the hawk has landed

Hoopoes at Anapji

2011-11-03T15:34:00.000+02:00

There is a hoopoe outside my office widow. I've always loved hoopoes. They're one of my favourite birds. I used to think they were uniquely South African. Obviously, they're not. Far from it. But I didn't expect to find them in Korea.

It was winter, I think, and I was visiting my favourite town in Korea, the history-rich Gyeongju. I had visited the museum that morning, and now I was at Anapji pond, a man-made lake, constructed in 674 as part of a palace pleasure-garden. As I walked around the lake, there on the path were a pair of hoopoes.

Strange how ordinary things - birds, animals, smells, sounds - gather memories over time.

Beautiful Bridge

2011-10-02T10:29:00.001+02:00

Beautiful Bridge, a photo by clairehawkridge on Flickr.

My favourite bridge in Little Rock, AR - an old railway bridge now being converted into a walking bridge

Why

2011-09-11T21:41:00.000+02:00

Two of the Aid/development bloggers I follow recently wrote pieces on why they do this work. Tales from the Hood and Alanna Shaikh are both great and I really like what they're saying. Particularly the bit where they talk about enjoying it. I sometimes come across people who, when they discover that I work in development, start finding excuses and making apologies for the fact that they don't work in development. It's odd and a little disconcerting.

I think it comes from the idea that working to help people must be a sacrifice and a hardship. Sure, there are disadvantages. But there are disadvantages everywhere. I visited the national headquarters of a big international corporate the other day. Everyone was going about their workday and they seemed pretty happy. And it's a nice enough place. But I can't imagine doing that kind of job.

Why do I do what I do? Cause it's what I do. I remember a heated conversation with a friend years and years ago. He was one of those (if I remember rightly) who was concerned because I didn't seem to have much of a life outside of my work. In retrospect - although I doubt he'd have accepted this at the time - the reason I didn't have much of a life outside of work was the same reason I still do the work now - it's what I do, it's what I love. I'm good at it, it's interesting, I get to learn about things like youth attitudes to future opportunities and the reproductive cycles of goats and I get to care about impact on a daily basis. I have another friend who used to say that when it stops being fun, it's time to get out. One day I'll put some effort into understanding why other people do the jobs they do. For now, I do what I do because getting a life sounds like less fun than getting up and going to work tomorrow. And I'm pretty sure, at least for now, that that's enough.

Strange Statues: The River Market Pig

2011-09-04T12:39:00.003+02:00

The River Market Pig, a photo by clairehawkridge on Flickr.

Swallows and summer

2011-09-01T02:46:00.000+02:00

I'm sitting here, in my hotel room, watching swallows dive and soar in the dusk of a warm summer's night. Maybe they're not swallows (do you even get swallows here?) but they look like swallows to me. It's almost 8pm and it's still light. And warm.

Tomorrow I fly home, back to winter. South and East, towards the rising sun and flood warnings in Cape Town and several more cold fronts to come. It's so warm here. It'll be fall soon and then winter with its icy grip, but for now it's summer still. It's hard to think I'll leave the swallows behind.

Flight 3 of 3 - waiting

2011-08-20T23:50:00.000+02:00

Atlanta, early morning.

Pic

2011-06-12T17:00:00.001+02:00

Untitled, a photo by clairehawkridge on Flickr.

Accidentally awesome pic from a little town called Creighton somewhere in the vicinity of Ixopo.

Focus

2011-05-11T08:23:00.000+02:00

Turns out it's really quite difficult to focus on any one thing when you're simultaneously doing a provincial visit, moving to another province and trying to adjust to a new job. Just saying.

Niggling questions

2011-03-31T09:47:00.000+02:00

Niggling questions, lingering from a discussion over the weekend, looking forward to, hoping for, more discussion and better articulation of these ideas which are, for now, mere fragments of thought.

What are you? Who are you? How do you self-identify? To what rigid, commonly-used category of people do you belong?

Why does it matter?

Here, in this place, it is a necessary signifier of guilt. This category is guilty of causing harm to another category. With obligations of recompense. And fundamental to the lives of everyone in these two categories.

Why does it matter? Surely, here of all places, the categories are half the crime? All other consequences followed from them? They were the original sin. Used to sustain unequal power-relations but the categories themselves not morally-neutral. The choice to categorise was the original sin. The categories were the foundation of the system.

Rejecting the categories is just a refusal to acknowledge guilt. Or a refusal to sustain guilt? What if it is? What if guilt is no longer useful, nearly 20 years after? What if categorization, sustaining a system of guilt and victimhood, cannot be used, simultaneously, to do away with that system? What if the future, the way to a better situation, can only be built on compassion between two equal, uncategorized human beings? What if compassion is a more useful mediator, is more important to fixing the problem, than justice?

What if I self-identify with a group, yet refuse to carry the guilt you assign to that group? What if I help because I am human, refusing to accept as normal other human suffering? What if I do more good than you because I am not trapped in the philosophical entanglements of putting a price on guilt? What if I get things done because I reject your categories, all categories? What if psychological emancipation can only happen when we (I) start by rejecting categories and assuming, and being open to, for everyone, multiple, complex identities? Diagnosis of the current problem, rooted in history, not current fact, is consumption (TB), never HIV. What if we are making the same mistake in South Africa with race and poverty?

Places remembered

2011-03-30T21:06:00.001+02:00

Anapji, a photo by clairehawkridge on Flickr.

Anapji, January 2010

Ski slopes

2011-03-10T12:14:00.000+02:00

Once upon a time I lived in a country where it snows...

Busan

2011-03-05T16:54:00.000+02:00

Gwangalli Beach in probably my favourite Korean city, Busan, November 2009

Mozambique magic

2011-02-14T16:47:00.000+02:00

Two years ago, I spent two weeks in Mozambique. I think about it a lot.

A pretty Cape Town day

2011-02-02T09:40:00.000+02:00

Almost home

2010-12-13T09:00:00.000+02:00

As I write this, I am sitting in OTI domestic departures at the downstairs boarding gates. You know the ones that go to all the small places? Like Kimberley and East London? Actually, this particular gate (unsurprisingly as I'm going to the same place) brings back an awful lot of memories of that crazy few months when I was commuting between Pretoria and Stutt.

This time I'm just on my way home. Much as I love travel and the nomadic existence - and the past two weeks have been a definite confirmation of that - there is a special joy in heading home. Apart from the obvious that I get to see people, I am quite looking forward to hot showers and home-cooked food and being able to do lots of laundry. That said, I enjoyed my time in Namibia. It was strange, interesting and at times a little uncomfortable, to be in a country that gained its independence from my own - and only 20 years ago at that. I plan to spend some time trying to get it all into perspective, as well as writing about the places and things which are peculiar to and special in Namibia.

For now, I find myself taking a deep breath, relaxing and looking forward to the Eastern Cape. This airport has changed so much over the last few years but this bit still feels largely the same as it did when I first started flying around the country all those years go. It's a comfortable, peaceful kind of feeling. Almost as if I'm almost, nearly home.

Green is my favourite colour

2010-11-15T07:51:00.000+02:00

In the last month, the world outside my window has turned from dry, dusty pale-grey to lush green. The grass is bright and health, the trees have rosettes of new green leaves setting off apple blossoms and bright pink hibiscus flowers. In the corner, white daisies worship the sun and the purple flowers of a creeper decorate the fence.

It is really quite remarkable how quickly and how luxuriantly the green has returned. Just in time - a major drought was looming here and had already taken hold in the Western part of the Eastern Cape. But that seems to have passed, as least for now, and the good, soaking rains at the beginning of summer have thrown everything into enthusiastic growth. It's far more green than is usual in this part of the world but really quite delightful.

Annie Lennox on HIV

2010-10-06T13:20:00.000+02:00

h/t Marianne Elliott

Girl Effect

2010-10-04T10:25:00.000+02:00

Problematicness of Nike pretending to fix the world's problems aside (also patriarchy, etc. etc.), quite liked watching this (purely as a piece of media, of course :P).

Also the parody, just for fun :)

Heritage

2010-09-24T17:33:00.000+02:00

It's heritage day here in South Africa. It seems as appropriate a time as any to be reminded of hope. This is one of the most hopefull and inspiring memories of our recent history - a heritage of hope, perhaps:

I am an African.

I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land.

My body has frozen in our frosts and in our latter day snows. It has thawed in the warmth of our sunshine and melted in the heat of the midday sun. The crack and the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightening, have been a cause both of trembling and of hope.

The fragrances of nature have been as pleasant to us as the sight of the wild blooms of the citizens of the veld.

The dramatic shapes of the Drakensberg, the soil-coloured waters of the Lekoa, iGqili noThukela, and the sands of the Kgalagadi, have all been panels of the set on the natural stage on which we act out the foolish deeds of the theatre of our day.

At times, and in fear, I have wondered whether I should concede equal citizenship of our country to the leopard and the lion, the elephant and the springbok, the hyena, the black mamba and the pestilent mosquito.

A human presence among all these, a feature on the face of our native land thus defined, I know that none dare challenge me when I say - I am an African!

I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the beautiful Cape - they who fell victim to the most merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and independence and they who, as a people, perished in the result.

Today, as a country, we keep an audible silence about these ancestors of the generations that live, fearful to admit the horror of a former deed, seeking to obliterate from our memories a cruel occurrence which, in its remembering, should teach us not and never to be inhuman again.

I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me.

In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence. The stripes they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master are a reminder embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done.

I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune led, the patriots that Cetshwayo and Mphephu took to battle, the soldiers Moshoeshoe and Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of freedom.

My mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum, as Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the Berbers of the desert.

I am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St Helena and the Bahamas, who sees in the mind's eye and suffers the suffering of a simple peasant folk, death, concentration camps, destroyed homesteads, a dream in ruins.

I am the child of Nongqause. I am he who made it possible to trade in the world markets in diamonds, in gold, in the same food for which my stomach yearns.

I come of those who were transported from India and China, whose being resided in the fact, solely, that they were able to provide physical labour, who taught me that we could both be at home and be foreign, who taught me that human existence itself demanded that freedom was a necessary condition for that human existence.

Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare contest that assertion, I shall claim that - I am an African.

I have seen our country torn asunder as these, all of whom are my people, engaged one another in a titanic battle, the one to redress a wrong that had been caused by one to another and the other, to defend the indefensible.

I have seen what happens when one person has superiority of force over another, when the stronger appropriate to themselves the prerogative even to annul the injunction that God created all men and women in His image.

I know what if signifies when race and colour are used to determine who is human and who, sub-human.
I have seen the destruction of all sense of self-esteem, the consequent striving to be what one is not, simply to acquire some of the benefits which those who had improved themselves as masters had ensured that they enjoy.

I have experience of the situation in which race and colour is used to enrich some and impoverish the rest.

I have seen the corruption of minds and souls in the pursuit of an ignoble effort to perpetrate a veritable crime against humanity.

I have seen concrete expression of the denial of the dignity of a human being emanating from the conscious, systemic and systematic oppressive and repressive activities of other human beings.

There the victims parade with no mask to hide the brutish reality - the beggars, the prostitutes, the street children, those who seek solace in substance abuse, those who have to steal to assuage hunger, those who have to lose their sanity because to be sane is to invite pain.

Perhaps the worst among these, who are my people, are those who have learnt to kill for a wage. To these the extent of death is directly proportional to their personal welfare.

And so, like pawns in the service of demented souls, they kill in furtherance of the political violence in KwaZulu-Natal. They murder the innocent in the taxi wars.

They kill slowly or quickly in order to make profits from the illegal trade in narcotics. They are available for hire when husband wants to murder wife and wife, husband.

Among us prowl the products of our immoral and amoral past - killers who have no sense of the worth of human life, rapists who have absolute disdain for the women of our country, animals who would seek to benefit from the vulnerability of the children, the disabled and the old, the rapacious who brook no obstacle in their quest for self-enrichment.

All this I know and know to be true because I am an African!

Because of that, I am also able to state this fundamental truth that I am born of a people who are heroes and heroines.

I am born of a people who would not tolerate oppression.

I am of a nation that would not allow that fear of death, torture, imprisonment, exile or persecution should result in the perpetuation of injustice.

The great masses who are our mother and father will not permit that the behaviour of the few results in the description of our country and people as barbaric.

Patient because history is on their side, these masses do not despair because today the weather is bad. Nor do they turn triumphalist when, tomorrow, the sun shines.

Whatever the circumstances they have lived through and because of that experience, they are determined to define for themselves who they are and who they should be.

We are assembled here today to mark their victory in acquiring and exercising their right to formulate their own definition of what it means to be African.

The constitution whose adoption we celebrate constitutes an unequivocal statement that we refuse to accept that our African-ness shall be defined by our race, colour, gender of historical origins.

It is a firm assertion made by ourselves that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.
It gives concrete expression to the sentiment we share as Africans, and will defend to the death, that the people shall govern.

It recognises the fact that the dignity of the individual is both an objective which society must pursue, and is a goal which cannot be separated from the material well-being of that individual.

It seeks to create the situation in which all our people shall be free from fear, including the fear of the oppression of one national group by another, the fear of the disempowerment of one social echelon by another, the fear of the use of state power to deny anybody their fundamental human rights and the fear of tyranny.

It aims to open the doors so that those who were disadvantaged can assume their place in society as equals with their fellow human beings without regard to colour, race, gender, age or geographic dispersal.

