Trees are for the birds

I started this post 10 days ago and I am only now finding a few moments to get it posted.

This past week has been a very emotional one. My dear mum fell on Sunday and broke her arm. She is 90 years old and other complications have come up in the tests they ran. She is unable to have the op she needs to correct her break as her heart is not doing what it should, it is a 90 year old heart after all. So for a while I will be a 24/7 caregiver as she is helpless without her right arm. Hospitals aren’t what they used to be, and sadly the nursing care isn’t as compassionate as it should be. In my comings and goings twice a day to the hospital, I have experienced a sad, quirky and wonderful Durban once more.

 The hospital is on the Berea, high up on the hill. The view from the hospital is one of a sprawling Durban with all its wonders and hidden treasures, as well as insidious grime and crime. Looking out across this bland autumn skyline with its buildings tall and dim in the haze, it is difficult to imagine a Durban forested and with African Big Fivers roaming freely. 

Still standing

breaking pavements

Driving through the suburbs, some of the old Natal mahogany trees (Trichelia Dregeana) still stand, some fractured and with missing limbs, and some dangerously hollow inside and liable to crash onto a car in the next wind or heavy rain. These trees spring gnarled out of tarred pavements, but they flower and seed themselves yearly and their dark foliage still blackens parts of the Berea. It is said that the first explorers were astounded at the blackness of the hills as they looked out across the Berea from the sea. They referred to these trees as “thunder trees”. These miraculous seething Durban coastal forests housed a wealth of wildlife, but now they have been razed, tarred in, trafficked and peopled. It has taken less than 200 years to become something outside of Nature’s intentions.

In 1839, the Swedish naturalist Johan Warlberg (the Warlberg’s Eagle, is named after him) got lost in the forest near Mitchell Park and had to fire shots in the air to call for help. Elephants wandered down the Berea to the Umgeni river just 150 years ago and, not that long ago (1884), the last recorded lion left its prints on the earth near the Botanic Gardens.

Durban’s wealthiest built and lived in their huge colonial mansions right up on this Berea Ridge. Some of these beautiful Edwardian, Victorian and Art Deco mansions still stand, and some have been pulled down to make way for modern homes, blocks of flats and 

offices,and the Berea has become somewhat tired and far too busy.

I don’t want to focus on the destruction of this beautiful forest, but rather on what is still there, and a lovely early evening I spent there. After a hospital visit, I left, to the sound of some disturbing screaming by an elderly woman who could not be consoled and for whom my heart broke, leaving me helpless and aching. I couldn’t face the thought of my dirty house and making something to eat, so my daughter, Mandy, and I went for dinner at Nino’s on Problem Mkhize (yes, the same street I wrote about in my “Problem” post).

 Although this is far from a scenic spot as it overlooks the street and parking lot, it has a Trichelia growing right there in the parking lot, and several others lining the balcony edge of the restaurant. 

A loud and trembling Trichelia

These trees are the chosen roosts of the Indian Mynah birds. These Indian or Asian Mynahs were introduced to Durban around 1902 when captive birds were released. They are closely associated with human activities, and, like humans, are opportunistic. They are loud, cocky and always ready for a fight. Anyone who has been dive-bombed by a Mynah will know exactly what I’m speaking about. They are one of the most successful bird species in the world. 

They are considered vermin here and thrive at the expense of other bird species. So for the purpose of this post I am ignoring the very real, complex and worrying fact that these birds pose a serious threat to bio-diversity in Durban and am focusing on their bold behaviour and how they have become part of our city landscape. These birds have bred profusely in typical opportunistic style, and have taken over the city (a bit like an Alfred Hitchcock movie). Their brazen character has become very much part of the Durban buzz.

Not long after we arrive at Nino’s the Mynahs begin their cacophony. Just after 5pm they start descending on the trees to roost. Their own darkness cloaks them well and they are barely visible, even when the trees shake with their flapping and pecking and raucous shouting for a space to sleep. It is deafening, and any Durbanite (wherever they are) will immediately recall this sound as I describe it here. 

They fly in, the white on their wings like flitting sparks in the dimming light, and then they leave again to perch on the office block window sills alongside, only to return in a huge flock back to the branches so it seems like some isolated wind rustles and tugs at the dark old tree. 

With the dark Mynahs unseen within it, it is as though the tree itself shudders. We can’t speak at our table, we can’t hear each other, so we watch and take some photos.

The light slowly dims, and high white clouds slowly grow brighter and turn from blazing gold to orange and then faintly pink, and the Mynahs seem to settle, still calling and tugging at their roosting tree.We have an odd but kind, chatty waiter, who informs us that the cooking staff has no idea what a foccacio is, and somehow I don’t care the way I would normally care, but I do point out it’s in the menu and this is an Italian franchised restaurant. Instead of a rant I just smiled weakly and opted for garlic bread (to regret it later). Mandy and I look sceptically at each other as the waiter waxes lyrical about parrots that descend on the same Trichelia housing the roosting Mynah birds. Green parrots, he says, and they stay on the outside of the tree. “Oh, how wonderful,” I say, noticing the condescending tone I take on. “That must be a sight” (too much talking to old people in the hospital ward perhaps?). As our food arrives so do the ‘parrots’. If my thoughts about the waiter’s story of the parrots had been words, I would have been eating them with my pasta. The sky is filled with a flock of birds, fluorescent green and yellow. Their flight and landing is positively parrot-like. They land, true to the waiter’s observations, on the outside of the tree and begin that shuffling-sideways parrot-walk, along the branches, holding onto leaves and twigs with their beaks as they scramble along. 

