All posts by Claire

About Claire

Wandering (and wondering) development professional and aspiring aid worker. Contact me on anticipationofwonder[at]gmail[dot]com

Remembering ’95

South Africa, ,

I don’t do movie reviews. Apart from anything else, I am horribly under-qualified never having seen 90% of the movies that are considered classics. But I feel the need to write something about a particular movie I have just seen, not from the perspective of critically assessing the quality or performances but just because it’s a movie that tells a story that means a lot to me.

Growing up in South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s was complicated. To begin with, everything kept changing and there was a lot of uncertainty. I was lucky to be in a fairly safe, secure situation, rather than, say, a township, so that most things didn’t reach my fairly protected childhood world. I remember some things. I remember that we couldn’t travel to play sports matches against schools in other towns because school-buses were being targeted so they weren’t supposed to go anywhere without a police escort. I remember doing bomb-drills alongside fire drills in primary school. I remember how, in the weeks leading up to the 1994 elections, several shops, in the town where I lived, that had always had huge glass windows suddenly put up burglar bars across their windows. I remember how the families of friends were stockpiling water and canned goods in anticipation of a civil war. On the day of the elections, I was at school (all of 14). It was a public holiday and we had an extra practice for a musical I was involved in. But my parents went off and voted in the first free and democratic election my country had ever seen.

I remember much more clearly 1995. I didn’t grow up in a rugby family and had never had all that much to do with the game, but you couldn’t live in the Eastern Cape without learning something about it. And in 1995, we were all learning everything we could. On the day of the final, I was the only one in my family who sat glued to the TV screen. I remember that my Mom had gone out for a walk and she said the streets were deserted and all they heard was shouts of joy and agony from the houses they passed as the game was watched by millions of South Africans. After the match, my parents went out to the shops and drove through crowds of people shouting and dancing in the streets and banging on the cars. Just a year earlier, crowds of people dancing and shouting in the streets would have been enough to terrify any South African. But on this day it was okay. On this day, the country celebrated as one because we had done it – we had defied all expectations and won the Rugby World Cup.

I was a little sceptical when I heard they were making a movie about it. I was chatting to a friend a few weeks ago – one of the few foreigners I know here who actually understands rugby – and I mentioned that I was worried about what they would do with it. As much as it was a movie-type moment for all of us, there is so much scope for error and horribly butchering the reality when people try to use that moment to make a Hollywood movie, there is a good chance that they’ll get it wrong.

Tonight I finally got around to watching Invictus. Just hearing Shosholoza at the very beginning and seeing the scenery that is so real and so much home to me, I was already in tears. And knowing what was coming. Since 1995, I’ve become a fairly avid rugby fan and watch my teams as often as I can – which isn’t nearly often enough being in a country that doesn’t play rugby. Since then, of course, I have also become actively interested in politics and finally understood the real horror of apartheid, so in some ways, watching the movie now, and reliving the moments, was even more moving than the first time around. I really enjoyed Freeman’s portrayal of Madiba. I have no idea how true to life some of the events were but he captured the humanity and humility which so endear South Africa’s great hero to so many. I loved Matt Damon’s portrayal of Francois Pienaar, too. I’m always a little uneasy when I hear that a foreigner is going to try and play a South African, but he managed it very well, even getting the accent mostly right, and I felt like he actually understood some of what it’s like and started to understand the rugby. I don’t mean understand the game – which many other countries do – but understand the role it plays in the identity and culture of so many in my country.

Ultimately, the greatest challenge in this movie was always going to be to find a way to capture the emotions – from the very real and still present racial tensions to the moments of reconciliation and overcoming history. I loved the way the movie portrayed the ongoing tension using the body-guards. And I loved how Eastwood didn’t shy away from depicting the tensions and the difficulties, and also the shared joy and growing friendship, using the bodyguards. Not being a huge movie fan, I don’t know directors or most actors very well but I was impressed with Gran Torino and enjoyed how Eastwood used the same kind of realism here. There was an authenticity which is often hard to create in Hollywood-style movies. It felt normal – or at least, normal for South Africa. I could see in the portrayal all the moments of tension, all the (often unfounded) fears and the joys all South Africans know so well. Because no-one is immune to history and the reality of a country trying to come to terms with a miraculous transition to democracy and all the fears and issues that go with it.

I find it difficult to explain to foreigners exactly what I feel about my country. There are many countries were patriotism is an important value. I always struggle to explain why I feel like what I’m feeling is different. It’s not just that I love my country. I do love my country. But not in the sense that I want to go out and fight for it. I love what my country stands for – the fight not for land or for control but for freedom. I love that South Africa is still going strong, that whatever my problems with the current leadership of the ANC, we have made democracy work. And I love how we got there. I don’t understand South Africans who dismiss our past and want nothing to do with making the country better.

My reaction to this movie wasn’t all about that history. Watching it so far from home, the scenery alone was enough to make me long to return. The images of home. The ordinariness of the dry grass and the dusty townships and the beauty of table mountain. Even the Elwierda bus made me miss it. And the people. Ordinary South Africans doing what ordinary South African do every day. Ordinary people celebrating an extraordinary country.

