Archive for July, 2010

Slow bus to Somerset West

July 27th, 2010

I travelled to Somerset West by bus last Thursday evening. Most people hate long bus trips. The seats are small and you have to sit for hours and you’re on a bus. Sometimes I agree, when I’m stuck in a non-window seat with a large and/or baby-carrying person next to me. But most of the time I love them. My only sadness is that South African long-haul bus trips tend to be overnight so you end up sleeping half the way and missing out on all the beautiful views. This trip I managed a few hours of beauty before I fell asleep.

I get on the bus in King William’s Town. The sun is going down and it’s starting to get chilly. It isn’t cold on the bus. So many people and the aircon. It’s warm, actually. I settle into my window seat and watch the world go by. The seat is just off-centre enough that I can’t see the random movie (Grease, I think) but I have a better view. The sunset is beautiful over the Eastern Cape veld. At the edges of the world pink and purple and apricot fade to blue.

Beyond Grahamstown, the stars come out, sparkling in a velvet-blue sky. The night is clear and bright. The moon must be nearly full. They’ve turned the lights off in the bus and, looking out, I can see the dry grass and the thorn trees and the rolling hills, peaceful and magical in the green-blue light.

Somewhere around Port Elizabeth, I fall asleep. Sleeping on a bus isn’t the most comfortable thing in the world. Luckily I sleep quite easily. I forgot to bring something to use as a pillow this time, so end up with a stiff neck. It doesn’t matter though. I wake up in Jeffrey’s Bay and then fall asleep again and sleep like a baby until the bus’s morning stop at 3am. I’m not sure why they stop at 3am.

On the last part of the trip, in the early hours Friday, it starts to rain a little. These are the apple-farming bits of the Western Cape. The cloud is low and misty. Small towns rise in the dawn light, church spires dark against low clouds. The road is a dark, wet ribbon through the brush. We head up the pass. As we climb further and further, the world disappeared in misty cloud. It’s eerie.

And then, suddenly, we emerge from the mist and spread before us is one of the most beautiful parts of my world – the lights of Cape Town, table mountain in the distance and Somerset West, Strand, Gordon’s Bay in the foreground, with the beautiful beach lapping at their feet. The bus is early. Even as I wait, the clouds break up and a perfect, sunny day takes hold of the beautiful Western Cape.

The weather in the Western Cape is usually fairly crappy in the winter – raining for weeks on end and always chilly and damp and dark. Since I arrived, the sun has been shining almost non-stop. I am certainly not complaining – this part of the world is exquisitely beautiful on still, sunshine-filled days. I keep getting excited about the prettiness. It feels almost too good to be true, as if this old home of mine, this old playground is putting on a show to woo me and welcoming me back.

Slow bus to Somerset West

I travelled to Somerset West by bus last Thursday evening. Most people hate long bus trips. The seats are small and you have to sit for hours and you’re on a bus. Sometimes I agree, when I’m stuck in a non-window seat with a large and/or baby-carrying person next to me. But most of the time I love them. My only sadness is that South African long-haul bus trips tend to be overnight so you end up sleeping half the way and missing out on all the beautiful views. This trip I managed a few hours of beauty before I fell asleep.

I get on the bus in King William’s Town. The sun is going down and it’s starting to get chilly. It isn’t cold on the bus. So many people and the aircon. It’s warm, actually. I settle into my window seat and watch the world go by. The seat is just off-centre enough that I can’t see the random movie (Grease, I think) but I have a better view. The sunset is beautiful over the Eastern Cape veld. At the edges of the world pink and purple and apricot fade to blue.

Beyond Grahamstown, the stars come out, sparkling in a velvet-blue sky. The night is clear and bright. The moon must be nearly full. They’ve turned the lights off in the bus and, looking out, I can see the dry grass and the thorn trees and the rolling hills, peaceful and magical in the green-blue light.

