On Fences

My room and person still smell pleasantly of the woodsmoke from my first brai (Afrikaans for barbeque), at which I finally tasted (and learned how to pronounce) boerewoers. Unlike most sausages, boerewoers are guaranteed to be at least 70% meat, and I, being rather a sausage aficionado, found them very tasty. Babett’s neighbor Darren and her friend (and his girlfriend—for which Babs takes credit) took me on a beautiful walk on the lower slopes of Table Mountain that ended at the grocery store, where we bought brai fuel and food. Traditional brais are very social events and involve lots of sitting around and lots of alcohol. They are also traditionally held in summer, when sitting around outside is generally more pleasant, but we managed quite well, as evidenced by Babs’ winter brai get up, complete with down jacket for cold and sunglasses for smoke.
Besides the exceptionally high quality sausage, our brai was much like an American barbecue—or cookout, depending on your orientation to the Mason-Dixon line—with one notable difference. We held ours in the tiny courtyard that we share with Darren, where the walls are so high I had to jump to see the bright, full moon and the tip of Devil’s Peak it illuminated. It seems that much of South African life takes place under lock(s) and key(s)—I have seven for the house alone.
After dinner, the four of us squished onto the couch on the stoep (stoop), letting our boerewoers digest and watching the cars go by on the N1. Although partially blocked by the beige blob that is the Good Hope Center—a 1970s horror made totally redundant by the recent construction of a glitzy convention center on the waterfront—Cape Town’s central station is also visible from our window. Provided one is lucky with traffic lights and is not hit by a left-turning Capetonian who is under no obligation to yield to pedestrians, it’s twenty five minutes from our door to the one operational ticket window. It can’t be more than a mile and a half, a fact I had gleaned from agonizingly detailed sessions with Googlemaps in my dorm room, and which I repeated to myself like a mantra as the black and yellow trains crept out of the station and fear wiggled its way through my bones.
When I was planning to study abroad in Cape Town last fall, I rebuffed concerns for my safety with a snarky, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to run in the townships by myself at night.” The truth is, I’m not supposed to leave the house on foot by myself at night. Nothing worse than catcalls has yet befallen me, and it’s entirely possible that nothing will. Indeed, the Jenny with whom you are probably familiar would have scorned the earnest entreaties of just about everyone I meet that I rent a car for my stay in Cape Town. But it was a considerably chastened Jenny who sat on the couch and listened to Babs, Darren and Dominique swap theft stories and caution me to trust my instincts and not think myself into dangerous situations.
My first four days in Cape Town were gripped by a sick, creeping fear such as I have never known. It (and jet lag) woke me up at three am so that I could worry my body temperature up at least five degrees and wonder what the hell I was doing here. What, exactly, was I so scared of? Of having R20 pulled out of my pocket while I wasn’t looking? Of being the only white person on a train car? Of the desperately poor? I think, really, it was the fences; I let them into my heart—which is not where they belong—and am still struggling to put them right.
For example, NATA is located in a predominately Coloured suburb that I thought perfectly respectable-looking when Babett drove me by last Friday. Then, the delightfully batty woman who served me a ginger beer on Saturday afternoon stared at me in disbelief when I told her I was working in Athlone and asked in her heavy Afrikaans accent, “Aren’t you scared?” I didn’t tell her I was planning to take the train. If she ever set foot in Athlone, though, she wouldn’t be half as scared. But then Mareth, the Academy director and patently neither racist, elitist, nor alarmist didn’t want me to walk the three blocks to the Athlone station by myself.
So, after my first day there, I walked with Naren the music teacher, a middle-aged Coloured man with an untidy mop of salt-and-pepper curls and the distracted air of a thoroughgoing intellectual (he’s a musicologist). He was also very hungry, and visited the bank and three different sandwich shops before finding one that was suitable on our way to the station.
One of those was the Athlone KFC. While Naren waited in line (before deciding that the service was too slow), I stood against the trash can, trying not to be in anyone’s way and feeling out of place and, yes, scared. Of what? Of the signs asking customers to buy the Palestine Times to support the cause? Of the fact that the other women in the room covered their heads? Or perhaps of the young Coloured man who caught my eyes for a millisecond as they dashed around the room at lightning speed—notice everything but be noticed by no one—and purposefully came over to the trash can I was blocking. He threw away a wrapper, then turned toward me. I smiled quickly before my dislocated brain whirred off to something else and I looked away.

“Such a fake smile,” he said.

Such a short sentence, I think now, and of such importance. I was too tired, too disoriented, too worried about the train ride home, too far away from home and (say it) too scared to lower my panic-fences and look this man in the eye. Though I’m unlikely to revisit the Athlone KFC—a KFC is, after all, just a KFC—I owe this man an apology and a thank you.
The lines between sensible caution and paranoia are not easy to draw, and trying to do so brings me smack up against prejudices I didn’t know I had and against a lot of big questions about race, class, political structures, and human nature. You know—nothing big. Writing it out makes me realize, however, that this level of questioning and examination is exactly what travel is supposed to yield and, indeed, what was missing from my adventures in New Zealand and in Prague.
However, on Tuesday, I traded my Fear of the Train Station for my Fear of Driving on the Left Side of the Road. The freedom that my little blue Hyundai Atos provides has removed some of the worries that were pushing me into the panic zone and making real learning impossible. And those of you familiar with my prowess at distinguishing my left from my right will be happy to know that I have not yet suffered or inflicted any major injuries driving on the left side of the road.