It's like when you have a naughty child under your supervision and all day long they've been screaming and yelling and running around probably with dirt all over their face and yellow paint from god-knows-where schmeared across their clothes and some other innocent bystander's clothes. Then all of a sudden they're quiet. Quiet, sitting by themselves, or just with one friend who was most recently their partner in crime, sticking gum in some poor kid's bowl-cut hair, both of them now making very few waves in the existential vortex around them when just moments ago they were the seat of all the motion of the universe.
You know something is up. We have a secret.
That's Mandela and I. Adult versions of that. Occasionally tee-hee ing in the Jeep while we criss-cross Western Cape. Scheming. We have BIG BIG BIG plans in the making and we aren't ready to reveal them to the world. But we're building. Building and scheming and studying up for the days to come. For the years to follow. For the life we are etching out from bare rock and soil on top of a mountain.
Here's a brief overview of the other chaotic things we've been up to that we aren't so secretive about:
1. For nearly all of January, my cousin and a dear friend of mine from University of Miami were visiting - we spent the first week with G Adventures (my third trip with them this year - highly recommended for budget and solo travelers, as well as anyone who loves a good adventure) briefly in Johannesburg and for the rest of the time bounding around Kruger. It was a spectacular new visage of South Africa for me - Gauteng province is apparently all business, though the part we visited was a bit haphazard and a strange assortment of game, bush and airport. Mpumalanga though. Mpumalanga was so much more than I had anticipated. The rolling green hills were beyond gorgeous. The land had such a serenity, such a pristine and quiet calm that overtook every curve or sweep of the countryside. I was shocked by it. I hadn't expected South Africa to hold so much beauty beyond the Garden Route, which is often termed the most beautiful area of the country. There are apparently several regional contenders for this title.
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| Mpumalanga |
Crossing into Limpopo, we entered Kruger. The bush was as I had anticipated, flush with impala and buffalo. We got up close and personal with white rhino, elephant and lion alike, even a lucky chance meeting with a leopard put everyone in good spirits, highlighting the extreme good fortune we had, seeing all big five in one day. We never saw cheetah, but bringing my friends to a reserve in Stellenbosch later, we were able to sit and pet one, so that's probably good enough, right?
After Kruger we toured all over Cape Town. It was made extraordinarily difficult, however, as my car had been recently gutted and rendered useless by a pair of asshat mechanics in Sedgefield (never ever bring your car to J and R Auto in Sedge just off the N2. Seriously, they are crooks and gamblers and they will remove your engine and keep your car hostage for weeks). In any case, I rented a chevy. Literally the worst car I've ever driven and complete kak on fuel but hey, it got us to Knysna! There, my friends met up with Mandi the Midwife and her amazing family and extended family and all the wonderful people of Heartland Organic Farm in Elandskraal. We had a quick stay there and enjoyed the peace and warmth of Heartland before back on the N2. Back to Kaapstad.
Once back on the good old Cape, we had some serious chill time introducing our new tourists to life as a Capetonian. We attended a football match in Cape Town Stadium (Bafana bafana vs. Mozambique) and had a riotously good time. I learned that Bafana bafana is a Zulu term that actually loosely translates to "the boys" or "one of the boys", which made me find the team rather endearing, even though they played quite terribly (seriously they didn't even qualify for the World Cup). Nonetheless, we had a fabulous night cheering. We made it up the mountain and onto signal hill, tasted wines at Spier in Stellenbosch, drove Chapman's Peak Drive and visited the penguins at Boulder's Beach, had a beer at Mzoli's in Gugulethu, walked the paths of Africa's oldest botanical garden in Kirstenbosch, did township tours and even accompanied me on my first time sitting down in my South African's house in Mitchell's Plain to meet his mother. It was as awkward as it sounds. I was sweating.
After three weeks of enjoying the time seeing my beautiful American counterparts, they were gone. Mandela and I cleaned, organized, regrouped while I recovered from an incredibly nasty flu given to me by none other than Mandy's boyfriend, Froggy.
Oh wait, I should mention something. Froggy has been with us since mid-December. That means that in my tiny one bedroom/studio apartment with no walls and no personal space there were six people staying. SIX.
Once it was back down to the usual four it was so quiet. So spacious. So still.
2. The respite was brief, however, as within three days we had our third guest. This one, however, arrived as an American ex-pat currently stationed as a teacher in Shanghai, China. I was hesitant at first. I'm always hesitant when I learn someone I don't know is staying in my no bedroom wall-less apartment with very little personal space and oh they're from Wisconsin? Even better. However, Becky had me eat my words within an hour of her arrival. She was so EXCITED about South Africa in such a genuine way. I can't help but appreciate people who are just as enthusiastic and interested in a continent that has such poor PR worldwide, a place that is so marginalized, so defined by its crime rate and corruption in the minds of anyone who has never felt the immensity of the heart of Africa.
