Chairman Hjof goes home

all kidding aside, all the things i’ve ever said about the chairman taken into account (all true of course) let me say in all honesty that my friend frithjof is an excellent man, and that it has been excellent to begin a friendship with him, and that i was very sad to see him leave south africa. the more time i spent with frithjof the more i grew to respect his heart, his integrity, his intelligence, and his ceaseless passion to truly engage with this world, rather than to just skate by on the minimum. frithjof is really a dynamic, caring and capable human being, and will surely build quite a fulfilling life for himself and those who come to know him. i hope to remain in the chairman’s life, and to see him again soon enough (i guess next time will be in europe…)

many people wanted to say goodbye to frothjof, so much so that we were almost competing for his attention. somehow frithjof juggled it all, and let himself laugh and cry and say the compliments which are so hard and necessary to say. he and i went up to the special ‘europe’ rooftop on signal hill (named such because we went there to say goodbye when i went on my trip to europe in june) and listened to a couple songs together, and i read him a totally inappropriate sad poem while looking out at sea point and the ocean.

five of us delivered him to the airport, and lena, simon and gerion made him a cake and brought him a big beer. it was all quite silly and somehow seemed appropriate.

Chairman Hjof sets fire to dragons

Carey and Brendan have a piece of land in the Drakensberg mountains. a beautiful stretch of land, curled in along the border of the national park and world heritage site. the nature of the ecosystem there requires that, if no natural fires occur within a period of roughly three years, there be controlled burning of the brush and trees. furthermore, this burning is helpful in the slow and ongoing process of removing the ‘invader’ species of plants which the colonial europeans planted in the area, both to make themselves feel ‘at home,’ in their colonized space, but also out of an expression of their belief in ‘dominion over all,’ a repugnant world-view which brendan and carey are working hard to counteract in themselves and others. the ‘alien’ species tend to crowd out the resources of the land, and therefore need to be burned and poisoned and physically removed to make way for indigenous species. the process of controlling the burning of 15 acres of land is absolutely spectacular. it was wonderful just to watch the whole process unfold…

this is the hut that is on the property now. another house, in another location is planned in the coming years…

ironically, we made a little campfire and sat and talked, while the mountainside was in flames…

the beautiful river was our source of clean drinking water, our escape option in case of emergency, and a great place for a game of chess:

walking home after a successful day of fire-starting (in the background, you can make of the spiny back of the dragon that gives the mountain range its name):

and the moon rose over the mountains…

Chairman Hjof in the valley of 1,000 hills

the chairman and i visited my friends carey and brendan. carey took us back to the spot in the valley of 1,000 hills that i thought was so beautiful on my last visit, but didn’t photograph. here are a couple images of it (missing the sunset that made last visit truly spectacular):

Chairman Hjof monkeys around in style, in Durban…

after staying one night in yet another crazy backpackers, and receiving their racist map of durban (see video above) we decided to head straight for the downtown area (majority black and indian) that we were cautioned against by the backpackers, and we spent a couple of days sleeping in a hotel in the red-light district and wandering around the busy downtown area. don’t know if that was any way more ‘authentic’ than the backpackers, but in some way it did seem slightly less fake and isolated.

something that did feel totally fake and weird though was the revolving restaurant we went to (only 1 of 37 in the whole world!!!!):

Chairman Hjof meets some asses in Coffee Bay

coffee bay is beautiful. but by the time we got there we were sick of the isolated backpackers’ situation. yet another place tucked away amidst beautiful landscape, passing by 100 or so km of totally black territory without the slightest interest, and then pay the backpackers to make an “authentic” khosa meal. it really gets a bit stupid after a while, it’s so silly, and so out of touch with anything that might actually resemble being in south africa (or the former transkei, as is the case in coffee bay). on top of all that, we were both physically sick, and there was a crazy trance festival going on at all hours at night. so, it was totally crazy and unpleasant. aside from a nice walk and game of chess by the beach, we just turned around the day after we arrived, and went straight to durban.

here, the chairman tries to explain what it might be like to have sex in time with trance music:

