A Close Shave

At the immigration desk, the official flips the pages of my passport backwards and forwards, backwards and forewards. Eventually he looks up. “Where is your visa?” he asks.

“I don’t need one,” I answer confidently. The international organisation on whose behalf I am travelling had submitted the passports of everyone in our small group to the Chadian Embassy in South Africa. Mine had been returned with a small, yellow post-it note that said ‘Doesn’t need visa’.

The border official obviously sees things differently. “If I travelled to Germany, do you think I wouldn’t need a visa?” he asks sarcastically. Since this was a rethorical question, he doesn’t expect an answer. “Come with me,” he demands gruffly and starts walking off with my passport.

“But I was told I don’t need a visa,” I call after him helplessly but have no choice than to follow  him. It’s 1:30 in the morning, and Chad’s capital N’dajema is still hot and humid. After a 14-hour trip from Cape Town, I am exhausted and just want to get this over with.

The international org’s communications manager S., who stands in line behind me, quickly walks after us. The border official brings us to a small room at the side of the immigration area. “We have a problem here,” he announces to his colleagues. “No visa.” He hands over my passport and disappears.

Now its his colleague’s turn to page through it. “Monsieur, s’il vous plait, there has been a misunderstanding,” I try to explain the missing visa. Can’t I please purchase one now, I ask, like one can upon arrival in most African countries. There is some humming and hawing, followed by a lively deliberation with his colleauges in a language I can’t understand. Eventually, he announces the reached verdict: No, a visa can’t be bought.

“You have to leave Chad on the next plane. And they are boarding now,” he says, referring to the plane we just arrived in and which is about to return to Addis Ababa. “But Monsieur,” I plead. “Please don’t do this. Please give us just a few more minutes.”

In the meantime, S. has been trying to get hold of her local office to have them bring the official invitation letter to the airport that will explain our mission. We are also trying to reach the German ambassador. But it’s difficult to get hold of people in the middle of the night.

Our pleas for “juste une minute” are at first met with stiff heads shaking ‘no’. After that, we are plainly ignored. One thing becomes pretty clear: this is not negotiable. Then, a policeman enters the room and the customs official points towards me. I look helplessly at S. “You! Come,” he says. “You have to board the plane. Now.”

His announcement propells us to renew our pleas even more vigorously. “Please Monsieur. Just give us a few minutes. They are on their way with the documents. They will get here anytime.” But to no avail. The policeman snatches at my passport. “Where is your luggage?” he demands. I pull up my shoulders in a gesture of ‘no idea’ to win time. I am running out of options.

The policman leaves but is back a couple of minutes later, my luggage in tow. He is holding on to my passport, making sure it’s out of my reach. “You come with me now. You have to board the plane. Right now”, he barks. Refusing to budge, I plead once again: “Please, just one more minute. They are on their way. I promise.”

Eventually he loses his patience. “Come,” he snaps and grabs me roughly by the arm. My passport and luggage in his one hand, my arm in his other, he starts dragging me out of the office, across the arrivals hall and towards the check-in area. While he gets me a boarding pass, he doesn’t take his eyes off me for a second. Then, he shoves me through the security check and I find myself at the departure gate – just an hour after I landed. “Oh Kristin…,” is all S. manages to say as she sees me walking off.

As I walk across the tarmac, I swallow hard, feeling utterly defeated and my suitcase seeming unnaturally heavy. As I approach the plane, I see a black limousine parked by the side of the plane. A stately, grey-haired man in a black suit climbs the stairs. I realise that the plane is about to take off and board after him with a heavy heart.

The flight attendants are visibly surprised. “Weren’t you just on the plane?” one of them says to me. “Don’t even ask,” I mumble, forcing a smile. I am suddenly very tired. I walk down the aisle, looking for seat 14C.

As I am about to lift my bag into the overhead locker, a uniformed guy boards the plane, gesturing to me. It takes me a few seconds to register what he wants. With a nod, he takes my bag, turns and walks back out of the plane. Unsure of what’s going on, I follow him. Back on the tarmac, he turns to me and smiles. “You were lucky,” he says.

We walk back into the airport building, back to the small office out of which I was pulled forcefully just 15 minutes ago. “We thought that if we sent you back to Addis Ababa, you won’t have money to buy food,” one of the custom officials tells me by way of explanation, with a straight face. “Yes, you’re right,” I confirm. Better make no mistake now. He asks me to follow him, almost politely this time, and we retrace our steps through the airport until I am reunited with my group.

“Thank you,” I tell the official out of obligation. He nods, awkwardly, avoiding my eyes. And walks away.

