Category Archives: Ideas

Photographs and memories

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.

K-pop for democracy

After a hair-raising culinary adventure in Mokpo, we high-tailed it onto a bus (sadly there was no ferry) and spent Friday night in Jindo. And on Jindo. Jindo-eup (town) is the main town on Korea’s third largest Island (also Jindo) and the largest city in Jindo-gun (county). It gets confusing.

Friday night, after a safely reassuring dinner of galbi, we found a lovely little jazz bar, complete with appropriate décor, jazz music and good cocktails. In Jindo. Jindo is tiny. Ok, it has a few apartment blocks and a large school or two but by Korean standards it’s a small town. Sometimes it’s amazing the hidden gems you find tucked away in the most unexpected places. Finds like these make me feel sorry for travellers who won’t ever venture off the beaten track, beyond their 5-star resorts and guided tours, for fear that they might be bored/in danger/unable to find somewhere appropriately trendy where they can ‘be seen’. If you ever make it to Jindo, try and find All That Jazz. The proprietor, who is friendly and professional, spend some time in Paris and has put together a delightful little spot to stop for a cocktail or two in a sophisticated yet comfortable bar.

The following morning, I was up early and off to explore, leaving my travel-mate to sleep in. Our plan was to move on fairly soon, so I wanted to get a look at the town before we left. I headed vaguely in the direction of the PB to get something for breakfast, but soon got distracted. By politics. A quick point here: I like politics. I find it fascinating and scintillating and other words a large portion of the population would never in a million years apply to the democratic process (or, most of them, be able to spell). I am most interested in South African politics, but also follow elections and other major political events in other countries, too. This is the first time I’ve been exposed to politics in Korea. It seems there is an election – local government, I think – coming up. Jindo was a great opportunity to watch, as a completely disconnected foreigner, democracy happen.

We had seen the previous day a few vehicles driving around playing bad K-pop-style music at high volume. It took some time and rather a lot of figuring out to realise these were part of the politics. Towards the evening, one of these covered trucks drove past with a man plonked on a stool on the back wearing a smart shirt with a yellow sash. The man waved enthusiastically as the noise assaulted our senses. The truck was yellow with some hangeul writing and a large number. It appears each candidate gets a number, I assume to make the process easier. Each also seems to pick a colour. In Jindo, the highest number I saw was 12. 12 candidates. That’s a lot in what is really a small place. I love that. I love that there are 12 candidates standing in a local election in a small place. And I love how enthusiastically they campaigned.

My travel companion coined the apt term: cute politics. Korea has cute politics. Everything seems to happen on a diminutive scale. Back home, political rallies involve the candidate standing on a big-rig talking and singing and dancing with a crowd of thousands. In Jindo, I found myself at what seemed to be the main intersection of the town’s two major roads (which wasn’t very big at all). Four corners to a busy intersection. On each corner stood one of the noisy little campaign trucks, each barring it’s own pop-ey exhortations for a particular candidate. In front of each truck was a row of women (ranging in age from early 20s to middle-aged), all in the identical, colour-appropriate outfits (with sashes), dancing to the music. When I say dancing here, you should be picturing a row of small Asian women all doing coordinated, very simple, pop-dancing moves. In fact, the dancing consisted mostly of coordinated hand-gestures. But they were determinedly enthusiastic about it and they were all in time. Duelling political campaigns, except that there were four of them. All out in full force, not only at that section but all along the main street where a Saturday-morning street market was taking place, in between the foot-traffic and car-traffic and the political vans and the dancing women. And all of this in the pouring rain.

I was fascinated, I just kept walking along the road and finding more and more of them. It was amazing. I was simultaneously amused (okay, very amused) and elated. There is a moment in the West Wing when CJ says that the small town that votes before everyone else is important because it teaches us about democracy. I felt a little like that, that Saturday morning in Jindo. Here we were, in the rain, in a small town, on an island, in the forgotten south-western corner of Korea but these people believed; they believed so strongly that there are 12 different candidates standing and each and every one has a little van of pop-music-noise and at least one row of well-rehearsed dancing followers. These people believed in democracy. And they were celebrating that belief. They were celebrating their right to vote and to dance for their candidates and to choose their leadership.

The south west (Jeollanam-do) was the birthplace of Korean democracy and the area that bore the brunt of the painful transition from dictatorial rule. Just days before, the country had commemorated the hundreds who fell during the Gwangju massacre on May 18th, 1980. And here, in this small town, were people standing up and honouring them in the truest way possible: by engaging fully in the democratic process. It was a little awe-inspiring, in a K-pop-ey, dancing-women kind of way.

(PS Can’t add photos to this post but this is hands down my favourite pic of the day)

In other words

The previous post got me thinking about this:

THOUGHTHAWK

she’s learned the winds in order to betray
the winds. today she drifts less frugally,
this unknoxed, disencalvined, no-god’s-prey
whose spirals widen centrifugally…

Which far more effectively expresses what I was trying to say.