How to Play Football

We drove past a group of ten hand-holding pairs of very small children in Hazeldene Avenue. Like us, they were on their way to the Mitchells Plain Grade R Football Festival. Unlike us, they marched in teeny tiny gumboots, holding vuvuzelas. It took them about ten minutes to walk the remaining block, corralled by two teachers who shoved their little bodies away from the street when they veered a little too far to the right of the pavement. Watching the seven minute games of five on five (everyone must get a turn), I learnt some lessons about playing football. I am not entirely convinced of their legitimacy, but since I'm all for learning from community, even the four and five year old members of that community, I'll share them anyway. In no particular order of importance:

Number one: Travel in packs. Do not spread out over the playing area (in this case half of a basketball court). Rather, run as closely to the other players as possible and cling to them when you feel you are falling behind. In most cases, the ball is moving in a circular orbit around the centre of the pitch so it is fine to be the last one in the line because soon the ball will come back to you. 

Number two: When the ball bounces and it goes over your head, which is to be expected since heads are hardly a metre above the ground, wave your hands up to stop the ball like you would bat a balloon. Preferably do this with a number of other players so that your strength is combined and you can hold the ball above your heads together as you run around in circles. 

Number three: Score whenever you can. The ball must enter the miniature goal. It does not really matter if it is your team's or the other team's because the people on the sides of the pitch will cheer regardless and you will be able to do a victory wiggle-dance and your friends in the stands will make a noise on their vuvuzelas. 

Number four: Shaking hands is overrated. It is much better to hug and pat the other players. This can be done at any time of the game and is allowed to interfere with the normal course of play. The ball will still be there when the hugging and patting ceremonies are completed.

Number five: Follow the ball at all costs. It does not matter if the ball has escaped the bounds of the pitch, this does not mean that play must cease. If it goes under a spectator's chair you must feel free to play between the spectator's legs, alternately, you can ask for the the spectator to assist. Momentum must be maintained at all times, so there is no need to stop if the ball has been momentarily lost. Continue running and bouncing around the other players until the ball is found and reenters play. 

Number six: Distractions are welcome. Should a fun song start playing over the PA system, it is fine to abandon the ball and dance (even if you are the only one on the pitch doing so). It is better to do this with a friend so that you can hold hands and swing around and dance together. Do not worry if the rest of the players run the ball into your path; they will play around you and might join in before returning to the ball. 

Number seven: The game does not start still you start playing. If the ref throws the ball down but you are not ready or do not know what to do, just stand around until you are confident. Eventually something will click and you'll realise you must run after the ball, and then you must go go go. But before then, you won't be in anyone's way and are bothering no one, so just relax and stare off into space for inspiration. 

My director and I sat for an hour, transfixed, as one team after the other tumbled down the stands and over each other onto the pitch. They fell, they rolled, they ran with their hands waving in the hair and followed instructions like only a troupe of kiddies can. It was ah-sum. 

Advice for Applicants

In a break from my usual ramblings, I thought that it might be time for me to say something vaguely useful.

Part of my job requires me to read applications from students wanting to participate on the programme for which I work. I get a huge batch of applications to read, usually in the space of a few days. At the end of it all, I need to rank the students and justify why I've either accepted, waitlisted or blackballed them. Over the years, I've developed somewhat of a sense of what makes a good application, so I thought I'd share that here. Take it or leave it etc etc. Quick note, my applicants are all American, so this advice is probably more relevant to them, although the principles might be a little more universal.

Here goes, in no particular order of importance.

1. Anecdotes are great, IF they're relevant
When I'm reading through lists of accomplishments and dry essays, coming across a little story offers a nice reprieve, and recaptures my attention. However, if I can't connect the story to the question you're answering, I just get confused. You may be using a metaphor that to you seems abundantly clear but I wasn't there and I can't always connect the dots. You may also be reusing an anecdote that you used for an application that was kind of sort of similar to this one: I can smell it, it's lazy, don't do it! Use anecdotes, but make sure that their meaning is clear, that they are relevant to this application, and that they serve to reinforce what you're saying elsewhere.

2. Don't just list experiences, explain why they're meaningful
It always surprises me how much stuff a 20 year old can squeeze into their life. You've volunteered, you've travelled, you've taken interesting courses, you've lost yourself, found yourself, reimagined yourself and now here you are. Thing is, a huge list of experiences doesn't prove anything. My dad complained this weekend (and I'm paraphrasing here) that some people may have had 20 years management experience, but they're still terrible managers. If you don't learn from experience, it really is fairly meaningless. So write about what you've learnt, and include a mix of knowledge, skills and values.

3. Know what makes you unique, and what doesn't
It amazes me, it really does, the number of North Americans who have volunteered in South America. School trips, church trips, family trips, Spring Break trips: if you've been to Nicaragua, El Salvador, Ecuador or Guatemala, I promise you you're not the only one. (Not forgetting Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and India.) What might standout is if you wrote that you'd taken the cost of your airfare and invested it in an Ecuadorian start-up and spent the summer monitoring the stock market while doing a holiday job, the earnings of which you added to your investment. What would definitely standout is if you wrote that you spent your summer working at MacDonald's. If you wrote that, I promise you, I would not forgot your application. Everything else about you will ping that much more. When it comes to ranking you in relation to your peers, I'll know exactly who you are.

Don't want to work at MacDonalds? Well no one does. But you'll learn about workers' rights, about minimum wage. When I worked in fast food I learnt about drug addiction from a colleague who spent every night's earnings on narcotics, I learnt about mental health from a colleague who went on to commit suicide, I learnt about racism from a manager who treated the black kitchen staff with disdain and disgust. (As a side-note, I also got my first job because the director of the company had worked for that exact franchise. We didn't talk about my academic transcripts in my interview, but about how I had stuck it out there so long, and about the challenges you encounter when trying to manage hungry people.) Look, you don't actually have to work at MacDonalds, my point is just: find alternative ways to have the experiences that grad schools, fellowships, internships etc want.

4. If you aren't into it, I'm not into you
A lot of you apply for everything. Even the things that don't interest you. Well, surprise, I can read when this programme really isn't your number one. If you can't find something in the programme that really gets your heart pumping, you may be better off spending that time applying for something else that does. If you aren't sincere in your interest, your reader is just going to be bemused. It's a waste of your time, and it's a waste of my time.

5. If you're asked to offer an opinion, offer it
Ok, this is an important one so listen up. Usually in an application you're given an article to respond to, or a topic to write about it. I can tell you with absolute confidence, that 99% of you choose the safe, sitting on the fence option. I know that it's a gamble to get radical, but if nothing else, you'll show your reader that you have the ability to take on a challenge, and that you have the courage to take risks. Whether it's affirmative action, climate change, the Middle East or obesity: say something. Be well-informed, be respectful, be robust and open to critique, but for the sake of your reader's sanity: say something. If you are pro, be pro. If you are anti, be anti. If you summarize the arguments on both sides, your essay looks like everyone else's.

Remember: whoever reads your application is not an idiot. They will have read the article or response piece too, and while they have their own opinions, they will (hopefully) be intelligent and sensitive enough to appreciate a good argument even if it contradicts their own. And they will get bored, so so bored, if they have to read a hundred of the exact same responses, and they will be excited, so so excited, if they come across one golden application that goes "I understand the nuances and complexities of the situation, and the competing arguments that are at play here, but I have to say..."

6. Don't be afraid to have values
I'm not particularly religious, but when an applicant talks about the religious values that drive their life, I respect that. Similarly, when someone talks about feminism, or black consciousness, or social justice having a profound influence on their life and guiding their action, I respect that. Having a set of values shows that you've given at least some thought to the bigger picture of life. You have managed to abstract from individual experiences and have found a framework or thread that guides it all. Perhaps it's an erroneous assumption, it's definitely mostly a subconscious one, but when I read someone articulate some values, I do kind of fill in the gaps and assume that in addition to all the good values embedded in Islam/Feminism/Buddhism that this applicant must also have integrity and value for their fellow humans etc etc. It doesn't need to be about religion or politics, you don't need to become an activist overnight, but talk about a philosophy that's important to your family, or to your sports team. You just need to show that have something beneath the surface, you're not just a high-achieving automaton.

7. Know whether you need to be specific, or vague
Some applications want you to articulate a ten-point, five-year plan to world domination. Some applications want you to be flexible and open to what the experience has to offer you. Read up on the programme, speak to people who've done it before, speak to a programme coordinator (I can speak for myself when I say I'm happy to give advice to potential applicants, but over the last three years only two have approached me) and figure out which camp the programme falls into.

8. Proofread
You're not writing a blog post, you're applying for something presumably fairly important. Check your spelling and grammar and formatting. If you've copy-pasted, make sure there is no duplication in other parts of the application, and no references to other applications. Get someone to read through the application before you send it, this will help with Point 1 too. Usually it doesn't blackball you, but it really annoys your reader and doesn't earn you any gold stars.

End of lecture.

I could go on for a while but this post is already long. If I gave a sparknotes version I'd say:
A successful application is one that stands out, not necessarily because of a list of achievements (you don't need to be a genius to succeed at every internship), but because the applicant shows originality, self-awareness, potential for intelligent engagement, and knows the programme to which they're applying. I guess that's it.

Good Luck!

Act. Learn. Repeat.

I arrived in the last five minutes of a session that seemed to be about attitudes; the facilitator spoke a lot about inner strength and power so I assume it had something to with self awareness, consciousness, et ceteraness. The group of 30ish students were not engaged. They held their own conversations, bundled in collectives of three or four. The facilitator needed to shout to get her message across, sometimes they listened. Covering the walls were body maps; each student had drawn themselves, emphasising the important components of their identity. "God forgives, I don't" was the motto draped across the body closest to me. Most of the pictures had some reference to life on the margins, and the carefully scrawled lettering indicated a marginal education.

Ok, I thought, tough crowd. There were only two women in the group, they sat together in front of a pillar. I was nervous, it was hot. Really hot. Today is one of those Cape Town days when the cooling wind abandons the city and you sit in your car with the windows down and the fan on, leaning forward so that your shirt doesn't get all warmly wet and stick to your back. The guys in the room all wore jeans, most of them hoodies and zip-up tops. I knew it would be pointless to ask them to de-hood, so they sat as a barely conscious audience, settled in their sweaty seats, beyond distraction. My session today was one hour, not two, I had my crayons and my newsprint paper, I took a deep breath...

At the end of the session, I shook my head at myself.

The students, in their hoodies and big shoes, had kind of been ok. Maybe more than ok on reflection. I had to repeat the instructions for the first activity multiple times, upside-down and inside-out and in as many different ways as I could think. But they'd done it. Every last one of them. And they'd shared in the big group what they had written and drawn. I won't lie, I was more than somewhat surprised. The point of the session is to teach them an alternate pedagogy, as a tool to approach their experience as learners, not just participants. I had to explain to them that classrooms and textbooks and teachers are not their only avenues into education. And I think they appreciated knowing that they can be an expert, and can get a 'A', on the experiences that they can claim as learning moments.

I forget sometimes, that I went to good schools, that my education affirmed me, it empowered me. I forget that for some people, for a lot of people, education can do just the opposite. It can prove to them how little they know, and how often they fail. Formal education at least. I don't think I'd realised that before today, not really. I've read the literature, hells, I've even written a Masters Degree on knowledge and knowing and its intersections with identity. And I've sat in I don't know how many shitty classrooms, surrounded by shitty textbooks that treat children as idiots, not learners, but it's never really sunk in. I've always known that education does not equal intelligence, but being able to see something shift in the group today somehow made that nugget of knowledge more real.

"So Step one...?" I asked them.
"ACTION!" They shouted back. I laughed; I wasn't expecting such an enthusiastic response.
Ok, I thought, I'll play along. I wound my hand up like a baseball player about to pitch a ball and threw out a "and Step two?"
"REFLECTION!"
"STEP THREE?" I'm really into it now.
"LEARNING!"
"And what. the hell. is the point. of learning. without mo-o-o-o-o-re...?"
"ACTION!"
For a moment it's awesome. For a moment they forget that they're sitting there all cool and hooded up. For a moment they all applaud themselves. I guess it was in that moment, that action, that I learnt what I did today.

Frogs in a fire

The room we sat in was painted a peachy pink. There was a man and a fridge to my right, a woman sitting on the desk behind me, and nine others squished in a rough circle between the standing fan and the door. The door led to the kitchen, where plastic bowls of porridge walked from the one side of the room to the other in an endless cycle of feeding. When we left, the children in the room outside lay in neat rows with their little legs and arms splayed like a frog's. I assume that the porridge was for them.

We were there, from our respective organisations, to help this centre conceptualise a programme for unemployed youth. I balanced my notepad and my backpack on my lap, and tried not to spill water out of the thick amber glass clenched between my knees.

(As happens at these kinds of events, it turns out the host knew the man three seats to my right.
"I know your brother!" He exclaimed initially, and hardly had to lean forward to extend his hand.
"Yes!" The man replied.
"Yes!" The host chorused in reply.
"But it wasn't my brother, it was me." The shaking hands paused. Laughter burst out and met the peachy pink walls.
"You're right, you're right, I was at Pen Tech and you at UCT?"
"Yes, YES!"
More laughter, more hand-shaking.
"We have a story to tell," the host tells us all, "HAH, we have a story to tell!" The man three seats right of me smacks his knee, the host smiles and smiles.)

We start talking first about who constitutes youth, then the challenges they face and the potential they hold within them. We talk about ambitions and aspirations, and how to build a programme that builds on hope, not despondency. The older participants lament: in the 1980s, the youth had something to fight for, to live for. They had a cause. The younger participants, we do what we do when the older ones talk: we look down, we listen, we try to create a memory from which to draw thought. And we wait, patiently, for the lament to pass.

Values and visions only get you so far, so we shift to talking programmatic design. Structure, resources, programme participants. We set up timelines, we make the commitments we can. I'll work on the budget and help with costing. It's a good meeting, a productive one. We had the chat about youth and about change, and used it to inform a programme idea. It's a seed at most, but it will be nurtured and it will grow, and will offer opportunity for existing potential to flourish.

The man three seats to the right of me sent me a poem this morning. His nephew died in a gang shootout last night, and he wrote him a poem to say good bye.

"Ooh I wish this day was never gonna come
Ooh how I wish that I will never hear these words
Ooh how I wish that I will never see this scene
Ooh how I wish that I will never have to say I told you so..."

We spoke just yesterday about creating options for youth. About building an environment that enables them to live a life that won't get them killed. We spoke in a room painted a peachy pink, next door to a room filled with well-fed frog children. Part of me feels that our words are now ash, seared and burnt and destroyed by a bullet, but they're not. Not really. They feel more like a fire that needs to rage and burn into being a change. Before the frog children grow-up.

Training wheels

On Friday morning, I stood, big black marker in hand, in front of 30 recent matriculants. They're part of a programme that will see them spend a year volunteering for an organization in Cape Town. They'll get skills, they'll get connected, and they'll do good while at it. Before they start, they get trained. I help to train them. My session was on experiential learning, and how to take a volunteer experience and learn from it. How to do, to reflect, to learn, to do, to reflect, to learn, to do... We were at the point in the session where I ask the students: so what is this reflection thing anyway?

We talk about what it means to think about an action, to think critically about what happened, and what it means in the context of your life, and your environment. We talk more specifically, about how one thinks; what enables thinking.

Some students like to listen to music, some go for a walk. Some students think aloud by themselves or with friends. Some students meditate, some students pray. Some students sit quietly in the dark, some students like to draw. And some, some students like to drink.
"It helps me clear my mind."
"What does?" I want some clarity.
"Drinking. I drink and then I think clear, it makes me brave."

My mind turns to fuzz. There are several things I don't want to do, chief amongst them is alienate the nodding members of the group.

"So you drink, and it helps you to think. It doesn't make you distracted?"
"No, it makes me focused."
"Ok, and it doesn't make you lose control?"
"No, it makes me brave."
"But what happens when you drink, you don't get into fights?"
"No maybe I'll fight, but still, my mind is clear and brave."

I'm waiting. I don't know for what. For someone else to say something that makes sense, for one of their peers to tell them they're wrong. That they're silly. That they're doing no one any good. They're fresh out of high school, and already dependent on drinking to keep focused, to keep brave.

I start talking about what it might mean to find focus from within. I talk about inner strength, how finding courage from the inside is real courage. They shake their heads, they start to back away.
"Look, I'm not judging you," I say with futility, "I'm not going to stand here and tell you how to live your life when it's a life that I don't live. I just don't think that it's the best way to focus, you know?"
I waver. Desperation creeps in. They remain steadfast.

"I am brave inside, the alcohol just helps me feel it."
"Yes," the man sitting next to the speaker attests, "it helps me feel my strength."

I've strayed into territory wholly unfamiliar, and wholly uncomfortable. I spent my undergraduate years learning about cultural relativity, learning not to judge the life of another, learning that there are different ways to engage with the world. But my memory is hazy now. I turn to the list of "What helps me reflect?" behind me. Music. Walking. Talking. Praying. I try to bring myself to write down "Drinking" but I can't. I write instead, "Doing what I need to do to focus". If I was here long-term, maybe I could have written something else, challenged them harder. But I've got two hours of their lives and then nothing.

The two men mumble to each other. They can see I'm uncomfortable. They can sense that I'm stuck.
"Well," my sensibilities have left me now, "sometimes you don't have a fifty rand to drink, sometimes you don't have money, and then what are you going to do?"
The two men shrug.
"Yeah well, inner strength is free." I end, with a renewed respect for cliches.

I dream in colour

One of the less enjoyable parts of my job, is typing up handwritten notes. Sometimes these are workshop notes, written in thick black koki pen on large sheets of newsprint. Sometimes these are meeting notes, scrawled in books or on pieces of paper that invariably get weathered on the way from meeting to desk. This afternoon, I'm typing. First I visited my favourite news sites, then I tidied my desk. I made some tea and made some more and finally, I started.

I've done two forms, which is a start, at least. As I grumbled and daydreamed about having an intern of my own to type up such things for me, I fumed about why me, with my fancy array of degrees should have to do this menial brain-stifling work. I'm not fulfilling my potential, surely I've paid my dues by now? I felt self-righteous for a moment, then felt kind of queasy.

There are millions, literally millions, of people all around the world doing menial, brain-stifling work. Doing work that doesn't recognize their potential. Doing this work from the beginning of their working life to the end. Never reaching the point at which the world acknowledges payment of their dues. Smart people, shiny people. Bright people, with-it people. Because of circumstance and history, they spend every day reaching unfulfillment.

Imagine the frustration. Imagine having fireworks bursting out of every corner of your mind, bouncing round and round and trying to escape until at last, exhausted by defeat, they stop their sparking and dwindle. Imagine the loss you might feel as you watch your fireworks fight to make their way into the light and no one will see them and no one will know them. And then those fireworks give up. And you beg your mind, "stop sparking!" because you know that short of a miracle, the beautiful creations and ideas that dance before you, will never, never ever, be known to the world.

Imagine the anger. You've done nothing wrong. You've failed at nothing. Everything you've started, you've finished. But you live in a world that doesn't allow you the smallest squeeze into the achievement of dreams. You live in a world that denies you education, that denies you opportunity. You stand, ready, with fireworks in your mind, and the world ignores you. Negates you. Or sees you standing empty, with only grey ash to offer.

My afternoon does not come close. My afternoon will pass. Tomorrow I'll be back on my canvas with colours and brushes and bubbles of light, letting my fireworks flow from my mind into the waiting, welcoming world. My boredom, my sighing, my desperate "why me"-ing will last only the duration of the task. For some people it lasts a lifetime.

I wonder how much unrealized potential, and the frustration that festers along with it, exists in the world? Too much, I know that. And it doesn't serve anyone. It doesn't serve those whose fireworks are never seen, and it doesn't serve those who never see them.

Thursday ennui. Best have a cup of tea.

Back at work

I met with a man from Tanzania on Friday. He came to South Africa to study Buddhism then he married a woman from East London and he stayed. Now they live in Ilitha Park and it takes him seven minutes to get to work. Work is in a container next to the Kuwait taxi rank in Site C. Or a set of containers really. And they're planning on building a sustainable building with sandbags and tyres to house the growth of their operations. They do all kinds of things. Essentially they offer IT services to residents of the surrounding neighbourhood, and to the foot-traffic that pushes through the space, in transit to and from the rank. But really, they do it all. Business plans and letterheads. Lecturing and logo design. 

Four of us sit, behind the door, between the walls, on small islands of space in the sea that is the manager's office. On his wall are pictures of his daughter. First as a baby, then as a toddler, all the way up to her most recent school sanctioned headshot. She is in Grade 9 this year, at school in Joburg. He misses her, ofcourse, but she's at a good school (Oprah's school) and she is pushing through. He tells us that a lot of the learners don't. Their families have problems, someone gets sick, schooling comes to an abrupt halt. But not his daughter. He laughs and says he is not interfering, she must stay there and succeed. 

We sit. Me, the man from Tanzania, the manager, and one of my students. He was in Ghana recently, and he laments with the Tanzanian about the fufu he ate there, how it kept you full from morning till evening. They both miss the fufu. Banku apparently, is a different story. My student shakes his head. 

I ask how things are going here, how their plans for expansion are progressing. 

"We tried to get space in the Plaza, but it's R200 a square metre," the manager explains. "It seemed so much, so I went and did research. You don't pay that much at Canal Walk."

The Site C Plaza popped up last year, after being in the pipeline for years. 

"You need to know someone," he goes on to say. "Like with the new station development, we want a space there, but you need to know someone."

"Who do you need to know?" I ask.

"I don't know," he laughs, "but I know I don't know them!"

The station development sounds impressive. From what he gathers, it's going to transform the Site C station and rank into an integrated transport hub. Lots of change, lots of opportunities.

We chat for a while, about this, about that. And then we walk outside into the sun and hug and handshake. As we drive down Lansdowne Road to the highway I point upwards as I explain electricity access and usage to my student. It's like a spiderweb in the sky. The wires criss-cross from lamppost to tree to lamppost and on and on. It's not beautiful in any romantic sense, but the lines and the layers of the aesthetic do draw you in.

After-school school

I sat in the circle of high school students next to Sanele. I was interested in why she was here, where she was from, but she was more interested in me.
"Have you seen any celebrities?" she asked me, almost interrupted in fact, when I told her where I work.
I laughed. "No, I haven't. When I go to California I go to San Francisco, not LA or Hollywood."
"San Francisco?"
"Ja, the university that I work for, that's where they're based. Just outside of San Francisco."
"But it's in California?"
"Ja, it's in California."
"Oh." She sounded disappointed.
I started laughing again, "why do you sound so disappointed?"
"I thought celebrities all lived in California, that you saw them everywhere, you know. Like you see in magazines."
"Well," I tried to find a way out of it, a way to keep the dream alive, "actually you know, when I'm there on campus, I spend all my time working so I never really get to explore the city. So there probably are celebrities there, I just don't get out much."
She smiled this time, "Ok."

Sanele is one of a group of about 25 high schoolers, here for one of their three weekly after-school sessions. Today they're doing life skills, this group at least. Their peers are next door having a physics lesson. I sat in that class for a while too, listening as the teacher explained an equation involving letters and more letters and curly brackets. Three times a week they come here, for extra lessons. The lessons start at 4pm, they go on till 6pm. Three times a week. I ask them why they come; why they don't just go home.
"There's nothing for us at home. There's nothing to do." The boy speaking sits squished sideways into a schooldesk.
"And you have to think about your future," the girl in front of me starts to say, "if you go home, ja, you can relax, but what about your future?"
"What about it?" I ask.
"To get a job you must have a skill, and to have a skill you can't somme go home." The kids around me all nod in agreement with the boy.
"So what skills do you get here, why do you come?"
There's some silence, some thinking. Another girl starts to speak. She explains that she comes here because she can learn. In a big class at school she never asks questions because someone will tell her she's wrong. Even her teachers sometimes, they just tell her she's wrong. But she doesn't understand so she needs to ask questions. She explains that in this class, with this group of nine students, she'll ask anything. Her peers agree.

They move on to the content for today's session; time management, and I leave them to talk about their study schedules. The grass in the courtyard outside is patchy, sandy, clumpy at places. There's a picnic table in the far corner, where a couple of kids sit in the last of the sun, their tutor tapping his pen to some imaginary rhythm as he waits for them to look up from their workbooks.

Round and Round

I found myself in a parenting workshop this morning. I didn't go because my relationship with Catticus has entered some other level, I went because I was invited to attend and it's my job to attend community events. So there I was, sitting around a horseshoe of tables with a group of parents, a cup of tea, and a Lemon Cream biscuit. It was an interesting morning. I learnt about the developmental stages of childhood, about parenting styles, and about how Ben 10 is not actually about a ten year old boy called Ben but about a boy called Ben who can turn himself into any of ten monsters when faced with a situation he doesn't quite like. It had relevance at the time.

Exactly a week ago, I was sitting in another horseshoe. It was a community support and prayer group that Ma'Regina wanted me to attend. We walked from the bungalow to the meeting and sat down together; she pulled my chair close to hers so that she could hold my hand in her lap. We sat the two of us, and then I helped her up when the time came to stand and pray. And then I helped her down again, and fetched her tea while the group leader welcomed everyone and asked us all to reflect on the last week of our lives. Ma'Regina had to translate a little, she whispered in my ear and the group leader paused when he saw our process.

The Monday before last, I was sitting in the too-full office of one of my community health partners. I sat with the service-manager, and it was cold. The electricity kept tripping because too many people had too many heaters on. It was instantaneously dark and we couldn't see, so we'd switch from the conversation that I needed to write down, to the conversation that I didn't. He's a nice guy, this service manager. He told me about how he's trying to change his name from the nickname his friends gave him in high school two decades ago, to something more professional. "The people I know from then, they call me Maboyz. The people I know from hey, the last few years, they call me Donald."
I smile and reach out for a fist-bump in the dark: "Ah, Donald, my friend, I know exactly what you mean. I can tell you where I know someone from, depending on whether they call me Jen or not. I used to be Jenny."

Three Mondays and three conversations. I had tea out of mug this morning, an enamel cup last week, and no tea the week before because the kettle kept turning off. Variables yes, but each week I've heard about cycles. Parent to child. Past to Future. Metaphors of relay races and students passing batons to each other. It's been kind of meta having the same conversation about how life repeats itself...

Baking Cakes and Taking Names

"I make these shoes, edible shoes. And this lady phoned, I will never forget, she phoned and she asked: what size shoe is this shoe? So I told her it’s a size three. She asked, “Patsy, can’t you make me a size six?” I told her yis, and she asked can I make two shoes. So I said yis. But then I asked her, “Do you know it is a shoe for eating?” And she didn't believe me! She said “No Patsy, it’s such a beautiful shoe!” That's how real it looks."

Patsy wore yellow to the interview. She explained that her hair had minced in the mist this morning and  it didn't usually look this way. She stood with her neon pink binder against the wall for her photograph. I liked Patsy. If it were up to me she'd definitely be accepted onto the programme. Students from a local business school and a business school in the States are running an entrepreneurial training programme for small business owners over July. My students have been tasked with interviewing the potential participants and selecting recruits for the programme. As per youge, I'm doing nothing more useful than sitting in a corner taking notes, and in this case also oohing and aahing at pictures of Patsy's cakes.

Patsy runs her business from her kitchen in Eastridge, Mitchell's Plain. “My stove is old, it’s an old stove. I’m just praying that it doesn’t break!” And from her kitchen she makes cakes and other fancies. The problem see, is her market. Residents from the surrounding communities are poor, they can't afford Charly's Bakery prices so she has to make cakes at affordable prices, which means she doesn't make massive profit. And when she advertised on Gumtree to reach a wider market, "it all was fine until they heard I was in Mitchell's Plain and then they said no thank you I've found somewhere else." I nod, I understand. Cape Tonians who can afford bespoke baked goods might not necessarily know that Mitchell's Plain is more neighbourhood than hood. Pity, because in addition to everything else, they're missing out on some delicious-looking cake. 

Next on the interview schedule was Zelna. "I'm the only lady in batteries," she explains, "in the whole of SAWEN, it's just me. Some of the other ladies are in construction, but no one else in batteries." Her rows of silver bangles click and clang as she moves her arms. "This game is not actually for a lady, but I'm here." She's here because the man who owned the business before her had a gambling problem and lost everything. She shakes her head at all the gamblers, the drugs: "it was his daughter too," she told us conspiratorially. "She also used that money for gambling and drugs."

But she's got her head screwed on right, she's got ambition she says and she wants to grow the business this year. She wants an empire, she laughs. She broke her ankle because on the 6th of January she fitted 15 batteries and when she got home she was so tired she just fell over. She tells story after story. I'm entranced. The end of the interview and it's photograph time. She stands and says: "Mm, but I'm glad I had my hair done today. Usually I only have my hair fixed on a Friday, but I have an exhibition tomorrow so I must look good." She smiles for the camera and checks the picture on the tiny screen, nodding her approval. 

All in all a good morning. An interesting morning. A morning full of stories; my favourite. And a morning that's reminded me I need a haircut. And maybe a piece of cake. Mm, yes. I wouldn't mind a piece of cake.

A relative truth

"Why does every conversation in South Africa turn heavy after just a few minutes?" a student sitting next to me asked.
I didn't really know what to answer, so I took another sip of tea and looked back down at the transport schedule on my laptop.

We'd been talking about violence, particularly in The (Always Capitalized) Townships and I'd stumbled through some kind of explanation of why people in South Africa are so intent on killing, maiming, raping and beating one another. I'd tried to abstract the conversation, tried to critique hypotheses that I've heard before, everything from new barbarism, to muti rubbed into thin cuts on the arms and chests of young men, to a local and global desensitization to black death. "Look at the drones in Pakistan," I tell them, "your government kills little brown children everyday but they aren't blonde and blue-eyed so it's no biggie." Tried my best, I really did, not to offer an opinion of my own, because what do I know? I know that there's a difference between a culture of violence and a violent culture but really, that's where it ends. So I'd listened to my students' stories as I'd fiddled with the spreadsheet in front of me, shuffling various pick-up and drop-off times, double-checking my route map. A history of this, I'd told them, or a history of that. The teabag bumped against my lip when I sipped, I'd forgotten a teaspoon to keep it pushed against the off-white curve of the mug while I drank. It was mildly annoying.

Earlier that day, when I'd been picking them all up, they'd asked about the men with horses.
"What horses?" I'd asked surprised, as we crowned the bridge between Samora Machel and Gugs. Of the wildlife I've seen in this part of Cape Town, a noble equine isn't one.
"There are men with horses and mattresses."
"Oooh, you mean a donkey cart."
"A donkey cart?"
"Ja," I shifted my attention back to the scribbled sheet in front of me, "some guys will go hustle for scrap metal and they have the cart to move the metal from place to place."
"Where do they live?"
"I dunno, around here, oh, and Bonteevil." I looked across to the driver for a confirmation nod. I'd heard that story somewhere, that there were a lot of men with donkey carts who lived in Bonteheuwel. I'm not sure where I heard it, but as the driver nodded in agreement, I passed on the rumor and wrote another note about timing on my schedule.

"We're going to a socialist memorial," two students told me when I asked why they wanted to know where the Mowbray town hall was.
"Oh, for Chris Hani." I nodded.
"No, for Hugo Chavez," and "who is Chris Hani?"
I went back to my tea for a while, before starting up about the violence in the early 90s, about white extremists, about the multiparty negotiations, about the SACP and then I ran out of steam. I suppose Chavez is closer to them, to their families, to their lives.

Which brings me back to the conversation about violence. Last night I got a note delivered to my inbox stating that since Sandy Hook, 2 200 people have been killed in America from gun violence. And that, in turn, brings me back to my student's question: "why does every conversation in South Africa turn heavy after just a few minutes?"