The Chairman Hjof gets cozy at the cozy cave

The chairman and i, being white tourists following along with the general tourist route recommended by guide books, the white-dominated baz bus, and the other white suckers backpacking through the country, decided to go from one famous beach village, chintsa, to another, called coffee bay. inbetween the two places is an inland city called mthata, the once-capital of the once-transkei homeland (or ‘bantustan’) created by the apartheid government as a way to oppose the demands for freedom and independence on the part of the liberation struggle with degrading, dependent puppet-states of black subjugation, which nonetheless would be referred to by the apartheid state and their puppets as black ’self-determination.’ anyway, our friend sean in grahamstown was raised in the transkei (as a white south african, one of a small percentage of families that seized upon certain tax incentives and so forth in order to make a life for themselves in the homelands, and thereby provide the little statelets with a certain skills-base that they needed to achieve a sliver of legitimacy) and so he asked us whether we were planning on heading to mthata. having read some things about it in the guidebooks, the chairman confidently said, “yes, of course.” to which sean replied, “ok, good, because mthata is, well… a shit-hole. yes, it’s a total toilet.” and sean sure was right.

ah, but i said already that we were headed to coffee bay, 80 km down from mthata. well, we sure thought we were clever. we were going to the white tourist zone, but we used black transportation to get there, a little private taxi, which is the transport available (other than hitchhiking) for black people who cannot afford cars or buses. and as we were arriving late to mthata (too late, we thought, to take the two hour trip down to coffee bay by hitchhike or taxi) we decided to sleep in mthata. and two ladies in our taxi told us they knew of a place for accomodation, and that it was right next to their house, actually. so, we were delivered to the cozy cave, a remarkable little place, a place so amazing that one hopes that it can be humorous. we sure tried to make light of the situation…

mmm… what a nice dinner we had…

The Chairman Hjof remembers boyhood on the ‘wild coast’

from east london, we went to a little village called chintsa, which is the start of the so-called ‘wild coast’ of south africa. we stayed in a crazy backpackers, which was kind of like a commune for weird, alcoholic sports lovers. that part was pretty crap. but we had a nice time wandering the beach, being boys again, finding neat animals and messing with them, and then playing some chess, to finish it all off.

here’s a weird puffer fish, which the chairman, being the fully civilized person that he is, ’saved’ from a little pool that he’d been washed into, and put back in the larger stream/ocean:

and here’s an octupus. the chairman wanted to get a better look at it, so he tried poking it with sticks, or at least poking the ground nearby, but it didn’t work. the little guy was sneakier and more patient than us little boys:

The Chairman Hjof mocks his settler kin

once the chairman was feeling a little better, he and i and doerte hitchhiked to east london (ironically, the route to east london passes berlin, potsdam and hamburg, so our hitchhiking signs said, “london,” “berlin” and “potsdam,” which no one but us found funny). arriving late, there wasn’t much to do there but walk along the beach. but we found out on our map about a memorial to the german settlers that came to the area in the 19th century.

turns out that this apartheid monument has been fused with a ‘hero’s park,’ that is so strange, and so weirdly placed, that it’s almost laughable. it consists of this:

and this unexplained list of names:

The Chairman Hjof makes his presence in grahamstown known

after a midnight pillow fight to celebrate the chairman’s birth (he was assaulted from all sides by lena, simon and i) and a crazy attempt to kite surf, which ended up sending him hurling through the air for a good 30 meters or so, we arrived in grahamstown on the chairman hjof’s birthday.

the national arts festival was pretty fun. we spent a week there, as the chairman had a friend who let us stay in her apartment for the week (we were alone, as she was house-sitting elsewhere) and so we had a very domestic, married-couple life with our friends, complete with omelettes, espressos, fela kuti and bedtime stories. there were a number of excellent performances we went to. most notably: a play written by zakes mda called “you fool, how can the sky fall?” which was mocking african dictatorships, zimbabwean (jazz) musician oliver mzutukuli, a play about a prominent activist and city council member (for the now-destroyed [to make it a 'white' area] district six neighborhood in cape town) from the 20s through to the 50s, named Cissie Gool, a great pantsula dance performance, a crazy irreverent, mocking afrikaans hip-hop artist named max normal and lectures on the repercussions of the corrupt ANC arms deal of the early nineties and on the so-called ‘border war,’ of apartheid white male conscripts fighting against the guerrilla forces and the cubans in southern angola.

(here’s doerte and jodi sleeping beautifully in our little cottage):

i got myself a couple of new sweatshirts (cuz i also got my jacket stolen and grahsmtown was freezing cold) and some gifts for friends and loved ones. here’s one of my new sweatshirts, featuring the big JC that we all know and love. i like to believe that it’s really just a tree…

towards the end of our time in grahamstown, the chairman got sick, so doerte and i had to entertain ourselves…

somehow, we thought this sign wasn’t explicit enough, so we made it more clear:

Bakkie to the national arts festival

the chairman, lena and i all rode in simon’s bakkie up to grahamstown for the national arts festival. it was a fun journey, cramming into the back to sleep, and lounging about, looking constantly backwards, as we meandered through the mountains and along the coast.