Departures and arrivals...

We had a flight to Joburg at 6.20 and I was convinced that I was going to have an early night until some bud-heads stopped by. Drinks, dinner and the frenetic insanity of spontaneous creative interaction and I eventually got to bed at 1. The alarm was set for 4.15.

Fortunately the night wasn’t too rough and we made it to the airport in time. Just-just.

I hardly touched the inflight breakfast of powdered eggs and canned smoortjie with a dodgy little sausage, but the juice and the water were good companions.

The airport terminal in Johannesburg struck me as being lightless. Not dark, but bathed in an insipid unnatural yellowish glow.

We were airborne with just a few minutes delay. Castle beer, more airline food and a relatively short journey of just under 4000 kilometres as the SAA bird flies and we were in Nairobi and through customs. We had just retrieved our bags and were on our way out of the airport terminal when we were randomly stopped by three ladies in the employ of airport security. Passport and yellow fever card. Busted!

I was supposed to have had my shots ten days before travelling.

“Normally we send you back. I must take you to my boss. How much you got?”

2500 Shillings later I was in the taxi to Karen Camp.

So begins the odyssey… 

AFRIKA! Hie' ko' ek!

For anyone growing up on the Cape Flats in the seventies, the spatial connection with the African continent was at best limited to an outdated map in an outdated Atlas. Africa was seldom mentioned in the classroom and I don’t recall it being a significant part of any of the subjects. Personally, I regularly used to spend holidays in what was then South West Africa and with our own South Africa these two cardinal references were the extent of my African perspective, but fortunately since then my horizons have evolved through research and reading as well as working and interacting with refugees from across the continent. A combination of factors have however always prevented me from travelling more extensively in Africa, but finally an opportunity has presented itself and I will be heading off to Nairobi to begin my own African odyssey – a two-month journey to Cape Town by road of close to seven thousand kilometers.

Departure checklist: notebook, pencil, espresso pot, camera, sloffies, sunhat, passport and yellow fever certificate…  

SAID IS DONE

Words are actions

Each one follows on

Leading from

And leading to

Giving substance

To these thoughts

Of me and you

Everyone a bridge

Straddling time

Jaded moments that could be

And the persistent possibility

That lies behind my eyes

Dispersed throughout a scene

Of an illusory memory

Stretching out before me

My footprints in places

Where I have never been

And behind me

A vaguely familiar

Windswept landscape

Constant and shifting

In the Eyes of a Child... / Dreaming with my eyes closed...

To my other brother
And my sister
And my other brother
That will be
My brother that is
Becoming now
A part of all
Future discourse...

What you looking at?

The Cape Town Book Launch...

A LOVE LETTER FOR THE EPOCH

There are still a few copies of the second edition remaining @ R120 per copy or R100 if you buy more than one. Inbox me for more info on how to purchase.

MINUS 34

Thirty four is not

Equal

To fifty-one-point-eight-million

It is not me

Nor you

It was them

The thirty-four from the headline

That are late.

Thirty four plus

Two parents each

Plus a spouse and siblings

And an average

Of two-point-four-two

Minors

And suddenly thirty four

Is equal to more than a few hundred.

Thirty four miners

Buried underground

Beneath the deceit

And piled-up profits

That pays the executioner

And buys the lies

As state-sanctioned murder

Is normalized.

Minus thirty four

A democratic massacre

More blood on the balance sheet

Of the corporation slave master

Brutal bastards who lurk

Behind manicured smiles

And doctored public profiles

That will never stand trial.

Tomorrow's Yesterday

And as one adventure concludes

we are faced

with the prospect
of so much more

beckoning to be begun.

Love, passion, life and living.

Memory.

No one truly exists

without the other.

Yet exist we do
even
if only to sustain

hope in the tumult

of progression.

A brief tribute...

In the yellow enamel mug, place half pap and fill with milk - stir with fork. +/- 2cm boiling water in smallest pot - add a pinch of salt, add pap and stir - Start at 6 & reduce to 3 once it starts to pop/boil. Add a good dollop of butter and stir.

Serve in a small, flattish white bowl. Dad will add sugar... May our memories remain alive!

Spoken Word Namibia - May 2014

Pic by Don Stevenson