District 6 is an area in Cape Town where 60,000 people were forced
to leave their homes in the sixties after the white government declared the
district a “white group area”. When South Africa became a democracy in 1994 the
original residents were given the option to move back.
Conversation With A District 6 evictee.
They told us we could go back, back to what? I knew if my avocado pear tree was not
standing up in the garden I would not go. As a boy I’d climb that tree, eat the
avocado pears and throw the pips at passers by. My neighbor kept homing pigeons and he lost them all after
his removal. He was sent to live in a township shack and couldn’t make his
birds follow. Guess you can’t shit on pigeons. Some of the residents did fight
but they only stayed in their homes to watch the colour of the district pale
around them. Its seventeen years into democracy and people can’t forward move.
There is still so much anger here because of apartheid. Even my old neighbor to
this day will not forgive the white government, but now he’s as angry at the
black government. Since 94’ not one president has served a full term. They get
into office and exploit and cause corruption for their own financial gain,
knowing they won’t be in power for long. Most of the coloured people will tell
you the white government were less corrupt and people lived better with official
division. The coloured people feel this because when the whites were ruling
they favored the coloured (including the lighter skinned blacks). Generally
they got better jobs and education so when the blacks took power the coloured
people couldn’t believe it. They had tried so hard to disassociate themselves
with the blacks and then they ended up ruling the country. If we are a rainbow
nation every colour is still living behind its own fence. It’s a shame we are a
nation of people defined solely by the colour of our skin before our South
African nationality. But I will say there are also great people here doing
great things to ensure South Africa becomes one of the driving forces for a
united Africa, an Africa that is always home.
1. Think about this - Maybe I shouldn't eat meat every day?
2. Walk how you walk. Find your pace - There is such thing as success coming too early.
3. Deal with my "I left school at sixteen and have no higher education" insecurity.
4. Remember this - Indecisiveness has lost me more opportunities than its gained.
5. You can learn more from people who do things/think differently to you than those that do.
6. Improve smell. I smell ok for a guy who is allergic to antiperspirant but I could be better.
7. Be involved in more collaboration projects. (another reason for improving my smell)
8. I now know there is such thing as reading too much poetry. Read more prose/novels/theatre.
9. Complete & publish the Shapes & Disfigurements journal (Will be sold at gigs/online)
10. Complete at least two poetry tours (National/International)
2011 accomplishments
1.Chill
Pill consecutively selling out Soho Theatre & becoming official associates
of The Albany Theatre, Soho Theatre & The Arcola Theatre.
2.Touring
Chicago & meeting Dan Sullivan, Tim Stafford, Robbie Q Telfer, Rodger Bonaire-Agard, Laura Yes Yes, Emily Rose, JW Baz and other great minds/people/poets.
3. Working as co-creative director of the Keats House Poets Forum project. Working with the great poets in the forum & Simon Mole & Paul Shez from City Of London.
4.Completing
a youth theatre project with Half Moon & Apples & Snakes.
Girl – I don’t like to sleep on
my own, it makes me think of snakes.
Me – Why?
Girl – Because I’m scared of them.
Me – … So are you scared of
snakes or loneliness?
Girl – Snakes because loneliness
doesn’t have a head with those big teeth in it.
Me – hmm… I’m going to write that
down.
Girl – Why?
Me – Because I like what you said.
Girl – Why?
Me – (Ignores question and
gets notebook out of bag)
Girl – You know what I like?
Me – What?
Girl – Balloons.
Me – OK, what else do you like?
Girl – Dogs, dogs that can dance.
I want Balloons, a dog that can dance and a gun.
Me – What? Why a gun?
Her – in case I see snakes...
snakes that can dance.
What A Cave
Can Teach You
It’s a one hour hike up the
mountain at KalkBay. I went with an
international hiking group (mainly Germans). I’d made new friends and got
invited along, not quite knowing what I’d agreed to. The mountains got steep
near the top so we were literally rock climbing.
Looking outward from the
mountain you see all the ocean beyond you, all the yellow, the green and earth,
its an incredibly overwhelming display of beauty.
When I got near the top there was
a cave. I’m told the cave was discovered by the Dutch when they arrived in the
1600’s. We took out torches and crawled on our stomachs through the black
miniature corridors. They get narrower the further you go in.
After an hour of
worming through the tunnels, my shoulders were too wide to fit into the holes
ahead of me. There were five of us that made it this far, a Dutch guy, an
American and two German girls. I turned back alone as they tried to push deeper
into the caves.
Now is when my mind turned
against me...
