One of the lovely things about keeping a blog this summer was the way it helped me digest my adventure in manageable portions. When a particular detail or story lodged itself in my brain and refused to leave—or when my parents were agitating for pictures—I could sit down and deal thoroughly with some aspect of what I was seeing, hearing and feeling. I wish I’d bid the city farewell (in writing) when I had it in front of me; I could have sat at Lola’s on Long Street and watched the foot traffic pass until something fascinating or ironic or quintessentially Capetonian presented itself as a perfect motif for my final entry.
From the sunny Seattle coffee shop where I’m sitting now, thinking about Cape Town is like dipping a toe into a swift-moving stream of images, each as significant and symbolic as the next. The best I can do right now is scoop up a few bucketsfull of my time in South Africa.
***
A public parking lot in Kalk Bay, where I am but my car keys are not. I must have dropped them while hiking and caving with Barry and Cliff earlier that day. As I search my backpack one more time for the missing keys, the septuagenarian members of the Trails Club of South Africa with whom we had begun the hike that morning return to the car park with cheery greetings and later, concern for my predicament. Tony tries unsuccessfully to pick the locks on my little Atos, and I end up calling the car rental agency with a shamefaced plea for help.
The spare key is on its way, and I lean against the hood of my car talking to Geoffrey. Geoffrey is at least seventy and resplendent in cut-off denim shorts held up by a rope belt, a tattered windbreaker from the 1980s and brightly colored gaiters over his leather hiking boots. He is tan and extravagantly wrinkled, with rough hands and a classic English-South African accent. When I tell him that I am working at a theatre school, he tells me about one of his boarders, a Zulu girl who is studying African dance at the University of Cape Town.
“It’s all very new to me,” he says excitedly, “because we grew up under the system, of course.” I would meet far younger South Africans with far less enthusiasm for repairing the damage “the system” had inflicted on their country.
***
I am browsing the bookshelves in a deliciously cluttered antique store. At random, I pick up a treatise on South African society written by a white South African in the 1960s. The faded inscription reads, “Hope this explains some of the challenges we’re facing here. Love, Mum and Dad.”
***
Babs takes me to a Couch Surfers’ gathering at a local bar, where every conversation begins with, “So how long have you been surfing couches?” and “Sister” Mary James performs an impromptu drag show. After the last strains of “Like a Virgin” have died away, Babs, Simon and I totter down the near-vertical Victorian staircase and set off across the Company Gardens toward Long Street. Babs tells us to watch out for the oversized rats that haunt the gardens at night and insists that we stop at a brick amphitheatre outside of the South African natural history museum. We stand on a plaque in the middle of the amphitheatre, from which our voices echo in the empty gardens. It’s a secret, she insists, and only works at night.
The bar where Simon is supposed to meet his friends is packed with European tourists and American exchange students drinking themselves into stupors and flopping around to Oasis. I abandon my glass of wine and flee to the sidewalk tables, which are less crowded if no less noisy. Babs—a black belt in karate—teaches me how to throw a punch as we watch middle-aged tourists engage the services of young Black and Coloured prostitutes. She fends off beggars with curt rejoinders in Afrikaans and recalls how Long Street used to be the sole province of drug dealers and petty criminals. Suddenly, the street is full of shouting in many languages; a black man and a white tourist are scuffling and hurling drunken insults at each other. The knot of bodies around the fight parts to admit two public safety officers and then closes again and blocks my view, but I can hear the sound of fists on flesh. It’s not something I’ve heard in real life, I realize, and it is infinitely more sickening without sound effects.
***
Rex and I are careening through the Imfolozi part of Hluhluwe-Imfolozi on our way to our camp for the night. It is the Fourth of July, and we are blasting Rex’s country music mix as loudly as the Fiesta’s sound system will allow in celebration of our nation’s birth. We are no longer looking for rhinos and giraffes when we take a sharp corner and nearly collide with an elephant. Rex reverses hurriedly as the elephant, which is blocking the entire road, turns its ponderous head towards us. Its eyes glow very yellow in the Fiesta’s headlights. It continues to shovel roadside grass into its mouth and chew it with large, circular motions. David Lee Murphy continues to sing. We are at an impasse.
Eventually, the elephant moves off into the bush and we keep driving through the starlit Zululand night.
***
It is the day of my students’ final performance. I march into my class overwhelmed by how much there is left to do and determined to use every minute as effectively as possible. I want to start rehearsing right away; some of the pieces are not even close to performance-ready, and we are performing in less than eight hours. Jean-Pierre raises his hand and says,
“But, Jenny? We have to clean the theatre first.”
“Fine.” I reply, and turn my attention to something else.
Forty-five minutes later, desperate to begin a run-through, I am chasing my actors all over the building as they bother Nozibele the housekeeper for a broom, and then a mop and bucket, cleaning fluid, and paper towels. I finally get them all into the (beautifully cleaned) theatre and ready to start rehearsing, when I notice that Jean-Pierre is stapling the curtains together.
Several of the windows in NATA’s 65-seat theatre are broken. There is no soundproofing, and performances are frequently interrupted by car horns from the M-18 and trains leaving or approaching Athlone Station. The theatre has five hanging lights, one of which came unplugged and plunged half the stage into darkness in the middle of the performance. Available set pieces include and are limited to plastic chairs, a few battered tables, a wooden window frame and a couple of benches. All of their costumes would have to be brought from home, music sung themselves, and sound effects made by hand or played on cell phones. And the stage itself is backed by a rickety wooden frame draped in scraps of cheap black fabric, which J.P. is meticulously repairing with nothing but a stapler, infinite patience, and an inspiring sense of stewardship for this space in which he works and creates.
***
I’m willing to concede that not everyone in South Africa can sing, but it certainly seems that everyone does sing. My days at NATA were filled with spontaneous song; students would harmonize with the music included in a classmate’s performance piece, and the audience even joined in with the a capella rendition of “Amazing Grace” that one group included in the final performance.
And so, while I darted in and out of the students’ classroom returning assignments on my last day, Stephanie and Leonita grabbed me by the hand and told me they had something for me. That “something” turned out to be a song, a pop ballad I didn’t know about saying goodbye and letting someone go. With their unparalleled ability to create compelling performances out of absolutely nothing—no music, no accompaniment, no trappings of any kind—they sang me off with designated solos and four part harmony.
With severe second thoughts about leaving my little life in Cape Town, I left NATA and drove to the Long Street Baths, the run-down municipal pool in the heart of the City Bowl where I had been lap swimming since breaking a toe in Mtunzini. Built in 1908, the baths are a Long Street institution and a remarkable space of cultural mixing in a city that remains very segregated. The pool complex also houses a Turkish bath and is closed to men on Tuesday afternoons.
I was usually there in the evenings, and my favorite pool employee said as much when I rocked up to swim at noon last Tuesday. He and I had developed a special rapport after he mistook me for a child and nearly refused me entry without a parent. After that, he greeted me cheerily whenever I paid my entry fee and almost always gave me a discount. While counting out my R11.90 fare on my last day, I told him that I was early because I had a plane to catch that afternoon. He asked me where I was going. I told him I was going home, back to America, and then he said,
“Tell you what. Stop that, put those coins in your other hand, put them back in your wallet, and enjoy.”
He was off shift when I left the pool; I never learned his name nor told him how much I’d enjoyed his cheerful greeting every time I went to swim. But it is his small generosity, rather than my rainy ride to the airport or rush to catch my flight to Dakar, that forms my enduring final shot of Cape Town.
For the moment, all that remains to be said is salakakuhle and baie dankie.
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