Seen and Read

I walk around the city. I walk into classrooms, bathrooms, down streets and up streets and as I walk, I read. Yeah, the whole city is a text; the letters and words rubbing off the bricks and and into my skin, but there's also actual text. Black on white and such. Here's some of what I've read the last few weeks.

This one was stuck to the classroom wall of a Catholic classroom in Lansdowne. There'd been training that morning, for mentors who'd be going out to schools to offer career guidance to Grade 9's. We'd sat in that classroom, the six of us, with our breath smoking and snaking out of our mouths. Queen sat to my left, her beanie pulled so low over her face it almost covered her eyes. N'seko sat to my right, taking cryptic notes that I couldn't understand; guess I shouldn't have been looking. As we stood to leave I looked round the room, mostly empty, furniture stacked in neat piles under the windows, crucifix above the chalkboard. And then this sign. Respect God's presence, it tells me, leave your cell phone at home. I've worked with a lot of community development organizations over the years, and there are few, very few, that don't include a little bit of God in their work. I read the classroom rules and am reminded of the relationship between service and spirituality, and how, for many, the two are so closely intertwined. 

I spent the afternoon hacking away at weeds in an overrun community garden in Lavender Hill. It was cold and drizzly. The rake had bent fingers, almost gnarly, like an arthritic aged hand. Hack, hack, hack. The soil there is so bad, so loose and stoney and infested with weeds. Sand got into my ears and my skinny jeans, and that crumpled old rake groaned when it hit the ground. Bathroom break and there it was. Smoke in the bush. There isn't a hell of a lot of bush here, tall weeds yes, but the bushes are mechanical; discarded trolleys with sides splintering out of their frame. I read a book* in undergrad about a group of people who moved from informal residences to bricked and roofed buildings. They called their first home, 'The Bush'. Or at least the Anthropologist who wrote the book did, I can't remember now whose name it was. 

Nothing like an anarchic hip hop filled afternoon on a Friday. Nothing like it. It was the 16th and I was watching an artist stencil "We will not forget" onto a long white sheet. They'd been at parliament in the morning, with the "We are all Marikana" banner and we were in Site C now. Just there at the Kuwait taxi rank. A man rapped about the police, about the state, about control and about freedom. The fumes from the spraypaint, the beating noise, the memories of what had happened the year before; I felt a little overwhelmed. I stood and filmed the black spray as it melted into the fabric, it was hypnotic. The movement of the woman's hand as she pulled her arm up and down so damn steady and even and solid and that spraycan could have been part of her. I handed out pamphlets for a while, listened to the words and the stories of the music and of the people. And then I went home.

Kloof Street, Cape Town. Sunday morning. I'd run from Golden Acre because I'd waited forever for a taxi on the Main Road and now I was late. Long Street was desolate apart from church bells as I reached the top of the road. I passed one or two of the traders who shuttle their wares out of narrow doorways and steep stairways on those beer crate trolleys, but that was it. Keep Calm and Riot. The N2 is closed at Mew Way, at Spine Road, at Baden Powell. Lansdowne Road at Duinefontein. Cape Tonians have reason to riot. Most people have no reason to listen, so they don't. They just bemoan the tyre-burning, shit-throwing, uncivilized savages: oh, the comments section. A message from the King and Queen, keep calm. A message from their people; no. 

* 'Raw Life, New Hope: Decency, housing and everyday life in a post-Apartheid community' - Fiona Ross