Somewhere around Port Elizabeth, I fall asleep. Sleeping on a bus isn’t the most comfortable thing in the world. Luckily I sleep quite easily. I forgot to bring something to use as a pillow this time, so end up with a stiff neck. It doesn’t matter though. I wake up in Jeffrey’s Bay and then fall asleep again and sleep like a baby until the bus’s morning stop at 3am. I’m not sure why they stop at 3am.

On the last part of the trip, in the early hours Friday, it starts to rain a little. These are the apple-farming bits of the Western Cape. The cloud is low and misty. Small towns rise in the dawn light, church spires dark against low clouds. The road is a dark, wet ribbon through the brush. We head up the pass. As we climb further and further, the world disappeared in misty cloud. It’s eerie.

And then, suddenly, we emerge from the mist and spread before us is one of the most beautiful parts of my world – the lights of Cape Town, table mountain in the distance and Somerset West, Strand, Gordon’s Bay in the foreground, with the beautiful beach lapping at their feet. The bus is early. Even as I wait, the clouds break up and a perfect, sunny day takes hold of the beautiful Western Cape.

The weather in the Western Cape is usually fairly crappy in the winter – raining for weeks on end and always chilly and damp and dark. Since I arrived, the sun has been shining almost non-stop. I am certainly not complaining – this part of the world is exquisitely beautiful on still, sunshine-filled days. I keep getting excited about the prettiness. It feels almost too good to be true, as if this old home of mine, this old playground is putting on a show to woo me and welcoming me back.

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A quiet visit to Grahamstown

July 21st, 2010

It is a dusty, warm winter afternoon as we wandered between the tombstones. I find cemeteries interesting. It’s not a fascination with death; it’s the history. This cemetery was used by the settlers in Grahamstown – those families who climbed off the boats in the 1820s and began a new life in what was to become a thriving educational, judicial and religious centre in the expanded Cape Colony and the young Union of South Africa. There are many important people, like the man who brought the first printing press to Grahamstown. To be honest, though, it is the ordinary people that fascinate me: the parents of Mr so-and-so who came over and lived their last 20 years here, the woman born in Dublin who married a Grahamstown farmer, the family that lost four children before any reached the age of 5. I was struck by just how many young children, infants rest here. There has been lots of talk about infant mortality rates in Africa just lately. We forget just how recently South Africa had the same, terrible problem.

Later, two of us went driving. Grahamstown is a university town and in all the very happy years I spent there, I didn’t explore very much outside of town thanks to lack of car. This time we could. We drove up past the monastery. The monastery wasn’t there when I was at varsity. Or, at least, I didn’t begin hearing about it until much later. It’s a landmark now. The road wound past and kept going, past crystal-blue dams and tall trees, through dips and up hills and over railway tracks, until we reached a point so high we could see for miles and miles. The road was beginning to get worse, so we stopped and got out. Not even the breeze was disturbing the incredible, breath-taking quiet. One of the things I missed so much, longed for so often in Korea was a quiet, empty landscape stretching to the horizon. This landscape stretched forever and forever – rolling hills right to the sea, a glimpse of which was visible in the distance. We could see a house far away to one side and the aloes and dry winter grass and thorn-trees of home. It was a perfect moment. The afternoon was warm and sunny. The sky was so huge and so blue above us. The view stretched all the way to the sea.

On the way back, we chatted – that gentle, rolling conversation of old friends. We went looking for coffee and found everything shut (except Wimpy) on a Sunday afternoon. Grahamstown was so quiet. It felt so familiar and so gentle. Grahamstown always does that to me. The beautiful old buildings – Commem, the Grocotts Building, the Cathedral – as you’re walking up from the bus stop. The University rising at the end of High Street, so reassuringly solid and the same. Getting the bus at Kimberley Hall, where I spent so many, many hours. Some part of me wishes I could live in Grahamstown but opportunities are scarce and chances are slim. That doesn’t mean I won’t visit again and again, particularly for as long as one of my favourite travel-mates is there to share those little moments of gentle exploring.