 

They too fly off and back, giving us a dazzling show of streaking greens across the sky. They are Rosy Ringed Parakeets, and I’ve never seen them like this. The lights in the car lot shine on the parakeets, and it seems as if they glow from inside, like Christmas lights on the dark leafed branches. The Mynahs still shriek together, a grand choir of failed singers, and if they are aware of the parakeets on the outskirts they don’t seem to mind. It all seems strangely dreamlike, and rather bizarre; thinking about my mum who has been part of Durban all of her life, the birds, the odd waiter, all woven together at the heart by a flock of luminous green parakeets.

I looked out across the parking lot to the glaring Caltex sign on the other side. The unpredictability of life tugged at my thoughts, yet I felt a small smile within. There was a spell in the air, a strange ending to a trying day. 

 
This had been a moment, no earth shattering event, nothing that could change anything, yet I will remember that blink of an eye in the day with the Mynahs in the trembling limbs of the aging tree, and the bright green henchman, hanging on the outer twigs. Just another “Durban dazer,” when just about anything can happen… and does.

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.  ~William Shakespeare

p.s. the parakeets also come from India, escaped pets that have bred profusely all over the world including London. Perhaps this is why the Mynahs and Parakeets are such good bedfellows? Here's a link to them with a close up pic. http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/kwazulu-natal/getting-to-know-durban-s-little-guests-1.1214995?ot=inmsa.ArticlePrintPageLayout.ot

Small change

The time is marching, the mundane has tripped me up and stopped all creative thought. It has been three weeks since I wrote. Oops!

This week while driving in traffic and thinking, it struck me: the people who beg at robots (we call traffic lights “robots” in South Africa) are actually working, as in, this is their job. They get up early and head to their spot, come rain or shine or melting tar beneath their feet. Their work is to manipulate us into giving them money. It’s their place of employment. Some of us do give them money, and some give lots of money, and some curse out of the window shouting “get a job”. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m just like most of you who slow down before the robots, hoping they will change to green before we reach them, thus relieving us of the guilt of not giving money for food to someone who has less than us. It is this guilt of ours that keeps them employed.

These people sometimes become urban heroes because they have staying power, and smiles and posters that endear us to them. There is a black man in sandals (the only reason I state colour is so you can paint a picture in your mind) on the Berea who has been there for many years with his sign, stating he has no job, no money, no home, no wife, no car and no Tracy Chapman. Lately he seems to have taken some rest, as I don’t see him that often now. For him to have done this for so long, I assume his employment has paid for whatever lifestyle he does own, even without Tracy Chapman. Also, he can’t be a boozer, cos they don’t last that long on the street, although I do believe his wages have paid for some exceptional Durban poison over the years. Close to this guy’s robot there is another man, he’s white, although now he’s the colour of rust (all that Durban sun). He changes his sign almost weekly, and it is adorned with glitter and written in coloured pens with pictures and outlines, and it sparkles in the sun. I had often wondered if he spends his ‘donations’ on embellishments, until a friend told me otherwise. She said he has children in a good school and that these embellishments somehow come from school stock! Also that he doesn’t need R10 to cover his shelter costs as he has a home to go to. Perhaps this is just part of his 'legend status' and all legends have stories woven about them, true or not. His ‘robot employment’ obviously covers his living costs very well, thank-you very much. He makes us smile and believe him, and we pay for that.

 A tongue in cheek pic borrowed from the inimitable musician and proud South African, the late, Syd Kitchen. He is so sadly missed in SA and particularly in Durban where he was an institution. Musos have a tough time making ends meet and in this case selling CDs!

The robots closest to my home, and the local bottle store, sure have had their comings and goings. Cast-out men (mostly white) who deteriorated slowly from their first day there, from clean clothes to unwashed bleary-eyed husks of men with wasted lives. People saw them, and not knowing what else to do, gave money to feed their habit and ultimately to bump them off thus relieving their guilt and helplessness at having to see them like this each day. Men and, less often, women, with stories to tell about how they came to this employment. Lately at my robots there has been a very hairy, late thirty-ish, white man (also gone dark). He dyes his hair black and wears a cowboy hat and vests and he is covered in dark body hair. He seems to have an affiliation with the truck drivers as he always gives them a thumbs up as they drive past, even though they don’t donate anything. Truck drivers are in a position of power and do not suffer the same guilt as us folk much lower and closer to street level and eye level with the robot workers. Also new at my robots is a young black man with a rubbish bag – he takes the bottles and sweet papers littering your car in exchange for a few rand. Now this chap seemed fine the first time I saw him, but by the end of the week he was limping and his right foot faced his left foot, toe inwards, and this week he had the facial jerks of someone suffering from Parkinson’s. Oh my God, I thought, what has happened to him, he can’t possibly find a job like that! Silly, billy, gullible me, this is his work and he’s making a damn good job of it too. When I glanced back at him when there were no cars left at the robots, he walked over to the island in the road and it was a miracle…no limp, no head-shaking. Hell, he’s good. My concern is, that with time, he will damage his foot and possibly his balance with these antics, but in the meantime he’s young and it’s working for him.