Writing rights and wrongs

We are out ‘in the field’. That’s what journalists call it when they manage to peel themselves off their office chairs. Away from the safety of their computer screens. Out of their comfort zones.

There has been a flood in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. In a convoy of three 4 x 4′s we drive, true international observer style, around the outskirts of Maun, a town in the country’s north that has become the launching pad for tourists visiting the delta. Usually dry and dusty, the flood has turned Maun into a green oasis through which the Okavango flows. That’s good for tourism. Very good. Lodges that for the past 30 years lay alongside a dry riverbed – often used as a cricket field – are now launching sunset boat tours from their verandas.

But the flood also has a serious downside. Poor people’s homes, often built either in the dried out riverbed have been flooded, and many have been damaged beyond repair.

We are a group of journalists from all over southern Africa. Three local journalists from Maun have joined us as well. One of them proudly works for a tabloid called the Voice. She is dead keen to take the lead of the tour, boasting about her in-depth knowledge of the area. She also speaks the local language. She has a good point, so we all agree.

Thandi is delighted to be the centre of attention. She talks loudly and non-stop as we drive through areas affected by the flooding. When we cross a bridge, we see a group of children swimming in a shallow spot of the river, obviously enjoying the unusual respite from the unforgiving afternoon heat. We stop the cars, get out and are immediately surrounded by a group of laughing, excited kids.

Thandi starts chatting to them and soon finds out that the family of two of the boys has been displaced by the flood. They now live in a shaky tent on a relative’s plot after having lost most of their few belongings. When the boys are promised ride in the back of the 4×4, they eagerly agree to come along to show us the site of destruction.

Off we go, driving along narrow, sandy roads into a nearby village. The cars come to a halt at an abandoned cluster of houses. We walk around, inspecting the water damage, taking photos, with he children leading us. Five minutes later, we are on the road again, driving towards the tent where the family is housed, just a few hundred metres further on.

When we get there, we are welcomed icily. The head of the family, a woman in her late 30s, who is the grandmother, addresses us in a harsh tone in Setswana and turns her back. An incredibly rude gesture in an African context. Her daughter, who is in her early 20s or late teens, sits nearby, comforting a crying infant in her arms. She avoids eye contact and mainly stares onto her dusty feet in worn-out plastic sandals. A third woman gestures angrily into the direction we came from, grabs her child, a small boy of about four, and briskly walks off.

We look at each other in astonishment, slightly embarrassed, while Thandi launches into a heated conversation with the grandmother. The debate goes back and forth for a while, until Thandi turns towards us to inform our group in English about what’s going on. The family is upset, it turns out, because we visited their damaged home without permission. They saw our group walking in between the houses from their yard. Even though it was their children who showed us around, we should have followed protocol and sought permission from the head of the family.

Big mistake. My trust in Thandi starts to crumble. But there is more to their reluctance to talk to us. The family is also angry because delegations from the local council have been visiting them to hear their story and take pictures… and nothing happened thereafter. Nobody did anything to help. The many promises made turning out to be lip service. Even though we don’t understand the words spoken, it becomes very clear that they are not willing to give another interview. When they see us holding cameras and recorders, they point and say ‘no’.

But Thandi is far from giving up. Her true light as a tabloid reporter shining through. Animatedly, she continues talking to the grandmother and her daughter. Once can tell from her tone of voice and her gestures that Thandi is trying her best to persuade them to be interviewed. She insists, she urges, she hugs the grandmother and, at some point, falls onto her knees, hands in prayer, pleading.

Consternation spreads through our little group. We don’t know exactly what is going on, and Thandi is so busy with her tactics, she hardly fills us in. The conversation goes on and on. I am no longer sure I am interpreting the situation correctly. Have they changed their minds? Is she interviewing them? What’s going on? When I look around, I see similar question marks on my colleagues’ faces.

Eventually, Thandi turns around to translate. They family doesn’t want to be interviewed, she says, and the main reason for their anger is that the young woman’s newborn contracted pneumonia due to the flood and died a few weeks ago. To them, we represent just another form of authority. The lines between the media and government agencies blurry.

After 20 minutes of palaver, we eventually manage to prise Thandi away from the family. We thank the for their time, climb into the cars and make our way back to the hotel. As we drive off, Thandi proudly announces she got the story. The women eventually told her had happened to them, she argues – the destruction of their house, loss of livelihood and the death of the baby. She is convinced she has the right to publish the story, in the interest of making the family’s plight known in the country.

I sense my jaw drop. From a perspective of journalistic ethics, the case is clear: the women refused the interview and it is their right to do so. At no point during the conversation did the women say yes to an interview. No notes were taken. The conversation was clearly off the record.