It was so
beautiful outside, why are you doing this? Why would anyone do this? You’ve
buried yourself alive. You’re an idiot. Didn’t you hear something about Scorpions
on the way here? Big shiny black scorpions, fuckers with venom shots loaded in
their tail? You’ll be dead, killed, alone in this cave. Why? Why? Why?
My knees got sore and I’d cut my
elbow on some sharp rocks. I started to feel a slight panic. It started in my
intestines, I thought of them as electric eels, voltage increasing by the
minute, opening sparks and then fire trails though the central wires of my
nervous system.
Its ok, its
ok, I’m fine I’m fine I’m going to get out, yes. Oh’ why? Don’t black stand up
comedians joke about stupid situations white people put themselves in? This is
one of them right? Suffocating to death in a cave I willingly crawled into? No
its fine, Mustafa and Trevor are black… no wait, they didn’t come this far!
Fuck!
When I saw my hope, the streaming
light through a tiny crack, my stomach turned on a different kind of
electricity – one that heats Jacuzzis.
Yes, yes,
yes. Oh’ the light, the relief.. yes.
There were ten other hikers
outside. One man was sitting on a rock smiling to himself. I caught his
eye as I stumbled towards him. “howzit?” (He’s South African) he waves me over,
“sit here and watch the faces as they come out the cave”. I sit with him and
after a few minutes one of the German girls appears from the cave, her face
installing new colour, her head in the sky, her heavy breath winding down. The
man I was next to turns to me and says “That’s exactly what relief looks like”
I then made sense of this cave
crawling insanity as a kind of 'appreciation for life' exercise.
Last
week I took a Grade six class (11-12 year olds) at the Primary School. I asked
the class (thirty five boys and girls) to write about their nightmares, I
wanted to see how ugly their minds can get. I asked for details, the breathing
under the bed, the blood on the walls, the funeral in the rain.
I noticed after
ten minutes there was a boy (let’s call him Nathan)
who hadn’t written anything. I approached him and tried to help but he sat
there silent. Suddenly he scrunched up the paper on his desk and threw it on
the floor, storming out the classroom. I was stunned, unsure if I should leave
the rest of the class to go after him. Later I told the Principal about Nathan,
I could tell by the pause before she spoke she was about to tell me something
heavy.
“Nathan lives in a home” she said
“his parents drank themselves to death. You’ve asked a twelve year old to write
about a nightmare he is essentially living"
See, I can crawl into some cave
and be lost and full of panic, I can think about my intestines as electric
eels, I can cut my elbows on rocks and bleed a little but what do I really know
about caves and how to survive in them?
It’s hot, very hot. It’s called South Africa in December. I’m walking down the street, past houses that look like giant shoe boxes. They are painted colours that glow in the sun – cream white, peach yellow, red toffee. I am on my own, imagining how she would look beside me, what she’d wear on a day like this, how we would look to the rest of the world. (Brazilian supermodels maybe? You know, nudist beach material). I would be walking closer to the road, I would sound like royalty as I tell her “the gentleman always walks closer to the road”, she would laugh but I would laugh harder (yes, I’m one of those laugh at your own joke types). She would point out my farmers tan; she would tell me my body has nothing to hide. It is a beautiful body, it belongs in the sun. I would not pretend I’m not thinking about sex, she is not telling me her father has Alzheimer’s and she has a younger brother who is afraid of loneliness. No, we would not talk, would not need to as our mouths open on each other… now I don’t know why I’m thinking this… why I feel so happy right now but feel the happiness enhanced by the imaginary presence of her. Isn’t this freedom? Complete freedom? Walking alone, down the street under an African summer? I could be thinking about swimming with penguins, hiking into caves, diving into the sky but here I am, holding strings and trying to attach them to things that have already disappeared.
Everyone
has told me the stories about the tourists being robbed on the trains.
The robbers and the knives. The robbers are kids or young African
men. They are desperate wolves, street savages, city junkies, they eat
without forks, just knives and knives. Tendon cutting, wound
gushing knives! I should not take my camera. If I had a hunger pain, one
so deep it stuck its jagged malnourished fingernails into me and I saw a
camera as a cure, a meal or something that picks me up and takes me
somewhere with brighter colour and happier settings, what would I do?
There’s no telling.
Should I take my Camera? I picture a knife at the warmest vein on my
neck. A man, clothes ripped, shredded, he must fight lions, the kings of
jungles. No, he is a lion. I am an antelope, a curious deer, a trained
dog on the wild city trains. Should I take my camera?