There is a couple who beg on the Bluff;  the husband has one leg and the other one has been amputated at the knee. He wears a steel ‘peg’ although I’ve heard he has an expensive prosthetic leg at home. He rolls the leg of his pants up to expose his ‘peg’, and he and his wife cover two robots at once earning a double wage. I have seen people give them big guilty bucks. I’ve been told this man abuses both his wife and children who sometimes have to hide outside in the dark from his rantings. I have seen his wife’s face bruised and blackened, and this may or may not be testimony to this story. If this is the case then this man has neither my sympathy, nor do I have an ounce of guilt for him. Apparently both wife and husband have been offered jobs, but neither would commit to them… the robot pickings were more profitable and less restricting. I’ve seen them out shopping, he with his pant’s leg down and wearing two shoes. The deception is part of the job, and I can accept that, but if he is abusing his family after downing alcohol that the public has supplied, it's unforgivable.

There was also a window washer at the very busy South Coast Road robots. Oh my, we did try to get through that robot without him catching us. You could tell him you really didn’t want him to wash the windscreen, but he would proceed anyway. Then he would swear profusely and spit on the glass if you didn’t pay him. He told me I was a white devil and wailed at the sky when I said my bag wasn’t in the car (we’re told not to have them in the car, rather in the boot for safety). The police dragged him off a few times but he always came back to torment us. He has vanished now and is replaced by a much kinder washer, who doesn’t wash if you don’t ask, and last week I saw someone nod at him to wash their windscreen and then drive off without giving him a cent…SIES!

A while ago I was touched beyond words, by a black youngster asking for money at a robot in Morningside. He stopped at my car window and showed me he was hungry (this always works). Something jerked me rigid - it was as though I were looking at a young Jesus, some Messiah who had more stories to tell than anyone his age should have. I asked him if he smoked glue (sniffing glue) he said no, but I had no way of telling, he didn’t have that wasted look, nor had he started to show the signs of the crippling that this glue sniffing causes. I wanted to take him home, to read to him, to bath him and dress him in new clothes, but I was helpless. I gave him money and had to drive off because there were cars waiting and the robot was green. Before I drove on, I held his look and said to him, “Oh God, don’t do this, try to make something, you are an artist, make something.” He nodded and said, “Yes mommy” (they always do). I felt stunned and with hindsight should have gone back, but if I had I’m not sure what I would have done. I feel arrogant and stupid for saying ‘make something’, how was he to do that? I know some have, and have become world renowned artists, street children just like him, but they had the will and the lucky break to do it. Glue deadens the pain, once these children are in this addictive clutch it is too late. Shop owners sell this glue to them knowing what they will do with it. I am haunted by this youngster who stood silently piercing my soul with his eyes at the robot. I look for him every time I go that way, but have never seen him again.

These youngsters don’t like the discipline the shelters offer, and the shelters in most cases are not stimulating or inspirational places in which to nurture rebellious, wounded boys. Some of these boys are from abused backgrounds and live with more abuse on the street. They are cold at night and live with burning feet in Summer. They steal from the weakest boys and from unwary tourists, they prostitute themselves, and they become numb and fearless and dangerous. Whenever there is a conference in the city they are all bundled into police vans and taken away, so they become invisible, this blight on humanity.

There are also mothers who employ their own, or others’, children to work for them at robots. This is illegal, but it happens anyway. Some women hire children from neighbours (who are also in need of food etc.) and these children, as young as three, weave in and out of the traffic while the women sit on the roadside a block away chatting and socialising. These children should never be given money, no matter how our guilt tugs at our hearts; we cannot feed this abuse, condone it. If they get no money, surely this despicable act will stop. It seems that there are no simple solutions, or any solution for that matter, and we are so quick to judge, with so little understanding of complex family disintegration in a non-functioning society.

While businessmen eat sushi off naked women, and politicians are driven in cars that would feed a village for 6 months, most of our next generation is losing itself, uneducated, hardened, and uncared for.

I remember as a child we would shop in the predominately Indian area of Clairwood. That’s where the fabric shops were and lots of bargains to be had. I remember an Indian man who walked the streets and my mother said he was a ‘tramp’. He had little clothing and his hair was matted and dreadlocked before it became fashionable. He had a long white beard, and I can still see him in my mind’s eye. I never saw him beg, and he lived and slept under the South Coast bridge close to the river. I remember feeling afraid of him, yet in awe, as though he were a magical creature living under a fairytale bridge. Now in adulthood, I realise he was a holy man, someone who lived off the generosity of a community; a community who may have felt blessed to have him in their midst. He may have had nothing, but he was no tramp. He was a Guru, someone of wisdom, someone close to the Maker. How I wish I could sit with him now, under his bridge, with my feet in the clear water that was the river then, before it tired of its toil, weighted down by its polluted load. Its clarity lost in time’s passing and now with no Guru to dip into it.