Becky was a fantastic addition to have around. She asked so many questions. She gave me so many opportunities to talk about things, in earnest, that I rarely get to speak about. We had sessions where African politics was a real, viable discussion. Where I could explain how race scientists in the 1930s and 1940s shaped the Rwandan genocide in 1994. How the genocidaires simply moved to Eastern Congo and are part of the violence and instability that persists in the region even now. We spoke about the coup in Mali and their history of democracy. Their history of ATT that no one, no one in the West has ever bothered to speak about. We talked about the drawing of the lines in Africa. We looked at maps. It was educational, and it was inspiring to meet young Americans who are still actively engaging with these ideas. With concepts that, when ignored, keep Africa shrouded in mystery, confined to the notion that there is simply a primordial violence that plagues it.
It was so refreshing. I was sad when Becky's two weeks were up and she had to return to China. She is a teacher there. Of three year olds. No wonder she is so full of inquiry. I think we have a lot to learn from young minds. Stay blank and open until you go forth and learn. Then simplify everything. And once you think you've learned all there is to know, you only have to relearn how to be blank and open again, for there is never an end to learning. If you look at atoms we're something like 99.9% empty space anyway. Blank, vapid, empty space. Keep learning.
3. Oh, I should also mention that it was my South African's birthday on February 5th.
We celebrated in the most fabulous way we could possibly celebrate, and in a way that filled our hearts in the exact way a party or a cake should. At my South African's request, for his 27th birthday we filled 27 bags with a simple but nutritious dinner for the homeless of Cape Town. We spent the afternoon preparing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with an apple, a juice box and a handwritten note of encouragement. That night, after the sun went down, we all piled in the jeep and set out to find people who really needed a meal. We checked the most downtrodden and stressed corners. We found people huddled under blankets or shuffling along the road. We found them alone, or with their significant other, clinging to each other for warmth and sharing their hardships in the most basic of embraces. It was a beautiful process. It filled us all with such a sense of importance, of humility, of faith that if we all did our part and made sandwiches, it would have an impact. On the drive back home we passed some of the people fortunate enough to cross paths with our Jeep that night, clutching their sandwich or sipping their juice box, so enraptured.
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| The backs of each of these cards said Happy February 5th! |
We were asked later why we didn't go out and celebrate with drinks and a party. It's because the feeling of seeing someone else light up when much of their world is dominated by the darkness because of something that you did is far better than any bar or party would ever be, and instead of wasting the money on drinks, we pooled our resources and made a difference.
As we did for Mandy's birthday, we accompanied the sandwich project with 27 messages of hope and inspiring quotes pasted around the city of Cape Town, from Gardens to the City Center and the Waterfront. More messages to the people of this glorious place.
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| Sufi poetry anyone? |
It is most certainly going to be a birthday tradition here. I hope it catches on.
4. I've learned so much in the last month. I've accomplished things I thought completely impossible. I've balanced so many commitments and causes. I started volunteering at Spier with their birds of prey. I've gotten my textbooks and am self studying to pass an entrance exam into a direct entry program for third year medical school in Johannesburg. I'll hopefully be registered for Anatomy and Physiology soon at UCT. I am a powerful force here and I spend each day working on the dream we are building.
I've gotten so many books. Self study has been the only option. The learning curve is far too steep for anything else. Here are some of the many things I've had to learn very quickly in the last month:
- How to paint a house.
- How to even choose what color you should be painting a house and why and what kind of paint for concrete and what if it's wet oh god we forgot to paint the ceiling and we have no ladder etc.
- How to treat a puff adder bite.
- How to even identify a puff adder from a night adder or a cape cobra or a boomslang or black mamba or rhombic skaapsteker ok the list is very long here how about basic snake identification.
- How to finish unpainted furniture.
- Irrigation systems and how to plant trees (note: trees apparently can be very picky).
- How to know when someone is speaking about you in Afrikaans while you're standing right there.
- How to drive off road. I don't just mean off the paved road like haha oh fun it's dirt and there's potholes and some ravine-like ditches. I mean no road no unpaved road oh god we're in the bush lets all pray to the lords of the fynbos there's not a massive rock somewhere in this brush and oh no we're on a pile of rotting wood? Everyone please take a moment to appreciate Jeeps.
- Spider and scorpion identification. FICK TAIL EVERYBODY. VERY POISONOUS.
- How to handle a significant other who is cold turkey quitting smoking and how not to want to kill them.
- How to not let them kill you.
- How to juggle four different lawyers and not have to pay them.
- How to cure literally anything with herbs. Aneurysm? No problem. Rub a little catnip on that shit.
- How to build a medical clinic out of an old shipping container.
- How to identify birds of prey in Southern Africa.
- How to be absolutely stone-faced while keeping incredibly stressful secrets.
- How to visit a prisoner in Pollsmoor.
- How to cook almost anything on an open fire. Because you're staying somewhere with no running water and no electricity and it's been 2 days and someone is coming for dinner and you have to make something semi-fancy and maybe edible.
- How to identify mushrooms of Southern Africa (note: mainly inedible or poisonous, don't attempt to use in dinner you're trying so desperately to make).
Ok the list is probably a lot longer but that's the best I can do for now. We are in the middle of an unending, inexhaustible adventure that has consumed us. We are so inexorably tied to the land, the veld, the bush, the beating heart of this country that we could never possibly escape. Nor do we want to. We ran away to just the right place. Just the right range topped in pristine indigenous forest. We are embedded.
- Rh
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