Writing the train, not riding it

I am spending my Saturday night becoming proficient in "Transit-Oriented Development". It's a fairly intuitive concept really; transport acts as a catalyst for social and economic development. More vroom-vroom, more ching-ching. More specifically, more feet on the ground in "corridors", more bums on seats on trains, and more wheels on the bus going round and round, translates to more ching-ching.

While wading through city policy is always a treat, I've quite appreciated the fact that some of the writers of the strategies and plans that get the CoCT stamp are mostly coherent and don't split too many infinitives. So it hasn't been wholly unpleasant. However, I am left with a troubling question as I gaze on the articles and budgets and maps lying next to me on my bed: do any of these writers actually put their own feet on the ground, their own bum on a train, their own packet of NikNaks on the bus seat next to them? Now, I'm not talking about doing fieldwork, because pretty much any old person can take a clipboard to Khayelitsha, talk to a bunch of people, count a few activities, and retreat to their office satisfied that they have a good picture of what's happening on the ground because hells they were just there. So no, I'm not talking about fieldwork. I'm talking about life.

See, there are things you notice as you go about your day to day, that you don't notice when you have a fieldwork mandate. You can go to the rank in town and ask commuters ten questions about their journey, and you'll probably get some juicy information. But what you might not hear is the resigned sigh of the woman in front of you walking up the stairs that take you from the bus terminus at the Grand Parade, over Strand Street and to the taxis on top of the station. You might not see as she lifts her ankle every few steps and shakes her foot gently, maybe even pulling her sandal away from her swollen ankle for a second or two.

You could set up camp with the Metro police block outside the Goodhope Centre and ask the taxi drivers questions as they come to a stop. But if you're not on the van you won't see how the drivers signal to one another as they drive, how they call and sms, how they send messages through the gaaitjies. You won't see how they know about that roadblock, how they swap drivers outside Dart Motors in Woodstock or even the BP after the bridge. You won't hear how the commuters complain when the taxi is redirected past Cape Tech and round past District Six to avoid the flashing lights.

You can ask someone about how hot the trains get, but if you don't sit there sweating and stuck to the seat you may not realise just how unpleasant it is. And you may not know that when people complain about getting wet it's because the road outside Retreat Station floods when it rains and there's a man standing near the taxis who talks about getting a license to sell Old Brown Sherry because he'll make his millions here, he promises you. If you've never felt the pang of panic when you're at Salt River Station running over the bridge to connect to the Ottery train, never felt the push and pull of the sometimes desperate bodies around you, you may not realise that the sequencing of the trains is just not right, and it means that the woman in front of me who sighs at all the stairs must now stop her sighing and run and push and do what she can to get to her train before it goes. The Metrorail trains never run on time, you may hear. But unless you're there, you may not understand the depth of what it might mean to be late. You might not get just how important it might be to bold that bit in your policy document.

Maybe anthropology rubbed off on me more than I wanted it to, but I just don't think that people who don't use public transport should be legislating about it. It's not that they don't come up with usable ideas, They do. They write lovely policies and strategies to help things go vroom. But I think they miss something. I read a stagnancy and staleness in these policies that show just how un-public the writers are. I guess you have to be well-educated to work for government. I guess that means you have a good job. I guess that means you have a nice car. But does your education give you the right to mandate policy for infrastructure that you will never use? That you will never experience? To be honest, I don't know. I have no education when it comes to Transit-Oriented Development and I respect the writers who do; they have some good ideas. It's just that those good ideas are not necessary complete ideas. Yeah, I think that's what I'm saying.

The City's Seasons

Like any ecosystem, urban or otherwise, cities have seasons. They have pressure systems that mimic rising and pushing warm and cold fronts, and trends that shift direction like the wind. Unlike the weather, however, Cape Town’s city seasons can’t be neatly summarized on colorful charts and maps. The city’s seasons are born into existence through the action and inaction of people, and that behavior is far harder to predict than falling rain or sunny skies. But there might be a backdrop to that behavior; here are a few ideas.

Migration

I live in Obs. Around this time of the year, the shuttles and busses moving students in and out of Observatory cut their schedules. The Pick ‘n Pay at St Peter’s Square empties. The McDonalds and KFC on Norfolk Road shudder with relief. The undergraduates are gone. They aren’t the only ones.

“I’m going to the Eastern Cape,” my domestic worker tells me, “my son is becoming a man.”

“Ah, congrats!” I smile in reply.