What a complicated, jewelled, wondrous, heart-aching, sometimes compassionless place we share… our Durban. 

We are all beggars, each in his own way ~ Mark Twain 

And to quote my 90 year old mum…If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride!

The M.A.D. post

The M.A.D. Post  

(steampunk pics are acknowledged with links to original creators' sites, click on captions to go to the websites)

My brain has been a whirl of ideas and undone creations, and my memory is not serving me very well. I forget where I put things, and I forget what I came to the bedroom for, or why I’m standing with a newspaper and a knife in my hand. All this ‘mindly’ matter got me thinking about technology and the ‘thingamabobs’ that aid us in so many ways. A friend showed concern a while back about Facebook shutting its virtual doors on us in March, because what’s-his-name (what is his name?) was tired of it all and wanted a social life, A SOCIAL LIFE. Nah, I don’t think so. And tired of all that money rolling out, paving his socially inept path - don’t think so. Anyway, I feel safe in the fact that my relationship with FB is still ongoing. I first opened my FB account when my daughter went to Sweden, just so I could see her pics and catch up on her news, and then I started finding glorious people from my past. I don’t think virtual friendships are the ideal, nor do I need to know what friends had for supper (unless it’s truly exotic and there’s a pic) or that they’re going to feed the dog or are going to bed. I am not mad about being poked, but I do like being liked, and I love knowing about friends’ creations and dreams and travels and children, and when they’re feeling down so I can send the vibes. Without FB I wouldn’t be in touch with friends who have moved away, or those I last saw in childhood. Nor would my creative world have been opened up by the inspiration from friends who I have met through their artworks and who have become friends on FB; friends I can now say I know and love through being exposed to their inspirational work and family pics. I would not for one second swap ‘real’ relationships for the virtual kind, but social networking on FB serves me so well. I have tried to Twitter or Tweet, but I have not figured it out, so, because I don’t understand it at all, I shall leave it for the birds.

Hang on, I was talking about my memory, wasn’t I? Well, if they can walk on the moon… no, I take that back, not sure they really did…have you seen those dodgy landing photos?  If they can create all these technological miracles that can do just about everything for you, then how about a Memory Aiding Device? I would be the first in line for a Memory Aiding Device (M.A.D.). Imagine getting a brain tweek just as you’re about to put your sunglasses in the fridge, or a twinge as you stand looking vaguely at the grocery shop shelves without your list, and the twinge would stop as you get to the item you need. A M.A.D. is definitely where I’m at, and how difficult can it be to make this? If they can make iPads and iPods

my little eye pod

and docking stations and miraculous wonders named after brainless fruits (Blackberries and Apples…REALLY) then surely they can do this. Talking about fruity technology, is it meant to confuse the confused and embarrass the techno challenged oldies? Apple technology used to be about      how you put fizz into apple juice, now it is about strange and wondrous applications that enhance your life in fabulous ways. I can just imagine asking my 90 year old mum if she’d seen my Blackberry Torch. What would she think she was looking for? 

      my blackberry torch

It seems it might be a trend to name the latest techno gadgets/companies after fruit. There’s even a phone company named Orange, but I guess it could be the colour not the citrus. The whole idea is just utterly bananas as far as I’m concerned.

Talking of M.A.D. I could also do with a N.O.D. (Never Over-react Device). This device would distract you in an urgent manner when you needed to stop doing the “diva drama queen” routine. We all know how bodily functions stop us in our tracks…like…I need a wee NOW! Well this device could tweek your bladder just as your rant gets out of hand, you know, when you actually leave your body and see yourself letting rip at some poor, unsmiling shop-teller who has scanned your peanut butter three times by mistake. You float there above your ranting self and think “Gees, woman look at you, this is humiliating, stop already, you look too red, the manager is heading over.”  Well, if you were just given a prod from the N.O.D. you would leave the shopping items and head to the nearest toilets with your legs crossed, saving you from getting the teller fired, the manager apologizing and you from having a stroke. It would however mean, that to save face, you'd have to start your shopping all over again at another mall. If everyone had a N.O.D. then there would be no more road rage, but then I think the device would have to tweek something other than your bladder or there would be far more people than there are already, peeing against walls all over Durban. Perhaps it could just cramp up a leg muscle which would be released as soon as you step away from the victim’s vehicle and get back into your car and put down the full 2 litre Coke bottle you’re wielding.

Steampunked laptop

Now to me all these amazing 

high- tech inventions are just ‘thingamabobs’. The word thingamabob is a bit archaic I guess, and it brings to mind the mad professor inventing machines to take over the world, using clock cogs and brass pistons. I quite like the idea of thingamabobs - less sleek and more fantasy. There is actually an art form that does just this - makes thingamabobs and doodats. 