It provides the opportunity to enable each one and all to state their views, promote them, strive for their implementation in the process of governance without fear that a contrary view will be met with repression.

It creates a law-governed society which shall be inimical to arbitrary rule.

It enables the resolution of conflicts by peaceful means rather than resort to force.

It rejoices in the diversity of our people and creates the space for all of us voluntarily to define ourselves as one people.

As an African, this is an achievement of which I am proud, proud without reservation and proud without any feeling of conceit.

Our sense of elevation at this moment also derives from the fact that this magnificent product is the unique creation of African hands and African minds.

But it also constitutes a tribute to our loss of vanity that we could, despite the temptation to treat ourselves as an exceptional fragment of humanity, draw on the accumulated experience and wisdom of all humankind, to define for ourselves what we want to be.

Together with the best in the world, we too are prone to pettiness, petulance, selfishness and short-sightedness.

But it seems to have happened that we looked at ourselves and said the time had come that we make a super-human effort to be other than human, to respond to the call to create for ourselves a glorious future, to remind ourselves of the Latin saying: Gloria est consequenda - Glory must be sought after!

Today it feels good to be an African.

It feels good that I can stand here as a South African and as a foot soldier of a titanic African army, the African National Congress, to say to all the parties represented here, to the millions who made an input into the processes we are concluding, to our outstanding compatriots who have presided over the birth of our founding document, to the negotiators who pitted their wits one against the other, to the unseen stars who shone unseen as the management and administration of the Constitutional Assembly, the advisers, experts and publicists, to the mass communication media, to our friends across the globe - congratulations and well done!

I am an African.

I am born of the peoples of the continent of Africa.

The pain of the violent conflict that the peoples of Liberia, Somalia, the Sudan, Burundi and Algeria is a pain I also bear.

The dismal shame of poverty, suffering and human degradation of my continent is a blight that we share.

The blight on our happiness that derives from this and from our drift to the periphery of the ordering of human affairs leaves us in a persistent shadow of despair.

This is a savage road to which nobody should be condemned.

This thing that we have done today, in this small corner of a great continent that has contributed so decisively to the evolution of humanity says that Africa reaffirms that she is continuing her rise from the ashes.

Whatever the setbacks of the moment, nothing can stop us now!
Whatever the difficulties, Africa shall be at peace!
However improbable it may sound to the sceptics, Africa will prosper!

Whoever we may be, whatever our immediate interest, however much we carry baggage from our past, however much we have been caught by the fashion of cynicism and loss of faith in the capacity of the people, let us err today and say - nothing can stop us now!

Pirate navy

2010-09-10T09:17:00.000+02:00

So, Somali pirates are finding a role as the naval wing of armed groups fighting in the area. Interesting. I want to say something similar may have happened in America before they had a navy. Am I imagining that? Did that come from West Wing? *goes off in search of people who know stuff...*

Goats rambling

2010-07-17T11:25:00.000+02:00

I’ve become an avid fan of go! magazine since my return, not least because I’m so enjoying following Toast Coetzer’s Great Ramble across the country. In the latest edition, he makes some very astute observations about the distinction between the ‘platteland’ and the ‘rural areas’ in South Africa. I took this pic yesterday in the middle of the CBD of Stutterheim. Perhaps the rural areas in this part of the world are beginning to reclaim the platteland?

Totem poles in the RoK

2010-06-19T11:19:00.000+02:00

57 days

2010-04-29T05:06:00.000+02:00

Synchronicity happens to me a lot. Especially when I'm not entirely happy (not necessarily because of anything related to the synchronicity). Perhaps I'm just more observant then. Perhaps it's not really synchronicity. Does it stop counting if one of the two unrelated things is a constant (like homesickness)? Of varying intensity but pretty much constantly there?

The intensity has been much greater this last week or so. I had no idea the homesickness would get worse towards the end. I haven't felt this desperately homesick since Christmas and the 6-month mark. I go home in 57 days. Perhaps even a day or two earlier if I can manage it. But 57 at the absolute most. This fills me with joy. I am looking forward to it like a child breathlessly anticipating a long-awaited treat. But I am also filled with sadness for every day that I am not there. I try and focus on the good things here and to see the beauty and appreciate what I will never know again. It is hard. Knowing that I will be home makes it hard to focus on good things here.

At the same time a friend of mine, based in Grahamstown, is exploring the stories of the Eastern Cape - the place I am missing. Synchronicity? As he captures the sense of a place I love so deeply and pins it down, he sends voices, images, place names, stories into the internet-universe and, half a world away, each reaches me like a tiny pin-prick dagger of 'verlang'.

Is it really synchronicity when homesickness coincides with words and images and stories from home?

57 days.

Strange statues #13

2010-04-29T04:58:00.000+02:00

Near Beomeo subway station, Daegu, RoK

Strange statues #12

2010-04-09T07:02:00.000+02:00

KMU, Seoul, South Korea, March 2010

(Note: The top one is how I first saw it but I decided to add the other pic to be charitable)

Strange statues #11

2010-03-22T03:39:00.000+02:00

Seoul city centre, March, 2010

Not so much a statue as a water fountain

2010-03-17T04:18:00.000+02:00

One of my favourite drinking fountains. Suseong Lake, Daegu.

Strange statues #10

2010-03-12T06:02:00.000+02:00

Daegu World Cup Stadium gardens, February 2010

Strange statues #9

2010-03-08T04:06:00.000+02:00

Daegu World Cup Stadium gardens, February 2010

Strange statues #8

2010-03-06T05:20:00.000+02:00

Daegu World Cup Stadium, February 2010

Strange statues #7

2010-03-05T04:04:00.000+02:00

Daegu World Cup Stadium gardens, February 2010

More dustbin than statue, but still a little strange

2010-03-04T05:25:00.000+02:00

Daegu World Cup Stadium intersection, February 2010

Strange statues #6

2010-03-04T05:12:00.000+02:00

Daegu World Cup Stadium gardens, February 2010

Africa is not a country

2010-02-05T05:25:00.000+02:00

One of the nagging irritations I have with people from the rest of the world is the entirely incorrect assumption that Africa is just one little country. Sure, some of them know that it's not really one country, but they still sort of think that it could be one country and is just divided because of a little tribalism. When you correct them, a lot of people treat it a little as if you were someone from the UK trying to point out that Wales and Scotland are separate countries from Britain. Because in their minds that is the scale of it.

How can so many people be so woefully, completely and stupidly wrong about Africa? We often put it down to ignorance and then excuse it by reminding ourselves that we definitely don't know everything about how life really is in, say, Belize. But it isn't the same. The global fears for about coming to the Soccer World Cup are a prime example. I thought Danny Jordaan's response - that it was like saying the London Olympics were threatened because of unrest in Russia - was spot on. We're not talking about knowing the minutiae of everyday life in a small central American country. No-one would think that the Haiti earthquake might jeopardize the Winter Olympics in Canada. And that is the scale we're talking about.

Every day I talk to people who at some level assume that the Rwanda genocide happened on the back streets of Johannesburg, that Ethiopian famine threatens crop production in Malawi, that fighting in Sudan means it's not safe to visit Cape Town. There is an episode of West Wing where they talk about world maps and how the Mercanter projection - the commonly used world map - distorts size and creates the impression that, among other things, Africa is the same size as Greenland. Which is wrong!

So I am on a mission. I am going to make myself a copy of the REAL world map and take it everywhere with me just so that I can point out to people just how ridiculous their perceptions are and maybe, just maybe, one or two of them will get enough of a fright to take another look and start to realise just how vast and complex and Africa actually is!

Strange statues #5

2009-12-22T03:42:00.000+02:00

Kookmin University, Seoul, November 2009

Photographs and memories

2009-12-13T10:48:00.000+02:00

I don't have a good memory. I wish I did, but I don't. I struggle to put things in order and remember what happened at particular times in my life. Sometimes I remember things which may have happened or may just have been products of my imagination. Some people think in 'movies' – they can remember times past in a linear, audio-visual narrative. My memories are more like a shoebox of old photographs, well-thumbed and closely held but all mixed up with no specific order and each just a snapshot of one precious time and place.

One of those is the memory of a holiday at Haga-haga many years ago. I couldn't tell you when. I think we were still living in Queenstown so it would be between 1990 and 1996. I wasn't with my family. I was staying with a family who were friends with ours. I remember going down to the beach and collecting lots and lots of shells. One of the daughters of the family I was with was collecting only tiny pink 'baby toe' shells. She filled clear glass bottles with them. We collected lots of different kinds of shells. There was old music. I imagine it was the radio – the songs were Radio Algoa-type songs. I remember walking up to the shop after lunch (one day? Every day?). The road was hot on bare feet. The sun was shining. The day was summery. We bought ice-creams and ate them as we walked back.

The memories are so strong. I can picture all of it. I can hear the sounds, the music, the laughter. I can feel the heat of the sun and the slight breeze and the hot road beneath my feet. I can taste the cold, sweet ice-cream. I can smell it. I close my eyes and I feel like I'm there, in that photograph-memory, in a place I don't really remember and a time I can't really recall.

Strange statues #4

2009-12-11T05:05:00.000+02:00

Dalseong Park, Daegu, November 2009

PS That finger remind you of anyone...?

Strange statues #3

2009-11-28T08:29:00.000+02:00

Kookmin University, Seoul, November 2009

strange statues #2

2009-11-25T03:54:00.000+02:00

Kookmin University, Seoul, November 2009

Strange statues #1

2009-11-24T07:04:00.000+02:00

Korea has some very odd outdoor art. Here are a couple of examples.

Kookmin University Campus, Seoul

Gwangalli Beachfront, Pusan

African Sky Blue

2009-10-29T06:26:00.000+02:00

I took the bus home last night. I was going to take a cab but while I was waiting the bus arrived. It was chilly last night. As soon as I sat down on the bus, I put in my headphones and turned on my mp3 player. I never used to do that. I never understood the need people seem to have to shut out the world with a sound-barrier of their own music when they're walking or running or sitting on a bus. I'm starting to understand it here.

Sitting in that red-plastic bus seat, with Johnny Clegg ringing in my ears at full volume, I closed my eyes. As I listed to the words and the beat and the voices, I felt for just a moment that I could taste it, that I was breathing in Africa. The sensations of an African winter evening - the dry, dusty air with the huge red sunsets and the smell of the woodsmoke, with the richness of braai and the dry grass. The taste of the smell of dry grass and dust. The singing became other sounds of Africa - the voices and taxis and cries. The complex rhythms were gumboot dancers leaping and turning and kicking or a thousand hearts beating all at once.

The bus stopped suddenly at a traffic light and the moment was gone. Johnny Clegg still echoed in my ears but I couldn't taste Africa anymore. I never used to walk around or sit on buses or trains with headphones on. I used to want to interact with the world around me and watch the people and be in the moment, in the space. Now I spend a lot of time in the music, trying to wrap myself in it, hoping to capture tactile glimpses, to return in my mind for just a moment each day.

Just

2009-10-16T05:31:00.000+02:00

It was the Box Theatre at Rhodes University sometime in 2000 or 2001 (I think). The venue is intimate - couldn't have been more than 50 people. Or perhaps it could and I'm just bad at estimating. We were near the front. There was a stage - a slightly raised platform, perhaps 10cm high. Karma and her guitars and her microphone were 3 feet away. I could hear her playing. Not just the music through the speakers but the actual, original sounds of her fingers on the fretboard and the strings. She sang all the hits I knew from radio and many I didn't know yet. Then she played this song. And it got to me. It got under my skin. I think it must have been the first time I went to an actual live rock concert. It was definitely the first time I saw a professional artist in such a small venue. When we left I was bouncing off the walls. It was the first time I discovered that performances could create the same wonder for me that new places or seeing super-famous celebrities does for some other people. I could hardly stop talking about it on the walk home. I didn't want to stop talking about it. I wanted to stay in the moment, to be in that bubble of wonder and magic and intensity forever.

This is a far less impressive version of the song she played that night.

Friday afternoon

2009-08-21T06:49:00.000+02:00

One of those perfect late summer afternoons. The sun beating down from a clear blue sky. The world peaceful. A gentle, caressing breeze turning scorching into sultry. I am filled with lazy nostalgia and the urge to retire to the Rat beer garden with ice cold castle, gently passing hours and far, far too many philosophy students.

Weather and wonder

2009-08-06T11:19:00.000+02:00

It's been overcast all day. Overcast with that low, threatening cloud that seems to sit just above your head and bring out all the claustrophobic in everyone. It has rained a bit. It pitter-pattered against my classroom window on and off this morning. But it hasn't really been a rainy day. And it definitely hasn't done more than drip a few drops while I've been outside. In a lot of ways I'd prefer actual rain. At least then there is some point to the clouds, other than just hanging around.

The weather has changed since I got here. It feels a little strange to be aware of seasons changing 10 000km from home. I feel a little like an impostor, like I have no right to think I know what is happening or to notice changes. But I'm still aware of it. When I first arrived, it was hot and humid all the time. The temperature didn't change much from morning till night and was only a little cooler at night than during the day. For the first couple of weeks, I was too warm even to sleep with more than a sheet. Not that I'm complaining, I quite like the heat. But now, the mornings are cooler. There is a slight chill in the air at dusk and dawn. And I'm generally quite happy to have something a little more substantial than a sheet at night.