The fact that Thandi plans to violate these people’s rights to be interviewed with the justification of raising awareness of a different violation of their rights flabbergasts me. Thandi is completely oblivious to this fact. A heated debate ensures in the car, during which Thandi declares it has her ‘role as an advocate and journalist’ to give a voice to the poor. By what means she achieves this doesn’t seem to matter too much.

It takes us over an hour to finally convince her that it would be unethical to run the story in her newspaper, if one can call a tabloid that. She agrees that she will have to find another family, with a similar plight, if she wants to show how the poor have been affected disproportionally by the flooding. With a bit of asking around, it shouldn’t be too hard to find people who would like to be interviewed and have their story published.

When we depart from Botswana a couple of days later, I leave with an uncomfortable niggle in my stomach. Did we mange to truly convince Thandi about the need for an ethical approach to this story? Or will she pitch the story to her editor as soon as we have turned our backs? All I can do is hope for the former.

The (House) Gun

There is nothing on TV that really interests me, but I leave it on anyway. I am sitting on the couch, reading a book, looking up only every now and then to see the images flicker across the screen. I hear the front gate click. Shortly thereafter, my housemate F walks in, arms stretched long by four heavy shopping bags. With an exhausted hello she proceeds straight to the kitchen to rid herself of the heavy load. “How was your day?” I shout across rooms. “Ok and yours?” she shouts back. Before I can reply, our conversation is interrupted by a noise in the back of the house. Something fell and landed with a heavy thud on the floor.

We are both alerted because we are the only people in the house – or so we think. I get up to check what’s going on, but before I reach the corridor, a figure comes sprinting past me. A teenager with a plastic bag in his hand. “Hey!” I shout, half confused, half angry. “What do you think you are you doing?” Before I fully grasp what is going on, the teenager has climbed over the wall of our property and is gone. F, who has joined me by now in the corridor, looks at me with a big question mark.

But there is no time to explain. My brain runs at full speed. The plastic bag, I think. Our stuff is in the bag. My body, frozen in shock a minute ago, springs into action. I run out onto the street to see if I can find him. I don’t have to go far. There he still is, walking leisurely down the road, pretending nothing has every happened, that he is just an ordinary resident on his way from A to B.

When he realises that I am coming after him, his eyes open wide. He is immobilised for a second, doesn’t quite trust his eyes. And then he starts to run. I am close on his heels, a mere 30 metres between us, but he is tall and his long legs carry him quickly down the sloping street, towards the intersection. The distance between us grows steadily. My lungs start hurting as I try to increase my pace. If I don’t catch up with him soon, he will be gone.

Just as I am about to give up, a man walks into view. He could be in his mid-40s and the way he is dressed – beige pants, black leather shoes, dark blue anorak – looks like he on his way home from work. “Catch him! Catch him!” I shout breathlessly, pointing towards the teenager who has just crossed the intersection and is now running up the hill on the other side.

The man looks up in astonishment, but it doesn’t take him long to make sense of the situation. He unzips his anorak, reaches with his right hand into his left inner pocket… and pulls out a small, silver revolver. He briefly waves it at me with a big smile, then takes up pursuit of the teenager.

But neither of us is a match for the young guy who, sensing the hot chase, quickly cuts into a small alleyway on the right, hoping he will lose us. Seconds later, the man has reached the entrance of the alley, with me tailing a good 20 metres behind. He positions himself and takes aim. Bang! Bang! He fires one shot, then another. I come to a standstill. Stunned, I bend forward, resting hands on knees, trying to regain my breath.

In the meantime, F has jumped into her car and sped down the road. Her white Corsa comes to a screeching halt next to me. Not having followed the events develop, all she sees is a man wielding a gun. To her mind, he is the teenager’s accomplice, shooting at me. In full panic, she throws open the passenger door, leans across, grabs my arm and pulls me into the car. She reverses as fast as she can to the intersection, before I can even utter a word.

A small crowd has gathered alongside the street, attracted by the shouting and the gunshots. But most neighbours prefer to watch the scene from the safety of their verandas or peep out behind half-closed curtains. Somebody says they called the police. We wait a good 30 minutes, but they never come. Bored, people start to walk back into their houses. The man has long walked off, with a brief nod but without explaining himself.

“You were crazy running after that guy. What would you have done had you caught him?” F asks as we walk back into our house, referring to the fact that, at 1.60 meters and 50kg, I would have never been able to overpower a well-built teenager. I look at her blankly. “I don’t know,” I say eventually. “Never thought about it.”

Shades of Grey

The plane hits the tarmac with a brief thud. I have landed in South Africa, for the first time. As I exit through the sliding doors of the baggage claim area, an elderly woman is waving at me. She works with Amnesty International, one of the organisations I have come to volunteer for, and she has kindly offered to host me for the first couple of weeks of my stay, until I find a place of my own.

She is talkative. On the way from the airport to C.’s home, I am told a variety of colourful and impressive stories about her life. I presume they are meant to give me a) an introduction to my host and b) an insight into the recent political history of the country. C. is not shy to talk about her achievements as a liberal white in the anti-apartheid struggle. And she has every reason not to be. She was a member of the Black Sash and had many black friends, who she didn’t hesitate to drop off in townships after curfew, when demonstrations ran late, even though her husband thought it too dangerous. To defy segregation and unfair apartheid laws, she also went swimming with black friends on a whites-only beach, risking arrest. According to her husband J., the apartheid regime soon took such a strong interest in C.’s political activities that its spies rented the house opposite their home to be able to watch her every step.

As we pull into the driveway of their simple face-brick single storey in an upper middleclass neighbourhood, I am made aware that C.’s house is the only one in the area that is not surrounded by a fence. One can walk straight up to the front door. C. and her husband make a point not to be one of those post-apartheid whites who lock themselves in … and others out.

Needless to say, I am impressed and feel blessed to have found a host with such an impressive life story. These first weeks as C.’s guest will be an incredible opportunity to get to know South African life from a critical, politically aware point of view, I think to myself.

C. shows me to my room and after I have dropped off my luggage gives me a quick tour of the house so that I can make myself comfortable. Room by room, she explains where I can find what and about the daily routines of her household. I quickly gather that C.’s life is organised down to the tee, according to a well thought out system and schedule. And I am expected to quickly catch on so that I can make sure to fit in. From 12h00 to 13h00 every day, for example, is J.’s “sacrosanct hour”, I am told, and during this time, no-one is allowed to speak to him. Not the domestic worker, not me, the guest, and not even his wife. It begins to dawn on me that this stay will be an interesting one from more than just a political perspective.

We proceed to the kitchen, where I am shown how to find my way around. C. explains based on what system the fridge and the scullery are stocked. She also shows me where to find glasses, plates, cutlery and so on. Then, she opens the cupboard underneath the sink. Next to neatly stacked cleaning paraphernalia is placed a lonely, chipped set consisting of a plate, a mug, a fork and a teaspoon.  The teaspoon is important because ‘they’ like to drink their tea with lots of sugar. C. is speaking about her domestic worker, who, she explains, does not eat from the same crockery and cutlery than the rest of us. I am a little shocked but say nothing, only too aware of my role as a guest, who has come from another continent, who knows nothing about how life is lived in the New South Africa and who better be grateful for the generous hospitality offered. How dare I question or criticise?

I go to my room and lie down on the bed to rest from the long flight. My first impressions and experiences of this country so different from anything I know float through my head until I fall into a deep, exhausted sleep.

I am awoken two hours later by a gentle knock on the door. “Dinner is ready,” says C., popping her head into the room. When I walk into the dining room, I am introduced to J., an elderly gentleman with refined features and a welcoming smile. A black woman is carrying bowls of food from the kitchen and places them onto the elegantly laid-out dining table. I am briefly introduced to S., the domestic worker. Then, we sit down to eat, while S. retreats to the kitchen. I imagine her sitting all by herself on a wooden chair with her chipped plate on her lap.

After we have dished up, J. notices that salt and pepper are missing. He opens a little drawer next to his place at the table and takes out a silver bell. Ding, ding, ding it goes and a few seconds later, S. emerges from the kitchen to inquire what is needed. Apologetically she scurries back into the kitchen, to re-enter the dining room with a set of salt and pepper shakers. For the second time in the day I am flabbergasted. For the second time, I don’t say anything. Is this really the house of the liberal anti-apartheid activist who risked arrest by protesting discriminatory apartheid law?

The next morning, I am awoken by the warm rays of the sun that shine through my bedroom window. Even though it is winter in South Africa, it is nice and warm. T-shirt weather. When I step out onto the veranda to breathe in the fresh morning air, I come upon J. who is reading the newspaper in a wicker chair in the shade. We get to talk about this and that, the news of the day, the quality of South African newspapers and how I am planning to spend my time in this country. “If you truly want to understand this country and its people, you should learn isiZulu,” J. suggests. That’s a good idea, I nod. J. gets up to search for an English-Zulu phrasebook he would like to lend me. Five minutes later, he is back, holding a thin book in his hand. “Here you go,” he says as he hands it to me.