This type of artwork is called Steampunk. Steampunk is just about the coolest thing I’ve seen (ever) and I’m collecting old watches and rusty keys, washers, chains, eye glasses, magnifiers, stray hands, articulated joints and flying goggles for my inventions (any donations welcome…I’m serious). You may be wondering how this relates to the whole memory/ranting new device theme, bear with me. Steampunk refers to an art form that adds an antiquated Victorian aesthetic to modern technology. I love it, and if my memory device could be Steampunked, then I’d be overjoyed. 

If a computer can have a 
memory device why can't I?

Somehow the sleek look of the latest devices just adds to the stress levels of those trying to understand how to switch them on. By Steampunking them, more people might feel an affection for them, an excitement, as though you were about to embark on a wild adventure in a Zeppelin. By seeing little cogs and tiny brass screws they would be determined to understand the wonder of a device that would enhance their lives. No one would be able to bring themselves to throw a wondrous gadget that seemed to come from a story book against a wall in the frustration of sending yet another blank message to someone. 

blue tooth

The wonder of having the latest technology in a curious Victorian casing would definitely endear me to it. It seems man has always wanted to be transported back in time to fix the mess ups that have caused the chaos of living today. Having an item that looks like it was found in a Victorian attic would give that feeling of another time, when spinning cogs and wind-ups made sense.

I think what I’m really saying is that there are times when all the spinning chaos of such a fast paced life, has me needing to just simplify things. I have this desire to find a large glass shaft, stand in it, and ask to be beamed up, in the hope that there is a tray of brownies, iced tea and a swaying palm on the other side.

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Links to the steampunk devices pictured on this blog (have a look at all the inspiring stuff): 

http://www.toxel.com/tech/2009/07/12/12-steampunk-gadgets-and-designs/

http://www.tektuff.com/extraordinary-steampunk-computer-workshop/

PS: speaking of  'thingamabobs', please watch this video of The Real Group (I saw them live last week,wow). They are the most amazing acapella group from Sweden, and this song in particular sums up the confusion I feel when I'm faced with the never-ending, always evolving, technological whirlpool. 
It's a must-see, Steampunked sort of song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpyMQNFkgRc&feature=related

Tread carefully

(apologies for the poor quality of the pics. I took them on my cell phone, and it was made before cells had mega pixel cameras) 

Last week I was coming home from Westville on the concrete highway. I was in the fast lane next to a pantechnicon, when I heard an almighty bang kaplunk, slap slap, gonk, kapow, crack, crack, crack. It was coming from my car, not the truck, and I nearly had a seizure (the fact that I’m writing this blog means I survived). I didn’t know what to do, there was no garage, no houses or shops to pull over at. I wondered, should I stop here on the highway, risking being squashed by a truck or mugged by someone who might pretend to help (now don’t go thinking I’m being neurotic because I heard a story of a guy who had a flat tyre and stopped to change it, three friendly guys stopped to help him, then drove his car into a neighbouring country, leaving him on the roadside, without his phone, laptop and lunch) or do I risk being blown-up in my car by driving home? I decided, I’d take my chances driving home. So I crawled. There wasn’t any smoke or engine smell, so I just crept, kaplunking all the way and praying for green lights. I made it home and went to check the side the noise had come from- there were huge chunks of tread missing from the tyre. Don’t think that you’d never use a re-tread because they’re dangerous, because this was NOT a re-tread. The AA came and changed the tyre saying “re-treads can be dangerous”, then corrected himself by saying “Oh, this isn’t a re-tread” and “I’ve never seen this happen before”. Over the years many people attending to things that have gone wrong for me, have said those very same words (like the electrician who said it after I was almost electrocuted by touching the hot tap, but that’s another whole tale).

the desk where you pay for all four tyres

The morning after the de-treading, I got up earlier so there was time to gird my loins before going to the garage to have the tyre story sorted. Now I say girded because workshops and garages are very overwhelming for me. I think it has to do with those polystyrene cups at water machines, the grease, overalls and testosterone fumes. I sprayed extra perfume on my wrists thinking if it gets too gamey I can always snort them. So I get there early and there’s already a queue, then I realise, I do not have a book to read and if I decided to read the car mags on the table, I didn’t have my reading glasses. I cursed under my breath. One of the mechanics/tyre guys checked out the damaged tyre (told me it was just old and had started to split) and then advised me to change them all. I almost asked for a brown paper bag at that moment, but remembered the terror on the freeway and decided to get them all done (I don’t neglect my car and all tyres had the legal amount of tread on them, except for the offending one which did have lovely tread on the parts that still had tread). This salesman could feel my vulnerability and honed in like a jack-hammer, perhaps he had a whiff of my perfume and interpreted it as a sign of weakness.

Did she also forget her glasses?

So off to the waiting room I went. Now I have to be honest, this is not a bad looking garage if you’re a man. It is black and yellow and chromed with that rubbery floor stuff with small raised circles all over it. In the waiting room there is a water cooler, big screen TV, fairly comfy chairs and a carpet mottled black and brown- I think it was the way it was dyed not from grease and sand (clever colour choice). It is also air-conditioned.

