Out of Afrika

I am now out of Afrika.
In just a few hours I will land in Europe, to begin the next phase of my life, with my base in Budapest. My move out of Cape Town is semi-permanent. I’ve emptied and cleaned my apartment on Hope St. and I will never live there again. In fact, as of now, I don’t feel any strong desire to live anywhere in Africa any time soon.
I am glad that I made the step of moving to Cape Town. It has been an intense year; frequently happy and feeling myself confronted by tremendous beauty, and just as frequently confronted by deeply ingrained injustice, privilege and cynicism. In many ways I feel that I have grown in negative ways as a result of my time in Africa, less hopeful and more scared, less engaged in collective struggle and more alienated from black and poor people. It is important that I leave now, that I reconnect with collectives of daring, irreverent and loving revolutionaries.
All the same, my time in South Africa is not finished.
I have begun the research required to do a major piece of writing on the white anti-apartheid activist and radical thinker, Richard Turner. I am greatly inspired both by Turner’s ideas and by the choices he made about how to live an open lifestyle, towards liberation, in times of severe repression. I finally succeeded in handing in a proposal to write a masters’ thesis, on this topic, just a few days before leaving. If they accept my proposal, my writing will proceed towards getting an MA degree, and hopefully continue into something longer and more beautiful after my degree is completed. So, in short, the work of interviewing people and producing writing will bring me back to South Africa within some months.
Further, I am not yet done with this website. There are still many more stories I would like to tell, and photographs that I would like to share. My apologies for the silence of the last months. I hope to bring this site up to date within the next month.

fly free, love…

birthday party ends at europe

libby’s friends erin & amanda:

libby & doerte:

i played some music for us and for a beautiful hawk flying above:

Mama Jean: Berlin

three days in freezing cold, grey, snowy berlin; we had a blast. my mom got a crash course in being in a city where cars are a bad idea because the public transportation is so efficient, got to go to AA meetings, and got to check out the kathe kollowitz museum. eva & i got to enjoy late nights with friends, exploring “house projects,” concerts and cheap haloumi sandwiches.

we stayed first with gesa (who first introduced me to my friend rudi, in vienna, who first introduced me to my friend lajos, in budapest, who lives with eva, so it was full circle…) which was laid back and fun. gesa and her housemates are totally revamping their apartment, without any permission from the landlord, but it seems to be beautifying the space and the ‘alternative’ guest room was quite cozy. then we spent one night at jan’s house, which was our first reunion since he left south africa, and a lot of fun. he was incredibly warm towards all of us, and very pleased to have an opportunity to show us all the different places that he loves in berlin. it was really sweet to be hosted by him. the best thing he showed us was this “house project” which has people living in the upper floors of a big old building, but cafe, concert space and bar on the ground floor and basement, and a funky haunted house tucked somewhere in-between. we had the great luck to arrive on a night when the haunted house was open. it was so creative and amazing, and actually ended up freaking me out a good bit…

here’s good old gorlitzer park, in kreuzberg, with its famously fucked up fountain:

some of the funky graffiti we found:

and one day we all went to the DDR museum. it was my attempt to allow eva to be a bit of a host, and to bridge the weird gap between my mom’s upbringing in a crazy “red scare” country, and eva’s in a “post” communist country. it was interesting to look at all the artifacts and descriptions of life in east germany, and to be able to get eva’s insight as to which features of life seem resonant with what she knows of ‘communism’ elsewhere and which were different. it was cute to watch eva explaining different features of the ’stereotypical’ DDR kitchen to my mom.

we were all struck by the explanation of “collective pottying” as a phenomenon that young school-kids were subjected to. could it be real? here’s a picture and a description:

all the great street art. really refreshing:

