Recently in Africa Category
Nkosi, sikeleli Afrika., or in Shona, Ishe Komborera Afrika.
Concerts
On Wednesday I'm going to see R.E.M. I had Radiohead tickets because R.E.M was sold out, but thanks to marktplaats and some good luck I swapped! Funny thing, the guy that phoned me to swap had such a young voice that I thought he was a teenager. I was really expecting the door to be opened by someone's mum, but no, it was a middle-aged man. It goes with the article I read recently about how the only people who can afford to go to concerts are the middle-aged. Ehm. That says a lot about me I know.
On Saturday I checked my email early enough and got tickets for Amy McDonald (I missed her last time she was in Amsterdam) and also for Jason Mraz. A few weeks ago I got tickets for Paul Weller. So that's four! I love living in the Netherlands, it's a musical playground.
Personal Manifestos
I read on a motivational website the other day about making your own personal manifesto. Despite sounding all Chairman Mao, a personal manifesto seems like a really good idea. What are you really after? What do you want? What are your primary goals in life?
The idea is to define your goals in one sentence which you can repeat to yourself as a kind of mantra or a reminder of why you're doing thing you're doing when it's bogging you down. Or maybe just to define to yourself what you really want. If you ask most people what their goals are, they'll have some longwinded explanation (after looking away embarrassedly) about what they think they want. The key is taking that longwinded explanation, trimming all the bullshit away and leaving just the core. I'm still working on my manifesto, but I'd love to know if any of you have one.
Being good-enough
I'm struggling with the concept of not being a 'perfect' mom anymore. My kids are in daycare for 102 hours a month now. It's 102 hours that they used to be with me, albeit while we were at football, the gym, tennis lessons, at home. I doubt if much of the 102 hours was actual one on one time with me, but still, I was there. Now I'm not there at all during those 102 hours and I'm not there during the time they're asleep at night.
Perhaps it's time to revisit the concepts of Donald Winnicott's Good-Enough Mother. When I was in psychotherapy back in the mid-90s and agonising about being a 'bad parent' my psychiatrist presented me with Winnicott's work (The Child, The Family and the Outside World) as well as Alice Miller's Drama of Being a Child. I read through them and although I was able to analyse and rationalise the contents to myself I was never able to apply the concepts to my own life. Perhaps now that I'm older I'll be able to apply those concepts more effectively.
This ties in a bit to some of the things that my post on The Reader made me think about. The futility of making choices for other people and the inability I have to let go and allow those choices to happen. There's nothing harder sometimes than standing back and letting things take their course.
White and African
Still reading Blood River and I'm about half way through now. The immense grief I felt for Africa at the beginning of the book has abated a little, but I find that some passages really shriek at me. Like the one I read about how the Congo massacres in the 1960s run a black vein of fear through every white African, because we've heard about it from when we were little and it pulls on the 'them and us' divide that is instilled in us from birth.
When I was about 9 or 10 our white neighbours were held at gun point by black rebels in their house. The man was raped and tortured to death while the wife and their three kids cowered in a bathroom which was inaccesible from outside. They heard him screaming all night until he finally died at about 5 am. In the morning the party-line telephone rang and the news filtered slowly from farm to farm until finally it got to us. The first thing my mom said, standing in the passage in her candlewick dressing gown, tears streaming down her face, was 'my god, it's getting to be like the Congo here'.
Tim Butcher is quite astute in his observations about white Africans sometimes.
I just started reading Tim Butcher's Blood River, based in the ruins of the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire and formerly the Belgian Congo.
It depressed me. Especially when I read this article this morning.
I talked to B yesterday about taking the boys home to South Africa for Christmas this year and the conversation turned, as it does, to the stability of Africa. He says South Africa is like Zimbabwe was 12 years ago when we left. I don't know, I can't really tell. He mentioned rolling blackouts of electricity, which only started in Zimbabwe in 1997 or so I think, but which are common in South Africa now. Hearteningly, wikipedia has no entries for human rights abuses under the South Africa entry.
I try not to follow African news at all. Sokwanele is the only media I read about Zimbabwe and M reads the BBC and tells me what has been happening in Zimbabwe. He is always surprised that my attitude to the news of atrocities, shootings, mutilation and murder is indifferent at best and blase at worst. It's not that I don't care, it's that I have African apathy. No optimism = no disappointment.
My mom, on the phone last week, told me that she thinks that if South Africa cuts power to Zimbabwe something 'might happen'. I heard this irrational hopeful tone in her voice and my heart sank. How, after 28 years of watching Zimbabwe stumble, falter and fail can she have any kind of optimism at all?
People ask me all the time, 'why don't your parents come and live here?' as though removing one's parents from their home country, the country of which you are a third generation citizen, is that easy.
On that note, my citizenship exam for the Netherlands will be on 11 July. Shortly after that I'll bury my past and say goodbye to my heritage, while I embrace orange culture and a world removed from steamy Africa.
'And all of these moments just might find their way into my dreams tonight' - Jack Johnson, Better Together
Today if I look up I see blue sky. If I ignore the buildings and look at the sky, with its pillowy clouds I can imagine I'm in Africa. If I replace the brown of the buildings and the tall poplars with the mauve of the hills and msasa trees, I could be at home.
If I close my eyes I can smell the rain hitting dusty earth, rippling its sweet scent through my body. Sudden raindrops falling while the sun still shines. Thunderclouds towering into the sky and the desire to offer myself naked to the rain.