The rain patterns have changed, too. For the first week or two (or three), it rained ever single day, almost all the time. It was a pattern of occasional dry half-hours in between almost constant rain. I still marvel at how much rain I've seen since I got here. There are dams in South Africa that would have overflowed ten times by now. These days, the rain is less regular and less constant. Whole days sometimes pass by with no rain at all. And when it is a rainy day, the rain comes in occasional showers. The difference, I suppose, between partly rainy and partly sunny.

I'm happy to see the sun more. I am definitely a sunshine child. It is a good reminder that if I do ever go to northern Europe, I'll have to have some plan in place to deal with the possible SAD. Strange to be looking forward to Autumn and Winter for the sun. But I suppose each climate is different. Here it sounds like there is plenty of sun in those months. Also, of course, in a world of leafy, non-evergreen (deciduous) trees, there is an amazing show of colour and texture to look forward to in the next few months.

The vegetable seller

2009-07-15T04:20:00.000+02:00

old mother

grandmother

mother

she waits

for the world

to buy her wares

her lined face impassive

in the heat

and wind

and rain

Restless

2009-07-09T16:22:00.000+02:00

Perhaps it's the wind. It's been gusting around all day. When it rained earlier, the rain was beating on my classroom window - an usual event in a country where the rain apparently falls downwards. A little context - this is an unusual phenomenon in SA, particularly in Cape Town where most people have given up using umbrellas because they simply get blown inside-out. Here they use umbrellas. In fact, umbrellas are a standard part of summer attire. But today the wind blew.

So, perhaps that's why I'm feeling restless. I'm finished work for the day. It's still early days so I don't really know my way around yet. I had the urge on the way home to stop into a restaurant and order something light to eat, like a salad, and a nice glass of wine. And then I remembered that it was after 10 o'clock at night and noticed that the restaurants I was walking past didn't look that open. So I trudged up the hill, with my regular stop at the little cafe/market down the road, and headed home.

While I was walking, it occurred to me that the walk now is roughly equivalent to the oh-so-familiar trudge up the hill I used to do every day when I lived in res at Rhodes. That hill was a large part of my experience of Rhodes. Some of my dear friends where people I got to know while struggling back up the hill for lunch or dinner after a lecture or a meeting or a tut. There was a camaraderie to it. Also, there was food at the end of it, made by someone else and served in a lovely dining hall. Even if it was res-food. Here I have to make my own. And I have to be honest that I am not always that keen when it's late at night and I've worked a full day.

It does suggest, however, that I will be getting as much exercise this year as I did in my first few years at Rhodes. It was pretty good exercise the first time round, so I suppose that probably cancels out the need to find a gym. Especially if I'm not quite finding the energy to make that many meals (particularly until I can figure out the gas cooker). Although, once I am a little more settled and have learned some basic Korean, it may be a struggle to resist the many, still-open-at-11pm take-away fried chicken places along the way. I guess only time will tell.

Jetlag

2009-07-07T04:27:00.000+02:00

Travelling half-way across the world has disadvantages. Intellectually, I'm loving the new-ness of everything and even, a little bit, the feeling of being completely and utterly out of my depth. Unfortunately my body appears not to have caught up. I found the flight a little exhausting but I certainly wasn't completely destroyed by roughly 24 hours in transit. I slept a little on the plane and had no problem, when I finally arrived, waiting until a reasonably hour to go to bed. In the last few days, I have been struggling with sleeping patterns, however. It seems my body is not keen to accept the new time-zone arrangement.

This means, unfortunately, that waking up at 9am feels a lot like getting up at 3 in the morning. I've never been a morning person, so this is not a fun experience. I find myself spending the first part of the day feeling a little nauseous and totally exhausted because my body is convinced that I have been deprived of several hours of sleep. It also means that when I go to bed at midnight (after getting home from work), my body is shocked and horrified that I'm going to bed at 5 in the afternoon.

I'm told it will go away in a few days. I wish it would hurry up and do so. I get the distinct feeling that I'm missing stuff because I'm walking through the days in a bit of a sleep-deprived (or so my body things) daze.

Time-zone bingo

2009-07-04T05:05:00.000+02:00

I'm not a very experienced traveler. One of the advantages of this is that I've never really, for any length of time, had to deal with time-zones. The closest I've come is that one of the friends I chat to regularly is in New Zealand so I've had to have a vague sense of how far ahead New Zealand was from South Africa. And it was very vague.

Suddenly I find myself very concerned with time zones. Not only because I'm trying to keep track of how far ahead I am from SA so that I can communicate with my parents. I'm also trying to figure out where all my other friends overseas (and there are rather a lot who are rather scattered) are in terms of time-zones and in relation to my new location. So my latest plan is to get/print a world map with time-zones and play a little time-zone bingo. I'm sure I can manage friends and family in at least 5 or 6 time-zones. Probably more

What's wrong with this picture?

2009-06-29T22:22:00.000+02:00

Genuine fail seen in Westpark cemetary in Johannesburg. Seriously, is it too much to ask that you check the grammar on the tombstone?!?!

My kinda city

2009-06-25T14:18:00.000+02:00

I'm not really much of a fan of cities. In particular, I'm not usually a fan of Joburg. In the midst of the chaos and disappointments and misery of the last few weeks, however, I've spent quite a lot of time in Joburg. It now appears (although I'm still somewhat skeptical and non-committal) that the disappointments are over and I will be heading to South Korea's 4th largest city shortly.

In the last couple of days before I go, I'm going to be here in Jozi. Today I went for a walk. Not a long walk and not in any sort of dangerous area. I'm staying with friends in a quiet, peaceful suburb. I was pleasantly surprised - or at least mildly surprised and ratger pleased - to find a wide open stretch of land, complete with Egyptian Geese, between here and the cafe down the road (about 3 blocks). I imagine I'm going to become intimately acquainted with cities in the next year or so. With big, busy, crowded cities - the place I'm headed has a population of around 2.5 mill and a population density of 2 866 people per square kilometer. I imagine I'm going to miss the open spaces, the man-made forest, the art-deco down-town and the sprawling light-scape at night that is one of Joburg's best features - having seen it from two particularly good vantage points yesterday evening, I can confirm this. I imagine that, despite not ever wanting to live in Joburg, I will find myself wishing that my city were a little more like this.

For those who wish follow my overseas adventure, by the way, I'll be documenting it on my Just Another Stranger blog here. This one will remain dedicated to musing about the sky and nostalgia and how much we under-appreciate the wonderful spaces and Egyptian geese of Joburg.

Come with me to the West Coast

2009-06-10T12:33:00.000+02:00

Half-remembered stories from years gone by...
(Inspired by Dana Snyman's stunning, On the Back Roads)

We left Cape Town early. Stopping in Pinelands to pick up the third person we was travelling with us. We all needed to go there so it made sense to travel together. And she was supposed to be showing us around. It was her territory and we were really just visitors. The two of us got along well together. We'd worked together for a while and were friends. Trips like this just cemented that. Years later we'd still keep in touch.

...

I'd never really seen the West Coast. South Africa is such an amazing country with so many interesting people and places. The West Coast is somewhere that just had never really been on my radar. I remember driving along the West Coast road that day. I sometimes find that it's easier to get a sense of a place when it has a more barren beauty. Places that are lush and green and full of colours are overwhelming. They take longer to get used to and to get a sense of. Or perhaps I'm simply more used to empty, drier landscapes. The West Coast is dry. The landscape is populated with sea-side brush and fynbos-type flowers, low to the ground, bent from the wind. And the wind whistles across the road, blowing from the cold, cold sea across the dry land. The road is long and straight and empty.

...

We're stopped outside a police station in a small town. Picketberg? I can't remember why. Perhaps we had a minor accident. Everyone is fine. I stay in the car as the other two go and sort it out. Eventually we're back on the road. My friend is not happy.

...

In the miles and miles of emptiness before Vredendal, there are canals cut along the sides of the road, to move water up and down the hills. Water is a precious commodity here, where people have to work so hard to drag life and energy and farming success from the barren ground. They grow grapes up here. And farm other things too. The dryness is deceptive. There is life all around in between the half-dead-looking thornbushes. And mining. We pass a sign for 'Droe Rivier' (Dry River).

...

Back in Vredenberg, the locals make it clear that this is for them a metropolis. This is a big town here. And it's true. There are far more shops and options than in the small town where I grew up. But the town itself is small. More isolated, so with more shops. But small, suburban, largely unimportant. We visit a clinic – the purpose of the trip – and talk to the staff. They live lives which are full and interesting and exciting for them but largely isolated from the rest of the world. This clinic hasn't been supported for months and months. The woman with us, the one whose territory it is, tut-tuts and says it shouldn't have happened that way and makes 'heads-will-roll' kind of noises. The clinic sister shrugs.

...

One of the nights (I forget how long the trip really was), we stayed in Saldanha Bay. At a hotel overlooking the harbour. Nice hotel, actually. My friend and I were neither of us up to spending the evening being formal and professional. Thankfully, the other colleague decided to go straight to her room. Leaving the two of us to spend a pleasant evening watching the sun set over the bay, with the cool breeze off the water and a cocktail in hand, and talking, for hours, about this and that and everything. So many nights like these. Colleagues, people with whom you travel and spend so many evenings in so many hotels, sometimes become a kind of second family.

...

My last memory of that West Coast trip is stopping in Langebaan for lunch. Langebaan, known throughout South Africa for it's spectacular crayfish and seafood, but we didn't really have the time or the ability to justify the expense of a fancy seafood dinner. So we found, in 'n hoekie om die draai, a pancake shop. I love pancakes and I know about the pancake shop on the way from Joburg to Rustenberg, but this one was new to us. And lovely. The feeling was rustic and home-made, but the food was good and the prices were reasonable, and the water was not so very far away, as we tucked into a final treat before returning to the real-er world of Cape Town.

2009-06-05T00:24:00.000+02:00

I got further this time. Last time I got as far as having the documents to apply for a visa, which would have taken a few months. This time I had sent everything off. I had even packed a suitcase. I was stressing out about the suitcase being overweight just this afternoon. I was actually going. I was getting out of this stupid town that has felt like a noose around my neck for months. I was leaving. I have a flight to Joburg so that I could be there to go and do the final bit of visa stuff. And now the rug has been pulled yet again. Someone said I should just find a crap job in South Africa - as if this whole, extremely painful process has nearly killed me for no reason. As if I hadn't tried. As if this was some crazy, irresponsible whim to travel. It was a job. A hard, crappy, soul-destroying job. That I've worked damned hard to get. At the very moment when I'm falling hardest. Because that is the worst part. The build-up and the hard work and the trying, just to fall so hard. To hurt so much. And there is nothing I can do. Again. A crumpled bundle of trying to hold on to belief in the hope that I was once so sure that I used to know that I was actually competent and capable. And yes, it's damned hard to be the one who doesn't have the significant other to cry with. This is what alone means. I no longer know what to think or try or do.

Bring me the good news...

2009-05-31T09:41:00.000+02:00

It's just a little thing. It doesn't really mean anything much. But it still feels a little good to pop onto the BBC site and there, between the wars and the fighting and the economic disaster and the corrupt politicians, is only one story about South Africa and it's not about violence and terror and oppression, it's about saving the whales. And not even saving the whales from violent, 'bad men'. The biggest story in SA yesterday was the desperate attempt by environmental groups, concerned citizens, the NSRI and the City of Cape Town to try and rescue a pod of Pilot whales that had beached themselves on Kommetjie. It almost sounds a little bit silly. But it's the kind of silly I can live with. I think I'm really okay with living in a country where the biggest story, not very many decades after the end of a long-standing and terribly oppressive regime and an almost-civil war, is that everyone rushed out and got their hands dirty and their feet wet (on a freezing day in Cape Town) to try and save the whales.

Void

2009-05-21T08:53:00.000+02:00

Screaming into the void,
Screaming words, thoughts, ideas, feelings,
To the tick-tick-tick of the laptop keyboard
And the echoing silence
Of impotent fury
And hope

Sending carefully crafted passages
Whirling and whispering
Into the ether,
Words, thoughts, something. Something.
Commentary, comment, come

Words screamed into the void
In the desperate hope, faith,
That something, nothing, reader
Will bring them back
Again

Monday blue

2009-05-18T09:34:00.000+02:00

Last week there was a kind of sparkle to the world. It all felt a little as if there was progress being made. That's all gone. Today is cold and it feels like a Monday morning. Strange creatures, Mondays. There is, of course, no logical reason why Monday should be any more miserable than any other day of the week. Some people find it so because of the contrast with the weekend but I have always worked so often on the weekend (and gone to the movies on a Tuesday afternoon) that this doesn't really apply to me. Besides, I like working. Working doesn't make me miserable. People do. Specifically stupid people or people determined to overset the hard work I've already put into something by changing the direction at the last minute. When I lived in Cape Town and spent my days designing training, I used to dread that phonecall, so often on a Monday morning after they'd 'given it some thought' over the weekend, to say that they'd changed their minds about what they wanted and a week's worth of work was now irrelevant. That still probably beat the Monday morning commute to Pretoria - there is nothing like the inefficiency of airport staff and a plane full of screaming toddlers to bring on the misery. Even when I'm not working, Monday still has the potential to be blue and cold and miserable and take the sparkle out of the world, all because of people who are a million miles away.