I relax a bit, thinking, well, it’s cooler than my car and I’m comfortable, how bad can it be? There were about five others in the waiting room, they all had their reading glasses with them or they didn’t need them so were reading their newspapers. One woman was lap-topping, and another just gazed into the workshop area blankly (she obviously hadn’t prepared herself very well, because I could see she was trying to hold it together and her dazed look wouldn’t allow her to smile at me). So I sighed and relaxed into my chair (black artificial leather, also a good choice). There is rugby on the TV, but the sound is down thankfully. I wonder why they don’t put some wors rolls by the water cooler, or some biltong or even a couple of samoosas. I guess they don’t really want rugby fans loitering about getting all social after their cars are done. Hang on a minute, I see the ball is round. It is soccer on the TV, but I don’t know the rules of either very well, and can usually only tell the difference by the ball shape, yet I don’t see a reason to use a funny shaped ball to play rugby, a round one seems perfectly sensible to me.

The view

I glance over the road, train lines look grey in a grey world highlighted by an almost white hot sky, litter clings to a barbed wire fence. 

Rather than watching the cars slide past across my view and rather than watch the soccer, I decide to find my microscopic note book and jot down thoughts for my blog. My car is sitting without wheels in the distance and the queue for the alignment is getting longer, this will take a while. I’m comfortable and jotting ideas and smiling to myself. It is quiet except for the odd clang of a wheel spanner falling. These tyre guys wield those spanners like ninjas. One has his spanner in his belt making a cross over his bum, ready at any moment to swing it into action, a veritable Darth Vader in overalls.

I jot, and think, quite pleasant actually, and then……. someone comes in with a vacuum cleaner. A small vacuum that has lost all its brushes and nozzles, because it is quite obviously only used for vacuuming carpets in cars. It only has the pipe coming from the machine and, I kid you not, that guy knelt down (because the pipe was too short to stand) and he vacuumed the whole carpet (about 8 square metres of it) with the 2 inch end of that pipe. If I am not at the end of a vacuum cleaner pipe (and that’s not often, ‘cause I’m a failed housewife) then I can’t tolerate that noise. It is like swarms of things in my head, it drones and butchers my thoughts) so I stop jotting and speak to the vacuum man, who complains bitterly from his crawling position about not having a longer pipe or any brushes. I think to myself that there are some guys on the workshop floor who would be better suited to vacuuming with a short pipe, seeing their knuckles are almost touching the floor when they walk. Earlier I saw one of them rolling two tyres in tandem across the floor and then hoisting them up. Tyres in their rims are heavy and this has lengthened their arms somewhat. I resign myself to the fact that I will spend another hour waiting and trying to hum a tune to the drone. Finally, silence again, and the vacuum operator smiles at me as he leaves. I am too exhausted to jot or think, so I wait and almost doze but stop myself because I may snore and just become part of this testosterone hell.

Finally my car gets aligned and I’m told about the importance of rotating the tyres every 6 months. NO amount of imagination or clonking sounds created in my head allow me to see myself doing this again in 6 months time.

Back then the cars had a trap door that we could pull open with a chain to check our tire wear.  Tim Flock  

For any guys who may be interested in these trap doors here's an article...just looking at the website reminds me of my ordeal http://www.circletrack.com/featuredvehicles/ctrp_0711_fireball_grand_national/photo_13.html

(D)Urban Legends

It has taken a week to get to my blog. I’ve been mulling over what aspect of Durban to write about, and I remembered reading lists sent by email about things peculiar to South Africa. They made me laugh, and they rang true to the South African experience. I decided to make my own list typical of Durban but fairly ubiquitous throughout South Africa. Being in Durban means…..

•  If you’re catching a taxi to the Bluff and you hail it down by putting your index finger up, you will end up in the CBD.

• When you take a dip in the ocean (and you’re alone) you have to place your towel, shoes, keys and cell phone in a zip lock bag and tie it to your chest, ‘cause if you leave them on the beach, you’ll be without a towel to dry off on, no means of transport and no cell to call for help or money for the pay phone, and you will be walking home with burning feet!

• You can buy 4 chappies, a loaf of bread and some tik all at the same corner tearoom.

• You had to change the name of your restaurant from “Bistro on Cowey” to “Burgers on Problem Mhkize”.

• People can green up the neighbourhood by planting trees in the potholes on every street.

• Sink holes pop up even in the most affluent neighbourhoods, and people have nearly drowned in them (in their cars nogal)....not called sink holes for nothing.

• At robots, guys hand out fliers advertising the doctor who has cures for ailments that would make a warrior blush.

• Young ‘happening’ people drive their cars with the seat pushed right back, so they can lie down and steer with one arm that barely reaches the wheel, while they drink a Black Label.

• Real men marinade their steak in beer before throwing it on an open fire.

• You could get arrested for smoking within 5 metres of a restaurant but you can drive at 100 km per hour in a 60 km zone with your child standing (without a seat belt) on the front seat.

• Vuvuzelas may cause permanent hearing loss but they will only be banned if they are used as missiles at a match (this is a REAL FIFA rule, so do not throw your vuvuzela, you have been WARNED).
• Takkies dangling from an overhead power line are never just takkies dangling on an overhead power line.

• ‘Car guards’ who have never driven a vehicle get to show you how to reverse.

