Gringos

My brain was cluttered and weighing down on me at the end of a long day's writing. Beer, I thought, I need a beer. More importantly, I need human contact. At this time, I've lived as a quasi-recluse for only about a week, and don't get me wrong, I love my own company, I actually rather quite fancy it, but I am reminded that I remain a social animal. So I lock up the picture window that blesses me with the flat screen-like view of the Indian Ocean all day long. I hide my 12" iBook from opportunistic "tsotsis" in this burglar-bar free town. I half-heartedly apply a layer of lipstick (don't know why) and select the bright orange soft shell jacket with the reflectors over my all-black version for the assault on humanity by bike.

I ride a bicycle, not the truck, partly out of principle – why drive when you can ride, and secondly because my host drives an extended cab pickup that practically requires a quart of butter to squeeze into the garage in broad daylight; I choose not to attempt this feat in the dark, especially if I am successful at finding that beer I've set out to conquer.

I find myself in a conspicuous town of Kleinmond ("Small mouth" in English), living in a lovely restored beach house of a South African friend I met in a military gym in Baghdad about five months ago. Many braais and accompanying bottles of bad Baghdad wine later, Marius remains in Baghdad, my husband Chris now texts me from Kabul, and I, I am here.

"Quaint" would not be my primary descriptor for Kleinmond, rather it is a small coastal town pleasantly oblivious to, or forgotten by, the 'New South Africa', I haven't decided which it is yet. Apart from the smattering of colored construction workers busily erecting beach homes for the wealthy Gautengers, and it turns out a whole horde of Germans, I don't see much diversity.

I turn right onto Hoofweg from the beach side, toward the only thing I can remember to remotely resemble a bar. I am armed (apart from my lipstick) with my journal and a book I bought at an outrageous price at Exclusive Books. The author's nom de plume is Kleinboer and his acclaimed Afrikaner novel has been translated into English. I don't know why I buy the English version, perhaps because I haven't read an Afrikaans book since matric and have this perverse fear that perhaps I won't understand all the words. Either way, the book is disturbing, very much so. I am uncomfortable reading it, but his writing, and clever narrative captures me. The book is a first-person account of an Afrikaner in a predominantly black neighborhood in Johannesburg, with an obsession of some sort with black prostitutes. The book disturbs me, in a Hunter S. Thomson kind of way, yet, I can't put it down. Partly because I need to know where the obsession comes from, and whether he eventually uses the machete in his trunk on one of the women.

Book and journal in lumber bag on borrowed bike with no lock I arrive at a bar called "Gringo's". I wonder if anyone in this all-whites town knows the meaning of the word Gringo, yet drag my bike up the stairs and ask whether I could bring it inside for lack of a lock. "No" the response rings, "don't worry, we here in Kleinmond are mak" (tame). I place it against the door frame, right over my left shoulder.

For a while, I am the only paying customer in the bar. I have a Hansa in a bottle. They only have Castle on tap. It tastes like honey. I reach inside my bag for the disturbing novel, before the overwhelming urge to write has me digging for the pen I took from the Four Seasons Hotel in Amman. I look over my left shoulder in the direction of the bike, right as two males enter. Small talk, something about looking good on the bike, I realize I am probably in the wrong bar. Mullets abound. Just as I am plotting my escape, which involves swigging the last sip of my beer, the only ethnically diverse person I have seen in close to a week, pulls up a chair. "What choo liting"?

He introduces himself as a Chinese with the English name Derek and asks to write me a 'letter' in my journal. I reluctantly oblige, handing him the pen and book. I page a few pages on, thinking I have left enough pages to complete my own thoughts. I didn't. I look over my left shoulder in the direction of the bike again. Derek tries to strike up a conversation. I eye the beer he bought me resentfully and smile. Another sip, another look at the bike. I want to leave. They tell me there is a bar down in the harbor, maybe I'll go there instead.

ACT II...meet Gerie the 40-year old artist who lives with his parents here in Kleinmond (I promise to share one of his poems too....)

Happy Birthday Chris!

"Haaaaapppy Birthday to yoooou
Haaaappy Birthday to yoooou
Happppy Birthday dear Christopher
Haappy Birthday to you!"

See you in a month

Comments

Folks, there was a technical difficulty surrounding comments - that has been fixed now, so you can comment away. Sorry for the inconvenience.

17 Mar: Update from Kleinmond

How do you get from Baghdad to Cape Town via Amman, Petra, Paris, New York, New Haven, Boston, Los Angeles, Park City, Visalia, Yosemite, Dubai and Pretoria, and do all of it in 4 weeks? Very, very carefully, with a lot of patience and a huge bottle of vitamin B complex, a lot of coffee and a strong stomach for airport security.

Today is St. Patty’s day, Kevin’s birthday and my two-week anniversary in Kleinmond. I still get nightmares from time to time. And emails, all the emails from friends in Baghdad. “We miss you”, “we are doing okay”, “love, your Iraqi sister”. My life over the past year plays off in my mind like an HBO series without an intermission. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and wonder where I am. When I look at my photos I see the attractive couple, and I think, wow, how lucky. Italy, Croatia, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, Egypt, Dubai, France, South Africa, United States…and soon, I must examine my vaccination record for Afghanistan.

But today I write from a small town on the Indian Ocean coast of South Africa: Kleinmond on a dial-up connection. I will be here for the next month where I am well under way to finish my thesis for my MA in African Studies on a fellowship from UCLA.

So many of you have written to inquire about my whereabouts and more importantly, on why I have not been writing more. The lame excuse is that I don't have Internet in the house, but that, indeed is a lame one since I access it daily at the tourist center in town, and that is not the main reason for the silence.

I guess it is understandable to want to “hide” for a few weeks after leaving a place as intense and draining as Baghdad, not to mention submitting ourselves to the travel schedule we did. So forgive me for my brief absence, rest assured it has not been maliciously intended, nor devoid of thoughts off all of you.

To make good on my promise to give a thorough update of the past whirlwind five weeks, please click on January in the archives on the right of the page and scroll all the way down to the post on January 21st, "Leaving Baghdad", and work your way back up to today. I have divided the posts up by location - alas I could not justify squeezing 7 countries, 16 cities and 4 weeks into one post, and trust me, you would not have wanted to read for that long. So instead, they are broken up into bite sizes, including photographs.

I already have a few current anecdotes I want to share, but will wait a few days before I post those.

[please see blog description on the right for some recent changes, I encourage you to leave a brief comment/remark if you are so inclined]

3 Mar: Cape Town!

[The view from my window, yes, I know, I know]

When I learned they released my shipment from customs, I did not wait around to schedule a delivery, instead I offered to drive to the airport and collect it myself. This was Friday, on Saturday morning I was on a 737 headed south toward Cape Town. Eager to get started on my thesis and to have the opportunity to reminisce and catch up. Here I stay in the most peaceful, gorgeous place of a good friend I met in the gym in Baghdad. A South African former member of the special forces, Marius became like a brother in our house in Baghdad as we shared a braai and bad Baghdad wine on an almost weekly basis. Today I am nestled in his restored home in the town of Kleinmond 1.5 hours up the coast from Cape Town in route to Hermanus. The enclosed porch is where I spend my days, research spread out across the entire dining table I watch the world go by outside my window. The Indian Ocean spread out like a blanket at my feet, a truly inspirational place to complete a research project.

[My workstation]