Amazingness!

2009-05-15T11:39:00.000+02:00

I have some pretty amazing friends. I mean, most people have pretty amazing friends but some of mine are not just amazing because I say so - other people (sometimes who don't even know them) think so too. :)

This is one of them:

More on salads

2009-05-12T11:18:00.000+02:00

The choice of lettuce is a particularly in creating a super breakfast salad. I am particularly partial to either butter lettuce or cos lettuce as a base. Like an artist choosing a canvas, you want something that is not too overwhelming but that will clearly add something to the salad. I find ordinary iceberg lettuce rather insipid. I'll use it if there isn't any other lettuce around, but it's a bit like trying to paint with oils on plain paper - you lose some of the effectiveness because the base just isn't substantial enough.

The lettuces are just the beginning, however. I absolutely adore fresh herbs in salad. Rocket and basil are two of my favourites - wonderfully tasty and they add body and variety. Basil is also, obviously, a fantastic accompaniment to tomato. Mint is also a great salad herb, especially for a wonderfully fresh salad to wake up in the mornings. The only thing to check is that it's not spearmint or there is a danger of the salad tasting like toothpaste.

A lot of people would probably say that more is not necessarily better when it comes to salad greens. I suppose that is partly true. But the greens really provide the body of the salad. They're the crucial layer of taste. To continue the art analogy, the greens provide the big blocks of colour (sky, forest, background) that lift the accents - the other flavours - to another level and highlight them andbring them alive. They're also a crucial source of vitamins. Thyme, for example, has masses and masses of iron (according to QI). That's part of the reason the greens are the part of the salad that makes it filling. It's also one of the reasons that ordinary, unimaginative salads are so insubstantial - because they don't have enough variety of herbs and lettuces.

In fact, if you get enough of the right variety and mix of greens, it is really easy to select and add the accent flavours like tomato and cucumber and sprouts. And olives and cheese. Different kinds of cheese. And spring onions. And celery. The real beauty of getting the base greens of the salad right, is that then all you have to do is pick 4 or 5 of the many, many options of other ingredients and chuck them in. If I don't have fresh herbs, I sometimes even use dried herbs. They may not add as much flavour or colour or body, but they still add some of the vitamins and minerals that make the salad filling and some of the taste that makes the salad yummy.

Stolen thoughts

2009-05-11T13:07:00.000+02:00

There are many advantages to having particularly intelligent friends. They regularly say interesting and intelligent things, for one. They also occasionally articulate something you've been trying, unsuccessfully, to explain for ages. I often feel a bit silly writing about the weather and the sky. Not that I think they're silly things but it's not that common for people to think about it and write about it. It's a little strange to be overly interested in the seasons changing. Not that many other people would do it. There is a vague, unspoken societal expectation that things like the weather are no longer exciting by the time a person reaches adulthood. Weather conversations are considered safe because there is nothing particularly interesting or controversial about weather.

But I think weather and seasons and the sky are beautiful and fascinating. Wonderful. Wonder-filled. The kind of things that make days interesting and happy or sad or dramatic. I remember living in Joburg and going to Emmerentia Dam on an Autumn afternoon and being filled to bursting with the joy of wonder. There are often days, and skies, that make me feel like that. I think it's wonderful to watch and follow the changing of the seasons and I'm perfectly happy use a friend's ideas to pretend I'm perfectly normal to be fascinated by the sky.

Winter days

2009-05-07T22:54:00.000+02:00

Winter has arrived in the Eastern Cape. It's early this year. Or perhaps it's not. Perhaps it just feels early because the year is passing so slowly. Empty days, without anything real, anything productive and meaningful to occupy time, without anything to make you angry or sad or miserably or ecstatic, pass in a blur. This must be what they mean by lives of quiet desperation. Hopefully, soon, the days will pass more quickly under , different skies.

East Cape sunset sky

2009-05-03T22:05:00.000+02:00

The 'flu

2009-04-30T09:00:00.006+02:00

Humans are such odd creatures. The WHO has now raised the alert level on swine flu to phase 5. This means that the disease is spreading human-to-human in more than one country. So swine flu is now a global reality and, as the WHO says, the whole of humanity is at risk.

In Mexico, schools, bars and stadiums are closed. The President, who yesterday said they really, really hoped not to close businesses and further cripple their already much-struggling economy, has now stopped all non-essential economic activities. It is an horrific situation where people stay in their homes, stockpile food and avoid contact with anyone else in a desperate national effort to limit the destruction of what will probably be for them a devastating epidemic.

What kills me is the reaction of the rest of the world. Keep in mind that this flu has already spread to other countries. People are dying in the US and a young man who has not travelled to Mexico has now contracted swine flu in Spain. But the reaction of the world is to try and make it go away. Airlines and travel agencies are stopping flights to Mexico. France has asked the EU to block all travel to Mexico. Country after country is scrambling to cut off the country they are trying to blame for this epidemic. Texas is considering closing its borders.

Sure, it's a fear reaction. People are terrified that they'll have to deal with this problem. Their governments are trying to reassure them by blaming someone else. The South African government (unfortunately unsurprisingly) has taken a different approach and is - or at least was yesterday - trying to convince us that it's not really that bad. Perhaps the SA government is right about one thing; perhaps they've learned from their many experiences with some of the more nasty African illnesses, that shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted is futile.

The WHO has abandoned attempts at containment and is now focusing on mitigation. This swine flu is very real and the current alert suggests that a pandemic is imminent. This has already spread too far to be contained in just one country or just one region. The world today is simply too connected for that to be possible. If France wants to keep the swine flu out and human-to-human transmission is already taking place within Europe, they're going to have to keep the UK and Spain out, too. Let's hope that SA's current reaction is indicative of their focus on mitigation rather than containment and that they're stocking up on anti-virus and preparing labs to test quickly and effectively. The WHO is clearly bracing for a global pandemic in the very near future. SA will have to brace to take the impact with several major international sporting events just around the corner, a country with many, many people who are already immune-compromised and the very real threat that the health system which, is already wobbling, could toppling over completely with the added strain.

Election fever

2009-04-27T10:23:00.002+02:00

The SA election season is eventually over. I'm not entirely happy about the results. But there will be another election in just a few years. And I want to be there. The strategic planning and careful management, the media-manipulation and carefully crafted responses of the campaign trail and the thrill, the marvelous, soaring, terrible thrill of watching the numbers flip over on the leader boards at the 'ROC' as the IEC results centre in Pretoria is called.

In the process of closely following the results as they came in, I have discovered an previously unknown love for electoral maths and statistics. I am fascinated by who votes for what party in what numbers and by the profile of different voters in different places. And I'm fascinated by how this changes over time. I'd love to do research looking at the changes in voting patterns and what factors may possibly have contributed to those changes, whether they are campaign tactics and messages or changes in the political landscape, as seems to have affected the ID in this election. I'd love to take a few small communities, perhaps in different provinces, that differ in demographic make-up, size, socio-economic level, and study their voting patterns over the past 15 years. Perhaps I could even look at the difference between local and national elections in terms of voting patterns.

Election-fever strikes :)

nothing like the sky

2009-04-21T17:56:00.001+02:00

After the rain

2009-04-19T11:11:00.002+02:00

The smell of wet dust comes to me through the open window. A brief, pounding fall of rain has beaten the dry, dry Autumn earth into short, swift rivulets. Globed droplets drip from rain-wet leaves. The air is suddenly cool, moist and cool. The welcome scent of wetted dust drifts slowly through the house.

Walking at dusk

2009-04-18T12:38:00.002+02:00

I was out walking the other day in the late afternoon. It's a time of day I used to walk often in Johannesburg, walking home from work with the sun just dipping below the horizon and the air thick with hazy, evening light.

It's quieter here. There are less cars and less people. As I walk, the occasional worker passes me - trudging home after a long day. I turn down around a corner into a dusty road and the world opens up to a view of the dusk sky rising from the dark silhouette of the long mountain. The grass in the open field beside the road is dry and pale with the winter's approach. A group of children play soccer and race around on their bicycles. As I pass by, the sound of their voices fades. There is a family sitting on the steps outside their house, enjoying the beautiful evening.

At the end of the road, at the edge of town, the view opens across the hockey fields and the rugby fields and the golf course of the club. A few pine trees line the road, dark sentries in the pale evening. The air smells like dust and faraway woodfires. A car drives past and then everything is quiet.

The light is fading as I wander up to the wooden deck of the club overlooking the golf course and the valley, with Dohne peak in the distance.

nothing like the sky

2009-04-07T15:20:00.002+02:00

Have you ever really taken time to take note of the sky? The other night I lay in bed with my curtains open watching (through the trees and leaves that threatened to obscure my view) as the stars and the waxing moon tripped across the wide open blackness. There is something so free about the sky.

In mid-summer, in Cape Town, the sky is almost solid behind the mountain. It is a clean, clear blue that reaches down and seems to touch the edge of the earth and the ocean.

It's so different to the winter sky in the Eastern Cape. Here, in autumn and winter, there is such an increadible depth to the sky. When you stare up you feel like it goes on forever. The blue is deep and cool and it feels like there are layers and layers of haze, layers of winter woodsmoke and icy high clouds between you and forever.

Since I can remember, the Disney-movie script idea of lovers or friends or family separated by miles and miles and oceans and continents sharing the same sky has shaped my idea of the heavens. Watching the sky changing the seasons, the sky brightly lit beyond the heavy clouds, the sky between the thunderstorms, the sky scattered with a million stars. Margeurite Poland talks about them as the hearths, the kraals of the Shades

The world is beautiful. No matter where you are, what you're doing, there is beauty in the sky.

In praise of salad

2009-03-23T11:15:00.002+02:00

When I lived in Rondebosch, I had a kind of breakfast routine - as much as it's possible to have a routine that only happens in between trips to Joburg. It consisted of salad. Salad has always been a part of my life in the sense that salad has always been around and I've always eaten it. But I never really paid all that much attention to salad. Once I started paying attention, I discovered a wonderful world of tastes and colours. I've recently started eating salad for breakfast again and it truely is the breakfast of kings. There is nothing like a good, crunchy, flavourful salad to start a day. It makes everything seem happier and brighter.

I generally start with greens out of a packet from WW. They're a little more expensive but a good base for a salad, a good mixture of lettuce and herbs, just makes such a difference. My current favourite is butter lettuce with rocket and basil. A delightful combination. The sweet and tangy is also pretty good.

To the lettuce, I add things like celery, spring onions... really whatever vegetably things are lying around. Raw cauliflower, frozen peas or various herbs also work. Next, some cheese. I always add cheese because I happen to like cheese. In fact, I generally add a couple of different types of cheese if I can. Oh, and sprouts. Sprouts are good, too.

Finally, the tomatoes. I use small tomatoes because I happen to like them - generally Cherry and Rosa. If possible, I use more than one colour. This morning's salad had red and yellow Cherry tomatoes. I like them cut in half and tossed in some balsamic and perhaps a little olive oil before they're added. That's also generally all the dressing I add.

And there you have a delightful and delicious breakfast salad. Salad can, of course, also be eaten at other times of the day. Sometimes I have salad two or three times in one day. Yummy, yummy rabbit food. I often have something with it for breakfast, too. Like an omelette. Mmmm. Yay for salad.

Time passes

2009-03-11T10:29:00.003+02:00

It's hard to believe it's March. The year feels like it's drifted past while I was looking away. And suddenly it's Autumn. The leaves haven't changed yet. The sense of changing seasons is more ephemeral than that. And silly, I suppose. It's silly to notice the changing seasons in the way the sky looks. But it does look different. I woke up this morning and looked out of the window and the sky looked further away, somewhat hazy, and colder. It looked like an Autumn sky.

It's more than that, too. There is a crispness in the air in the mornings and evenings. Even on the hottest day, it cools down at night. The wind in the trees is starting to sound different. Soon the poplar tree I can see from my bedroom window will turn from late summer green to yellows and browns. Down the road, the tall trees will glow with red Autumn colours.

Pretty soon, it will be Winter. I don't mind Winter. In fact, I quite like the intensity of Winter - the little death, the crispness, the bare beauty. In fact, it's normally Autumn that bothers me. I have a feeling this year will be different. It's been a long Summer. There have been high-points - a flit across the bother to discover another country that got me thinking in ways I have still not really explored, the absolutely beautiful wedding of a particularly special friend, a visit to Stellenbosch. But it has been a summer of disappointments.

I never thought I'd see this Autumn. If things had gone according to plan, I'd be frolicking in Springtime by now. I still hope that someday soon I'll get to see a very different Summer. For now, I'm watching every day as the seasons change and a little looking forward to this Autumn.

Consummate performer

2009-02-12T23:04:00.004+02:00

There is a business leadership/management concept that interests me. I love the idea of 'elegant solutions', the idea of solutions that are not necessarily complicated but are excellent. These ideas are never the first ideas. They have nothing in common with crisis management and rushing and panic. These are exceptional solutions that only come from calm and planning, preparation and knowledge built up over time, and cooperation. They're solutions that go beyond the initial ideas and thoughts. They seem obvious once they are developed but their elegance and simplicity hide the immense work and effort and preparation that goes into making them possible.

A consummate performance is the stage equivalent of this. I love live theatre of almost all types but I'm particularly fond of non-traditional performance styles where the performer has a clear rapport with the audience and interacts with and reacts to them. Things like stand-up and the like. And music shows where the performer talks and shares with the audience. And tells stories. These performers are always story-tellers. In many ways this kind of performance is harder than more traditional, structured performance. Not only do the actors need to know their lines but they must be so well prepared and know the material so well that they can play with it and adapt it and jumble things around on the spot. I suppose it's partly as a result of being a BP debater - I expect top people not only to be able to produce exceptional arguments and be persuasive but also to do so on the spot, with regular interruptions and with minimal preparation time.

Chris Chameleon is a consummate performer. I saw his show in East London last night and loved it. Much as I love live theatre, and particularly live music, I am often disappointed by people who just aren't well prepared or who are so nervous they can't react to the audience, or who just don't know their material well enough. Last night's show had none of those problems. Chris Chameleon gently wove humour and poignancy, stories and themes around his varied and wonderful music. He spoke about and played with language and images and ideas. He speeded up and adapted and adjusted to suit the audience, the place and the mood. At the end of an hour and a half - of one man and a guitar, as he pointed out - the audience was still completely entranced and asking for more.

I suppose part of the excellence - the elegance, even - of the show is that Chameleon is a mature performer. He has huge amounts of experience and his command of the stage is entirely natural and practiced, with none of the nervousness or need to prove oneself that often trips up younger performers. There is a sense that he is completely comfortable with his role, his music and himself. He doesn't need to pretend to suit anyone but he is so familiar with it all, and so aware of the people for whom he is performing, that is able to adapt to make the experience even more enjoyable.

I've enjoyed Chris Chameleon's music for years but I wish I had more opportunity to see him live. He really is one of SA's top entertainers - along with several others who put in the same level of preparation and can hold an audience in their hands in the same way as a result (Rob van Vuuren and a several SA stand-up stars spring to mind). I sometimes struggle to explain why I continue to love live theatre and often prefer the performances of people like Chris Chameleon and Rob van Vuuren to other, sometimes more generally popular shows - like the less intelligent, less difficult, often obviously-funny shows that sell out every year. It is because the people I truly enjoy and respect are stars not because they can pull a big enough crowd to make money but because they build on natural talent with hard work and preparation to become elegant, consummate performers.

A long December

2009-02-06T08:45:00.003+02:00

The weather is changing. The last few days have been an odd kind of Summer. It's been chilly and overcast every day. You don't notice as much when you live in a place all the time but it's noticable when you move. It's starkly evident in contrast with Mozambique. The weather there was sweltering every day. From the minute of waking up to the getting onto (because it was too hot to get into) the beds, under the mosquito nets with the fans on full blast, it was hot. Several of my fellow travellers complained that you started sweating the minute you stepped out of the shower. It's hard to describe the heat when you are in cooler climes. Heat that is almost tangible.

The memory of that heat is strong. I close my eyes and I can smell the heat - the dusty, hot, dampness. The incredibly oven-like hotness of waking up in the yellow tent with the sun beating down. It was cooler, stepping out of the tent, but cooler is relative. Even so early in the morning (6am was an ordinary time for waking in that tent) it is hot. The air is hot. The air is heavy. That day in Inhambane, the smell of heat on paving on the broad, empty pavements, on the wizened trees, on the wide roads.

The heat in Mozambique is humid. The air feels heavy with heat and moisture. Even in rain and storms it is still hot. The rain is not cold. In South Africa, we so often avoid the rain because it will make us cold. In Mozambique we didn't need to. We spent a whole day, in fact, sightseeing in the hot rain. It was beautiful. We were rather damp by the end of it and my hat never recovered, but we weren't cold.

I slept last night with a blanket. The cat spent the evening curled up under the blanket because he was so cold. There were moments when the heat was not pleasant on the trip; moments on sweaty buses and in ridiculously hot tents when we tossed up the risk of Malaria vs the incredibly hotness. But in the moments of cold, or just cool, days when I wake up wrapped in blankets, I long for the enveloping, sensual, all-consuming heat of a Mozambique December.

Lulas pasta

2009-01-21T11:14:00.003+02:00

It started with a vague discussion about dinner. I'm not sure why - in fact, I'm pretty sure we'd all just eaten. But we were walking back from the place with the internet to Baobab Beach Backpackers in Vilanculos and it's a long walk. It's quite a nice walk, along a long, straight, gently dilapidated main road. The hot is quite significant but it's exhilarating - at least, I found it exhilarating.

On the way we stopped at the garage shop. Every garage shop I saw in Mozambique was a South African brand. This one was a Total Boutique shop. We stopped largely to try get something to drink. The something to drink tended to be either drinking yoghurt by the slightly dodgy name of 'Mayo' (still have no idea why but we found it all over Mozambique) or the local carbonated soft-drink, Fizz. Orange flavoured Fizz.

While we were there, and as a result of the previous desultory conversation about dinner, we picked up some spaghetti. We also bought a tin of tomato paste. In retrospect we probably would have been better with sticking to fresh tomato and onions when they didn't have the tinned version but it probably would have required far more work. The tomato paste was fine.

All set with this lot, we headed on down the road. A little further along, we stopped at the bakery to pick up fresh bread. One of the things I loved about Mozambique was the little bakeries on every corner with fresh bread and sometimes other delicious baked things. The only complication, of course, being a rather annoying tendency on the part of sales staff to deal with language barriers by ignoring you. We eventually got past this and headed on to the market.

The concept of market in Mozambique is a fairly specific one. South Africa is a fairly developed, Westernised country. In this country you pop in at the supermarket or stop at a hawker's stand to pick up the bits and pieces you need. In both cases, these retail outlets are the end of a long retail chain. They are far, far away from the farm or even the market where the produce originated. In Mozambique it feels that you are in direct contact with the person who collected the coconuts and grew the tomatoes, or at least with his/her family members.

We wandered around the market for a while, picking up such crucial items as two cloves of garlic, some cooking oil, two onions. One of the group spotted some vegetables that looked a little like baby marrows so he got those too. We then came to the complicated issue of fish. I am not the least squeamish about raw meat. In fact, I love the clean smell of a butchery. But it turns out I'm not so good with raw fish. Particularly raw fish in a situation where there is no refrigeration of any sort. Of course, the fish has come straight from the sea so the concern is largely unnecessary but I'm still squeamish.

We eventually settled on squid. I overcame my squeamishness. Well, that and I got overruled - for which I am grateful. Just as we were leaving the market (read, wandering down one of the rapidly disintegrating roads), we, on a whim also picked up a pineapple and some coconuts.

Back at the backpackers, after a little break to recover, we set about making dinner. Katherine was the brave soul who attacked the squid to turn them from a mess of inkiness to the calamari (Lulas) they were destined to be. The worst part of the process? Squid-ink under your finger-nails. Urgh!

Eventually, it was done. We cut it into thick strips and added it to the tomato paste, garlic, mixture Jonathan and Katherine had simmering on the stove. By this stage it was already smelling super-fantastic. The calamari was the final ingredient.

Richard, meanwhile, on cutting open the mystery-vegetable and discovering that it was in fact nothing like a baby marrow, was urged to find someone who could help us make it edible. It turned out to be ochra (sp?). Boiled up with garlic and butter it was pretty good.

So, after a long day of walking and markets and cleaning and cooking, we had lulas pasta with ochra for dinner. It was really good, probably made even better by the process. Certainly made more memorable. Nothing in the world quite like lulas pasta.

Oh, and remind me to tell you, some time about what we did with the coconuts and pineapple...

Hot in the summer

2008-12-16T18:25:00.002+02:00

The seed pods on the tree in the back garden burst and pop and explode in the shimmering heat of the summer day. The sky is pale, see-through blue with puffy, gentle clouds gathering at the horizons - clouds that on some days will join forces and bring down the rage and the energy and incredibly electricity of summer thunderstorms. Not today, though. Today there is a slight movement in the air, a very, very gentle breeze. Not enough to cool it down but enough to scatter the clouds.

Today is not the hottest. It's still searingly, shimmeringly hot in the sun, but the shade is cool. The white and grey cat stretches out on the cool grass, measuring the heat of the day by the length of the cat. Everyone sags in the heat. We're supposed to be putting up the Christmas tree today but no-one has the energy. We'll do it tomorrow. Today we sip on cool drinks and wait for the long hours of the day to fade to cool. I love the heat.

As the heat of the day fades slowly to dusk, the air is filled with the shrill cries of Cicadas. As much as I wish for a chance to visit a winter wonderland, my heart will always sing with the gorgeous, incredible, full dry heat of South African summer.

Swallows for summer

2008-11-28T09:29:00.003+02:00

Summer has finally arrived. Several mornings this week, I've looked out onto leaves and flowers and grass decorated with sunlight sparking on dewdrops and the sweet remnants of evening rains. The air smells like summer after the rain this morning. The world is filled with nature's symphony of bird songs, frog chants and the buzzing of small insects, all carried on the gentle breeze. In this quiet little town, there are no other sounds to disrupt the morning. Outside my window, swallows swoop and soar as they gather mud and bits and pieces to build their summer homes.

Memories take me back

2008-11-24T22:29:00.003+02:00

Today was a proper hot summer day. It's strange how a moment, a memory can take you back. There is a friend I've been chatting to quite often recently. She's currently in London being freezing in between comedy and studying. We haven't lived in the same place for ages but we've kept in touch on and off.

At one point, a few years ago, I happened to be in Stellenbosch when she was in the Cape for work and she drove through to visit me. Stellenbosch is one my homes. It will always have a special place in my heart. On this particular day, my friend came through and we had an afternoon drink at one of my favourite spots - De Akker. For the uninitiated, De Akker is one of the oldest pubs in SA and a staple of anyone who has every found themselves inadvertently humming songs about "die lower van die eike oor die straat". It's a place with so many memories, of people and important moments and times gone by.

For some reason today reminded me of De Akker and that afternoon when we sat outside, at the wooden table, with the faint buzz of music and laughter from the few afternoon patrons, not far away Dorp Straat meandering through the town and somewhere students studying away. I had a glass of wine. I can't remember what friend had. That moment is etched on my memory. With the instant yakka and the bizarre evenings upstairs and sitting in the backroom marking an adjudicators test, it is one of the moments of De Akker.

Strange how memories take you back, how the way the sun falls, the first sip of a cold beer, echoes of long remembered laughter can bring back all the joy of the half-forgotten moment frozen perfectly in time.

Interesting diversions

2008-11-18T21:50:00.003+02:00

"I think the crucial thing in the writing career is to find what you want to do and how you fit in. What somebody else does is of no concern whatever except as an interesting variation" James A Michener

That's easier said than done. So much of life seems to be keeping up with the Jones's. Which gets complicated when the Jones's in your particular case keep doing random things like slipping off to take up scholarship offers and generally heading in the direction of taking over/saving/being-appointed-to-run the world. I've watched several of my friends struggle with the comparisons we draw. And, often, the comparisons we assume other people are drawing.

One of the hardest parts of deciding to choose freedom is that the traditional measures of success no longer apply. It's difficult to live in a world without the reassurance of comparison. My contemporaries outside of my own circle are largely settled and married. For many women my age, the joy of motherhood has mellowed as children have started 'big school' and life is a blend of the warm glow of the children's successes and a gentle, and welcome, return to one's own pursuits.

I am unusual in an already unusual circle. Within that group, most people are onto the umpteenth qualification and/or management level position. Some have their own particularly successful businesses. A few are still studying but mostly those who changed direction at some point. And generally in the form of overseas scholarship opportunities.

All around me - at least among those I consider my peers, my equals, my friends - is success. By any ordinary definition, I know many, many successful people. That has never bothered me. In fact, I love my friends' successes. I share in their joy.

The complication is in the comparisons. The problem with having so many successful friends is the constant worry that society, 'them', 'people' are expecting you to achieve the same kinds of successes. That there are many, many people out there who are expecting you to be like those friends, like those successful people. And in this case it is horrifyingly true that "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not really after you".

I have no doubt that the choices I make are right for me. But many of those choices don't stand up to the scrutiny of comparison. Many people assume that I'm not as successful as my friends. It's true for a given value of 'true' and, more importantly, a given value of 'successful'. The hardest part of choosing freedom is knowing that you will spend your entire life countering the expectation that you will, and the temptation to, live in comparison.

The crucial thing is to find what you want to do, who you are, where you need to be in this moment, and to do it full-speed-ahead. And then, as hard as it may be, to see everyone else's choices as interesting diversions unrelated to your own.

weather and waiting

2008-11-13T10:50:00.003+02:00

I'm not a huge fan of rain. I love thunderstorms but less extreme forms of precipitation don't make me excessively happy. But it is pretty good for writing. Especially when it's the kind of weather that tends to be WEATHER - strong winds twisting branches around and about, huge drops of rain splashing down, gutters rushing like streams. There is a tension, a beauty, as if a storyline, a narrative, an argument is swirling just beneath the surface.

Today is an odd day. There is work I could be doing - and I'll get to it later - but I'm trying to get back into the habit of working only the number of hours I'm paid to work. Just 20 more working days to go. I can't wait. It does, however, leave my life a little devoid of distractions. I don't really have all that much of a life outside of working these days. In fact, I don't have any life. So not having the work distraction is a bit of an odd experience. It takes time to get used to being totally free again. Like a wild animal that has been kept as a pet and takes time to adapt to the wild again.