I can see the dust of winter, and the
cold clear mornings. The blue sky stretching endlessly above and the
ground covered with a thin layer of crackling frost. The sunlight,
warming the earth as the day grows, the earth abruptly turning cold as
the sun sets.
The smells of maize meal cooking over an open fire, air thick with smoke, the scents
of animals and people intermingled. The smell of dust and shit and life.
When I open them I can see blue sky again.
Turn up your sound, I had trouble balancing it.'It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you' - Toto, Africa (also immortalised by SAB in a Castle beer advertisement)
I listen and I think of my childhood.
'I could have been someone. Well so could anyone. You took my dreams from me, when I first found you' - The Pogues & Kirsty McColl, Fairytale of New York
Mom on the couch, cigarette in one hand, knees curled up under her, skirt moving higher and higher as the drink kicks in. Dad in his chair, newspaper on his lap making us keep quiet while the news is on. Simmering tension in the room as they wrestle with their choices.
The Christmas cards are all stuck up on the wall. Holly, snow, robins, mistletoe. I've never seen mistletoe before and I wonder if it's magic. If you kiss under the mistletoe will you find true love? My teenage self, desperately romantic, hopes so.
Christmas is high drama. Twenty or more assorted family members and no-one knows if mom will get drunk.
Not just drunk, incapable drunk.
Not just tipsy, but helpless, mascara streaked tears and beautiful blue eyes full of pain.
Until then we'll sit under the bauhinia tree on lawn chairs and dig at each other. Gran will tight-lippedly do the dishes on the back verandah at around four when she disapproves of the conversation.
Dad will complain about the weather.
Uncle T will tell tasteless jokes to mom in the pantry and try to get her to drop her pants when she's at the cusp of had enough and had too much. My cousins will tease me mercilessly.
The Christmas lights will twinkle in the bright sunlight. We'll all drink tea and eat cake.
We have so much to be thankful for. Let's count our blessings.
Thank god for the servants, even though they have the day off. Thank god for Gran whose making three different kinds of cake and all the desserts. Thank god that Uncle T will be bringing his booze and then taking it all home again. Thank fucking Christ that we'll be playing happy families and pretending we all love each other while the sun beats through the humid air.
And silently we wonder when we'll see a better time? When will all our dreams come true?
The memories bitter, yet so familiar, knife-sharp and clear and I miss it.
I want it back, even with all the anguish. I miss my Mama, but she's 2000 miles away.
So happy Christmas, I love you.
They're only little tears, darling, let them spill
And lay your head upon my shoulder
Outside my window the world has gone to war
Are you the one that Ive been waiting for?
- Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Are you the one that I've been waiting for.
The tennis ball flips lazily from one side of the court to the other. Tanned, smooth, effortlessly hairless, teenage legs chase the ball.
Backhand, forehand, volley.
White socks with bobbles above white-washed plimsolls, painted every weekend to keep them white.
Green skirts short, slips of white bikini showing when they dip to hit the ball. White t-shirts pulled tight across suddenly full breasts.
The tennis teacher, Flash, he's called, leaning back characteristically on his heels and surveying the sea of hormones in front of him.
The best player is blond and cheeky. Her C-cup passes her in Maths and advances her in tennis. She has curls, good teeth, and an impish face. Even at 14 she knows how to stand close to the teacher, how to show the most flesh when she swings for the ball.
The ball slams, hits the faded clay, catches in the ancient net. The racquets squeak. Shoes thump.
The sun shines on and trickles of sweat run down the back of the tanned knees.
Circles of sweat start to form in the armpits of the clean white shirts. Beads form on noses. The ball slams.
Mid-afternoon and tennis ends, just as cricket starts.
The few boys, favourites of the tennis teacher, lift themselves from the shade of the hut, where they've been watching the play. Punching each other, horsing around, they pretend not to care.
Lanky and loping, they leave to chase different balls on a different field.
If I don't break a sweat, it ain't as good as it gets. - Beth Hart, As Good As It Gets
The veranda. Wide and low.
Soft darkness in contrast to the glaring October light.
Green gauze over the window apertures to keep out the flies. Whitewashed walls, paint flaking if you rub against it.
Inside, cool oxblood floors, polished to a high shine by the Boy and his polisher. Whirring and whining every morning at 7o'clock.
The electric fan on top of the gramophone, limply distributing the air. The heat pulling the life out of you.
Dad fiddling with the radio to get a station through the static. Eventually giving up and settling for torpid silence.
Ochre plastic leather covered chairs sticking to the backs of your
legs where your skirt rides up. A sucking sound when you shift in your
seat. You want to fling your legs apart and hook them over the sides of the chair, but that's impolite so you keep them together and squirm in your chair.
You really want to lie down on the cool floor like the dogs, who pant and salivate in the heat.
Kleintje the fox terrier lies on her side, panting, chest heaving, in an effort to cool down.
Tea in a metal teapot. The green knitted tea cosy made by one of the aunts pointlessly covering the teapot. All delivered by the Boy on a tray with four cups, sugar basin, hot water, teaspoons.
'Bloody Boy forgot the milk again. Can you tell him to bring it?'
'Ephraaaaim, milk!'
The conversation drags on about crops, rain, mielies, Boys and their wives, incest, polygamy, the goat herder and his penchant for fucking the goats. Having to call the vet for the goats and why can't he just be normal and keep it in his trousers.
'Jeepers, did you see that Juliet's husband beat her again. These people. Drink and fight. You can't do anything with them. It's not surprising they can't govern themselves.'
A sigh, and then the subject changes.
'Mmm. Do you want another cup of tea?'