“He’s going with his daddy at the end of the month, I’m going on the 14th.”

Over December, people go home. The women’s club I sew with in Khayelitsha closes as soon as the schools do; the grandmothers have saved all year to spend six weeks back in Pedi and Ngcobo. They go home.

But as people leave, others arrive. GP number plates idle along Victoria Road from Bantry Bay to Llandudno. From the start of school holidays till the end. It’s a transient time this, our seasonal migration.

Regeneration

On the 1^st of January this year, a massive fire burnt through BM Section in Khayelitsha. Thousands of people lost their homes and the political year shortened its summer holiday and started in earnest to answer the questions of the watching public: whose fault was it that the fire could spread through the shakey infrastructure in the way that it did, and whose fault was the arguably slow response to the fire? What upgrading was and wasn’t happening in BM Section, and where were the city’s political leaders? Fire destructs, it also provides reason to rebuild. If there are resources, capacity and political will, crisis can be a catalyst for positive change. It’s a big if, but a possible if.

In January and February the wind continues to blow. It’s hot, so hot, and Cape Town burns. The fires that run up and down and along the mountain parade in the new year and require our attention and action. The southeaster blows and freshens the city, the schools open, the students return. For better or worse, the city regenerates.

Consolidation

And then the city finds its groove and builds its routine. The gaaitjies shout their Mowbray-Kaap’s and squeeze themselves into tighter than tight taxi corners. “Don’t worry, I’m a chicken,” one tells me one day as he huddles over my legs in the front row, “I only need one leg to stand.” The Village Three bus winds its way through every road in Khayelitsha before reaching its destination. Everyone knows to be patient.

I love Cape Town’s routines. At noon everyday the city blinks as the Signal Hill cannon announces: “it’s lunchtime!” At full moon we walk up Lion’s Head. The call to prayer calls us to witness the ways in which we live together, syncretically sometimes, other times in tension. But always together. The first Thursday every month turns the city into an artwork that you can walk through and talk to. And on Fridays the traffic starts early, why shouldn’t it? It’s Cape Town.

We spend April and May consolidating (and ruing the passing of the March public holidays). It’s a time for the city to function.

Protest

To speak of a season of protest is not to undermine the grievances and the pain of people whose homes flood in July. Not their shacks, their homes. Protest in Cape Town is not just about poo and closed highways, and the politics that attempt to divide us. It’s when the inequalities in our city turn toxic.

But Cape Town doesn’t just protest service delivery. The angry upside-down umbrellas that are shoved broken into the bright green bins dotted all over the city articulate our collective rage against the weather. We’re not a patient people, Cape Tonians, when it comes to the weather and dark early mornings. The general air of discontent that settles over the city in the winter dissipates fairly rapidly though, as we move into spring.

And spring pulls us back to migration and movement, and closer to the long December holidays… 

No smile, no sneer

On my way to the deck this morning, as I strolled along Wale into Adderley, a man introduced himself as Luke, and suggested we spend some time together in his "limousine back at home". I was overcome by a sudden urge to punch him in the face. Usually I tolerate the advances and the innuendo and the not so subtle requests for sex, but I this morning I had no patience. None.

I went to a "Rape Awareness" workshop at the US Consulate a few weeks ago. I was expecting it to be horrendous but the new regional security officer knows his limitations and got an outside woman in to run the workshop and it was pretty good. The one thing she said, which I remembered this morning, was that "women, you don't need to be friendly. You don't need to reply, to respond. You don't need to smile." WOWZA! So this morning, I didn't smile. I was just sick of it.

"Oh, but what's a few words?" You may say, "just relax."
Yeah but, I'm kind of over relaxing. If you say hello to someone, and they don't say hello back, it means they don't want to talk to you. It means they don't consent to that conversation. I am forever being roped into conversations and situations that I don't consent to. I am forever having my body and my clothes and my hair commented on. I cut off my hair, almost all of it, and yet STILL men on the street find it necessary to share their opinion on my appearance and attire with me. You know what, I know what I look like, I don't need you to tell me.

I was livid this morning. Really. I wanted to turn around and shout at Luke, "what right do you have to make me uncomfortable? What right do you have to make me try and shift my bags so that when I walk in front of you you can't see my ass and pull a comment about what you'd like to do with it? What right do you have to make me feel like everything else that I am is totally undermined and invisible in those seconds and minutes that you tell me what you'd like to do with my body--because clearly that's all I am...?"