I only get to sit down for my first isiZulu ‘lesson’ in the evening, after a day of taking in the sights of the city and familiarising myself with my new surroundings. I open the cover page of the book and see that it is divided into several chapters around the home: the kitchen, the garden, the garage and so on. I turn to the first chapter: the garden. “Fetch the watering can” the first sentence reads. “Don’t dig here” the next follows. “Clean your boots” reads the next one. I can see where this going. It suddenly dawns on me that what I am reading is not a Zulu phrasebook to understand a culture and a people but rather a tool for a white baas to give orders to his staff.

With a sigh, I close the book, realising how many shades of grey there are between black and white.

Picture Me

The sun is about to set as I stroll down the dirt road towards the beach, small stones making a crunching noise as they grate under my tennis shoes. Camera slung around my shoulder, my thoughts are projected towards what I might find on the beach worth making pictures of. Lost in thought, I pass two men sitting on the side of the road, their workman’s clothes soiled from a long day’s labour. They must belong to the adjacent building site, waiting to be picked up and taken home. “Excuse me, Miss,” the taller one calls after me. I turn around, with a question mark in my look. There is a little pause, as if, momentarily, he lost the courage to go on. “Could you take a photo of me?” he asks eventually. “I would very much appreciate it. I only have two photos of myself and I would very much like to have one from here, in Pringle Bay. I can write down my address and you can send it to me.”

I hesitate. The man seems to be in his early thirties but looks quite rough. He has stood up and walked a few steps towards me to explain his request. His younger companion is still seated on the grassy curb. He looks at the ground in front of him, chuckling to himself. Is this a plot to steal my camera? But I can’t pick up on any bad vibes. I think about how common it is for working class South Africans not to have any photographs of themselves. And how, for a middleclass citizen like myself, it is pretty much a given to have my life documented in pictures. From the day of my birth, year on year, on every birthday, Christmas, holiday, family reunion and other special and not so special occasions. It’s amazing how many thoughts can cross one’s mind in a split-second.

I decide to interpret the other man’s chuckle as a harmless expression of embarrassment at his friend’s bold request. “Do you have pen and paper?” I ask. He looks searchingly around him, pads down his pant pockets and then nods his head towards the building site. “I can get a pen from there,” he says and runs off. A minute later, he is back, with a pencil and a small scrap of cardboard. Leonardo Abrahams, he writes on it in a schoolboy’s scribble. “I have a fancy name,” he tells me. The irony has not escaped him. Underneath he writes Nesertia Rd at No. 70, Kleinmond. “I also need your postal code,” I prompt. Leonardo hesitates. “What’s the postal code of Kleinmond?” he shouts to his colleague. 7193.

Now that that’s out of the way, Leonardo positions himself in front of a large hedge of fynbos. He knows exactly how he wants his photo to be taken. “Only up to here,” he instructs me, drawing an imaginary line with his hand across his chest. He wants a close up head-and shoulders shot. I position myself and lift the camera. Leonardo looks straight at me, proud, without a smile, his lips apart and his head slightly tilted to one side. I can detect a faint scepticism, as if he doesn’t quite trust the process of photography. As I look at him through the viewfinder, I notice how closely his dark hair is cropped to his head and his uneven, pockmarked skin, partially concealed by two-day stubble. A half-moon-shaped scar decorates the cheek underneath one of his eyes, which have turned into small slits as he blinks into the low late afternoon winter sun. He is not the most reassuring figure.

“Can I see?” he asks when I am done. I call the images onto the screen on the back of my camera and turn it towards him. He briefly studies the photos and nods. He is happy with the result. “If you send me the pictures, I will do work on your house. For free,” he offers. He is good at lots of stuff, he assures me. Painting, building, tiling, fixing things. He doesn’t seem to realise that what he proposes is a deal much to his disadvantage. That’s how much a single photograph is worth to him. “Thanks for the offer,” I reply, “but I don’t have a house here. I am staying with family.” He nods and we say goodbye. I don’t tell him that I don’t think he owes me anything. That in this warped society built on privilege, opportunity and advantage, I have the distinct feeling that it is me who owes him – even if it’s only a picture.

As I continue my walk to the beach, I make a firm promise to myself to have the photos printed and posted to Leonardo as soon as I get back to the city. And not just conveniently forget about it. Part of the firmness of my resolve stems from a speech I remember well-known photographer Obie Oberholzer make at the opening of one of his solo exhibitions not so long ago. Oberholzer, who has become famous for his honest photography of ordinary (and mostly poor) people throughout the continent, brags that the way he gets people to pose for him is by promising to mail them a copy of the shot. Next, he prides himself, without any qualms whatsoever, on the fact that he has never ever stuck to his promise. Not once. Throughout his entire career. He says this with a wide grin, clearly chuffed with the success of his ruse. I feel a little nauseous when I hear the arty audience snigger. It is then that I decide to take Oberholzer as an example – for how not to do it.

