Because They're Burning Bricks

Posted By Sika on February 20, 2009

Our first full day in SAfrica*, I woke on Malawi time (read: way too early). I was very excited because I knew we were going to see Johnny Clegg that afternoon. Gareth had told us about the summer concerts at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, and that we had to make sure to go to one. I looked up the concerts in October, determined to book early because I read somewhere that tickets often go fast. But I found out that a) I couldn’t book online, and b)I couldn’t book until the Tuesday before the concert. So, we picked the Just Jinger concert for the day after we arrived as the best looking option. I was a little disappointed with the selection: I had been imagining something more like the classical music Concerts in the Park in New York, but Just Jinger looked ok.

Every day of the three weeks before we left I reminded myself that I needed to call. On the appropriate Tuesday, my callback service seemed a good idea: even though I wouldn’t get the same rates I get calling America, I’d still get better rates than the $1/min or so dialing direct from my cell phone. But I dialed the wrong number. This was a pain, because here’s how the callback service works, with Zain’s crappy signal right now:
1) Call the number in Florida that recognizes my number.
2) Don’t get through.
3) Try to call again, get a disconnect buzz.
4) Try to call again, get no noise at all. Look at the phone in confusion; realize I’ve been silently disconnected this time, just for variety. Decide to wait a few minutes.
5) Call again, get ringing, hang up after two rings (or, when I forget what I’m doing, when the message tells me that I should’ve hung up already).
6) Wait.
7) After 15 minutes, realize the callback service can’t get through and repeat steps 1-6.
8 ) Get called back. Dial the number I need to call and try to make the fuzzy connection, delays, and cutting in and out work because I don’t have the time or the patience to go through it all again.
Talking on the phone was an interesting experience; between the normal delays, the person struggling on the other end to understand me, and me struggling to understand their thickly accented English, I’m pretty sure some of the pauses in the conversation lasted at least a few days. I’m not sure if it was the guy’s surprise at an American being excited about Johnny Clegg replacing Just Jinger or his inability to understand me at all that made our conversation so stilted. When I booked the tickets, it was like a Monty Python sketch, there was so much cross-talk, uncomfortable silences, and miscommunication. But eventually I secured the tickets.

I grew up demonstrating against apartheid, learning all I could about South Africa, watching Cry Freedom, A World Apart, The Power of One, and others I’ve probably forgotten. I grew up listening to Hugh Masekela, Boyoyo Boys, and Johnny Clegg & Savuka. I was so excited about seeing him that I skipped my way into David’s office to give him news he didn’t understand the import of at all, although he tolerated my inexplicable excitement. Then I texted my dad to ask both my parents to call me, just so I could brag that I was going to see Johnny Clegg and they weren’t. Sometimes I am an evil child.

So the morning in question I read and studied maps until the hostel office opened and I could ask how to get to Kirstenbosch on the other side of Table Mountain. It’s funny, because I had read the guide book Carol left us at the Long Street Backpackers, and I had read all about Rikki’s, which the guidebook said was dead easy and yet seemed hopelessly complicated to me. Then one of the hostel guys explains the same damn thing in nearly the same damn words, and it’s sudden illumination: oh, that’s how it works**.

We decided the first order of business was the mall. I thought a lot about how ridiculous I usually think it is when people go straight to the mall when they are on holiday. Even malls that are different are still, in some fundamental way, exactly the same as all other malls. But there are no malls in Malawi, not really. Our need and my justifications for going to the mall, however, do not make that story interesting.

On the way back from the mall, laden with packages on an unusually quiet Long Street, this guy was driving by in a sedan and hollered out the window to David, “Are you English?” David bristled a bit and said no, and the guy got out of his car, came up to us, and asked again. No, we’re not English. He said he was Tourist Police and showed us an ID that looked as if a 13-year-old got out construction paper, scissors, and old school photo, and borrowed his father’s laminator and called it good. We were 90% sure he was trying to scam us to start, but y’know, it’s unhealthy to immediately expect the worse in people, so we tried to give him the benefit of the doubt while staying safe. He did the angry at having his authority thwarted thing well, and was very upset about us obstructing justice or some such thing, until we asked to see his ID again. He pocketed it and demanded to see our passports, and we said that instead we were going to go into the petrol station we were just in front of. He booked it out of there.

What I don’t get is, (Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, really), why are all the scam artists who target us so laughably bad? Do we just inspire people to think, “Oh, they look stupid, let’s see if we can get their passports?” Are we just lucky, and something about our auras render criminals suddenly unable to properly execute their scams?

The Rikki’s picked us up and we traveled all over the foothills of Table Mountain, picking and dropping off people and chatting with them. Most of the people we picked up were excited on our behalf that we were going to see Johnny Clegg. The driver, in particular, was impressed because the tickets had all sold out by Wednesday. I told him that I had called on Tuesday, and when he said, “Oh, it’s your fault no one could get tickets,” I tried to feel bad but failed.

Eventually, we arrived at Kirstenbosch and went straight to the Deli to buy stuff for a picnic. South Africans, or at least Cape Townians, are obsessed with picnics. Many people had their baskets with their wine bottles and nice wine glasses and all kinds of food packed away into neat little cartons. For the visitors and the lazy, however, there was the deli.

We were a bit awestruck by the deli. There were sandwiches—gouda that actually tasted like a different kind of cheese rather than a slightly differently colored mass of milk byproduct, which is what “gouda” is in Malawi; peppered roast beef; bread that wasn’t striving to be Wonderbread when it grew up and so had bite and flavor.***

We managed to find just about the only space on the lawn that was protected from the sun—still blazing even at 4 in the afternoon—and settled down, using one of my ubiquitous zitenje as our blanket. The crowd was mostly white, which surprised me: Unlike the Summer Nights at the Pier concerts back home, the Kirstenbosch concerts aren’t that expensive. I think they were about $10/ticket.

Also, I thought he’d be less popular amongst the people who seem to be getting tired of feeling guilty about Apartheid and so tend to insist that current problems are because of the ANC’s mistakes while denying that they could (also) be rooted in Apartheid. Which, after all, has been over for 14 years. That’s obviously long enough that everyone should just get over it.

The music was great; the crowd was excited, yet well behaved (I think it was the picnicking. Picnics make it difficult to be too rowdy. He didn’t play the really old stuff that I know until right at the end, but there were several of his new songs that I really liked. David liked Kilimanjaro but I think half of that is because Johnny Clegg insisted on using the word at the end of lines a lot, even though there are very few words that actually rhyme with Kilimanjaro. I liked Jongosi even though it was about sports because it was also about South Africans of different colours and creeds coming together to embody their nation representationally. But mostly because it has a catchy tune.

It surprised me that very few people were dancing back where we were sitting. I guess it was to be polite? But by the time Johnny Clegg started in on his older stuff there were a few people standing up and I felt free to dance. There was an older guy who had been close enough to me that he probably knew I was North American, and when I started rocking out to Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World and singing along with all of the words, he looked at me as if he couldn’t figure out what kind of animal I was.

We finished off the evening by going to Ari’s Souvlaki in Sea Point for some of the best Greek food I’ve ever had—and I’ve had some good Greek food. It was also cheap beyond belief. But that’s not as important as how good it is. We had hummus and keftedes and souvlaki and tsatsiki and I can’t remember what else, and then were too full for dessert. We looked at the menu longingly, trying to convince ourselves that really, there was just enough room left in our stomachs that we could fit some baklava with a little reorganization. But the waiter told us we shouldn’t have dessert if we weren’t still hungry, which is, I think, the first time I’ve been told that by a waiter.

*Often, people spell South Africa like this. What cracks me up is that it is often also pronounced safrica. It took me forever to figure out that part of the word was actually missing and I wasn’t just having intermittent deafness.
**To use Rikki’s, all you do is call the number, tell them if you want a private or a shared car, where you need to be picked up and where you’re going to. A shared ride is cheaper, but they’ll bring a car that seats 6 and pick up other people along the way.
***I told Kris about our trip and she was most fascinated by the idea of multiple, good cheeses. When I told her that we had even found cheeses we had never heard of before, I couldn’t tell if she wanted to hit me or see if she could eat me and still taste the wondrous cheeses. Whenever she was in the room and I told anybody else about our trip, she would direct the conversation to cheese as soon as politely possible. If I failed to mention the most miraculous part, she would prompt me to talk about how I ate cheeses I had never heard of before. This is not strange behaviour. Any of us who liked cheese back home go into cheese withdrawal here. Our Lariam dreams are full of dancing cheeses begging to be devoured.

Categories: Philosophy, School, South Africa
Tags: Apartheid, Cape Town, cheese, dancing, food, lariam, music, Scammers, Zain