But Ray, the stories of
these robberies, they are not yours. You are not a twenty one year old
white woman from Germany, or a white teethed American student with
blonde surfer hair and a backpack full of prized goods. You don’t wear
black tinted sunglasses that are too big for your face. No Ray, until
you open your mouth people think you are from here, South Africa,
beautiful South Africa. Take your camera.
Now I picture being asked a question by the man with shredded, ripped
clothes. I don’t want to respond but I have to... in some way. I shrug
my shoulders, he takes it as a sign of a challenge. He will not be
brushed off, shooed away. He is not a fly I can swat, he is a king! I
say something.. something short, in one quick breath but I sound too
unsure of myself. He smells a weakness; he sees a worried goat, a
wounded bird. The claws in his eyes reach for me, or should I say knife,
yeah, his knife, his rusty life-ending knife. My blood is sauce, hot
sauce from Europe, it will be on his knife.. I will bleed to death,
right there.. on the train... and on my birthday...
Looking out the window I see a man sweeping
the street. He has made a pile of bright yellow and green leaves, fallen from
the trees. Another man, dressed in all black looks like a shadow with clothes
on. He is scooping the leaves into a black bin bag. There are two bags already
filled and sealed with a knot. The bags are in the shade of an almost naked
tree. The tree looks sad having lost the colours that made it happy.
Conversation about Apartheid
I am having a discussion about Apartheid
with a (coloured) man in the street. He is in his late fifties and tells me
things are worse now.
The
black government is more corrupt than the white one. They steal most the money
that goes into our economy and apartheid is now reversed by giving all the jobs
to the blacks even though in general they aren't as skilled. The black South
African’s don’t even want to work.
He points across the road at two men
sitting on the pavement. One of them is holding a beer bottle; his body looks
thirty years younger than his face. The other man is barefoot; the skin on his
feet is flaky and dry. I thought at first he was wearing grey socks.
Look
at them! Lazing around drunk at this
time (it’s about 2pm).
I ask the (coloured) man what he thinks
those men would say if we asked them why they’re sitting around in the street
drunk early in the day? He suggests we go and ask them.
We walk over and ask if they mind being
asked a question. Only the man I thought was wearing grey socks responds. He
doesn’t look at me, he just shrugs his shoulders.
This is his response.
Where
you from? England? … and you want to understand me? Your mind cannot be
anything like mine. I am African. No European mind can be like an African. Now
I don’t want to talk. Talking English makes me want to get drunk.
For Miss Able (The School Principal) -
To know the weight of your sky is to know
the clouds are heavier than they look.
Imagine, you're in an African country you've never been in before and you've just walked into your first classroom as a teacher.
The Principal introduces you to the wild eyes of thirty five children as "a young man from England".
A boy, sitting at the back of the room, eyes like a lion cub throws his voice at you.
He tells you he supports Man United. You try to find common ground by telling the class you are an Arsenal fan.
The whole class jeers and secretly, you congratulate yourself for turning them against you already.
When the class settles you are pulled
aside by the Principal who has this to say...
See that girl sitting with her head on
her desk?
Her mother died of Aids when she was
born.
She has it too. Some of the children
know.
Every day those children ask her why isn’t she bleeding.
They don’t understand how she has Aids and still looks like them.
Matthew, the boy who sits two rows from
the back,
he broke two of the seventeen windows
that were smashed here last week.
His mother came to school with a bat
that day.
This is a Primary School, Malik is fourteen years old,
repeated the sixth grade three times.
his father had three wives at the same time before he had
a stroke.
Now Malik's in a Home, the boy can’t sit still. He feels his
whole life in his stomach,
we all have to pretend he isn’t ill.
You’ve got to talk to David. He’s the
boy by the window,
he’s from the Congo. You’ll see him
climbing trees in the playground.
His mother said he takes all the
blankets at home and sleeps on the roof.
His world has its own sky.
The girl with the pink hair band, that’s
Kim.
She never does her work, she just wants
to draw.
See drew all the mountains on the wall,
She won’t get that far if it’s all she
can do.
A cartoon is not a career path.
This week the children have been drawing
diagrams of our solar system Show them, show them how to
colour in their planet.