Mama Jean: Dublin

this blog is really for ‘word from a sparrow in afrika‘ but last month i went and ‘collected’ my mother and ‘delivered’ her to cape town for a short visit. and ‘on the way’ we spent five days in europe, visiting with my friend eva and exploring dublin and berlin. i want to share some bits from that time, as well…

this was my favorite trip to dublin in my life so far. i’ve been there a few times, but never before felt like i’ve had any real grasp of the city, of how the streets fit together, how the transit works, what places are interesting to go, etc. i haven’t just *enjoyed* being there. but this time eva & i (and sometimes mom, too) did plenty of playful walking through the streets, just taking in the different people and places around us, talking, playing in the park, hopping on the tram, etc. we even explored the campus of trinity college… anyway, even though it was a short visit, it felt full and enjoyable, and made me want to return to dublin again some time…

of course we found a vegetarian restaurant or two…

as dublin was the last place that my mom was with alex, both outside of the usa and before his turn to hospice, being back in dublin was very crucially about time to remember and honor alex, and to deal with my mother’s process of grieving. it was important to go, then, to the burial place of matt talbot, who was an alcoholic whose process of transformation to sobriety has inspired many people. in specific, alex was a member of a group of men that held retreats in matt talbot’s name, and so when he came to dublin he was very intent on making a ‘pilgrimage’ to sites related to matt talbot’s life. it was good to go there, again.

my mom took some time to sit quietly, pray, remember. and we also lit candles in alex’s memory:

also in this church, there was, surprisingly, an art exhibit against the war in iraq:

also remembering alex, and also on my mom’s birthday, we went out to howth, were libby, my mom, and alex had all come together in sept. 2007 and taken a nice long walk in the hills overlooking the ocean. i still have a picture over my desk at home of alex and i walking together on that day… on the return trip to howth, we didn’t make it until it was already dark, and so it was more about quietly reflecting then a beautiful walk. we went out to a lighthouse and threw some symbolic stones into the ocean, together with kind thoughts towards alex. on the way out to the lighthouse, we were joined by this cute, sort of anarchistic dog, whom someone told us was named mimi. she stuck with us for a good while, and was just generally pleasant to be with, then she just walked away again, as quickly as she had came:

and we had a lot of fun at my mom’s birthday dinner:

and this one? you guess…

Budapest Calling: Craziest Table Mountain Climb Ever!

There were many reasons why the climb of table mountain that evi and i planned was crazy. You might say, with hindsight, that our climb was destined to lead in the insane direction that it led. Maybe. We certainly decided to take the “maximum risk” route, and we got a rush of exhileration out of that, and also paid a steep price.

First off, we didn’t leave our house to start the climb until about 2:30 in the afternoon, and with the climb being 1.5 hours (at least) each way, and the sun setting around 6:30, we were really pushing the limits of possibilities. Then, we had to get some things to help protect evi’s blistered ankles against hurting horribly from the four hours of hiking. Doing that meant that we didn’t make it to the start of the trail till 3:30.

Aware of the time constraints facing us, we decided to take the path that leads towards Devil’s Peak – and not the recommended route up to the top of tabel mountain – because, as i’ve said before, we were looking for “maximum risk,” an adventure, if you will. We had looked on the map, and it seemed like it might be possible to turn off of the Devil’s Peak path at some point, onto a new trail up to the top of table mountain. As we started climbing, we met a man coming down and asked him about this idea. He assured us that it would work and that (and here’s the for sure “quote of the day”) “it’s really well signposted up there,” so we’d surely find our way without any difficulty. Furthermore, being reasonable for a moment, we told ourselves that if we just climbed up Devil’s Peak and back down the same path, that wouldn’t really be so bad.

After an hour of climbing we were near what they call the “saddle,” a piece of rocky earth that bends down, inbetween Devil’s Peak and Table Mountain. As the clouds were covering the whole sky and down to us, so we were literally “in the clouds,” we tried to decide whether to keep going up to Devil’s Peak, or to try and turn off towards the top of Table Mountain.

Convinced that we could see a clear path up Table Mountain, we decided to turn away from Devil’s Peak and head again towards “maximum risk.” If we could make it to the top in a little while, we could still walk down the “recommended route” down into the setting sun. Not a totally crazy idea, eh?