I'd reached boiling point, I guess. After days and weeks and months and years of hearing this kind of shit. Of being called at and spoken to and engaged in conversations that I just didn't consent to. I was furious. And then I wasn't.

I ignored him. I was indifferent.

See, the way I figure, offering someone emotion, whether it be love or kindness or anger or hate, recognizes that that person is a person. That they have humanity. That they share something with you, that when all is stripped away that they could be you. But when you're indifferent, when you ignore and give someone nothing: neither love nor hate, you deny them that personhood, that humanity. You deny them the opportunity to be loved and to be hated in the way that people are, you deny them the part of their being that they would otherwise share with you.

That's what I did this morning. I didn't punch him in the face, I just refused to recognize his personhood. Maybe that's wrong, maybe that makes it worse, but when you're fatigued by the world's insistence on inscribing it's power on your body--because that's what each of those little comments are; a mark seared into your skin--maybe it's forgivable.

I took a deep breath as I walked past the flower sellers and stopped to tap the toe of my shoe in a puddle of water and I love the way it splish-splashes so quickly and quietly. Breathe. It smells good here.

Accidentally on Adderley Street

We stood behind the shattered glass and caught our collective breath.
"Uhm, what's going on?" I ask the woman standing next to me, once the burn in my throat has abated. I knew that there was a protest, but there's always a protest somewhere in Cape Town... I'm not used to this. I'm not used to walking out from the taxi deck and down onto the street and having rows and rows of faces running toward me and forcing me to change my course.
"They're striking," she answers me, after a breath.
"Who is?"
She shrugs in reply.

I have a meeting at the provincial legislature in ten minutes, and I'm stuck behind the spider webs of cracked glass at the Golden Acre entrance on Adderley Street. I push through the small throng gathered at the doors to the security guard who'd pulled them closed as soon as he'd got inside.
"I need to get out," I said.
He shook his head.
"I need to get out," I repeat.
He looks at me like I'm crazy, but cracks open the door and pushes me out, slamming it closed again behind me.

Adderley Street is messy and filled with people and shouts but it's walkable. I can hear people in St George's Mall, and it doesn't sound walkable. Most people are walking and running down towards Strand, getting as much distance between themselves and the group on Wale Street, I suppose. As I walk past the flower-sellers they're upset. Usually they greet me, usually we chat about what's in season and how beautiful it all looks. Usually we laugh. They're pushing and packing and protecting their flowers and all I get is a shout, a warning: "Hold your bag, they'll take it!" The they are coming.

I reach Spin Street and ask someone, "Who is it, who's striking?"
"The people who want housing."
That's right, people. People. People. People. Not theys and thems. 
Someone pushes me and I fall, someone else lifts me up, "Sorry," he says, as he grabs my arm.
"It's not your fault," I smile.
We keep moving.

The provincial legislature is surrounded by people. I slow my pace finally, there is no real movement here, just people standing and sitting and walking. Someone is talking on the steps, some in the crowd respond. I am tempted to stay here and talk and ask questions. But I squeeze through the crowds and am lifted up to the railings on the side of the steps by a man who can't quite seem to work out what I'm doing, but is nonetheless happy to help. The policeman on the otherside of the railings is not. I explain my predicament and he tells me, "Walk round."

As I walk to where the crowd starts to thin I notice the empty NikNak packets rolling and rutting along the pavement and street. Hundreds of bright yellow packets; I can't quite make sense of it. I learn later of the looting and the small vendors who lost their stock. Their stock of empty NikNak packets, rolling and rutting along the pavement and street.

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

Hugging trees, not environmentalists

I'm not one for drama, nay-nay. This is true for both my personal relationships and my opinions, and, more importantly, the opinions of others. And, oh, OH, the opinions of others (I might enjoy a touch a pizazz in my writing though, I won't lie to you). So, something like the alarmist-denialist onslaught of the climate change pashionistas really grates my goat. The alarmists believe in apocalypse, so understandably they're a little vociferous. If I believed the world was about to fade to black, I too might be tempted to embrace and espouse doomsday adjectives. The denialists are no better. Their eye-rolling and condescension for naive greenies wafts from the steaming piles of their discursive flotsam with the power of a thousand dirty black jet engines. The militancy of both camps offends me.

Usually, however, this offense doesn't translate to more than a mild annoyance and a disinclination to read anything environment-related. And it's not that I don't love the environment, I do. However, I don't love it for the same reasons that the alarmists do. But back to that in a moment.

