Charity

"Madam," I hear from the pavement, "can you help me?"
I look down. A woman sits on the low bricked wall on the corner of Main and Dane. I smile at her and she hands me a folded-up piece of paper. I wonder why she has written her story on this paper, why she doesn't talk to me. I don't quite know what to do.
"Hello," I start, and keep smiling. I must look like an idiot, standing there, looking down, holding this sweaty piece of paper.

I read it. She is the mother of five children and the sole breadwinner. She needs food, money, clothes, a job, anything really.

"Uhm," I say at last, "so you have five children?"
She nods and answers, "yes."
"How old are they?" I ask. I'm not sure why I ask. It's not like I have a right to know this. If a stranger came up to me and asked me how old my cousins were, I'd give them the stink-eye and suspect them of being missionaries on a divine hunt for a potential convert.
"Different ages," the woman answers me, and she moves her arm up and down in a "this high" gesture.
"Aaah," I say. And I nod. Because nodding is so helpful Jen, so helpful. We chat a little more and then "ok, well," I scrabble around in my bag for a bit and hand over a R10 note, "have a nice day!"

Have a nice day, it's storming outside. I can hear the rain hit the plastic skylight above my desk like bullets from a semi-automatic.

And this is why charity sucks. See, that R10 will not even cover her taxi fare from here to her home in Gugulethu (another piece of information I seduced out of her; her participation incentivized by the potential of a cash reward). Maybe someone else gives her R10, and someone else. Ok and then maybe she can buy a loaf of bread and her kids can be fed this evening, they went to bed hungry last night she told me. That doesn't suck. So maybe charity is ok for her. No, maybe the money is ok for her. But what about the process of asking for the money?

On Monday evening as I arrived home, a man came up to me and said: "I can see you've just come home, and I know it's unfair, but I want to ask you for help."

Unfair? On me? Say whaaat? What's unfair is that you lost your job at Telkom after working there for years. What's unfair is that when you were retrenched some technicality meant you couldn't draw from your UIF. What's UNFAIR is that you are forced to relinquish your role as care-giver and stand in front me, a stranger, and rely on me to feed your children. That's unfair.

Look, I'm not saying that living in a symbiotic relationship with people is a bad thing, that relying on the input of others is wrong. I'm all for reciprocal living. But entering that relationship with no power to dictate the terms of engagement is not ok. So this is really why charity sucks. Because it's a short-term interaction where the playing-field isn't even discussed. If I saw the same man or the same mother every day, maybe it would be different. Maybe. For now, I'll just pay for their stories. Because what the hell else am I supposed to do?

I walk on. My feet slush in mud as I make my way to the office. The sky has been grey for weeks.

Of Lights and Lampposts

So I moved into my little la maison in September last year, but I have yet to receive an electricity account. Fueled by the fear of receiving a scary legal document explaining why my lack of payment has resulted in my imminent imprisonment, I've been following up with the ever-elusive City for the last three weeks. It's not like I don't want to pay, I do. I explained the situation to my colleagues this morning. Carol said yes, it's always like this when you want to do the right thing. Her husband bought a TV license a little while ago and then BOOM he was fined for who knows how much or how it happens and let's hope to God you are lucky. Yes, lets.

The last time I spoke to Mr Manuel, from the unsurprisingly aptly named "Electricity" he told me that there was no meter for my erf.
"What does that mean?"I tried to convey my quizzical brow over my beige office phone.
"It means we don't know how your electricity is getting to your house."
"Ok," I said, no less certain of the situation, "but what does that mean?"
"Well," he started, and launched into a long story that culminated in, "so it's possible that your neighbours are paying for your electricity."
"Oh," I said, and gave the matter some thought. I don't mind if number 14 is paying, they keep me up at night with a mixture of domestic disputes, a dog called "Molly" and a very loud piece of equipment that could be a dehumidifier, could be a high-pressure cleaner, or could be the mincing machine they use to chop up the bodies; they seem like the sort who'd have use for it. But number 10, now she's quite sweet. Thing is with these semi-detached Obs houses, you never really know.

Go 30kms down the N2 and there on the corner of Mew Way and Lansdowne Road, you'll see ladders and their owners leaned up against the lampposts; ever-ready to connect one more brightly coloured cable to the electrical box two-thirds of the way to the top. I always wondered why Goodhope FM's traffic report mentioned almost everyday that the lights were out at that intersection... Although there, in RR section, it's not stealing so much as renting electricity. Considering I pay no twenty-rand a month to either of my neighbours, I'm not sure my case really falls into the latter category.