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Photographs and memories

July 17th, 2010

There is something about photographs. Since I returned, I have thought very little about the experiences in Korea. As in any journey from one culture to another, there has been a sweet honeymoon period and I have given myself over to that heightened appreciation for the beauty and amazingness of the Eastern Cape. Today I plugged in my camera for the first time and discovered I hadn’t even downloaded my pictures from Hongdae and the DMZ.

I duly downloaded them. Looking through the pictures was the strangest (strongest?) experience. I had downloaded a picture in the wrong place. I’d put it in the Hongdae folder but it wasn’t – it was a picture taken in Itaewon. I took it from the window of the restaurant where I had lunch after I went to the DMZ. The window was open and the flags strung across the street were flapping in the breeze. It was a quiet afternoon. It was a Tuesday and not many people were wandering around this tourist/shopping/restaurant area. I suppose it would still be busy by many people’s standards, but it was quiet for Seoul. I find myself, in my mind, pronouncing Seoul in the Korean manner. The photo takes me back. I can taste the Korean beer – not very good, especially after the North Korean beer we’d tried earlier in the day. I had fish and chips. It was the first Western-style fish-and-chips meal I’d had in Korea. The restaurant was called Little Guinness, I remember now. I can feel the breeze through the window and hear the sounds. I sat on the side with the hatch from the kitchen. In the background, beneath the music, I can hear people speaking Korean as they prepare the food. It took a while to arrive – I was hungry – but the day was beautifully hot and clear and it was peaceful there.

There are other pictures, later. I went to a park by a river. By THE river, the Han River (Hangang). There was a man by a tree, in a field of flowers, practicing the saxophone. I’d forgotten about it. I watched him for a while. It was so unusual.

And the craziness of cosmopolitan Hongdae. The Self-Esteem boutique. SPAM restaurant. B-hind coffee shop. The crisp taste of the white wine at the bar where I sat on that last night. A beautiful Italian place. There were dogs in the courtyard outside the window next to my table. Children came and talked to them and fed them. Groups settled down to eat pizza and drink wine. Families sat on the balcony across the courtyard (all the same restaurant) and ate fancy dinners. I can taste the wine as the last sunlight fades and the night settles softly on the city.

I am struck by the tangible sensations evoked by the photographs – the smells, the tastes, the feeling of the wind. I go further back, to the pictures from the Mozambique trip, a good year and a half ago now. They’re just as vivid. The rain on the first morning in Maputo and later, when we stopped and ordered Sangria, and in the wild gardens. How soaked we were when we finally got back and my hat that would never be the same. And Rich and Jonathan going off to find prawns for dinner. Breakfast at that surf-themed place with the bookshop in Tofo after waking up because it was no longer possible to sleep in the heat of the yellow tent. Looking the pictures, I feel the heat, even on this cold winter morning. I had fish and chips in Tofo. The others had gone off exploring but I stayed behind. It was the best fish and chips I’ve ever eaten. I don’t have a picture of that. I wonder why.

There is a picture of Inhambane that New Years Day. The sun is just going down and people are starting to gather on the wall by the water, across the road from where we were staying. My picture is blurred and not very good but still I can hear the music starting and taste the cold Mozambiquan beer as we sat down to watch the people and soak up the atmosphere. It was such a perfect evening.

Days later, in the lush green of Vilankulos, the squid pasta evening. We drank Savannahs there. I’d forgotten that. And that amazing sunset. And the dog. And the rolls. Suddenly I remember those tiny, sweet rolls we bought that morning in Inhambane and ate with those Senor something-or-other chips. That was the day we took the ferry and found that bakery/ice-cream shop. The memories tumble over each other like a dam bursting. The tastes and sounds, the heat and the rain. Being soaking wet on the ferry. Everything comes back in a rush. I feel the need to go even further back, to a long-ago cruise in the Caribbean. The pictures are almost like travelling – they allow you to go back, in your mind, to revisit and experience again. I am primed for travel.