A Bergie on my Stoep

05:31 the neon digits of my alarm clock say. It is still dark outside. I have been woken up by a subtle noise outside my window. A strange rustling. There it is again. I sit up in bed and listen. Someone is outside on my stoep. I try to peer through the slits of my wooden shutters. At first, I can’t make out much, but a few seconds later, I start to see the bottom half of a man, waist down. He is getting dressed, pulling clothes out of a plastic bag. He puts on a pair of pants, then another pair on top. Next, he pulls socks out of the bag, also two pairs, and finally he puts on his shoes. Seconds later, the latch on my front gate clicks and he is gone.

I couldn’t see his face but I know exactly who he is. He often hangs out on the streets around my neighbourhood. Almost every day, he comes to sit on the stairs opposite my house. That’s his favourite spot. Right across from my bedroom window. There he sits for hours, doing nothing in the particular. Every now and then he goes for a brief walk and comes back to sit again. Sometimes he pisses against the side of the staircase. Sometimes he shouts after women. But mostly, he speaks to himself. I have seen him change his clothes there, too. That’s how I knew it was him, this morning on my stoep, in the dark.

Two pairs of pants is all he owns. One day, he wears the dark grey ones on top and the other pair, in a lighter shade of grey, underneath. The next day, he swops them around. He does the same with his socks. Only that he also turns the socks inside out to keep them from starting to smell for longer. Quite clever, actually.

It’s winter in Cape Town and from what I observed this morning, I know he has taken to sleeping on my stoep. I can understand that he wants to protect himself from the icy wind and the rain and I’m pretty sure he’s harmless. We have never had much interaction because he seems to speak Afrikaans only, a language I’m not familiar with. He also often speaks Gobbledygook. Loudly. To himself. But when we see each other on the street, we greet, and a couple of times I have given him food. Still, I am not particularly happy about him sleeping on my stoep. My bed stands right next to the window, so when he’s there, I am literally lying half a meter away from him, separated only by a thin wall and a window. He has also taken to hanging around my house at night, waiting for me to come home, so that he can safely take occupation of the stoep.  He is smart enough to arrive late and leave early so that he won’t get caught.

I am not sure how to best handle the situation. This is South Africa after all, and I feel a little unsafe having a homeless, psychologically unstable man waiting by my house each night, following my movements. I decide to consult my neighbour Janie, a feisty, elderly woman who has been living in this neighbourhood all her life and who is something of a matriarch of the community. She knows everyone, and everyone shows her respect. One time, she even commanded two thieves who had stolen my hubcaps to return them and put them back onto my tyres. But that’s a story for another day.

Yes, she knows exactly who I’m talking about, says Janie. That man used to own a big, triple storey house just down the road from us. He got himself into financial trouble and eventually lost everything. Since then, he’s been roaming the streets. Hearing this, I feel terrible. How can I bar someone who has such a tragic personal history from seeking shelter on my stoep? “No dear, don’t take too much pity,” Janie warns me. Initially, he had the support of the entire community, she says. Everyone helped out, tried to get him a job, a place to stay. But he is up to no good. Over the years, he has ruined his relationship with all and sundry, and when he drinks too much he gets aggressive. If you catch him on your stoep again, call the police, she advises.

But I feel reluctant to take what I feel is the last step. He has never done anything to me, so I don’t want to get him into trouble based on hearsay. I decide to take the bull by the horns. The next time I see him sitting on the steps, I walk straight up to him. “I’m sorry but you can’t sleep on my stoep any longer,” I tell him. Instead of getting a reply, the man gets up, walks a few steps away from me and starts talking loudly to the empty space in front of him. “Listen,” I try again, “I’m really sorry, but it’s not ok for you to sleep on my stoep.” But the Gobbledygook gets only louder.

That same evening, I decide to a heed a friend’s advice. Before I go to bed, I empty a bucket of water on the stoep to spoil his sleeping place. Barley two minutes later, I am brushing my teeth in the bathroom, the doorbell rings. It’s late, so I answer through the Interkom. “Lady, there is lots of water running off your stoep,” an alarmed male voice tells me. “Yes, not to worry,” I answer. “I was cleaning it.” But the person at my door doesn’t let up. “There is lots of water on the stoep, lady. Lots of water,” he repeats with a strange urgency.

And then the penny drops. Hang on a moment, I know this voice. It belongs to the homeless guy. Only that he suddenly speaks perfect English. I hang up and make my way to the door. There he stands, by my gate, all flustered, pointing to the wet stoep, still repeating the same sentence. “Lots of water here, lots of water.” “I know. I just cleaned it,” I tell him my half-truth again, adding “you can’t sleep here any longer.” The moment I mention the word ‘sleep’, his demeanour changes. The well-spoken English is gone and replaced by the familiar Gobbledygook, louder and louder to drown out my voice. Then he walks off.

