Apropos of nothing, here's another 24 hours from last summer's South Africa notes. It grazes issues of drinking, irritation with other tourists, masculinity and contemporary South African racism..
--------------
Yesterday morning Paul ferried us from our modest house down to the guest lodge where we were charged with presenting camera-trap images to imminently departing guests: an airline pilot and a doctor. Both were decent seeming folk who were probably suffering little personal impact of the recession. An uncomfortable bumpy ride in the back of a jeep later, the seated areas filled with guests and Stella, and we were out of the conservancy where the guests had deposited their hire car. We bid them goodbye and safe onward journey before continuing ourselves into the town.
In a small blocky house within a small blocky suburb Stella and I received a presentation from The Snake Man, an expert in reptiles who keeps roughly a score of wild, deadly poisonous snakes in his house. These included an apparently housetrained Black Mamba which he had reared from an egg, and one which roamed loose in the house – the deadliest of them all, but entirely tame. Or so he assured us, waving his fingers and poking around the sinister smile of the snake. Not massively fussed on taking the trip, I was a little bored throughout, even though it lasted only an hour. Stella was characteristically enthused, voraciously taking notes for improbable future reference back at her school in Botswana. She remains tiringly smackable.
This was underlined again afterwards. Martin and Paul had driven on after leaving us with The Snake Man, and headed off to collect Martin’s brother, Gavin, who had spent the previous month nocturnally tracking wild dogs via webcams. Their three hour round trip gave Stella and I plenty of time to kill in the small town. Hopefully no industrial riots would pass through the town, like the week earlier.
The khaki uniformed Snake Man dropped us in the smaller of the two main shopping centres. Stella and I went first to an American themed diner for a coffee and stunted chat, then visited an internet café a few doors down. My inboxes were again devoid of interest or hope. We then we headed to the larger shopping centre, five minutes and a couple of blocks away, to mill around the Spar supermarket and buy a few items. I walked too fast for Stella. As usual, I asked if the pace was ok and she wheezed yes, fine, cough-splutter, she always walks this fast. Only briefly did I succeed in losing her. For the remainder of our dead time we spent a little too long in the garden of a coffee shop, reading paperback novels, all possible conversation long since exhausted.
A couple of hours later the horrible Land Rover, now containing Paul, Martin and Martin’s brother Gavin, pulled into Spar car park to collect us. From there we were transported to a bikers’ bar, where Martin, Gavin and I alighted, and where we spent a handful of hours and several beers, enjoying the change of scenery, if not the density of burly bikers and leather.
Gavin was nineteen and dopey in the style of a less developed Joaquin Phoenix. Pale through his recent nocturnal work, he had a large, effortlessly well-conditioned frame and sprigs of hair sprouting from his chin in a desperately try-hard attempt at a goatee. He had little of interest to say and a not particularly compelling style in which to say it. Reunited, the brothers changed the unrealised dynamic Martin and I had developed. Their conversations were immature and rather boring, depending much on well-worn Cardiffian phrases such as “Aeyy,” together with a clenched fist of buoyance meant to indicate that something is good.
The sun dipped, a small handful of females were surreptitiously ogled for little reason other than they were female. One barmaid bore a passing resemblance to Angie from Eastenders in looks and style. We’d been trapped in the secluded conservancy valley much too long. The bar’s music was predictable modern rock while a home camera clip show played on a loop, interspersed with local advertisements for mechanical services.
Martin’s phone rang and we were beckoned outside and back into the Land Rover where Paul had come to collect us with his young friend around Mart’s age. We headed 4 kilometres out of town to a farm, stopping once en route at an off licence for further alcohol supplies.
A slippery wet dog tongue greeted my ankle as I put my foot down on the gravel of the farm’s drive. The rest of the dog appeared equally good-natured, and led us indoors. A main farmhouse building, it soon became clear, was a part-renovated barn that only revealed itself fully the further into the building you went. Immediately inside the front door was a homely kitchen and lounge, where the young chap’s parents sat watching the rugby on a handsomely sized television. The whole place wore the look of a long-term project subjected to sporadic bouts of effort and money.
Paul set about making a large saucepan of chicken curry and rice while his young friend led us further into the building to show off his room and a genuinely impressive set of speakers. Corrugated iron roofing and incomplete brick walls surprisingly didn’t detract everything from the comfy homeyness.
We sat in his room drinking beer, admiring his photographs, an ex-girlfriend in a frame and on his computer. He was a good looking young guy who looked like he might have done better, yet he was still clearly hung up on her. We talked of regular young man things: sport, music, girls. A couple more of his friends arrived and more beers were drunk. I was feeling their effect by now and was well ready for the food when Paul began scooping out dishes of curry.
We ate hungrily, watching assorted sport on the man-of-the-family’s cable channel. There was considerable banter about fighting and the danger of trouble down at the bar we had just left and would shortly visit again. Martin and Gavin, apparently seasoned fighters trained by their father, gave typical Cardiff bravado. I sat quietly, not fussed enough about the potential confrontation not to go back to the pub, wondering how much of it was masculine bullshit.
Still struggling to correct his nocturnal body clock, Gavin passed out in our new friend’s bed. Paul and the parents remained when the rest of us clambered into and onto the back of another Jeep, before speeding coldly through the night back into town. There was never any hint of trouble or violence. More drinks were drunk, locals were met, girls were admired – only a handful spoken to, all were aloof. It became fairly busy with well age-mixed clientele yet a gender disparity weighing heavily on the side of males.
Obviously there were no black people: customers or staff, the apartheid in bars seemed as strong as ever. Casually flippant racism throughout the young was still rife too, and the use of “Kaffa” quite common, even by the otherwise genial Paul. African black people from the area were considered a race apart, different from any other sort of black person, cleanly pigeonholed, bracketed and dismissed. “They don’t help themselves,” was a frequently used allegation when we passed them at roadsides. It wasn’t unlike the attitude towards Baboons.
Paul returned to the bar to join us and act as our taxi later on. His ever-present Khaki uniform was covered by a plain fleece top and he sat with us drinking coke, looking bored and sober. The unremarkable music stopped, lights came on, drinks stopped being served, yet there was no mass exodus. The barstaff came and joined us. A young girl we had admired in the bar in the late afternoon and who had worked until closing, had also enjoyed a brief stint working at the lodge.
Finally we left, crumpling drunkenly into the Land Rover. Paul’s young friend passed out on the way back to the farm, me wedged in the middle helping to keep him vertical as he swayed right and left, front and back. Back at the farm, now 4am, we swapped him for Gavin, ate remaining cold curry and played with the soft dog. Paul sat watching the cable TV sport, not seeming to mind the lateness or feel any sort of urgency about getting home and sleeping. I had never imagined being able to sleep while travelling the long, steep, violently bumpy track which led to our conservancy, but as I recall little of that trip aside from intermittently lolling forwards and headbutting the soft seat in front of me, I must have.
No comments:
Post a Comment