he moved to the door, turning back to me, to the gaaitjie, giving a bit of a wave.

As I sat today, surrounded by fabric in the stationary taxi, I felt the van shudder as another taxi stormed by. Taxi's, it seems, like people, respond to others moving past them; caught for the briefest moment in the same frame. And people, like the wind, move past those moments so fleetingly; somewhere else to be.