Over the next few days, I repeat the water bucket ritual in the evenings before I go to bed. When I see the old man in the street, we do our best to ignore each other. He either looks to the floor in front of his feet, or he storms off in the opposite direction, noisily speaking to himself in a language only he can understand. His favourite spot on the staircase opposite my house remains mainly empty.

The following Saturday, I buy a huge pot plant at a nearby nursery. It now stands on my stoep, taking up most of its width. A tacit notice that sleepovers are no longer welcome.

Lost and Found

“Hello. Is this Kristin Palitza?’ I think I have found your wallet. In a garbage bag in Summer Greens,” says a stranger’s voice on the other side of the phone line.

“Yes. Who is this?” I ask, slightly confused. Our car had been broken into the day before and my wallet, cell phone and camera had been stolen. At first, I think I am speaking to the police, but it soon turns out that the man on the phone is a private person who somehow came across my wallet. From his story told in broken English, I can’t quite make out how. “My name is Christopher Williams,” he says and gives me directions to his house, stressing that he wouldn’t mind if I bring along the police.

Thirty minutes later, I sit in my car on the way to Kensington. C. is in the passenger seat, studying the map on his lap. He has turned on the small reading light to read the street names. None of us has been to Kensington before and it is already 19h45 and dark. We veer off the N1, direction Muizenberg. Damn, that was the wrong turn. We are lost. Since wherever we are clearly isn’t a safe place to stop and ask for directions, I slow down the car so we can read the street signs, while making sure we don’t become a hassle for cars coming up behind us. C. frantically tries to locate our position on the map. I really wish we had a GPS. Eventually, we are back on track. We hit Voortrekker Road, a major artery. A few more right turns and we come to a halt in front of Christopher Williams’ house.

It is a poor area. The houses are tiny and simple, typical two-roomed township houses, with peeling paint, lawns that have turned brown and rickety gates. As we walk up to the front door, a young woman comes towards us. A one-year-old sits on her hip. When I introduce myself, she nods. She has been expecting us. Christopher had to go to the shop, she says. She goes inside to fetch my wallet, leaving the door ajar.  I can see into what must be the lounge, a tiny room in which are squashed an armchair and an old, grubby couch with worn-down patches on the seats. And then she is back, with my wallet in her hand.  She opens it to show me that everything is still inside – my credit card, banking card, drivers license, health insurance card… everything but the cash, of course. There is also a small batch of my business cards. That’s how Christopher William knew where to call.

And she holds something else in her hand. “Here”, she says, “Christopher said I must give this to you as well.” She hands me a flyer from Debonair’s Pizza with a receipt stapled to it. It’s an order placed by someone named John, followed by a street address in Summer Greens and a cell phone number. I am not entirely sure what to make of this. How does someone ordering Pizza relate to the theft of my wallet? The woman doesn’t know.

As we walk back onto the street, we see a figure walking towards us down the road. “There he is,” the woman says, pointing. Christopher William is a skinny fellow of medium height. He wears blue workman’s overalls much too big for his slim frame. He looks like he just came home from work. But as we chat, it turns out that Christopher William doesn’t have a job. He has been unemployed for quite a few years, in fact, and survived by searching other people’s garbage bags for scraps of food and other things that he might be able to use or sell. That’s how he came across my wallet. It’s the third time he found someone’s purse, he tells us proudly, and every time he has managed to track down the owner.

I hand him a small, white envelope on which I have written ‘Thank You” in capital letters. Now that I know a little more about who the person is who found my wallet, I am really glad I decided on a generous finder’s fee. But Christopher William pays the envelope little heed. He is far too focused on the story he wants to tell. In his excitement, he mindlessly crumples up the envelope.  “This,” he says, pointing to the Debonair’s flyer, “is an important piece of evidence.” He found it in the garbage bin, together with my wallet, and the attached receipt contains the address of the thief, he proudly explains. He knows this, because he often checks the garbage at this house. It’s rented by a number of guys, and whatever Christopher William finds in their garbage bags tells him that they are up to no good.

I look at the receipt more closely. John ordered pizza at 18h30 on Sunday evening, three hours after our car was broken into on a wine farm in Stellenbosch. I had just drawn money from the ATM, so John and his friends had a feast. We have a lead. Again, we thank Christopher William for his trouble, and especially for his honest. “Honesty is my middle name,” he replies with pride. When we drive off, I see his slim figure in the rearview mirror, waving.