Why has my usually latent frustration at the climate change debate translated into my current non-latent frustration? Because of this whole Philippi Horticultural Area development shebang. For those of you who haven't been following the news (you should) there has been ongoing discussion as to what to do with the PHA. Cape Town gets its veggies from here, and not just the Woolies shoppers of Cape Town, the shoppers who frequent the bakkies on the side of the road and in the corner of parking lots, bakkies with a canvas stretched out over boxes of fresh produce and you can buy a bag of those small yellow plums for R5. Or hells if you go to Epping you can get boxes and boxes of veg for next to nothing. Point is, fruit and veggies from PHA are cheap. There area lies on an aquifer, and if my high school Geography can be believed, this means that there's water there, and lots of it. It's proximity to the Cape Flats (it's on the Cape Flats) brings down transport costs. So you have a farmland that can produce nutritious food at a cost that isn't prohibitive. Gold star for food security.

The PHA also has a bunch of minerals and useful sands beneath the surface, of these I know nothing more than what I've read in the various reports on the area. Mining these goodies is another gold star. It's gold stars all round really, for employment, small business, consumers, and people who like to look at green spaces. However, the housing backlog in Cape Town is such that the City needs land on which to build houses, and land that isn't out in the middle of nowhere. They don't often get this bit right, what with their plans for the Wescape mini-city they want to build next door to Koeberg. But in this instance, they seem to be holding the map the right way up and have identified a piece of land that is actually in the city. And parts of the PHA have already been taken over for housing, and did I mention that there's a huge demand for housing in Cape Town?

Hence, the problem. You've got  to balance food security with housing. Jobs with shelter. Cauliflower with sanitation. As though this isn't a complicated enough issue as it is, the environmentalists--on both sides of the spectrum--have also come to the party. They like coming to parties. Some might call it gate-crashing. Some might call it a takeover. Because invariably, whenever the environmentalists--again, both sides-- start their musing, everyone else is forced to shelve their interests and listen. In save-the-world terms, green really is the new black.

I have no opinion yet on the PHA situation. I do however have an opinion on the environmentalists; all the above was really a bit of a self-indulgent elaborate tangent. I'll admit that it is very likely an ill-informed opinion, given my reticence to spend much time engaging with them, but what are blogs for if not ill-informed opinions? They way I understand the discourse, is that I am asked to look after the earth because if I don't, bad things will happen. I must abandon my car to save the ozone layer [ozone layer seems a bit 90s, and I'm sure there's a more vogue term for it now, but y'all know what I mean]. I must recycle to save the soil, I must not flush my toilet unless totally necessary in order to save the lesser spotted green-winged albatross. However, to me, these seem like terrible reasons to care.
Care because of impending doom!
Care because the world's about to end!
Care out of fear. No. No, no, no.

How about I care because things like excess, destruction, exploitation of resources, unnecessary consumption, and waste are intrinsically bad? They're bad because they're bad, not because of their consequences. They're bad because of what they tell us about human behaviour and human relationships. They're bad because of how we define ourselves in the world, how we dominate weakness whenever we can. They're bad because production, consumption and the money that symbolizes it all is equated with power, power that can lead to abuse. So they're not bad because of what they result in, they're bad because they're a result of bad human action.

I do care about the environment. I love the earth. I'd be a hemp-wearing hippie if I could and my soul is so interwoven with the Oak Tree I grew up with that hugging trees is like a fist-bumping a posse of my bestie pals. But NEVER EVER will I recycle a single damn bottle or tin out of fear, or anxiety, or some self-endowed sense of responsibility.

Ok, takesie-backsies, sometimes my opinions are a little dramatic, but I've only had one cup of tea this morning so I'm less diluted than usual.

The Year of the Yay

As the two and a half avid followers of my little blog know, the end of last year did not leave me particularly inspired about the world. Not just the end of the year, the entire second half really. One horrendous and depressing event after the other just grayed South Africa and Cape Town with a haze of discontent and longing for another reality. But the year has been swept from centre stage to recycling depot and twenty-thirteen has shimmied its way out of the wings. I have high expectations for twenty-thirteen; at the very least it can't be worse than twenty-twelve. Below is my list of five things that I hope will transform my laments of last year into something less Old Testament, and into something a little more Madiba Jive.

1. Minimum Norms and Standards for South African schools
Sure, it would have been great if civil society didn't have to take the government to court to demand them to generate a document that should have been compiled shortly after Romulus and Remus got into their little tiff about where to build Rome. Point is, after much protesting and politicking, the Department of Basic Education has to pull itself towards itself this year and outline a set of infrastructural norms and standards for every school. Now, whether such a set of norms and standards will actually result in every school having a sufficient number of toilets and an abundance of window panes is not immediately guaranteed, but it's a step in that direction and it's a step so tangible you can smell the sweat of the activists whose marching feet forced Ms Motshekga into court.

2. The Khayelitsha Police Commission of Inquiry
The first response of the women at the Wellness Centre in Khayelitsha--where I've wiled away a good many days in the last 18 months--to my announcement that I would be taking the bus out to them instead of my car, was that I should never, ever walk in the stretch of Bonga Drive in front of the school. I've driven that stretch so often its every pothole is jaggedly etched in my mind and I've never seen anything worthy of concern, but the women assure me; it's just not safe there. That intuitive feeling of insecurity, that almost imperceptible anxiety that has spent so long on your skin it has become normal, that edginess balanced between fear and content: no one should have to live with that. But in Khayelitsha, as in so many parts of South Africa, many people do. What makes it all the more upsetting in Khayelitsha is that the people charged with protecting residents and for ensuring the visibility of justice are so wholly unsuccessful at fulfilling their mandate. And so the people asked for an inquiry into policing in Khayelitsha. As can be expected, it was first accepted by some, then rejected by others, taken to court, protested outside of court and on December 13 the legality of the commission was heard. While judgement was reserved, I'm putting this on my list because the commission must just take place and I have faith that the judiciary will make the right call.

3. Design Capital Craziness
Yes, yes, I know Cape Town is only the 2014 Design Capital of the World but 2013 will be the year of buildup, which means that like in 2009, people will be employed to buff and shine lampposts, the City will distribute thousands of generically geometrically designed maps (which are mostly useless but well-intentioned) and gaaitjies the Main Road over will have plenty of opportunity to practice the Dutch and German phrases they picked up the last time Western Europe descended en masse to the Mother City. Ofcourse the dark side of it all is the sweeping away of homeless people who live in the City Bowl, along with the other less human flotsam; all cobbled together in the squirming bundle that privilege likes to ignore. Oh, no, wait, no doom and gloom, no no, it's lucky number twenty-thirteen! Maybe the homeless will be allowed to stay so that visiting Instagrammers can take filtered pictures of their romantic destitution, add in a caption borrowed from Chinua Achebe and post it up on their Google+ pages to show how deeply Africa has moved them. Sigh. Look, I think the employment of lamppost buffers and shiners still counts as a win.

4. Cyril Ramaphosa
Controversial, I know. But I'm still looking forward to seeing how his Deputy Presidency of the ANC translates in practice. My optimism is premised on the belief that ANC party politics cannot get any messier than they already are and that Ramaphosa's wealth, while immense, seems more legitimate than most. I don't think he managed his role at Marikana very well, at all, but in the spirit of the new year and second chances, I think that he is able to manage situations like Marikana. He has the background for it--his role in NUM and in the negotiations preceding '94 indicate his competencies--and he's been out of mainstream politics long enough not to have earned the scorn of too many. Also, he respects Motlanthe and he doesn't strike me as the easily manipulatable type, so I'm hopeful that he'll facilitate a dignified exit for Motlanthe that won't make us bear witness to another Mbeki-esque ousting. A hundred years ago when I was on my high school debating team, Ramaphosa was one of our go-to examples of good government officials. Admittedly, that was a while ago but I still like him a hell of a lot more than some of his colleagues.

5. The DA's bright blue Tshirts
I am not the biggest fan of politicians and political parties, no matter their colour of Tshirts. When it comes to social change, I'm a facta non verba kinda person. And politics is way too verba heavy for my liking. So why do the DA's bright blue Tshirts excite me? Simple, they symbolize the lighter side of politics. The side that I can poke fun at, critique, mock and shake my head at. The picture of Helen Zille in her floppy Khaki hat and bright blue Tshirt marching the streets of rural Kwa-Zulu Natal and wagging her PW Botha finger in the black policeman's face could not have been caricatured better. I am not pro-ANC, nor am I pro-DA (if anything I'm pro dismantling every Focauldian institution that regulates my life but that's a dream I'll have to hold onto for a while) but I am unequivocally pro political fashion. Viva the brightly coloured Tshirt that the DA does so well, VIVA!

And so, with one last glance to the wheelie bin of twenty-twelve, I fix my eyes onto the year of yay that will be twenty-thirteen, and thank every god that ever was and wasn't that even if the year starts to fester, I'll always have a cup or twenty-thirteen of rooibos tea.

A better day

I had to sprint through traffic to catch the Wynberg-bound taxi. I just stuck my hand out in an apologetic gesture and hoped that the driver of the white car that stalled to an uneasy stop uncomfortably close to me understood my haste. I was already running late and didn't want to risk waiting on the pavement watching the Golden Arrows puff by in their smokey crawl. I stepped inside the taxi and looked around, no empty seats. "Where must I go?" I asked the gaaitjie. He pulled the door closed behind me as I stood hunched over him and pointed to a spot next to the driver's seat, there on the otherside of two pairs of legs. I leant over and held onto someone's shoulder, an unseen hand reached out, pulling my elbow, and I swung onto the small cushioned platform, one foot underneath me, the other dangling somewhere behind the front passenger seat.
"Sit forward!" the driver suggested to me. I held onto his head rest and demanded:
"Do I look like an acrobat my friend?"
He laughed and said fine, "as long as you're comfortable, sister."
I assured him I was. 

While having a sit-down and chat with a friend at a cafe overlooking the Main Road in Rondies, I started to hear some music that seemed a little too vibrant for a taxi sound-system. As the music got louder, I realized it was moving. Over the road, on the corner of the Woolworths where the homeless couple sit, a bunch of four men in orange robes danced along. Two had big drums, one had an accordion, one handed out flyers. One of the beggars at the intersection joined in the jam, so did two or three students walking past. There's a Hare Krishna temple nearby, I assume that's where they came from. The music moved up the Main Road, mixed with the hoots and grumbles of the traffic. The four men in their orange robes, joined sporadically by pedestrians: I found them almost hypnotic.

About half an hour later, they returned, now on my side of the road. They paused at the petrol station behind me, the attendants left their pumps to dance with them. I waved as they walked by, smiled and got up for a quick wiggle. The man with the accordion returned my smile and sang louder. His friend passed me a flyer inviting me to join them for yoga and a "sumptuous vegetarian feast." I continued to wiggle, maybe I even jived a little there on the pavement. My companion laughed, "making friends again, Jen?"
"Yip!" I was happy to answer.

Came home, perused Facebook. First couple of posts in my newsfeed are all links to the Equal Education 'Build the Future' youtube, friends sharing with friends sharing with friends. I also saw some updates that showed how the non-profit that a couple of my friends started a few years ago is so beyond thriving it's basically recalibrating the youth development scene in Cape Town. For lunch today, I read Bottles' paper on transitional justice, I was all: YOH, not only can she drink her body weight in alcoholic beverages, but here is a woman who knows what is what.

So yeah, South Africa may not be doing all that well right now. But as long as we're working for change, as long as we'll offer each other shoulders and arms to steady ourselves in a moving taxi, and as long as we can dance in the street with strangers, I think we're going to be fine. We'll be fine.

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.

Cape Town - 1

There are those horrible Cape winter days, where it rains and rains and the rubbish bins become graveyards of umbrella's that have been flipped up and broken by wind. Those days of grey discontent where, living in the southern suburbs, I shiver vicariously for residents of the water-soaked Cape Flats. Those days where I appreciate every fluffy fibre of every fluffy sock, and thank whatever universe-lotto it was that spun me into my current cocoon. 

But then there are those days that defy the winter stereotype. When it is so clear that the mountain looks like a cardboard cut-out, pasted on a perfectly smooth blue sky. You can tell it's still winter, because the sun is so far and so low, but its rays still reach you. That feeling of sitting on the step outside my parents' dining-room, squinting into the sun and holding my hands out to the far-off fire; nothing beats it.

Yesterday, in absolute opposition to our sedentary series-filled weekend lives, I joined two friends on a spontaneous jaunt to celebrate the afternoon glow. Our desire was simple: find somewhere to sit where there was sun, food, drinks and a view. So we headed out on the M3, into wildly unfamiliar territory, and ended up at a wine farm in Constantia. There was a giant old willow tree like the one in Pocahontas, a vineyard--the rosebushes planted at the end of each row of vines alternated white and red flowers--and mountains, obviously. A whole waving roll of warm mountains.

There are some days that you really just can't beat Cape Town.