• The best bunnies in Durbs are not the fluffy kind.

• If you are one of three elephants made by Boetie (the international sculptor), then you can pretty much pack your trunks and waddle off penniless into the African sunset.

• “Walkie talkies” are not those little radios you lusted after as a child and “smilies” are not the little icon thingies you attach to your mail so your friends think you care. They are chicken feet and heads (walkie talkies) and are sheep heads “smilies”- you can buy them frozen or fresh on the side of the road).

• Music in said taxis rocks with the highest decibels that cause the lowest hearing in later life. Going deaf could be a greater problem that HIV.

• A “boom” used to be something you sat under for shade…now you can smoke it.

• On facebook, when you get poked it’s just silly fun, but in Durban you usually don’t live to tell the tale (Indian slang for stabbing.

• Eskom holds no power.

• You can have a “mother-in-law’s tongue” curry that will blow your socks off and singe parts of you for days on end.

• Seeing men peeing on walls is as common as seeing children under 10 begging in the traffic.

• Laughing at yourself with others is a genuine cure-all.
  

Durban is a place of contrasts, where spice and sweat and grime contrast with billowy days held together brightly by blue and white laced skies. Where people who have too much, flaunt their wealth, and those who have nothing, sleep in doorways. Where a warm ocean invites, and night streets threaten. Ja, this is my Durban, and sometimes it hurts like hell, and sometimes it’s just lukka. 

Hitting reverse gear

For those of you not familiar with car guards, they are the people who ‘look after’ our cars while they are parked outside businesses, in parking lots and at outdoor or sporting events. We need them because it was happening too often that when you thought you’d forgotten where you parked your car, it was actually on someone’s  shopping list in Mozambique and was already on its way to the border, while you stood laden with shopping, facing an empty parking spot.

Car guarding started off in an informal way, with entrepreneurs taking tips in exchange for looking after your car. It was a way for the unemployed to feed families or drinking habits. Now they have been rounded up by people who knew a money making opportunity when they saw it, and who had the education to go to shop owners and register their services and then employ people with less education to work in the lots. Each of these people now pay for their lumo vests, and a sum of money to the business owner before they can work at looking after cars. Each guard is assigned an area in the parking lot, and the newbies are assigned to the outer reaches where few people park because they don’t want to walk in the heat to get to the shops. These guards often don’t make enough money to pay for the fees to work the day.

colours of the car park

White people are really not suited to this job, because having no skin pigmentation means melanomas, and I have yet to see a guard using sunscreen, even though I always offer advice to them about it. White car guards look like people stitched into leather skins. Car guards may be locals or from other African countries. Sometimes you may be greeted by the beautiful French Congolese accent, Shona accents from Zim or Portuguese from Mozambique (hang on a moment, should we be trusting them to guard our cars when Mozambique is hauling several cars over the border as we speak?). Anyway, car guards are ubiquitous in South Africa, they are beacons on every street corner and in every parking lot, and they are part of our days and nights (if one is brave enough to park outside at night).

my local car guards... wonderful men from the DRC after a long day in the sun at ...................

 

 

I admire them and tip them (most times), and being unemployed myself, often think I may end up as one. If I did end up as one, I would know how to help people to reverse, and I would know which people to allow to reverse unaided. And in some cases, judging by the skills of some drivers, I would actually do the reversing for them. However, with all the compassion in the world, I do not want to be told how to reverse when the sweat is pouring down my face, and even though I said I was fine, the guard has just helped me pack shopping bags into the boot of my car, and the packet with the strawberries and eggs is now under the packet with 6 kgs of dog food (this only gets discovered only when I get home), I want to t get out of my car and say, ”Listen dude, I’ve been reversing for 30 years now, and although there are many things I need help with (directions, finances, making order of my life) reversing is not one of them. Move away from my car or my tyres will clamp your feet to the tarmac”.

Another thing is I don’t need help with is finding a parking when the lot is half empty. They swagger out in front of you and, as though conducting the orchestra through a Strauss waltz, show you where to park. I never park where they tell me to, it is my small rebellion. Sometimes I’ll be waiting for someone to leave a parking so I can take his spot. I wait for the car guard to show him how to get out of the spot, then, with a great sweep of his arm he shows me the parking space, as though I’d been daydreaming and he had discovered Antarctica. For fek’s sake, I have been waiting for 5 minutes while the car moved out of the spot. WHAT DID HE THINK I WAS DOING? Did he think I had stopped to watch his “how-to-reverse” skills?

back, back, back

flappy, shouting … “BACK, BACK, BACK”. Sometimes they even stand directly behind the car and start flapping you out, so the only way out is over them: it is tempting, really, really tempting.