On the drive home, C. and I are silent. My thoughts go back to Christopher William, his ramshackle, little house, his years of unemployment and his resolve to live an honest life. I try to figure out why one poor person decides to resort to crime, while another person in the same situation takes pride in morality. What went wrong in John’s life and how did Christopher become to be so dignified? I don’t find an answer.

Asbestos Alan

When I open the gate into the courtyard, I see Alan perched on a ladder. He is busy fixing the roof of the front veranda. Alan is my landlord. He is in his late 60s, retired and clearly bored. He is also tight when it comes to money, so he tends to fix things around the house himself instead of hiring a handy man. Alan, at least, believes he fixes things, but in reality, the stuff he ‘fixes’ usually ends up being in a worse state a couple of weeks after he is done. On the upside, this gives Alan a never-ending amount of work to do to fight the boredom of his retirement.

A couple of years ago, Alan and his wife, Thelma, moved to the basement of their three bedroom family home, which allowed them to rent out the much bigger top floor of the building – to myself and a friend. Retirement, and the end of Apartheid, weren’t particularly good to the lower middleclass couple. That’s how they gauge the situation. They struggle to make do in a world they can’t relate to any longer, desperately trying to hang on to the past whenever they can, for example by being members of the AWB local branch.

Once Alan and Thelma tried to leave South Africa on the search for greener (or whiter) pastures. They went to visit their son in Florida, perhaps hoping the state where the oranges grow would be closest to the Orange Free State. But three months later, they were back. “Too many Blacks,” Alan told me by way of explanation. What irritated him most was that they were empowered ones at that. People in their own right, not domestic servants. That’s certainly not how he imagined the American Dream. In South Africa, at least, society changes only slowly, despite a democratic Constitution. The previously disadvantaged, as they are called politically correctly, will not be educated overnight, and well off. That gives Alan & Co still another few years in which they can call their domestic workers ‘girls’ and their gardeners ‘boys’ and expect them to respond ‘Yes, Baas’ without being too offended.

Alan knows where he draws the line when it comes to race relations. He knows, for one, that in the New South Africa, he can’t forbid his tenants, like myself, to have black visitors, or friends, but he is adamant that no black person will ever move into his house. And he has no qualms voicing that. Over his dead body. He also won’t shake a black person’s hand. He will greet him or her, if he has too (he has manners after all, he tells me), but shake hands… never. After this conversation, I know it’s time to look for a new place to live as soon as my lease is up.

But right now, I have to make do with Alan as a landlord for a while longer. I walk towards the front door and try to squeeze past him with a quick hello before he can draw me into another one of his dreaded monologues about how hard he was done by. I feel entitled to be a little rude, not only because Alan is a racist, but also because he is not entitled to be unannounced in this section of the house. He is supposed to notify us, but he happily ignores our requests for privacy. This rule was made after my roommate, twice, stepped out of the shower to be confronted with Alan’s face on the other side of the window, fixing things.

Just as I am about to draw the door closed behind me, relieved that I escaped a chat, Alan says by the by: “Don’t worry, I won’t be long. I am just installing a new plate of asbestos here.” I am too dumbfounded to respond. Who in his right mind would add asbestos to their house, in the year 2004? I put down my bag, pour myself a glass of water and step onto the veranda. “I am not too happy with having put additional asbestos into the roof,” I venture. “It’s known to cause cancer. Could we perhaps use a different material instead?”

Alan seems to think I’m hilarious. He almost falls off the ladder, he laughs so hard. “I’ve worked with asbestos all my life, girlie,” he tells me. “And look at me. I don’t have cancer.” Seconds later, his gaiety changes into anger. He must have realized that I am serious about my request and that he won’t be able to quickly blow me off by belittling me. “I had the plate custom cut, and I paid R250 for it,” he vents. When I offer to order and pay for another roof plate made from a different, healthier, material, Alan still isn’t happy, but there is not much he can say. “Whatever,” he says in a huff, making me look like a stickler for useless detail. (Later, when I call the builders’ warehouse, I am told that they don’t sell asbestos any longer because it is a health hazard and that they supplied Alan with an alternative material anyway. Even that he interprets as a confimation that he was right in the first place.)

Almost a year has passed. I have moved out of the dreaded house a few months ago and my verbal battles with Alan are long forgotten, when I run into Thelma in a supermarket aisle. How are Alan and herself doing, I ask politely but without real interest, expecting the usual ‘fine, and you?’. But Thelma’s face falls. Not good at all, she tells me. Alan is seriously ill. Cancer. Terminal. When the surgeons opened him up, they realized that the tumor had already spread throughout his body. There was nothing they could do, so they closed him up again and sent him home.

Six weeks later, Alan is dead.