In the meantime, I begin to wonder if I should be concerned that I am extraordinarily excited that today is Thursday. Why? What do you mean 'why'? Because I get to watch Strictly Come Dancing, of course!

Sigh. Time goes by too slowly. I think I'll wander off to town and do some window shopping.

Reasons to love Africa #342050...84309834...many

2008-11-05T15:17:00.003+02:00

Kenya celebrated today as their presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, won the American presidential election. Kenya is the ancestral home of Obama's father - and clearly the ancestors were with him in this election.

In celebration, the Kenyan president, Mwai Kibaki, has declared Thursday a holiday in honour of Obama's victory. Not a lot of places in the world where the president will declare a national day of celebration and a holiday to celebrate another country's election results! :D

Coming up for air and they push you back down

2008-11-03T07:58:00.005+02:00

Big changes are strange. I'm what would probably be called (by those who like me) 'fiercely independent'. I've lived my own life, really completely on my own, for many years now. When I make decisions they're based on my own feelings and ideas. This is a big part of how I function. This doesn't mean I don't consider other people. I do. Agonizingly. I just don't talk to them about it. I have no qualms about this. It's my life and I am perfectly capable of making my own choices. After all, I'm the only one who has to live with the consequences. It's one of the things that makes me so very, very different from (and often incomprehensible to) those friends who have settled into relationships and mortgages and children.

One of the downsides of this approach is that my decisions tend to take other people by surprise. This irritates me. Well, I suppose what irritates me is that people tend to go through the whole process of surprise, denial, excitement and scepticism and feel the need to tell me all about it. It's as if they all feel like they should have been part of the initial decision and because they weren't, they now want to explain it to me. Every time someone hears about me heading off to another country, for example, they feel the need to warn me about all the horror stories they've ever heard about that country, and to tell me that I won't manage and to load me down with masses of unsolicited and often frankly wrong advice. As if I have somehow forgotten to research the life-changing decision I have just taken. Or as if my big decision is really just a childish whim.

When I first decided to do a Masters I told a few people. One of those people, someone I considered a close friend and who worked nearby, came rushing over to tell me that I'd never be able to do it. Whatever his motives, I was completely thrown by the response. It still bothers me. It was a massive self-esteem blow that someone I thought knew me would think I couldn't do something like that.

Looking back, I have learnt that that kind of reaction is really quite common in these situations. I don't know what it is but people tend to react to someone saying that they've made a big decision with negativity and criticism. My latest decision - about which I'm visibly excited because it's the realisation of a dream - even managed a 'that's such a waste of your time' from someone. It's one of the reasons I'm reluctant to tell people about the decisions I've made.

I think part of the problem is that everyone thinks they know what is best for everyone else. We all do it - myself included. We think we know what will make our friends happy. It's hard for us to accept that their decisions are the right ones for them - whether they'll ultimately make them happy or not. I do still take exception to people who won't stand up for and be happy with the decisions they've made. But I respect the decision. I'm happy for them because they're happy with the decision they've made.

These days, I'm very careful that my first reaction to someone else telling me their good news about a big change is to be happy for them. I used to have to make a conscious effort but these days it comes easily. I'm happy that my friends have made choices that they're happy with. That's all it's really about. I believe in individual choice and everyone doing what they need to do. Even when they are going in the opposite direction to me. Even when their choice to settle means that I'm even more alone in my choice to fly and live differently. I just wish that everyone else could be as happy for me as I so often am for them.

hemispheres and time zones

2008-10-29T14:57:00.003+02:00

It's snowing in London. It's freezing cold. Fat, fluffy flakes falling past windows.

I'm struck again by how life has changes with the advent of social networking. I'm not in London. In fact, I've never been to London. It's many, many miles away in another hemisphere and another time zone. But I know when it's snowing in London.

I got a message from another friend today, a friend in Cape Town. I had messaged her to say I might be around her neck of the woods early in 2009. She replies to say that she's off to Australia.

I had a conversation with a friend in New Zealand who has been bemoaning the lack of proper thunderstorms there. A friend who I chat to at least once a week.

Not so many years ago a move to the other side of the world was something that took years of planning and saving and much hesitation and worrying. These days it's just a hop. Not such a big deal at all. These days the world is all a whole lot closer. Close enough for it to matter in sunny South Africa that it's started to snow in London town.

supporting terror

2008-10-17T21:37:00.004+02:00

The ANC is threatening disciplinary action against any of it's members caught supporting Terror. Some days I feel like I'm living in one of those 'you know you're from South Africa when...' lists.

Of course, the situation is full of convoluted ironies. The Apartheid government took a very similar line - although their response to anyone found supporting terror, Terror or terrorism in general (read any action of which they disapproved) was a little less polite. Of course the sadder irony is that the ANC are taking this stance in an attempt to prevent any dissent or opposition.

Whether or not the new party happens and whether or not they reduce anyone else's election share, the current political turmoil has broken the complete hold of the ANC and opened the way for genuine democratic dialogue. That's a pretty fantastic contribution to sustaining the growth of the South African democracy. I want to get T-shirts made (quickly before something goes wrong) in recognition of that achievement. They can be quite simple. Just 'I support Terror'. That should get the world talking!

The rain has come

2008-10-08T21:22:00.002+02:00

As I write this, the wind is howling around the house as another stack of cloud drifts past. After a particularly dry winter, the rain has finally come. Yesterday, we had a thunderstorm. It wasn't quite a highveld storm, but the day was hot and the pressure had built up and up until it burst into rain and hail, complete with the usual sideshow of thunder and lightning.

It's been raining again, on and off, all day today. I was in East London so I missed out on the miserably drizzle but I don't think it even managed that here. It's a little too untamed for that. I dislike drizzle. I find it insipid. Rain should be wild and free and rush headlong towards earth, like the storms and the sudden showers. It shouldn't drizzle. On the way back from East London we even drove through hail.

The rainy season has begun with a bang. The tingling, enticing smell of the world after the storm fills is driftng in my window. It fills my senses. I will dream tonight of roads washed clean by summer rains and cocktails on summer streets and the smell of umbrellas on the metro-bus on the way home after a storm.

Heritage

2008-09-24T07:02:00.003+02:00

Today is Heritage day and what better way to celebrate it than with a Coral Tree? This beautiful, local tree flames with bright flowers in orange and red every spring. The flowers appear far in advance of the leaves, so there is nothing to obscure the exquisite clarity and warmth of the flowers. The depth of orange/red in the flowers also seems to vary depending in how close you are to the coast. In East London, the flowers are almost red. Here they tend more towards orange - generally even lighter than those in the pic. The Coral Tree, sometimes also called a lucky bean tree is one of the flowers that has been part of the great South African name-change project - an attempt to remove some of the more historically controversial, offensive or just plain bad names from SA trees and plants and places. This tree's name used to be particularly offensive but it's now been replaced by the pretty (and far more appropriate, actually) Coral Tree.

Heritage day is a public holiday in South Africa. We celebrate our heritage. It's important to celebrate heritage. We don't celebrate specific things like Republic Day anymore because those types of days became a bit of an issue - firstly because there are so damn many of them but also because there was disagreement on whether the declaration of a Republic by an oppressive minority government was actually a good thing, etc. So, instead of upsetting any one group or pretending that we can whitewash our histories, South Africa decided to embrace the fact that we have multiple histories and celebrate heritage day. Which I actually think is fantastic.I love the idea that we recognise that we have many histories and they all intertwine in various ways at various points.

We also like to mix our heritage up. A few years back a couple of supermarkets decided to join the fun on heritage day and the National Braai Day campaign began. Braais are a crucial part of the South African heritage, after all. Although braais have sometimes had a bad rep as an Afrikaaner thing. Luckily SA seems to have moved rapidly and gracefully beyond that. So today South Africans will Braai4Heritage and the patron of this project is internationally renowned cleric, struggle activist and peacemaker, Archbishop Emeritas Desmond Tutu.

One of my favourite parts of being a South African? We cope. The country is in turmoil, the government has resigned, the economy yesterday took a rapid downturn at the suggestion that our finance minister might resign but we're able to put it aside and join Tutu in gooi-ing a chop on the braai and celebrating our heritage. Sometimes you need to put aside the political, the important, the external and enjoy the day with friends. Welcome to a place where we know how to live. Welcome to South Africa!

Wisteria

2008-09-15T14:33:00.003+02:00

Jasmine has always been an August flower. It's a flower of late winter - the last gasps of the cold weather chilling the air and carrying the scent through the windows. Jasmine is jerseys and late winter colds and curling up in bed trying to get warm.

Wisteria is about Summer. The purple sprays of flowers drift in the air and scent it very, very gently. Here they sometimes grow in trees. In Queenstown the Wisteria grew outside the front door. There was a little stoop and the old stone pillars with roses planted between them, on either side of the little path that lead to the gate. Just outside the window fo the main bedroom, the wisteria twisted an turned. It was an old plant, many many seasons of flowers and seeds. Many, many summers.

I remember lying in the dry, intense heat of a Queenstown summer, lying in bed and listening to the Wisteria pods bursting. Each one with a little explosive crack. Wisteria is summer days in the exquisite dry, intense heat of the Eastern Cape. The sweet scent of early summer and the dry, bursting pods as the heat mellows and the season reaches its peak.

Teaching

2008-09-08T08:25:00.002+02:00

It's another one of those perfect-looking, 'fake' days. Although today is a little different - hot winds and fire warnings. It's a good picture day. It makes me think about where I'll be this time next year. A year ago, I was in Cape Town enjoying the last of the winter storms and the exquisitely beautiful start of Spring. This year, I spend my days hurtling through the countryside and creating word-pictures to sell this beauty to others. The future is tentatively planned to be another country.

I've moved a step closer to that. I've been doing an online TEFL course over the past few months. I would have done a contact course but I'm in the middle of nowhere and TEFL courses are a little scarce in SA. So I'm doing an online course. Well, done really. The main course is complete - I'm now qualified to teach English to people who don't speak English. Yesterday I finished the specialist course in teaching young learners. I'm a fairly flexible teacher. I can teach most people most things. But simply doing the reading and lesson plans for the kiddies' english class made me miserable. I will teach kiddies if I have to - I know I'm capable of it - but I'd hate every minute of it. This is not only because I dislike children. In fact, the two are associated effects of the same cause - I am very bad at dealing with people who can't communicate using words. Words are my bread and butter, my sustinance and my means of survival. I don't have the tools to deal with people who don't have words, no matter what size they are. The words don't have to be English, but there must be words. But it's fine - the next module (the third last! Yay!) is Business English, which sounds like far, far more fun. Actually, it really sounds enjoyable. I could very happily teach English to adults and students for business and academic purposes.

And when I'm not flittering around trying to sell the pretty, I'm waiting. Life is in limbo. It feels like the longest Spring ever, as I wait for things to change. Not wait, work - while I work for things to change. In the meantime, to pass the time, I'm starting to play with digital cameras and see if I can find pictures to complement my words.

Fake days

2008-09-01T15:09:00.007+02:00

Today was one of those crisp, sparkling icy-early-spring days when the world is exquisitely beautiful and full of almost too much sky. The kind of day's my sister calls 'fake days' - because if anyone painted days like these people would laugh at them.

The road home

2008-08-29T15:10:00.003+02:00

It's overcast in the early morning dark as I wait for the bus. It's not raining yet, but they've warned of rain this weekend. It's still totally dark and deserted. The bus is on time. I sit at the window and watch the world pass by. I know this road so well. How many times have I travelled this stretch. I recognise the turn-offs to the forestry station, to the settlements, to the farms of friends along the way. Even in the dark, each signboard is familiar. A car flashes past, travelling in the other direction. It's headlights sparkle in drops of water on the window. It's started to rain a little. The drops gather and reflect. I stare into the darkness and let my mind wander.

This trip is important. It's an odd thing to do, travelling back to a place where I know hardly anyone anymore but it's the place. It's hard to explain.

It's started to get light by the time we get to King. The stop here is longer. This is a bigger town, somewhere they can pull up and wait. We move off again.

It's much lighter by the time we get to Peddie. Not sunny. The clouds are steel-grey and heavy.

As the bus travels uphill, just the other side of the fish river, I look out across the hills. The clouds are lying heavy and cold on the Amatola Mountains in the distance. These are my hills. This is my country. I remember a flash of a moment from the past, travelling this road some time during varisty and looking out across this valley. The opening words of the first chapter of Shades come back to me, as they came back to me then: "Ad anum extremum mundi. Arse end of the world." During sunny days there are often people sitting on the side of this road selling pineapples or peaches. There is no-one there today. There is no-one anywhere. The road is bare an grey. I am almost home.

A little like Upington, 2003

2008-08-13T08:03:00.006+02:00

It's a strange morning. It's cold and windy and dry and dusty. I reminds me of Upington.

Hotel. One of the It must have been this time of year - August/September. It was a big weekend with funders in to see the event. We arrived on the Tuesday or Wednesday. We were staying at the Protea. There are two Protea Hotels in Upington. They're on opposite corners, opposite sides of the road. It's very strange. We stayed in the one above the Spur. The people we were working with were in the other one. There was at least one very late night - if I remember rightly, involving the infamous search for Frangelico Dom Pedro - in that hotel. The hotels were small-town attempting luxurious - at least they had been a few decades before. The debaters were staying at a holiday-camp type place on the other side of the river, on the edge of a vineyard. I hadn't realised there were vineyards in Upington.