Now, I believe most car guards need empathy and respect for doing what they do and for the reasons they do it. My heart goes out to those so far from home who cannot stay in their war torn countries. However, there are some who can turn a parking lot into a veritable circus arena. I have seen women guards having cat fights over tips or lanes (they are very territorial). I have encountered guards so drunk they see two of your car and allow one to be stolen. I have seen sober guards watch while a car is driven out the lot (and not by its owner). I have also seen two car guards show two parkers how to reverse into each other. I have had a guard see me waiting 10 minutes for someone to leave and then wave a new-comer into the spot- this has caused a form of parking lot rage that I am not altogether proud of. I know it is JUST a parking, but in Durban’s heat, when the lot is full it is not JUST A PARKING. Car guards also will not take to task those female 4x4 owners who only use their wheels for shopping or to take their children to school, or to do lunch. These vehicles are often sprayed with mud by some sharp business man advertising, “we will spray your off road vehicle, so the world thinks you’re an authentic, rugged adventurer”. The guards cannot stop these selfish painted gals from parking across two spaces so nobody bangs their cars. This makes me so mad, and I always tell the guards people shouldn’t park like that just because they are rich, and they always smile and nod and agree, but they are just humouring me. I wonder if double space parkers tip better.

Although I’d dearly love to reverse out of my parking unaided, I would miss these guards if they weren’t greeting and grabbing and waving and in my way in the parking lots. They are part of our country’s workforce, and certainly part of the Durban scene. They work in the blazing sun, or heavy rain, in parking areas all over South Africa, they add colour and frustration, and every one of them has a story to tell… if you’d only ask.

It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.
~ Muhammad Ali ~

P.s. What sort of person rushes off to the car park to take pics of guards who are very suspicious of their intentions, while everyone stares and wonders? What is becoming of me? Am I turning into a BLOGGER? gasp!

Monkey Daze

The vervet monkeys visited me today. A big bloke announced his arrival with a thud on the little overhang outside my bedroom window. This ‘overhang’ is not strong and barely holds the rain out of my bedroom, so one day I could have the troop in my bedroom, tumbling one after the other through a great hole. I sat on my bed and watched, and a teenager watched me, his small face full of summer. He twitched his eyebrows and bobbed when I moved. There was a mother with her baby clinging tightly to her stomach, his small arms embedded darkly in the maternal fur as though she carried a cheerful parasite. The light caught his perfect face shining through his big ears, ears he will grow into, transparent in the sunlight like two great pink cockles on his head. His mother knows him, he is her own and she protects him with all her being.

I hear the sounds of pellet guns, and I know a neighbour is trying to chase them off. So many monkeys have pellets in them and they die slow and painful deaths. These people feel they’re pests who are out to attack them and steal their bananas or bread rolls. Now make no mistake, these guys are opportunists of note, and if you leave your custard buns on the kitchen table and the door open, a hairy guy will definitely take them. Monkeys are not out to attack people unless they are threatened, and I would so prefer these intruders to those who could come in if a door was left open, and take so much more than just some fruit. If only these narrow-minded folk would see that we have displaced these animals; their habitats are shrinking and the alien plants enveloping our indigenous trees offer no food for monkeys. These people with pellet guns deserve to be banished to a barren sandy island where there is no wildlife to threaten them, not a single tree for shade or a monkey, and just sea water stretching out in front of them.

I did have a monkey in my kitchen once and he swiped my lunchtime buns. I tried to get them back, but he sat on the roof looking at me, exposing his bright blue genitals,  and then threw the plastic bag down at me. Speaking of blue genitals, to the artist’s eye, they are the most marvellous blue, and the girls in the troop sure love a good set of them. You know sometimes you see a woman (often an academic) wearing blue eye- shadow right up to her eyebrows, like Twiggy did and like Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe from the 60’s, well to me, those are monkey ball eyes. They are the same blue and have the same startling affect when they flash at you. Of course the monkey ones are far more attractive.

When I attended writing groups many years ago, the woman whose home we wrote in, had her doors open to monkeys when she was at home. I remember one day watching them walk in, one behind the other, and then sit in a line on the banister of the sitting room stairs to watch us. I have to admit, my suburban roots did throw up some fear, which soon dissipated as they swaggered past, out into the garden through the sliding glass doors. A friend writing in the garden had her pink-lensed sunglasses (this was the 80’s, pink was in) taken from the table, and the culprit sat in the tree above her head taking some suspicious bites at them and then smelt them and put them close to her eyes and peered through them, not liking the way the world looked though the rose tinted glass. She then threw them into the leaves below. They survived to lessen the glare for my friend for quite a while after the incident and I think she quite liked telling people that those were monkey bites decorating the frame. If you're going to wear rose tinted glasses they might as well have the scars of a little wildness.

We watched each other

Later the troop moved to my bottom garden and some of the youngsters rolled and sprung and tumbled from branches, until the bull male ‘chuck chucked’ at them. They were there for the afternoon, much to the dogs’ dismay.

I remember seeing a vervet’s hands up close once, and feeling a soft but bony finger. They have perfect, dark hands with tinyt palms, and each small finger has a tiny print on it, like a human’s, but finer,  just a tiny sketch upon a finger pad. I wonder if that empty man with his gun would respond if he saw those hands so like his own, holding the flowers and fruit they find in my trees, would he still be so set on removing them from his world. Would it change his attitude or will he be happy to tell his grandchildren, that we once had monkeys, wild, in our gardens? I hope their words of, “Gee, Grandpa, that must have been so cool,” ring out in his vacant head for all eternity.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.  ~William Shakespeare