Well, there are many heavy things that happen here. But really, there are many heavy things that happen the world over. I tried to explain that they see it more here because it's a different kind of heavy. "The difference between a machete and a sniper's rifle is not all that much," I tried to tell them. "At the end of the day, someone's dead and someone did the killing." Like the donkey carts that trot along the side of Lansdowne Road, and their drivers who hunt for exchangeable goods, it might all look a little different here, but don't tell me people don't hustle for scrap metal in the ole USA. The surprise is in the aesthetics, is it not?

Ja, I know, I know it's not. I know that here we have a special kind of violence here that the rest of the world doesn't actually share, a heavier heaviness, I know. But will it really help anyone or anything if we're defined by it? I'm not sure. Best have another cup of tea.

First Day

Today is the first day of school, along the coast at least. Today is also the first day of service for my shiny new group of American service-learners. Walking to their 'dorm' this morning, I wanted a drink and a smoke and at least another 48 hours to resolve the various surprises of the last couple of days. While the centre we run here resembles a perfectly choreographed flashmob, our community partners have slightly more variables constraining their programming, and substantially less resources to deal with, well, to deal with reality.

The NGO funding crisis in South Africa (here, there, also here, oh and here) has meant that things are a little more turbulent than usual. As with every upsetting situation the world over, it's when the crisis seeps and sinks in between the electrified fencing around my middle-class life that I feel it most acutely. Two of our partner organizations closed last year, a number of them "restructured" or are running on a wing, a prayer and a bathtub of Ricoffy, and others are just ticking over steadily; unsure if they're sitting on a bomb about to explode or on an eternally reliable grandfather clock. Point is, to stay in sync with the uncertainty, my practice has had to change this last little while and my students have had to learn that adaptation is as valuable as any of their other well-honed skills. So, it's the first day of school for both traditional and unorthodox learners in Cape Town, and there are as many glitches in the morning as they are happy instances of things working out.

I arrive at 8:30 at a primary school in Mitchell's Plain to drop-off my two sports students. I can't get in the door. Parents, their school-going children as well as the smaller ones who couldn't be left at home, and an assortment of other people who seem as much interested spectators as anything else crowd the entrance hall. I step back outside where it is quiet enough to make a call and phone my partner: "Ya no, I'm in the principal's office," he tells me, "come through."
I wave to my students to follow me and I start elbowing people out of the way, gently ofcourse, but elbowing nonetheless. I lose my students in the milieu for a moment but we reach the principal's office and there are hugs and handshakes all round.
"Long time I haven't seen you!" the principal tells me.
"Ya" I answer, and we chat for a moment about our respective holidays.
"But tell me," I ask him, pointing to the rambling mass outside of his office, "is this normal?"
He laughs, and my partner replies: "You should've been here an hour ago, you couldn't walk!"
"I couldn't walk now," I say. "Anyway, here they are," I introduce my two students, "I'll leave them to you."
"Yes, yes, good," the principal seems chuffed and I'm waved out of the office into the cramped entrance hall once more.

About ten minutes later we're at a school around the corner (there is a school on every corner in Mitchell's Plain: if you look down on the area you just see little blocks of blue and green roofs breaking small clumps of red-roofed housing). I don't even try to see the receptionist, choosing instead to squeeze through the smorgasbord of entrance hall residents. One woman held a tiny baby with a tiny mouth that was pressed closed as it slept on her shoulder, on the otherside of the room it looked like a senior's club gathering. Obviously little bodies in uniforms far too big for them, shouldering school bags that overwhelmed them, ran and scattered constantly like a swarm of confused ants. Small children scare me at the best of times: when they swarm I am almost overcome with fear. I whisked my school-garden student to the upstairs office of my environmental education partner, greeted the familiar faces as quickly as possible and sprinted out of the school and back into the calm of the van.

"I wonder how everyone else did." I say to the driver after we've dropped off the third and last group at a high school in Khayelitsha.
"Oh no, we drove the routes yesterday, we all know where to go."
I smile at him. "No I'm not talking about the drivers, I know you know what's what, I'm talking about the organizations. I could have been talking to them every week for the last three months about today but the students can still arrive and be a surprise."
He laughs, but it's true. The nature of the crisis doesn't just mean that funding is tight, it means that organizations are tight. A small interruption to their daily operations can throw the whole show off-kilter. Is it right then, you may ask, for little ole Jen-Ben to throw students around like smarties? Well, it's a tricky one. Sometimes taking on a volunteer can build capacity, sometimes it can cost capacity, and usually my partners and I don't know which it's going to be until a couple of weeks into the placement.

For now though, it's the first day of school, and it's gone ok so far.

Gardens and recreation

"Oh, you're a little early!" exclaimed the woman we were visiting at the garden project in Mitchell's Plain.
"Ya, I know, sorry. But we can wait don't worry." I was taking a few visitors around my community partner sites; one of the components of my job that I do without thinking about it too much. I only ever visit the partners who're happy to interrupt their day to talk shit for a while and I think they quite enjoy it, regaling my foreign colleagues with twisted, funny and often wildly untrue tales. And why not, it's so tempting. My visitors' temporary pictures of Cape Town are blank canvasses, you really can paint on that canvas just how you like and some of my partners embrace that artistic liberty like Picasso on hallucinogenics.

We'd been in Makhaza the morning, then Khayelitsha, and we'd winded our way along Baden Powell Drive to Mitchell's Plain. I'd walked to the office to find the woman I needed to find, and yes, I was early. She exchanged a glance with the director, I couldn't quite work out what was going on.
"I'll just go wait at the car..." I started making my way to the door.
"No, no!" I was told. The director pulled a bit of a face, "it's just that we need to deal with a quick issue outside." The two of them shared an embarrassed giggle.
"Ok no, tell me!" I  smiled my demand, I stepped in closer to where they stood, and we formed a conspiracy of a triangle.
My tour guide looked to the director, the director looked to me, "well, it's just that that space down there is used by the community for a whole range of..." she paused, looking for the right word, "recreational activities."
In my experience, when someone talks about a recreational activity it's going to be of the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll variety. So, "aaah," I replied, "no I understand"
"Mm, we just have to clean some things up," explained my guide. "Go stand in the parking lot and I'll give you a wave when I'm..." another pause, "when it's all ready."

Walking around the garden later, she explained how plants grow here, despite the horrific soil that oscillates between sand and clay with nothing really nutritious in between. How they flourish while being pulled and pushed by the summer south-easter and winter north-wester. I've been visiting this garden for just over two years now and knowing what this space used to look like, I can see the magic that's embedded in the undergrowth. I feel kind of sorry for my visitors, sure it's a beautiful garden in it's own right, but it's the growth and change that they can't see that makes it so worth seeing. Kind of like seeing a frame of a movie that's paused on the cliff-hanger of the narrative, but not having a clue how the characters got there, not knowing the depth of their histories, hardly aware of their meaning... You can't really understand the extent of what's in front of you, can you?

I never did find out the cause of the euphemistic cleaning.

Community

As happens in life, I found myself sitting on the pavement outside the closed garage door of a fabric distributor in Salt River last Thursday morning. The manager arrived shortly before 9am, in a flurry of apologies for her lateness. "It was the taxi," she told me, "it went straight through on the freeway to town and I had to get another one back out!"
I nodded sympathetically, "no, no, I know, don't worry. The drivers sometimes do their own thing, it's fine I wasn't waiting long."

She waved me in behind her and walked me around the small shop, lifting and pulling rolls of fabric off the shelves, helping me find one that didn't have watermarks or creases. We each grabbed an end of the cardboard-centred roll and maneuvered it onto a measuring table and then into a plastic covering. I realized the logistical error of my plan when I saw just how much fabric 22 metres translates to. "Uhmmm," I started, "I don't know how I can get that home." We stood the two of us, assessing the totem pole of fabric. "Can I get the couch guy to come here to pick it up?"
"What's his name?" she asked me.
"Riza."
"Oh ja no, he pops in here almost everyday, I'll leave a note that it's for you. It's Jane ne?"
"Jen." I answer, "I'll tell him it's here."

I phoned him on my way out of the shop and he promised to send his cousin to my house later with his bakkie to pick up my furniture. I ran home over lunch and opened the gate to a man shouting "Hiiiiii!"
As he stood in my lounge, nodding and looking perplexed, just him with no friend to help carry, I thought it might be a good idea to ask, "Oh, are you here for the couches?"
Fortunately he answered in the affirmative. "I'm just wondering how to get them out." Clearly not everyone has Mr Isaacs' level of dexterity when it comes to furniture removal. He did have a friend though, and the two of them squeezed my couches out and onto the pavement. I had to head back to work, so I left them there, Riza's cousin, his friend, my two couches, and a hope that it would all work out.

Friday was my community partner workshop, an all day affair at the District Six Museum. We spent the day talking about all kinds of things: volunteers, development, partnerships, research, volunteers again and then at some point in the afternoon we settled on community and just how foreign some of Cape Town's communities are to my students. "We try to explain to them," one of my partners said, "that it's different here. But it takes for them to be out there to really see."
"Mmmm," added another woman, "how do you explain that everybody's your auntie, nobody's your uncle and who is your daddy?" The room erupted in nods and laughs. Wide agreement then.

I thought of the auntie at the fabric shop, of Riza and his cousin, of my volunteer placement partners and of the taxi drivers that move us all around from place to place. I know, I really do, that "community" doesn't actually exist. But sometimes, in some spaces, it kind of does.

Away from the airport

Alfonso drove me to the airport last last week Friday, and explained to me while we drove the problems he is having setting up a gardening project in Seawinds; the suburb next door to Lavender Hill. Alfonso is one of the drivers who cart my students to and from their service placements during term time, and as one of my students recently pointed out, is not the most politically correct character the world has ever seen. But, given my desperate dearth of friends in Cape Town, I'm a bit of a beggar when it comes to getting myself to the airport. So Alfonso drove me, and regaled me with tales of municipal incompetence and general maladministration. He likes to sprinkle a little sugar and spice on his tales though, so I'm not always sure how accurate his information is.

Anyawy, so he drove me to the airport, I hopped on a plane, and spent last week in the grey of the United Kingdom. My friends being my smarty-pants friends, I visited Oxford and Cambridge and finished the week in London. This last week Friday, I hopped on another plane to San Francisco, followed by a brief shuttle journey into the heart of Silicone Valley. I'm spending the week at the home campus of the overseas study programme that keeps me employed. I'm meeting my colleagues and bosses and trying to camouflage the fact that all they employ me to do really, is drink tea and watch sports tournaments. But there are only so many ways that you can say "community relationship management and partnership coordination" without the emptiness of the job description bouncing off the artfully decorated walls. So it's time to start defending why they pay me the big bucks; why having happy, productive and generally equitable and constitutionally sound relationships with community-based organizations and individuals is totes the way you want to float your goat. 

In between my rambling soliloquies on the value of tea-drinking, I've been quietly overwhelmed by this campus. It's Disneyworld for academics. A veritable wonderland of intellectual stimuli, a smorgasbord of caffeinated collegial activities. If there were balloons and cartoon characters you'd need a ticket and a wristband to enter. It's also beautiful, just gorgeous. Trees, fountains, sculptures, lawns, and, being California, sandy white volleyball pitches every few blocks. I love it. I had dinner last night at a "cooperative", a big house that is part dorm, part commune. I ate vegetarian food outside under the trees, off metal picnic tables with twenty-odd undergraduates. The scent of hippie intelligentsia flavoured my spinach and corn salad in the most inoffensive way. Everyone rides bikes here, they recycle their waste and they drink water from old glass jam jars. It's somewhat surreal; a bubble. It helps me understand my students though, who come from this to the gentle chaos of Cape Town. 

Anyway, I'm here for the week, to learn as much as I can and orientate myself to my students' world. Part of me wishes, just a little part, that this was my world too. But they drink coffee here, not tea...

White boards and legalese

I don't spend much time in the city centre. I used to work in Shortmarket Street and live in Gardens, giving me a happy 20 minute walk to work past the National Gallery, the Rose Garden, St George's Cathedral and Greenmarket Square. It was 2010 and the whole city was saturated with FIFA madness. Loved it! But I quit that job and moved south, and now I just don't get to the city very often. I had a meeting in town yesterday, at the government department with which I'm negotiating a new partnership. From the building's lobby, you can see "authentic" African prints breezing from the stalls of Greenmarket Square, you can hear the French and Portuguese of the traders, you can breathe that bitter, chalky smell of hundred, a thousand, seemingly identical wooden figurines. The cobbled ground and nirvanic tourists complete the scene.

