Keep on Walking

Fabulous Jomo en route Kenya 

Recently I’ve had the urge to walk out of my life and just keep on walking. To take a soul stroll, step by step, breath by breath, actualising Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu’s saying that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Just because.

And then bing bada boom I met a man who did exactly that. So now I can stay at home with Johnny Walker and live by proxy through the fabulous Jomo from New York who simply upped and left his life. He was en route Cape to Kili - from the fascinating foothills of Cape Town’s flat-topped Table Mountain to Arusha, beneath Tanzania's snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro. He was eight months into his 5000-km-plus journey, he had a stick, a small back pack, a tent, an ipod and an old-fashioned fold out paper map. He was averaging around 35 clicks a day, had no specific time of arrival in Kenya, and was debating a route change to avoid the Beira Corridor due to rumours of war, and instead walk through Zambia, which would add on another thousand kilometres... then he was going to climb Kili haha, and fly back to NYC.

My friend, delightful Debbie encountered him on Aqua Lane in Tzaneen. He was such eye candy, she admits, she felt compelled to pull over at once and speak to him. Being Debbie and delightful, she suggested he put his feet up for the weekend and arranged him a spot in the soul mountains of Magoebaskloof . Jomo agreed, being tired and skittish after a nasty incident with a racist white farmer in Mpumalanga. Jomo was born of Jamaican parents who immigrated to the USA when he was a kid.

Since he obviously didn’t have a car, it was arranged that I drive him up the mountain from Tzaneen. I picked him up at my rellies’ home in the Nut Village, Macadamia retirement home, where he sat, a bit startled, as the black housekeeper brought the tea in on a silver tray and my Alzheimer’s uncle uttered surreal comments.

“Man, this is the first car I been in for a while”, he said as we drove off. He told me he grew up in Brooklyn, became a doctor, felt essentially unfulfilled and decided to walk out and just keep on walking.  Because he could. And he wanted to. He just needed a very long walk all by himself. A very long one.

I dropped him off at Zwakala Retreat where he relaxed by going on a few hikes, and then he was returned to Tzaneen where he waved goodbye and began walking to Mussina. He planned to cross by foot, over Beit Bridge border post, southern Africa’s busiest and craziest, into Zimbabwe.

“You made these last days in South Africa really great”, was the last email he sent Debbie. “I’ve had such a wonderful time in Limpopo, a province that I was formerly dreading.  You can imagine my surprise when two English cyclists bumped into me on the N1 south of Louis Trichardt and said they had heard of me. I figured you had to be behind it. It’s awesome to think by how thin a margin I ran into them. Had I taken a slightly longer lunch break yesterday, I would have missed them altogether.  These small fortunate occurrences and the beauty in the kindness of strangers have been the highlight of my travel experience. So last night, we all laughed, ate, drank too much wine and generally were merry. Truly a wonderful night.  As it stands I am about three days walk away from the the Zimbabwe border. I’m excited but nervous. Even with all its ups and downs I have gotten used to South Africa and figured out both what to expect and how to survive.  Now I enter into the unknown”.

Both Debbie and I emailed him this weekend but we haven’t yet heard back.  Drop us a line Jomo, and keep on walking, brother.

Missing Melea

In times of mourning and healing, one misses the wise elders. Today I am missing my mogadibo (my darling) Melea Letsoalo, domestic worker for the Hilton-Barber family for almost her entire life. She held me just after I was born and I held her just before she died. She was my anchor, my grandmother, my comforter, my friend. We really adored each other – despite the rule of apartheid at the time, despite her servility in our household. Well into my forties and her nineties, her favourite thing was letting me paint her finger and toe nails post box red, while drinking sweet peach-flavoured champagne. 

Long life! 

Melea cared for me through happiness and heartbreak, through tragedy and trauma – my brother’s death, my armed robbery, me being stabbed in the head. I cared for her too, after her own daughter Carol died, and her son Harry, after her knee conked in and her eyesight faded. Melea was wise and warm, with great humour and healthy streak of anarchy. She was an irrepressible joller. She smoked, she drank. She ran a small but lively shebeen from the alley in Northumberland Avenue in Jozi where we lived for twenty years. 

When I was writing my matric (both my brothers had left home), my parents went overseas for a month and Melea and I were left alone. We had the family Peugeot – and I had a learner’s license - and Melea and I drove all around the suburb visiting my friends and hers. Almost every nearby domestic worker and gardener came to sit in the sun drinking all the stuff we’d raided from the liquor cabinet; as did my friends, but we sat near the pool.  