I guess the reality of our insanity didn’t really sink in until we reached, for the first time, an actual sign:

From that point on, things got really quite crazy. First we got crazy happy. The clouds cleared as we stood on the saddle, and it was wonderful to see the city centre and the suburbs spread out beneath the mountain on the other side, all at once. We were convinced that we had definitely made the right choice, doing the more interesting, fun and beautiful thing.

As the maybe-a-path turned into clearly-not-a-path, first gradually and then radically, we started to feel a little different. For a while there was an adrenaline rush, making us think that we could scramble our way to the top and triumph in an amazing way. There kept being little piles of rocks as we went along, that looked intentional and gave us the idea that even though we were scrambling we were clearly headed in a possible direction towards the top. Then, as it neared 6:00, we realized that we were increasingly having to turn back around and try again, increasingly looking up at shear rock and looking down at sharp cliff edges, prickly bush and unstable footing, etc. In another flash of reasonable behavior, we decided to “start heading down.” Brilliant.

We decided not to head straight down, as in backwards, because our last half an hour up had been so harsh and steep. So, we kept going, scrambling all the way, around the mountain. We thought we’d walk along the mountain and downwards, till we reached a viable path. As it turned out, we didn’t reach any clear path (the “recommended route”) until 9:00 – three hours later! Those three hours were some of the scariest, gruelling, tiring – and therefore fully alive – hours of my life. Each of us reached multiple periods of full panic. Luckily Evi’s panic mode frequently made her want to keep charging ahead (only once did her panic tell her to sit down and smoke a cigarette!) whereas my panicked mind kept telling me to totally stop moving my body, to give up. But our moments of panic and hope luckily alternated, so we were able to keep each other calm, hopeful and focused, each taking turns leading the way down.

As the last bits of sunlight gave way to darkness we found ourselves walking and sliding and crawling through bushes, shrubs, rocks, trees and mountain streams in the shadow of the moonlight shining down onto the mountain. Our standards for what was a safe place to place our hands or our feet steadily declined, till we were almost always sliding on our asses, almost always stepping onto things that couldn’t hold our weight for very long, and many of the things we couldn’t even really see that clearly.

Around 8:00 or 8:30 I started to get totally fed up with the whole process. The initial fear-driven hope-adrenaline was all gone, and I was just weary. I began screaming songs at the top of my lungs, and demanding that we walk further across the mountain (and no longer down into the ravine, which was anyway increasingly a stream and we were increasingly wet and cold) to reach a path and be done, once and for all, with this insane scrambling. This “strike” mode led me, at one point, to the moment that was closest to dying that I’ve ever experienced. I ended up standing in and on a waterfall, with water sliding past my feet and arm, standing on a thin piece of wet rock, and my body just totally froze. There was still a few more feet of waterfall to walk through, and i couldn’t conceive of doing it. I was just stuck there, screaming for evi to help me somehow, screaming out my terror, and eva tried to encourage me to turn around, but i just couldn’t. i literally thought to myself that the easiest thing to do would be to just let go of the rock and let myself fall. the whole moment probably lasted about 45 seconds, and then i somehow unfroze and walked across the waterfall to dry land. Normally my emtions feel so cloudy and confusing, but in that moment (and others on this long scramble down) i felt no ambiguity at all, just the pure beauty of fear!

When we finally reached the path we were totally ecstatic. We ate snacks and sang songs and laughed and began marvelling at the feat that we had just accomplished. We had scaled more than a kilometer and a half of a huge mountain, mostly when we were at least 800m up, and then climbed a good 500m of that down through a ravine, with no path, in the dark. Once it was over, it could be funny again, a miraculous, adventurous “success” of some sort.

Furthermore, we had the good luck of doing this whole crazy thing on a night when the moon was full AND being eclipsed by the sun, exactly at the point that we reached the path. Many people had driven up to the roadway along the bottom of table mountain’s path in order to see the eclipse, and there we were, joining them, to see the beautiful sight.

We drove down the hill to the wonderful biesmallah restaurant in bo-kaap, wet and ragged and exhausted, and feasted on curry and sweet drinks – and evi snuck out (and brought me along sometimes) of the restaurant a half dozen times to keep catching glimpses of the eclispsed moon.