Inside, the only refreshment on offer was water-cooler water, no tea, so I sat empty-handed in the very ambiently-lit boardroom. The man talking to me speaks a lot about the bureaucracy of government, using terms like "compliance" and "management" and pseudo-legal terms so unknown to me that I couldn't write them down. It's a whole new ballgame. Hells, it's a whole new genre of sport. One of my partners is affiliated with government, but that's the city government, not the whole provincial-national shebang, and in any case I visit them in their satellite office in Stocks and Stocks, which is perpetually loud and apparently the place where uncomfortable chairs go to die. The rest of my partners; they work so close to the grassroots they're practically underground. So this was new and unfamiliar terrain. I'm not used to "confidentiality agreements", nay-nay, I'm used to endless cups of tea and conversations about people's children and it's Matric Dance season at the moment, so right now I spend my time looking at photos of sons and daughters on smudgy phone screens. But signing long-worded documents, shoh, I don't even know what those look like.

I try not to come across too panicked, and manage to fake-it through the meeting although not without tugging incessantly at my hair: in the mirror in the lift going back down, I see that I've squidged my short locks into an afro.  Hopefully my new partner was so disturbed by my Edward-Scissorhands hair that he didn't notice how me and my bright purple sneakers clashed with his board-roomed world. Wait, before the freaking boardroom, this building has a damn lift! A lift. Have you ever?! Usually my meetings take place in up-cycled shipping containers, or dingy rooms adjoining someone else's facilities, or the director's long-suffering lounge, or, actually, just outside there under the tree where some mosquito invariably upsets the rhythm of the meeting by swooping around our heads so persistently that we have to pause to find something to swot it, or a kid who's willing to run over the road to borrow the school kitchen's mosquito spray. But a building with a doorwoman and a sign-in sheet and a lift with a mirror and a boardroom. It's a miracle I didn't pee my pants never-mind gurgle incoherently, my thoughts more occupied with praying for some rooibos in a cracked mug to drop from the ceiling and into my sweaty hands than on the process of "escalating" complaints if something goes wrong with my students.

The meeting ends and I'm back on the cobbles outside. It's started to drizzle so I bow my head and shuffle between the canopies of the stalls, ignoring the shouts of the sellers around me, urging me to stop, just quickly, and choose which piece of Africa I'd like to take home.

Big place

Earlier, a colleague and I sat down with an official from the American military. I know nothing of how their army works, I just know that he's part of it somehow. He's going to be working in Africa for the next couple of years, and wanted our thoughts on development and South Africa's role in the sub-Saharan region. Fairly broad interests then. Polite man, very earnest. It reassures me to know that the world's most moneyed army is staffed by people like him, people who desperately want to understand the strange regions in which they march. What does not reassure me, is what they actually do.

I'm a pacifist. Me and Gandhi, hey, we're like: soo besties. So any army, any military, no matter the principles that guide them, is not going to fill my heart with butterflies. And when it comes to war and peace, intervention, particularly of the west in Africa, does not have the most stirlingest of stirling records. Understandably then, before our visitor launched into his questions, I had a few of my own. Starting with: "Soooo, what is it exactly that you do here in Africa?"
"A lot of training, capacity-building of locals. Particularly with regard to medical interventions..." Ok, ok, cool, military personnel train local doctors and nurses and dentists. I can deal.

But then, "...and we equip local militaries with surplus uniforms and munitions."

STOPPIE LORRIE!! I didn't actually say that, I chose the more articulate but equally pointed: "So you're selling weapons in Africa then?"

I was rewarded with a wry smile and a knowing, "not quite." Which was followed by a lengthy explanation of supporting legitimate armies in Africa. Again, I opted for the diplomatic track and said: "Well, I don't envy you, having to make decisions as to who is legitimate or, er, not. And how and under what conditions, and from what perspective..." and stop talking head shake, head shake, the British in Biafra and all of that. He went on to explain that you know, in Cameroon there is only one government and one army and so it's clear. The US military runs operations with the South African army too. I choked on my tea. Am I this clueless about the world of war? Sheesh.

I love America. I lived there for a couple of months back in '07 and had a jambreezing time. In fact, I was in the midwest, the Democrat midwest to be fair, but the midwest all the same and I still loved it. So it's not the country that makes me uncomfortable. It's the power. It's the reality that one country has so much presence in the world that really rattles my teaspoon.

I realize I'm tense, chomping my teeth. I snap out of my mind-wander, "So sub-Saharan African," I offer, "big place." We all nod, three synchronized heads. I drain my teacup and rest it on the table in front of me. "Ya." I pause, fiddle with my nose. "What exactly do you want to know?"

Sing-sing-sing

My students are learning the national anthem. Singing it slowly, deliberately. Nolu, the Xhosa teacher, calls instructions over their muddled lines. Their Xhosa has an American twang to it. Strange that. I suppose I just assumed that all English-speakers would speak Xhosa with the same accent. But theirs is different to mine.

I've had a crap weekend, having destroyed every piece of technological equipment I've come into contact with. Obviously the destruction happened in between spending the weekend in my office working on my never-ending dissertation. So I'm not having the best Monday.

Somehow, knowing that despite my horrendous pronunciation, I still speak Xhosa in a more South African way than my students, has made me feel a little better about life. That and the fact that they called me in mid-blog to help with the Afrikaans verse. Nothing like a bit of a mid-morning sing-along to turn my Monday frown upside down... :)

Introducing Cape Town

My new group of students from the US arrive tomorrow, all excited for their quarter abroad in Africa. Unfortunately, part of my job is to orientate them. It's not that I don't enjoy bouncing about and getting them all enthused for their forays into their volunteer placements, but rather that I never really know how to introduce Cape Town. How do you convey the overwhelming beauty and injustice, the simultaneous magic and tension of the "South African fruit salad" as my colleague, Carol, calls us who live here? A few days ago a friend asked me if my job was challenging. Well no, not in the Good Will Hunting maths-proof sense it isn't, but helping someone make sense of a context that is unknown and potentially uncomfortable can sometimes feel like trying to translate colour into music.

So I take a multi-pronged approach. While telling them about Von Gennep's Rites of Passage Model, and getting them lost somewhere in his liminal space, I put up maps with colour-coded stickers, bits of string, movable labels and all manner of artefacts more often associated with pre-school posters than the walls of an Ivy League campus. I flick big words and big pictures at them, cover them in mountain-related folklore and saturate them with tales of squirming pot-holes, goats and all the other animations moving in, through and around the Nyanga bus terminus:
transaction zones and walkie-talkies.
ethno-epistemology and afro-jazz. indigenous modernities, tik and tik-lollies.
developmental tourism, ubuntu, the Pink Strip in Greenpoint, sandy in-between roads and asset-based-community-developshment. Frantic-frantic and then just throw them into their service placements and hope I've told them enough to keep them afloat in the chaos of the unfamiliar.

Introducing Cape Town yo, it's no joke.