Next to my computer sits a bus ticket. It’s not a long trip, just an overnighter, in fact, but it a little taste, a little glimpse of travel. A little picture, even. I pack my camera back in its little bag, check that I have extra batteries and put it in my daypack. I have a longer journey planned for next week, to one of my favourite cities in the world, but for now this will do nicely – a little journey to a little place that more than any other makes me feel home.

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Posted in Adventures, Ideas, Mozambique, Seoul

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African winter

July 13th, 2010

I woke up this morning and looked out of the window. Outside, the grass, just touched ice, stretched away to a dam dotted with silent birds. Beyond that, hills gently undulated into mountains, towards, in the distance, a taller peak dusted with snow. The fingers of the sunrise were just painting the snow a gentle pink. Away in another direction, a copse of bare trees reached for the huge blue sky against a background of green hills. I was staying with friends just outside of town but in town was just as beautiful. The winter grass is dry but there hasn’t been much frost so lawns are still green – a perfect contrast to the white frost.

I sit in the garden in the mid-morning sunshine, watching a white cat trying to catch moles. A robin is bobbing from branch to branch in the apple tree. No gloves, not hat, no scarf, just one jersey – I’m not even wearing shoes – but I’m warm. I’m warm. It’s the middle of winter and a cold day but I am warm sitting in the sun, outside.

This is the winter I love. This is the gentle, beautiful winter that warms up in between cold fronts and has so much sunshine, for so much of the day, that a day that doesn’t reach the mid-teens is really, really freezing. The sun was shining brightly by 7:30am this morning.

I struggled with winter in Korea. I found myself much in sympathy with the ancient Europeans who honestly feared each winter that the sun might never return. It shook me. I began to wonder if I was imagining the pleasant winters back home. Everyone around me seemed perplexed because ‘that’s just how it is’. Being back, seeing the beauty and with my heart giving a jump of joy each time I remember that I can go outside, I feel sane again.

This, this is what winter should be like, with the dry grass and the red, red aloes and the birds and the blue, blue sky. There were no birds in the Korean winter, and no sunshine and no warmth and no winter-blue sky. Part of me wants to spend the days just lying on the grass and breathing in the joyful beauty of a proper African winter.

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Fest is over

July 11th, 2010

Another Fest is over and I am sad. Not only because it is Fest in all it’s amazingness, but also because it feels as though this finally brings to a close my Korean year. I spent so much time in my last couple of months in Korea thinking about, planning for and anticipating Fest. And now it is past, as if it was elastic stretched to that point and now it is broken.

Fest, itself, was fantastic, of course. I missed 2009, so this year was a particular treat. I also found myself thinking a lot about future years. I think I have now reached the point in my life where I can official become one of those people who gets into the habit of taking a house in Grahamstown for Fest every year regardless of what else is happening. An annual injection of cultural joy.

Of course, there were some duds. One was the awful one-woman opera I mentioned earlier. Another was a particularly annoying production called ‘…Miskien’ that felt interminably like a 15-minute student piece (built around nothing but the supposed ’shock-value’ of people being Afrikaans AND gay) stretched to fill an hour. Such a waste of time. Another was, sadly, one of the most talked-about productions at Fest. Everyone – from friends and acquaintances to reviewers and radio presenters – was calling it a ‘must-see’. I think they were wrong. It was called London Road and it was fairly sweet, I suppose, but the acting wasn’t great, the characters weren’t believable, they did nothing with the set and the story was bland. It wasn’t magical. It didn’t at any point make me want to forget that I was sitting in a theatre and watching a show. They even did annoying things like pulling full cups of tea out of drawers. I like my shows to make a little more effort, thanks.