Traffic Lights? My friend, you
are in Africa. They are called Robots. When they turn green, still you cannot
trust. No road wants you to get too comfortable. There are drunk
drivers and many deaths, mostly pedestrians. Life eh? Cross one road badly and
your whole life knocked away. Look out on your left. See how the waves rise out
the sea like white horses and crash to the yellow rocks? That says Africa is a
woman, only women have that much colour in their fury. You know I'm Muslim, a good
Muslim. I do not drink. Many Muslims learn Islam through other idealistic
Muslims instead of Islam itself. Like the women who are not allowed to drive in
Saudi Arabia, I do not know where that comes from but it's not from Islam. Islam
is not strict, it offers many choices. You’re an atheist? Is that
the name of your God? OK, we're here. Great to meet you today Ray, take my
number. I can come when the morning gets up tomorrow. Call it nine fifteen,
Africa time, you might call it 11. OK Ray? See you at nine fifteen.
I was packing for my trip to South Africa
and decided not to pack any music, just basic clothes, camera and books. I
realised a lot of my memories abroad involve me walking around strange places
with headphones. I can’t tell you the sound of these places but it definitely
isn’t soft rock or indie rap.
South Africa – Where, What
& Why?
From November fifth I’ll be living and working
in the outskirts of Cape Town in a place called Belthom. I’m going to be
assisting teachers in a Primary School, using poetry to help teach English.
I’ll also be working at The Woodside Special Care Centre working with orphans
and children with disabilities.
One of the best things I’ve done with my
life so far has been working with children in special needs camps in Ohio, USA,
followed by road tripping across North America on my own. I met many people in
different cities and suburbs, I felt how different states are like different
countries, I understood how so many great people have come out of a country
that represents freedom to its people and imperialism, slavery or Hollywood to
the rest of the world.
I’ve been eager to experience something
like this again and chose South Africa because of my own curiosities of the
culture and political history. I’ve read and heard about the Dutch and British
colonization, the Zulu wars, the spice trade, the Boer Wars, Apartheid and
Nelson Mandela’s long walk to freedom. I’ve met many white South Africans in
London and listened to their rants about the inequity of blacks against whites
and how the political transition from Apartheid processed too hastily. They’ve
told me this has created new tensions between “black, white and coloured
people”.
In many ways we should all change the way
we think about Africa, its history began thousands of years before European
invasion yet it seems to be where we all start with our understanding. Myself
included. Why is this important you may ask? Well, we all came from Africa so
we’d be more in touch with our origins as human beings. The exploitation of
Africa has made many European Empires and has now helped make China perhaps the
most powerful country in the new century.
On Race
I’m curious to see how people will
respond to me in a country with such high (on-going) racial tensions. As
someone of mixed heritage (Caribbean/British if you want the box) I feel I
represent the togetherness of two very different cultures. The identity
crises/confusion that comes with the mixed race experience is something
inflicted by a culture that can’t get rid of its colour lines. People all over
the world give you different labels (white, black, mixed race, bi-racial,
coloured etc) so the confusion of other people is inflicted onto you.
I struggled with this throughout my school years
but meeting other mixed race people and discussing the experience with them helped me to make sense of it. I now
celebrate the ambiguity of my appearance and I want to invite the
whole world to the party!
Conversation With A Doctor
I went to the travel Clinic after the NHS told me I had to book six
weeks in advance for free treatment. At the clinic I paid £75 for three
injections to keep me protected in Africa (Hepatitis A, Typhoid Fever &
Polio).
The doctor who gave me the jabs ranted to me about the NHS cuts and the
new procedures that are being phased in.
I’ve been a doctor thirty years, so I’m
glad I’m coming to the end of my career. It’s terrible now. The new doctors and
GPs are being trained to prescribe the lowest costing medicine as opposed to
the most effective, it’s a disgrace. You’re my eleventh patient today, you see
more people travelling from the UK are getting Malaria and Yellow Fever because
the dangers aren’t emphasised enough and people are inconvenienced in getting
treated…
Five minutes after he’d injected my upper left arm I passed out in the
middle of this conversation. My vision went a fuzzy pale grey then completely
black. I came though and I was on the floor with the doctor’s panic stricken face
over me. I had no idea what happened. It was like when you skip a scene on a
DVD and you know you’ve missed something so you ask someone to fill you in.
Me - Woah. What happened?
Doctor - You passed out buddy; I
can feel you’re burning up! I’ll get you water. NURSE!
I found out later that because I have low blood pressure I should always
be laying down when receiving injections.
Autumn Photography (Shadow Experiments)
In the UK the season is changing from Autumn into Winter. South Africa is coming into its summer so that's another reason for me to to jet pack. For you people staying put there is beauty in the cold seasons. The first picture below was taken by myself in London Fields on a late monday afternoon and the picture below that was taken on Tottenham Court Road one cold November night.