And then the final. After the build-up of the movie and the energy and the action, the moment was electric. I felt again the thrill and the anxiety. My heart was in my throat. I knew how it would end – I remember the moment – but I still felt the same heart-thumping anticipation. I watched the play, my nails dug into the palms of my hands, on tenter-hooks all over again. And then the final whistle and that moment, the moment that means so much to so many of, when Pienaar raised the Webb Ellis Trophy, the moment of joy and glory when we showed the world (again) that we could overcome expectations. That moment that is a symbol of so much to so many.

It’s strange to have a movie capture something so personal and so real. Not everything was 100% accurate but it was close enough to evoke all the emotions of 1995. Each song, each moment, each image of the South African landscape and the springbok jersey was a reminder of how amazing my country is and how much I love it and look forward to being home and sharing my days with people who share the history and the culture and the love of a game that brought us all together.

A sense of place

Daegu

William Kittredge quoted in Dana Snyman: “A sense of place is bound up to some degree with the way people are in that place and with the history of the people, and it’s bound up even more with physical and natural details, with trees and grass and soil; weather, water, sky, the way some weeds smell when you walk on them. These are the details of place, and an awareness of them is what I call a sense of place” Dana Snyman, On the Back Roads

On the way back from the Ski Trip, we were chatting in the bus about the things we are looking forward to when we go home. Simple things, most of them. Like carpets. And cheese. And tumble dryers. But there are things from here that I will miss, too. Again, not necessarily huge, monumental things. But every place has a sense, a feeling, an identity. And when you’ve lived in a place for a while, it starts to get under your skin.

I have a strong sense of every place I’ve ever lived in. Some of them I didn’t even like that much. But there are moments and things about each place that stay with me. Climbing Bowkers Kop in Queenstown. Sunsets in Grahamstown and sitting on the couch outside 46D. The forest in Stutt. Walking to work on a crisp, frosty morning along Katherine Street in Sandton. Emmerentia Dam and ice-creams on random Sunday afternoons. Fat Cactus in Little Mowbray. Baby Egyptian geese falling out of the huge monkey puzzle tree outside my window in Rondebosch.

Even a short visit to a place can be enough to form a sense of the place in your mind. The sense is never objective and out there. It is always your own, unique experience, a subjective impression of where you’ve been. Flamingos from a hotel room in Kimberly. Cuppacino under winter grapevines while looking out at the mountains in Colesburg. Often, for me at least, the sense of a place is stronger if you leave and return to it often. Stepping out of Cape Town airport and breathing the Cape Town air and seeing the table-cloth on the mountain always feels like coming home. But once you start to be aware of ‘sense of place’ you start to form those opinions and impressions even without the regular contrast of other places.

My sense of Daegu is of a place that is temporary for me. It doesn’t feel like home the way Grahamstown always will. But there are definitely things that will always remind me of this place. Of course, this impression of place will continue to develop and become richer and deeper over the next few months, but sometimes it’s good to try capture it as it is now.

The strangest and most foreign part of this place for me is the smells. The food is different and the plants are different and the way of living is different. I can’t describe all the scents that make up the way that Daegu smells. I just know that it is a unique and completely alien smell that will always remind me of here.

Daegu is also the neon signs. A jungle of huge signs and billboards on every building, mostly in Korean and completely unintelligible, until you learn to read Hangeul just a little and discover that at least some of them are dotted with Korean-izations of English words like ‘school’. The sounds of Korea are different. The blaring of the loudspeakers on a roaming vegetable trucks, driving up and down suburban streets selling fresh fruit and vegetables at all hours of the day and night. The squeaky birds. The strange, whining, complaining noise that Korean girls make. The incessant thump, thump, thump of basketballs on the court across the road from my flat. The military planes flying over. The noise of the traffic. The Korean radio on the bus and in the taxis. K-pop blaring in every shop and restaurant. Horrible Korean versions of already annoying English songs, like the Titanic Theme, spilling from speakers in every park.

Daegu has an opera house. It is the place I first got to start watching operas regularly. And foreign-style restaurants with beautiful food and atmosphere. Korean food, each dish a side-dish to something else. And the sticky, white rice which is eaten all by itself or soaked in one or other of the many, many spicy soups. The scent of sweet-bean-and-dough treats that follows you down the winter streets. Galbi sizzling on a little grill, strangely nothing like the smell of meat on the braai but pleasant nonetheless. Fish on ice looking dead and a little gruesome right there on the pavement outside shops and at street stalls. Fruit and vegetable sellers crouching behind their wares on every busy streetcorner. Steam billowing from the outside cookers at the mandoo shop down the road from work.

Downtown on a Saturday night, standing in the street with cocktails over ice in plastic bags. Or Communes full of foreigners, rock music blaring and sport playing on the big screen. Bubbles floating down as you walk along the street and sometimes people handing out sparklers. The taste of Hite and Cass and Soju and strange bar-snacks.