It was really a beautiful ending to a totally crazy adventure…

Budapest Calling: Climbing a bit of Chapman’s Peak

our second mountain climbing attempt was up the path towards chapman’s peak, which is a beautiful stretch of land near hout bay. we might have gone all the way, as we were hoping to climb up and watch the sun set, but after about 45 minutes of climbing clouds rolled in and not only spoiled the potentially beautiful sunset, but also threatened to drench us in rain. still, it was an enjoyable walk, and the view back down towards hout bay is amazing. there are a number of paths in and around hout bay and chapman’s peak that i still want to try walking over the coming months…

Budapest Calling: Silly Time

Eva and I had plenty of silly times together, giggling and playing and just enjoying each other. Many of those moments will just have to stay in our minds, the clear imagery and stories held there, safely. A couple silly moments got caught on camera. Here’s a movie of the silliest card game ever (we had a couple fun card playing times, restoring eva’s ‘faith’ in the joy of playing cards):

and here’s the silliest sign that we saw: 

Budapest Calling: Ocean? What Ocean?

Eva and I wanted to go and see the ocean from a different angle, to get a sense of the Milnerton/Tableview section of the city. Going with my friend Arouna, we asked the minibus taxi driver for the taxi to Milnerton to take us somewhere we could see the ocean. He said, “ocean? what ocean?” Arouna tried asking for the sea. No luck. He tried spelling it out for the driver on his mobile phone. Still no luck. Finally asking for “a view of the city,” got us a ride to Tableview, which, incidentally, is the beachfront of the atlantic ocean…

Budapest Calling: Playing at the Botanical Gardens

After a crazy morning sitting for over an hour on a train that moved only 100m out of the Cape Town central station (delays due to ‘cable theft,’) Eva and I finally made it to Observatory, borrowed Doerte’s car, and made our way to the Botanical Gardens. Even with the drizzly, overcast day, and having to pay to enter (for the first time ever) we had a great time playing in the gardens. Eva loved all the new plants, and ran from one to the next, touching them, photographing them, smelling them, and just generally smiling really wide. It was my favorite trip to the botanical gardens ever.

we asked an older woman what her favorite place in the gardens is, and she told us about this dell. it has a bird shaped bathing pool of mountain spring water, and a little waterfall…

personally, eva fell in love most with this tree. hope the picture captures it’s beauty:

and here’s the lovely eva:

Budapest Calling: Township to Beach

wanting to go and see the ocean on a beautiful, sunny sunday afternoon, we decided to take the train down to Mitchell’s Plain (the largest ‘coloured’ township in Cape Town) and walk through the neighborhood till we hit the beach (maybe 30 or 45 min. walk). I had never before been to Mitchell’s Plain, effectively kept away by it’s reputation as a township and the whole pile of nasty associations that white people have with ‘townships,’ and how dangerous they are. But Mitchell’s Plain was a vibrant, inviting area, and many people happily greeted us and wished us a nice day. (I know it might be strange, and makes the blog less instructive in some way, but I don’t like photographing the townships, because I don’t feel like I exactly have the ‘right’ to do so, especially not to depict people living there without talking to them. Sorry, you’ll have to come and see for yourself…)

Once we reached the ocean we found a beautiful stretch of coastline, with many lillies and otherwise beautiful land, rocks and sand. It was very affirming and positive feeling to realize that even in this so-called dangerous, negative space, there is such a beautiful space to go and to just enjoy oneself. And yet, none of my white friends, all of whom go to the beach often and many of whom have cars, ever say, ‘let’s go to the beach by mitchell’s plain’ (or khayelitsha, for that matter, which also borders the indian ocean). Crazy. After we spent some time enjoying the ocean, we hitchhiked to good ole’ white/tourist muizenberg, to have dinner and to catch the train back home. We were picked up by a racist white couple that really wanted to pick us up so that they could tell us (four times, actually) that we’re in a really dangerous area, and really shouldn’t be there. No matter, we had a great time.

Eva was so happy here, she found it so beautiful…

i was very happy as well…

good ole’ muizenberg:

and here’s Eva’s favorite photo: