Surviving South Africa: September 2006

Hospital

My host father has been forced into the hospital on account of his TB. It’s not looking good…

Knives

Today, I was walking out of the school grounds when I happened on four young teenage boys brandishing knives. They did not seem as if they were about to cause trouble; instead they seemed more focused, in the way most 14 year olds are, on looking cool. In order to achieve this they spent their efforts flipping the blades to a rhythmic beat that seemed to accentuate the image they were attempting to portray.

I confronted them which didn’t particularly have any real effect considering their limited English and my equally limited Sepedi. The conversation went something like this:

“Why do you have knives?” (in this corner Cait)
Blank stare (from corner “cool” teenage boys)
“You need to leave you can’t be by a school with knives.”
Blank stares
“It is illegal to have knives at a school. We can call the police.”
“No, it’s not illegal to have knives,” responded corner “cool” teenage boys indignantly.
“Wanna bet? It is illegal to have them at school around kids. Want me to call the police so you can find out?”
Stare of loathing aimed at me from team “cool” teenage boys
“Put them away.”

I walked off then. There wasn’t much else to do. From what I can tell no children were harmed in the incident but it does make me worry for the future.

The Smells of Summer

The Smells of Summer

One of the ways I can tell summer is upon us, besides the obvious rise in temperature, is the smells. The rain, very slowly, is casting occasional storms scenting the air with the wet dirt aroma that wafts from the ground and makes me imagine new beginnings and the shades of green that will arrive persuading the surrounding mountains out of their dull slumber and into their riveting exquisiteness, like beautiful maidens escaping from a tower in which they’ve been locked away.

Yet not all smells are smells of rain, of freshness. The smells of humans; masked often before by the colder weather, embolden themselves with their sour return. Now, when I sit in a taxi, all of my senses are attacked, particularly my nasal cavity, as the heavy musk of perspiring bodies hangs like smoke in the enclosed vehicle.

Of all of the scents, both pleasant and pungent, the one I have to run from, avoid at all cost, is that of cow intestines boiling on the stove. For whatever particular logic it seems that my host mom only eats this specific delicacy in hot weather, thus increasing the noxious odor emitted. I know the intestines have been cleaned, but still they manage to emit a raw perfume of combined staleness and rot, a scent that lies heavily in the air: a seeping smell that slips under my closed doors and through the cracks of my window managing to turn my stomach and kill my appetite for anything, while I sit armed with a cologne bottle intermittently dousing the air around me with artificial fragrance.