Point is, it's what my dad referred to as "more omnishambles". [Side note, score one for retirement age pop-culture references.] Despite my clear interest in, and passion for paying for my damn electricity, there has been no progress since my conversation with Mr Manuel. Until today. After hounding him with emails, and the occasional telepathic communique, I finally reached him via telephono; most hated of all communicative devices. Then I phoned the woman he told me to phone. Then I heard her tell me:
"Yes, you really need to speak to Mr Manuel."
"Erm," I wonder if I accidentally slipped into a foreign language when I explained the situation to her in the preceding 30 seconds, "so remember I've just spoken to Mr Manuel."
"Aah, ok." Pause. "Well there's nothing really that I can do."
"Ok." I'm not really sure where to from here. I'm staring at a brick wall willing it to move. "Soo, you know, I suppose I'll just wait then."
"Yes," she agrees, "just wait."
"Ok," pause, "cool. Thanks." I put down the phone.

When I am arrested for stealing electricity from my neighbours, and am thrown--yodeling obscenities ofcourse--into the back of a luminescently striped police van, let this blog be evidence that once upon a time, I tried to make like a responsible citizen and pay.

Secret Lairs and Hiding Holes

Every Monday morning, as we sit more or less coherently at the kitchen table, my room-mate and I muse over the "hallelujah's" and organ music floating around our back garden. We don't know where it comes from, only that its source is community church-flavoured. So over the Mondays we've developed theories ranging from a neighbour with a passion for blasting religious radio-shows, to an underground lair of the catacomb variety, where hundreds of Hallelujah-singers meeting on Monday mornings to offer praises to their God. But this morning, oooh this morning, we figured it out. Between the hallelujah's a voice announced something to the effect of:
"And our Grade 8 learners....mumble....mumble...."
"HEY!" I exclaimed, "It's coming from the school!" Thandokhulu High School is on the Main Road, probably about half a kilometre from our house. Easily within earshot.
My room-mate listened as the announcer read names after shouting "position 10..... position 9..... position 8....." and then as the audience erupted in cheers.
"It definitely sounds like kids," she concurred over hummus-toast.
Mystery solved. Although, admittedly, it was a far more intriguing state of affairs when catacombs were still on the table.

So no secret lairs. But over the road from our front gate is a storm-water drain, which serves as a hiding-hole for one of the homeless men who live in our area. Periodically you see him walking to the drain, bending his knees till they almost touch the ground, lifting the cover and shifting it to the side, and then depositing or withdrawing a plastic bag filled with unknown goods.

Got to embrace the underground intrigue when you can.

On the radio

I stopped by the local 'odd collection of products' store on the corner of Trill Road yesterday evening. It's got the usual cheap toilet paper, fridges of Coke, rows of condoms on a little shelf across from the rows of Smarties and Jelly Tots. It's also got okkah pipe tobacco, which was my reason for visiting. I went up to the counter and:
'Heya,' the shop owner and I smile at each other. I point and squint at the brightly coloured boxes to the left of his head, 'what flavours have you got?'
 'Come around' he replies, and waves me over.
I wiggle past empty crates and squeeze myself between the counter and the wall and then up a step to his platformed domain. As I'm choosing my flavours, a couple come in wanting to buy cigarettes, and wanting to pay with a card.
The shop owner shakes his head. 'Cash only.'

When I'm paying him for my boxes of 'Blue Mix', I realize that the music playing from two crackling speakers above the door is a radio station. The DJ speaks in rapid Francophone African French over the last bouncing refrains of the song. I smile at the shop owner again; aaah, so that was his accent.

Tazed

Squashed in between the N2 and Main Road is the teeny tiny suburb/village of Observatory, where I live and work. Those who are generous describe Obs as bohemian, vibey, a hub of student and hippie activity. Less generous descriptions would have you believe it's a little more edgy than your average cup of tea. Last week on my daily commute to work (all three minutes of it, on foot) I walked past two homeless residents embroiled in a passionate altercation. The man and woman were in a rugby-style tackle, screaming and shaking one another; hitting wasn't really possible because their limbs were too tied up in the wrestle. It was difficult to say who was at fault, or who was on the offensive. I stopped with another passer-byer and exchanged a "should we do something?" glance.

Fortunately, before we had to generate an answer, one of the local security guards started crackling up to them. I say crackling because he was waving his tazer in front of him, complete with white-blue crackles of taze. He approached the pair and connected the tazer to any body part he could access in between the flailing, squirming, moving-as-one mass. The tazer wasn't strong enough to do anything but give them each a surprised look and create a few milliseconds of pause before they continued with the abuse. The mechanics on the corner didn't look up from their work, another local man with a trolley walked right past, mumbling to himself. The security guard persisted.

It was absurd. The whole scene. The struggle, the authority, the control and un-control of human action. Foucault would have had a field day. But it was just me there, not Foucault, so I just shook my head, looked around for a bit and returned to my commute.