Groups of ajummas sitting on a blanket in a park or at the lake. Groups of old men gathered under whisteria-roofed platforms playing boardgames on a Saturday afternoon. Little children calling to their parents – ‘ouma’, ‘oupa’ – and me turning around, taken a little by surprise every time. Shop workers who follow you around everywhere. Pre-cooked rice and instant (just add milk) pancake mix. Making sure you buy bottled water because the tap-water isn’t good for drinking. Fruit juices entirely unrelated to the flavour of the fruit. Syrupy-sweet tomato juice.

Children still walking the streets or playing or on the buses at 10 o’clock at night. On a school-night. Every school-night. The city moves and rushes and crowds all day, from about 8 in the morning until 11pm. Except downtown, which seems to be crowded and busy 24 hours a day. There is no peace and quiet. There is no space. No-one seems to notice. People walking down the road past my flat from the hills above in full mountain climbing gear (all correct and branded and expensive) at all hours of the day.

And so many other things. The three clearest, most typical moments of Daegu life? Watching the day-light fade, over the heads of small children bent to their books, from the window of my classroom; walking in parks in summer, autumn, winter, filled with other people walking and children playing and couples or groups of friends sitting together and nights at the hut with dongdongju, fellow foreigners and salty, fried eggs.

Ski trip For The Win: Sunday of stiffness

Adventures, Food, travelling in Korea, , ,

There is something particularly peaceful about waking up late on a Sunday morning with the sounds of skiing outside the window and the sun filtering through the not-quite-meeting curtains over the sleeping forms of friends huddled under excessive amounts of yellow bedding on the heated floor. Everything was quiet and warm in the room. I sat for a while jotting down thoughts and memories of the evening before, from Zanzibar the ladybird to cotton-producing sheep. At about noon, the first of the other room to emerge, Erin, came and joined me in my peaceful little spot and eventually, as we chatted quietly, other people emerged from their yellow cocoons. The process of 12 people waking up and getting organised tends to be a slow, noisy and sometimes humorous one. This one was notably highlighted by the series of groans as people moved sore arms, legs and asses in their attempts to stand up. It took a little longer to get moving than usual. I wasn’t horribly stiff from the waist down but my arms were ridiculous. It hurt to lift them at all. Even writing caused twinges of stiffness. Reaching for food from the cupboards at home that night was not fun. In fact, by the end of Sunday sitting still hurt.

This did not deter us from heading out, however. Largely because we were in need of food. We had all also reached the outer limits of our capacity to eat KFC or the same five Korean meals even once more. So we took the plunge and headed off the resort in search of lunch. Down the hill and past the cheaper ski rental place we went, all the while enjoying the incredible and for me (although less for those who have seen it before) somewhat breathtaking views of a snowy-wonderland world under the bright lunchtime sun.

A little way along the road, we spotted a galbi place. Just the thing for lunch. We headed inside, took off our shoes and sat at our table. A disadvantage of eating Korean food when incredibly stiff is that it may require sitting on the floor. Actually, sitting on the floor isn’t the worst part. The worst part is standing up afterwards. The galbi was good, with the usual array of side-dishes and some particularly good onion-y-type-salad. The galbi cooked over hot coals in a little braai set into the table. The coals were a little hot so some of the meat caught a little, which was actually particularly yummy.

After lunch, we rose with moans and groans and headed back up the hill through the snow to our warm and cosy youth hostel room. Everyone flopped down on a sleeping mat and/or burrowed under blankets in front of the TV. Some people napped. We flipped through channels, searching for more of the figure-skating which had dominated the occasional TV viewing of the weekend. There was a documentary on rodeo clowns and barrel men, in which inexplicably became enthralled. Then we happened upon the movie Stardust and settled there for a while. Desultory conversation and  laughter drifted back and forth.

At  4:30 we packed up for the last time, gathered our luggage and set off on the trek up the hill to where the bus-driver had dropped us off and would pick us up. After rearranging the seating and luggage set-up, much to the driver’s not-entirely-happy surprise, we squeezed everyone in without anyone sitting on the floor and set off for home. The drive back was long and chilly – except for the feet next to the heater-outlet. Almost 4 hours later, we arrived back in Daegu in the middle of a conversation about super-powers. We were all tired and sore as we tumbled out and gathered our belongings. I was so exhausted I could barely organise myself enough for the last little bit of the trip. Luckily, I shared a cab with someone could give the driver directions – I’m not sure I would have made it home alone.

Finally home in my freezing cold apartment, I had some dinner, checked mail and spent some time just sitting around – blobbing as one of my friends put it. Monday would be back to work in the cold, windy, snow-less wilds of Daegu but for a while it was nice to potter around, downloading photos and generally decompressing in the last glow of what had turned out to an exhausting and stiffness-inducing but truly enjoyable weekend filled with snow, fun people, trying new things and plenty of crazy memories.

Postscript: As is turned out the wilds of Daegu were not, in fact, snow-less on Monday but that is a whole different story.