SUN AND SEPARATION

[being cool in Cape Town, copyright Jade Gibson]

The sun is out today, the harsh dry radiation-filled heat of South Africa, against a clear blue sky. I hear it is sunny in London too. There is an absence of the roar of traffic here; traffic, yes, but interspersed with birdsong and stillness. It is afternoon, and I've just returned from the University, where we discussed the concept of everyday life, an interesting yet troublesome one when one considers apartheid was once part of 'everyday life' in South Africa. Yesterday there was a seminar on the historical obtaining of freedom by a slave 'concubine' in the Western Cape.

My head addled with academia, I took refuge in a new experience; being 'cool' in a Cape Town music venue; semi-contemporary jazz, surrounded by designer dark dreadlocks in suits meandering between blonde six-foot-something men wearing sports gear (Dutch heritage, I'm told), all of them out with that contrived look of cool-ness, thinly masking the fear of not being as cool as everyone else. What does it mean to be 'cool' really, does it mean to be afraid, to ultimately be conventional, to always wear a social mask? That's what it seems, at least.

Cool-ness aside (interestingly, on the salsa floor, one strives to be known as 'hot'), the streets are beginning to look more familiar, and London is a distant smudge of bright lights and salsa floors, crowds and hurried encounters. Here, there is talk of liberation, and struggle in the past; histories of resistance and secret political meetings taking place in dance venues. Tomorrow is woman's day, a struggle in South Africa I feel still has much progress to make. As ever, a place of contradiction.

My dose of coolness over, I return to writing poetry. The wind was howling this morning, and it entered my poems, squoze between the words and infused them with gale-force emotion. When one travels, the wind bears new meaning, suggests places far away, is a means of connection with what you can't see. For the next few weeks, I think I will continue to feel there are parts of myself elsewhere, there are parts of me that others here cannot see, because they have not lived them.

Of mermaids and mountains...

[copyright Jade Gibson 2007]

Well, I saw my first mountains again, in the real sense. When they stand stark and solemn against a night sky, with a three quarter moon rising above a swelling sea coated with a sheen of moonlight. A friend drove me down the coast towards Kalk Bay (harbour), Fishhoek (beach) and Boulders beach (where the penguins are) in the evening, after I declared I hadn't seen Cape Town properly yet. The dark streets with firmly shuttered and burglar-barred shops turned into an open stretch of sky with bright stars circling the moon.

'I can breathe again,' I said. After a year in London, I could see far again, across a sea that suggested new horizons, a vast sky unmasked by buildings, neon signs and massive crowds.

I remembered once, seeing over Kalk Bay harbour wall on a dark night, a luminescent seal shooting through the waves. 'Red tide', explained my friend, 'when the algae come in they float in the water, and when they are disturbed they give off fluorescence. The squid come in too, and people fish for squid.' I remembered the seal; a flash of bright phosphorus green, spectral in the water, as it chased food, the squid also luminescent, darting in bright sparks under the waves. The seal swirled in the dark, appearing translucent as it awoke a haze of spinning green light around its body, seeming almost human in its silhouette. I understood then how sailors could easily believe in mermaids, strange spectres that ghostily haunted the waves with fish-like tails.

Earlier, I danced, my own spectral mermaid, amongst a sea of floating colours. Up to now, I have been looking at Cape Town from the outside inside; as a visitor, a spectator. There comes a time when you move from living in a place from the outside, to a time when the place takes over and encloses you, becomes shell-like, protective, and the two of you are in unison. I am not sure if I am there yet, a little torn between two places, but, slowly, I feel I am growing wings here, and soon, like the seal, will be sailing in my own light.

SETTLING IN...

[Image: copyright Jade Gibson 2007]

A few days later, I've just attended my first return-to-writing-group class in Cape Town. It's an all-women's group, although this is not always exclusively, apparently due to the chauvinist upbringing of many males in South Africa, who are brought up to think they should be in charge of women and, I'm told, try to 'take over' and prove themselves all the time, and possibly the fact that the women themselves restrict their creativity and self-expression in front of men here as well. Sometimes men are allowed in, those who are seen to be 'liberated'. I am not sure as yet if I agree or not with this, and maybe there are other reasons also, but it does mean, as opposed to my London group, there is an absence of thrillers, detective stories and male murderers in the novels. The men in my London group were not at all controlling; all very nice and should definitely be invited over to present an example of non-chauvinism to the groups here, in fact they are more likely to be subject to expressions of self-doubt and insecurity; a trait I find somewhat endearing.

I return to South Africa to hear one artist I knew has died, another was killed in the township, being mugged for money. Hijacking has apparently gone up, and it is, I'm told, unsafe to hike in pairs on the mountain now (before, it was on your own). Second-hand cars are unbelievably expensive, because the cost of new ones is out of pocket (for example, a second hand automatic 1985 Peugot in good condition, was advertised at 16,000-17,000 rand, well above a thousand pounds, whereas I've seen perfectly good second hand cars in London for 200 pounds!).

Banks here are remarkably efficient. I opened a bank account in about half an hour, bringing proof of address (in the person of my friend I'm staying with!), and received my printed bank card about ten minutes later, while I tapped in my pin at the desk. So much for the fact Lloyds in the UK took 3 months to re-open my old account properly and lost my bank card several times (once in the internal post)!

Well, the only similar thing to the UK here is the weather. I read the weather temperature is about the same; it's raining here too. Although this is winter here, and it's summer in the UK... There are floods here, and many people consequently homeless. On the radio, I hear a social worker being interviewed about the high level of child abuse in South Africa, and how there is a desperate need for foster and 'safe' homes to put children in. So, if you want to support charities... you know where to go.

I registered at the University, met the fellow fellows and department, as well as external funders who happened to turn up on more or less my first day. It seems as soon as my feet touch the ground, they are forced to keep moving (and not just on the dance floor!). I'm considering a bit of voluntary work on the side; this place is always open to skills if you have them to share, at the moment it's a question of where.