The wind howled that weekend. They said it was always like this at that time of year. Bergwinds gathred dust and swirled it and hurled it against people and buildings and swept it over the landscape. After a while, the dust got everywhere - in clothes, in food, in every corner and over everything. The grit in your teeth a constant reminder of the wind and the dust. It blew incessantly. The land around Upington is relatively flat. We were working mostly on a wide-open set of sports fields. The grandstand formed the only little bit of relief from the wind and the dust. The wind was so bad that the huge tent (that had been hired for the VIPs and the ceremonies) had to be taken down for safety reasons.

The only place that was totally out of the wind was the visual arts centre. Visual arts was held at a school. It was a tiny little school a little out of town (although if I remember in some sort of residential area). It was terribly dusty in the courtyard, where the paintings were left to dry and the boards for the graffiti were standing against the wall. The person in charge of visual arts had just started; it was her first big event. She went to all sorts of trouble to buy extra supplies and turn it all into the ideal that she had on paper - a kind of naive optimism that she never really lost, come to think of it. Inside was gloriously wind-free. A whole lot of the dignitaries and the organisers suddenly developed a remarkable and previously non-existent interest in primary school art.

It wasn't a particularly good weekend in many ways. There were major crises and some relate to close friends of mine. There were good bits though. Despite the crises and the wind and the issues, the funders were happy, particularly with the debaters who - in spite of serious problems - ran a good show. And there were moments: standing in the howling wind with colleagues, laughing that insanely-tired, slightly unbalance hysterical laughter that happens at some point in any event; standing during the opening ceremony - not able to hear a word because of the wind - watching everything run according to plan with the wind howling around me and staring out over the cold, flat expanse of the Northern Cape into the distance; the hunt for Frangelico Dom Perdro. It was an odd experience but the mutual support in a crisis situation and the ability of the team to cope with all the problems and the weather and still share feeling moments of joy were the start of a very good experience, even if it started in the dust and the wind and the troubles of Upington, 2003.

Today feels a little like that weekend. There is less dust, and the air is sweetened by the scent of jasmine. But it feels a little like Upington on a late winter morning, with the wind bombarding everyone with dust and the flat landscape that goes on and on forever.

I cannot rest from travel, I will drink Life to the Lees...

2008-08-10T21:24:00.002+02:00

"Exploration is not so much a covering of surface distance as a study in depth: a fleeting episode, a fragment of landscape or a remark overhead may provide the only means of understanding and interpreting areas which would otherwise remain barren of meaning."
--Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques (1955)

A snapshot, a scrapbook captured in words... memories of the places I have been. Some of the places are fleeting moments in between work. Some are average. Some are spectacular. Inexpertly, I try to pin the memories to the page, like butterflies captures forever, slowly gathering dust.

Melville, 6pm

2008-08-05T22:19:00.002+02:00

After a long day's meetings and much productive work, sitting with friends on the leather couches on the side of the street (on the pavement) in the fading light. It's surprisingly calm at this end of 7th - down the bottom end of Melville, past all the revellers spilling out of the cocktail bars and restaurants. Although, it's still early for those types. Quiet music drifts out of the restaurant and mingles with the early-evening patter of voices and cars.

The air is a little crisp but not cold - the remnants of late winter. It's pleasant outside. We sit and chat about this and that, sipping beautiful wines by the glass. The first, ever so slightly fruity, still dry crispness of my Chenin plays delightfully over the taste-buds. Someone else is sipping a pinotage. The peacefulness of good wine and gentle laughter washes over the group.

These are the nights I can understand how people fall in love with Johannesburg.

Cefane

2008-07-27T21:15:00.003+02:00

There is something particularly pretty about the way the light sparkles on the lagoon in the afternoon. I'm catch a glimpse of it through the open hall door as my mind wanders for a moment. Someone is presenting. I am interested in what they're saying but I've grasped it and they're now repeating it for those who missed it the first time, so i let my mind wander and enjoy the light on water for a moment. I'm here for a workshop. The setting is ideal - quiet and peaceful and pretty. We stopped at the 'office' on the way down. When you turn off the tar road to come here, there is a hand-written sign directing you along a long, gently sloping road that leads to the 'office' - a large house on a rise, looking out towards the river. I get out of the car when we stop, to stretch my legs while we wait for the keys. There are is veritably buzzing with the singing of little birds. It's very beautiful.

The day is spent productively in sessions. When we take a break, people drift outside and sit in groups on the grass. There is a tennis court just outside the hall. The fence around it is useful for leaning on when sitting on the grass. The sun is beautiful. The grass is green. The light sparkles on the water as lights slowly come on in the houses across the river. We speculate about who lives there. The evening around the fire is filled with gluwein and chatter. Someone brings out a guitar and we sing.

In the morning people feel a little the worse for wear, but the lagoon is, if anything, prettier. Thin, high cloud is drifting in across the sky and scattering the sunshine. In the distance, the chilling call of a bird out hunting. A baboon spider offers to join the session during tea. Someone gets rid of it. After lunch we get into the car and head off - through the dust and the veld towards home.

Into the Amatola Mountains/Hogsback Xmas in July

2008-07-22T22:19:00.002+02:00

It is still dark when I go out. Waiting outside on the road, I watch the moon drift towards the horizon. It glows, full and white, and dances beyond the silhouette of branches. The air is warm. Unseasonably warm. The jasmine scent permeates the air even this early. Cocks crow feebly, somewhere in the distance, welcoming Saturday morning.

We leave late. Inevitably. Eventually we have all the paintings and the plants and the bits and pieces loaded up and we hit the road. Driving between hills and fields and plantations.

It's getting light by the time we reach the turn-off at Cathcart. The air feels a little chilly. It's so clear and crisp you could almost cut out a block of winter morning and take it with you. We stop and wait for the others to catch up. It is increadibly still. The fields on the side of the road flow into the distance.

There is frost on the ground at the turn-off onto the dirt road. The frost lies thick in white terraces on the grass and the ground and the fence-poles on either side. The grass is bleached by the frost and in places burnt red by the hands of the icy mornings. They call this 'hay-colour', I think. It's almost-white,-bleached-grass-colour. It's a winter colour. There are no aloes here. In the valleys, trees cluster around streams – steams that you know, just by the feel of the valley and the look of the air, are icy-cold and perfectly clear. There are trout in these rivers, my companion tells me.

We pass old stone buildings. The sheds and houses must have taken years to build – collecting and ferrying each stone to lay with the others until the wall was high enough. They have been here a long time. The trees around the houses, oaks and firs and poplars – old-world, European trees, planted for the lands these settlers had left behind – have grown tall. They dominate and shelter the homesteads now.

Over the mountain-tops, the red sun stretches it's hands and paints the winter grass a perfect, dawn pink. As we drive, the sun's rays slowly dawdle into the valleys and work away at the frost until only the glimpses of white remain, hiding in the deepest shadow. The sun is starting to shine now, still low in the sky, but with a touch of the warmth that will fill the day.

We cross a river. There is a little bridge, just a half-metre above the water. Above the bridge, the river spreads out across rocks, dancing and playing in the light. Below it, it flows together, getting stronger and faster. There is a stand of trees just beyond the river. As we come abreast of the trees, I notice a flock of sheep in their shade.

As we drive, the land around us changes. Hills rise into mountains. The rolling grasslands give way to brush and then to plantations. The road reaches up into the mountains.

Eventually, we spot a sign for Hogsback. Within minutes, we are driving on a forest road. Tall trees rise and shield houses from the road; housesindicated only by the plentiful sign-boards on either side. The road winds down through the town, past the one garage, past the liquor-and-hardware store, past the B&Bs and art galleries and restaurants.

We stop at the Information area and set up the stall for the day.

The stalls close at 16:30. We pack up and close down and eventually get back on the road around 5. The sun has been slipping towards the horizon for the past hour. Now the air is starting to get cold. We're high up, here. As we retrace our route from earlier, the sun sinks further.

Just before we turn back onto the tar road, not far from Cathcart, we come around a corner and the sun sits, red, just on the edge of the mountain before us. All around, the air is soft and dusky, shading from pink to purple to orange to blue. Another perfect moment.

It's dark when we get home. We're all exhausted. As I head inside, I catch the scent of the jasmine again, as if framing the day. The moon is starting to rise.

Jasmine

2008-07-21T09:19:00.003+02:00

The air is heavy with the scent of Jasmine Flowers. This past weekend was particularly warm, with warm air wafting through my window, filling my room with the scent. It was so clear early on Saturday morning, when I went out - sweet and gentle and full in the dark, warm morning. It reminds me of high school and matric dances and growing up. I remember the first Matric Dance I ever went to. China Moon was the theme. The hall was beautifully decorated with bamboo and carefully drawn Chinese characters and red and black and white and jasmine scattered across the tables, filling the air with the heady scent.

Jasmine's scent is fairly heavy and heady. It's something you are aware of. I catch it every time I go out, just as I walk past the jasmine plant at the top of the path. Suddenly the world bursts with the sweet scent of jasmine. I'm always taken a little by surprise and turn to look at the perfect white flowers. I remember the many, many mornings when I would take a sprig of jasmine to school with me - picked as I walked past the bushes and carried in my blazer pocket all day. And the jasmine pressed between the pages of my school-books.

The sweet scent is mixed with a slight chill to the air. It is still winter here. But the jasmine is out in force, scenting the air wherever you wander in town. And the matric dance was on Friday, too. The seasons change and the cycles turn but some things remain the same. Like the scent of jasmine drifting through the window on a morning in July...

Shattered narrative of ordinary life

2008-07-14T22:05:00.003+02:00

I watched a show at Fest called 'Untitled'. The more I think back on it, the more I realise just how harrowing it was in many ways. Perhaps I was just oversensitive and open to suggestion that day. I'm not sure that everyone walked out of there feeling the same. I found it very powerful. No, I don't mean powerful in the pretentious sense. It was powerful in that it was able - through the use of a completely shattered narrative - to create an emotional and intellectual response. Mostly emotional. The story was fairly straight-forward. It was a story which is so normal and everyday in South Africa that we've forgotten how horrifying it actually is. There is a phenomenon where people become so accustomed to living with a certain level of fear of violence that they stop noticing. It's how people survive in concentration camps and in the middle of war-zones and genocides. In works in societies with high crime rates, too. This play - well, I say play in the loosest possible sense of the word - this presentation, brought back the emotional response. It used the concept of narrative. By shattered narrative I mean that the whole narrative was there - the whole story from beginning to end was there. But it wasn't presented chronologically or with the introduction and development of characters and actors. The narrative was shattered. There was also the issue of words. Normal, ordinary times come in sentences and paragraphs and words. Times of crisis and fear and intensity don't. They didn't try and find the words. Because you can't. Because there aren't words. Words don't make sense of it. The set was a stage within a stage. The performance was jarring.

I left the theatre and felt nervous walking down the road. Nothing had changes. It's probably the same level of anxiety that I generally carry around with me in my every day life. I had just been reminded of it.

Ozymandias

2008-07-07T22:56:00.005+02:00

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;—
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample a kingdom down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

A breath of our inspiration
Is the life of each generation;
A wondrous thing of our dreaming
Unearthly, impossible seeming—
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working together in one,
Till our dream shall become their present,
And their work in the world be done.

They had no vision amazing
Of the goodly house they are raising;
They had no divine foreshowing
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man's soul it hath broken,
A light that doth not depart;
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man's heart.

And therefore to-day is thrilling
With a past day's late fulfilling;
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted,
And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.

But we, with our dreaming and singing,
Ceaseless and sorrowless we!
The glory about us clinging
Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing:
O men! it must ever be
That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,
A little apart from ye.

For we are afar with the dawning
And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning
Intrepid you hear us cry—
How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God's future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
That ye of the past must die.

Great hail! we cry to the comers
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers;
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.

(Ode, O'Shaughnessy)

I saw Ozymandias on Friday. The Cue reviewer was less impressed with this piece than I was. Perhaps I am just more sentimental about the concepts - the idea of a traveller confronted with the ruin of a civilization, the human confronted with his smallness in the face of the forces of nature and civilizations. I found it cathartic. The sense of loss and smallness portrayed in the multi-media piece found echoe. It made sense on a purely emotional level. World-losers and world-forsakers and the meaninglessness of the human striving to build and create great civilizations that invariably crumble to dust.

Ozymandias, a collaboration between John/Allen Project, The First Physical Theatre Company and the Rhodes University Music Department, has Shelley’s poem of the same name and Hurricane Katrina as significant influences.

communication

2008-06-14T09:49:00.003+02:00

One of the hardest parts of running a project - particularly a project that involves making something better - is getting people to talk to each other or, alternatively, to tell you what they're doing. It's increadibly frustrating and annoying.

My current project is probably particularly bad because there has been a precedent of not having formal communication (reports, records, etc.) for the past few years. When the organisation is made up almost entirely of students who move on after a few years, the loss of institutional memory is significant. Which, of course, results in us reinventing the wheel every two or three years, with all the associated drama and confusion. It also results in us constantly being in crisis mode because we have no precedent to work from - or rather we have to search out someone who might or might not remember in order to find the precedent. Not that I think precedent is the be-all an end-all. Quite the opposite in fact - I'm far happier working on projects where there is no precedent and everything is being invented from scratch. But there is a value, especially when time is short, to having something to refer back to and some idea of how it can be done.