The other dud was just bizarre. We later read an interview with the director who seemed to think they had presented a groundbreaking theatre piece that explored sexuality, power relations and transformation in South Africa. I don’t know what she was smoking because what we saw was a play about two women time-travelling in a freezer and eating children, that left us going ‘but why?’. You really can’t get that far and then do nothing with it – it just makes you look silly.

For the rest, we managed to pick shows that made us happy. Choosing a top show of fest is always hard, but I think this year’s was Karoo Moose. Lara Foot directed this stunning story of a young girl growing up in the rural Northern Cape. The cast was great and effectively managed to combine African music, choreography, movement, storytelling and acting to produce a piece that was funny, moving, heart-wrenching and so incredibly real, but without any of the annoying self-indulgent angst that plagues so many realistic South African stories. I loved it and would happily have seen it again had we not caught the last show.

A piece we did see again, and which stole my heart for its simplicity and magic was Hats with Richard Antrobus and Tristan Jacobs. It says something about this piece that, when we were talking about it after we’d seen it the first time, we couldn’t remember if it had any words or not. It doesn’t. It is a physical theatre piece that uses music and visual effects but it communicates so well that it feels like there are words. It was probably one of the saddest, most beautiful pieces on the Fest. It was also the exact opposite of London Road – the audience was drawn into the piece and had no choice whatsoever but to go with the performers on their journey through emotions and moments and friendship and loss.

Another excellent piece, which made me cry and verlang na Stellenbosch, was Dinsdae by Morrie. This is a stage adaption of the Afrikaans version of the best-selling book. I haven’t read the book. I don’t think I will. I’m scared it would spoil what was an exceptionally sensitive, funny, beautiful piece of theatre. This, unlike most of my favourites, didn’t use physical theatre but it did make use of music and captivated the audience as all good theatre should.

There were other favourites. Blood Orange was a very South African one-man piece with Craig Morris, who was so convincing that when the rocket took off to the moon (with no props to create the illusion) the entire audience looked up. Kaput was a delightful piece that, although it touched on some heavy material, was performed with such a light touch that you left feeling happy. Also, the seagull! Stilted, another delightful piece with Richard Antrobus and Tristan Jacobs, stunned the audience with excellent stilt-work (jumping on a trampoline on stilts and other feats of acrobatic insanity) and weaved a subtle tale so delicate it even laughed at itself. Nina Lucy Wylde was excellent in The Human Voice. Breed was a haunting and unexpectedly beautiful piece by Ubom! that I would love to see again. A lecture on the Eastern Cape made me fall in love with my country all over again. Plus several other lectures and a conversation with a travel writer.

Of course, there was also the ballet (which was lovely) and plenty of music, from the symphony and gala concerts to Vusi Mahlasela and Karen Zoid . We also really enjoyed Jeremy Quickfall in a show called My grand(ma se) piano and Lana English (and co.) in Belles and Beaux. It’s hard to remember what else. I keep having to go back to my list. We saw 32 shows.

And then, of course, there is Raiders. Raiders is hard to describe to someone who has never seen one. For starters, you have to like puns. I kept thinking of a friend from Daegu who would have been in punny-heaven. Puns of all shapes and sizes. In this particular Raiders, a box of lion matches becomes ‘he came across some Lions; they were no match for him’. Also, the audience is an integral part of every performance, in this case, for example, as ‘jim’ and ‘morrison’ – the doors. The shows are funny and magical and an integral part of the Fest experience. This year was also the 21st that Raiders has been at Festival so we had the absolute joy of going to their special 21st anniversary evening performance of Raiders of the Lost Aardvark. It was marvellous. I can’t wait to see what they do next year.

Next year. This is, of course, the other sadness of Festival – that we will have to wait a-whole-nother year before it happens again. Ah, well, next years dates are 30 June to 9 July so plenty of time to plan my life and make absolutely certain I don’t miss any of ‘AMAZ!NG’ next time round.

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Posted in Arts, South Africa

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