It goes beyond that, however. Semler (one of my favourite writers- Maverick and The 7-day weekend) talks a lot about breaking tribalism in the workplace. When you're trying to get something done, one of the greatest barriers to success is lack of open communication. Ideas feed off and build on other ideas. One of my favourite Le Guin quotes is

The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on. (Le Guin, The Dispossessed)

That doesn't happen, in our information-conscious society, when 'tribes', groups of people who band together, horde and keep information. In Semler's model, the tribalism is broken by encouraging people to move around all the time (making them members of many tribes) and
removing those physical manifestations of tribalism - the desks belonging to certain individuals all work together, the lunch area/table where that group always sits. In Semler's company's offices, desks are communal and whoever wants to sit, park, have a meeting or work in whatever area does so on a first-come, first-served basis.

This is somewhat more difficult to do in a more broadly geographically dispersed area. Like across the whole country. Information doesn't get passed around. Even informally. Formal reports are almost never submitted. Communication may happen but it is very difficult to extract information from groups who don't see why you need to know. Poor communication has been raised as a point of concern in every national stakeholder meeting of this organisation since it stopped being a small team of 6 people doing everything. What has not been made clear in response to this complaint, is that the problem doesn't necessarily lie with the team trying to be the centre of the wheel (from which all the spokes stretch out). What information reaches the middle is dispersed to all corners. But information does not reach the middle. I have taken to calling in favours and pressuring people I know (often poor souls who have no reason to be in the firing line but are the only people I can exert some pressure on) to find out for me so that I can pass the info on. I hate having to do this because my social and political capital could really be far better used, but I currently have very little choice.

At the same time, I have finally cracked. I'm normally very good at being diplomatic and managing difficult relationships but after my last reading of Semler and after the past couple of weeks, I am no longer interested in protecting people's egos and shielding them from petty politics and personality clashes. I am now taking the approach of sending out all information to everyone. I had originally used individual relationships with each person to try and get information and support them apart from whatever other conflicts and issues may exist. Given that that has failed, I am now planning to blow those conflicts and issues wide open on the basis that information needs to flow freely if decisions are ever to be made and that I don't care about the conflicts and personality clashes. Of course, this may be equally ineffective and may simply result in people disliking me. Right now, I'm not sure I care. I do know that unless information starts to flow more effectively in this organisation and unless we reach a point where the flow of information is not dependent on the person in the middle (who should be the conduit for all the info) being a close friend of everyone involved and ringing them up regularly for a chat, I cannot make anything productive happen. Perhaps there are people who are willing to manage through friendships and long-standing relationships. I am not one of them, nor do I think they are productive and sustainable.

Information is necessary because information inefficiency makes for bad management decisions. Information is not available unless the people with the information (who in this case will be the ones affected by the decisions) share that information. Tribalism is one of the many barriers to communication.

The result for those trying to make things work is immense frustration. Some days I wonder if it's worth trying to continue. Thank heavens for those who are willing to communicate. Without them, I would have quit ages ago!

Mampoer, winter sky, boeresports and a trip to the North

2008-06-03T07:31:00.002+02:00

The veld in more crowded in the North. More tall trees and hedges and more houses, as the country's capital spills over into the country. But the early winter sky is just the same, that same increadible crystal clarity and thin blue emptiness. And the winter grass crunching under your feet.

Wandering around the annual Mampoerfest at the Willem Prinsloo Agricultural Museum felt a like wandering around an agricultural show. The local old-engine society has a display of ancient engines, all spluttering and chugging away. There is even an old hay-baler, working, in demonstration. We stand for a while, fascinated. The children play in and out between the old tractors.

The stalls are familiar, like so many others. The spookasem (candyfloss) and toffee-apples and biltong. The second-hand books, the toys and the stalls and stalls of jewellary. Bonsai trees and CDs. Gooi Mielies has some new T-shirts. A couple of unique stalls like the stall selling 'hunting trophies' of the tail end of various traditional trophy animals.

And of course, the food stalls. Walking between two rows of food stalls, I have a sudden moment of such strong nostalgia it takes my breath away - like a punch in the gut. It's the smell. The mixed up collection of sosaties and boerewors and steak and mince, of jaffles and vetkoek and curry and rice, of pancakes and koeksisters and fudge. It's a smell that is so familiar and so bitter-sweet. The sweetness of nostalgia and childhood and home, a little bitterness of roads not taken.

It seems odd that there aren't any animals. But of course, there are a few fun activities for the children - a jumping castle, a little children's train. And for the adults, the obligatory Afrikaans/country and western singer. This time complete with dancing girls - the Rodeo Girls. And boeresports.
We laze on the grassy bank in the afternoon sun and watch the toutrek (tug-of-war) and yukskei. The boeresports get more enthusiasm, more reaction than the singer.

The 'sweepklap' (whip-cracking, basically) is a particularly popular, a primitive, traditional test of manhood, an opportunity for young girls and their parents to see the strength of the local young men, for the young men to prove themselves. It is a subtle (if loud) way of establishing rank and social status. One of the friends I am with asks where the game came from. We speculate that it's related to the trekking with the oxen across the country all those years ago. It's so easy to imagine some of these young women and men trudging beside ox-wagons across the Drakensburg.

A (single) friend complains that none of the women are unattatched. People sit in couples or in small family groups. An older couple sits on camping chairs at the bottom of the hill below us. Someone else's little girl stumbles around them, exploring the world on legs not yet that steady. A group of children, immitating their elders, stand in a circle and toss around an egg.

Intermittently, one or other of us wanders over to the mampoer-tasting tent and brings back a shot-glass of mampoer or liqeuer or witblitz for everyone to taste. In between, we sip home-brewed beer. It is a gentle afternoon. Desultory conversation drifts back and forth. People watching. The stereotypes are all there: the biker with leather pants and kakhi shirts and a mullet, a vernon koekemoer type with tiny short shorts, long socks and a denim shirt, the blonde poppie with the make up and the two-year-old and the sickly-sweet girly drink in her hand.

The sun is going down as we set off back to Pretoria and Joburg. The dusk is dusty and looks at though it is smudged around the edges. The light fades over bushveld. It has been a good day and a good opportunity to be somewhere else - somewhere a little bit like home and a little bit like stepping into a completely different world.

Traveling North (roadtripping)

2008-05-31T08:37:00.001+02:00

"The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer; and his sons are born in exile" Le Guin, The Dispossessed

I'm an Eastern Cape girl. With a little Western Cape. But definitely from the old Cape Province (including EC homelands). I guess you could say I'm a 'southerner'. Before I started work, I had never (except for a brief trip up the KZN coast) been further North than Pretoria.

Since then, thanks to work - and there being far too many provinces in the northern half of the country - I'm made several forays into Limpopo, Mpumalanga and the North West. I've even discovered a few places I love - Lapalala and Mawhelereng in Limpopo, White River in Mpumalanga, the hills around Rustenberg in the North West...

I still feel a bit odd, a bit like an explorer when I go North of Joburg and Pretoria. I've learnt to savour the experience, the difference. And to write it down. Difference and strangeness is much quicker, much simpler to write than complex familiar.

I'm heading North today, with friends, to the Willem Pretorius Agricultural museum in a little town called Cullinan. We're to their local Mampoer Festival. Food stalls and farm produce, demonstrations, dancing and drinking, Afrikaans music and mampoer tasting. I'm dying for the immersion in their culture and their world. And the chance to capture the experience, to pin it to paper, and to send it home.

Packing for work makes me sick

2008-05-25T16:25:00.003+02:00

I hate packing. The process of cramming your life for the next two weeks into a stupid bag is physically painful. If you've never lived this life, please don't try and make helpful comments because you cannot, ever, possibly understand.

Packing represents everything that is bad. It represents carefully folding those uncomfortable shirts and jackets and suits you would never in a million years choose to wear under other circumstances, the clothes you were only because you are expected to. I hate the fact that I give in to the stupid conventions which dictate what I should wear to the office. It's not that I'm sitting in meetings. In fact, I'm doing research so there is absolutely no need for me to be sitting in an office - and I wouldn't be if the person I was working for had any intelligence at all. Apparently she doesn't. So I sit in an office and I'm expected to look like your standard-issue, cookie-cutter bureaucrat. It makes my skin creep. I have drawn the line at high heels. Not because I dislike heels. In fact, I often wear stilettos for fun. But I often end up walking back from the office to the hotel (because the hotel shuttle service is ridiculously inefficient) and heels are incredibly inconvenient to pack, so I choose not to wear them when I'm in Pretoria. The other day one of the silly little poppie secretaries realised I was wearing flat shoes and was totally shocked - how could I wear flat shoes to work? The only pair of flat shoes she owns are a pair of slops for the beach?. I carefully restrained myself from telling her that her obsession with shoes (and make-up - I have also been scolded by her for not wearing enough make-up) are the reason she will spend her entire life being a secretary. I hate the fact that I give in to the pressure. And every time I pack for work, it is a reminder of that.

Packing is also an increadibly intimate process. Especially this kind of packing. I'm deciding, in advance, exactly what will happen this week, exactly what I will feel like wearing and exactly what risks I'm willing to take. I am a free spirit. Granted, I am to some extent also a control freak - but not when it comes to clothes. I hate having to choose in advance what I'm going to wear. Some people look a bit confused and say 'but you just pick one outfit for every day, roll it up and put it in'. Don't you see, that's the problem! I don't want to have to choose in advance what I'm going to wear.

What I have begun to realise is that my hatred of packing is particularly related to 'work-clothes'. I'm really fine if I don't have to go to an office. That doesn't really bother me. I simply chuck in a few pairs of trousers and a selection of tops and I'm sorted. They're all mix and match and all go with tackies, so no problems. It's the work clothes that upset me. You've heard of the concept of emotional distress lowering immunity and making one sick? This has that effect on me.

It's not the packing as such. Packing just for me is fine. It's what this packing - packing to do work I hate for people I don't respect, in a city that I think is ugly and soulless - it's what it represents. I have known people who, after a while this kind of lifestyle felt ill every time they were at an airport. I don't mind airports. And I'm really quite fond of planes. It's the packing that makes me feel ill. It makes me want to put it off as long as possible and not think about it. I hate the work I'm doing at the moment. It's really just like being back at loveLife. I keep getting told 'but it's only two weeks'. No, there is no such thing as 'only two weeks'. I want to live my life. I don't intend to spend two whole weeks wasting my time at an office where they treat me like an idiot and expect me to be okay with it. I'll do the work, but I will find every excuse I can not to be there. And when it's over, I'm out of there as fast as possible and I won't be going back. I may still do some work for them, but it will be from the other side of the country, on my own terms and without me having to waste the beautiful early-winter sunshine in a windowless room.

Enclaves of exclusion

2008-05-23T08:12:00.000+02:00

Diepsloot, Danoon, Cato Manor.... These are our flashpoints. Knysna, Mpumalanga, Pretoria.

For the first time in years, the danger of keeping some people in abject poverty is obviously. If you ignore our labour laws, at base, a large pool of available cheap labour drops labour costs. Socially it's a powder-keg waiting for a match.

The most dangerous individuals in a capitalist, democratic system are those who are disaffected, angry and structurally excluded. These flashpoints are the places with poor service delivery, poor service payment rates, very little formal housing, low school attendance rates, high HIV infection and extremely high unemployment. Their population is unstable - high in both South African and foreign migrants. They are enclaves of exclusion.

In the South African system, this is a problem. The wide-eyed belief in the pure ideology of democracy, the lack of cynicism are dangerous. The SA government tries to provide service, etc. to all. There is an attempt to help everyone equally. This is theoretical good. NGO's choose the location of their work based either on history or, increasingly (and very positively) based on where the highest returns are possible - which isn't generally in working with the most excluded. Business would rather work with the slightly more stable areas - where there is a market - unlike in largely zero-income reality of these areas - and slightly more stable, better educated workforce.

All of the reasoning here is valid. An uncynical analysis would applaude the situation. The problem is, the market doesn't take into account the explosive nature of enclaves of exclusion. Imperfect information. Expecting democracy to produce peace and stability, without taking steps to coerce or coopt the poorest and most excluded leaves room for the newly created peace to be seriously damaged by explosions of violence in these areas. As has happened here.

Perhaps it is time for a more cynical approach in SA. Time to target social development investment (unfairly) to these areas. To buy off the excluded so that the rest of the country can get on with developing and hopefully eventually absorb the disaffected.

A friend of mine, who knows far more about policing than I ever will, was explaining to me, a few weeks ago, how the army could be effective in establishing peace in the chaotic townships, without my nightmare of tanks rolling over shacks and guns blazing. He pointed out that we have, after years of being Africa's peacekeeper, many troops trained to bring and keep peace. He was arguing that THEY should be sent in. That made sense to me.

So maybe there is a way to restore some sort of stability. Even so, a lasting peace in these areas is unlikely unless we can all get over pure ideology and find a way to buy off the enclaves of exclusion.

Postscript to Square pegs

2008-05-13T16:09:00.000+02:00

In the interests of clustering scattered thoughts and trying to make sense of my own thinking, more on square pegs here: //hawk-emptysky.blogspot.com.

Now, where was I...?