Colonial family photo 1947

Melea was born in ancestral Letsoalo land in Limpopo, in the green upper reaches of the Letsitele Valley, near Tzaneen. Her people were forcibly removed from there in the 50s. When the land was successfully reclaimed by the Letsoalos in the late 90s, Melea was at the handing back ceremony. “Bloody liar”, she shouted at land minister Thoko Didiza, “all governments are liars!” 

Melea’s father worked for my grandfather on Kings Walden farm in Agatha at the beginning of last century; a skilled stonemason who built the original walls of the now famous gardens. As a teenager Melea went to work on a nearby farm where the farmer tattooed all his workers in case they ran away. Which Melea of course did. I will never forget how I used to trace, with my baby fingers, the warm initials ML in Victorian cursive script on her left inner wrist. 

Not so colonial family photo 1986

Melea fled back to Kings Walden where she went from kitchen ‘girl’ to nanny for my newly born mother Tana. During this time she fell in love with the Portuguese farm foreman, Fernandez, who had come from then Lourenco Marques in Mozambique to manage Kings Walden. Melea and Fernandez lived in a little cottage (which later became mine) and were arrested several times under the Immorality Act in 1948 (no Sex across the Colour Line as it was known then) but continued as lovers ‘til his death in the late 70s. 

Melea eventually retired to a cottage my parents built her in Direpeng Sreet in Lenyenye, down the road from Kings Walden, with a couple of fabulously feisty gogos who smoked newspaper joints and hustled me for bucks to get hot stuff from the local bottle shop. I visited her often there, bearing nail polish, sweet stuff, mielie meal, chickens, eggs, clothes. I got to know her family and relatives, and maintain contact with those still alive and kicking. 

Melea and Tana testing the summer punch 

Born a few days before the Titanic sank in 1912, Melea lived to be 102. I dreamed about her the night before she died. Come quickly said her son Mickey when I phoned the next morning, she is leaving us. I raced down to CN Phathudi Hospital near Lenyenye and saw her for the last time, peaceful and paper thin on the hospital bed.

“I love you”, I said, holding her tiny old hand. “I love you”, she whispered back. 

Love you mogadibo forevah!

My beautiful crazy cage

In some Freudian, Pink Floyd-ian way, I guess I did exchange a walk on part in a war for a lead role in a cage. Last year I fell in love, took eighteen aeroplanes, travelled nearly 80 000km, went to New York, Hawaii, Malawi, Ilha de Mocambique, Thailand, Maputo twice and Jozi about ten times. I moved house, packed up the family home, wrote another book (watch this space September!), suffered heartbreak and ego’s sorry defeat, moved house again and now here I am, completely exhausted and living in this beautiful crazy cage.

A sun flooded porch enclosed by metal and roses. Burglar bar baroque, art in the face of adversity. It’s at the front of my house on village edge, Haenertsburg heart of the Magoebaskloof in Limpopo, and it overlooks distant mountains and soft green hills and a little school with a very loud bell. I don’t have a fence just a tumble of lawn and shrubbery, nor do I have an actual house number so I am considering making a sign outside: 69 Mandela Corner. 

Being South Africa, fucked-up-cowboy- country, even in this mountain paradise we must live in cages these days, not realising the worst are in our minds, but at least my cage is pretty. My ex-neighbour doesn’t like it. He’s more of a Trellidor kinda guy, and he also has a home security system. At least he doesn’t have a white picket fence.

“These things are bloody horrible”, he said furling his lip at the metal roses. But I think they’re fabulous. Okay they do tend to snag tights, tear jeans and shred shins if you approach the cage too fast under the influence of tequila but hey, at least I’m allowed out. 
And there is astonishing eccentricity beyond my cage. 

I’m new to village life. In between gallivanting, I’ve been based on a remote farm for the past decade or so. Now I can walk to the bookshop and coffee shop, chat to the locals, pop in at the watering holes, you know, generally, stroll around the grounds like Mrs Robinson until I feel at home. 

Love this bookshop

Me being a thrower of pots and this being a village, everyone knew of my sorry heartbreak within about five seconds of it happening and since I moved to the crazy cage I have been showered with typical village loving. You look so sad, said a man in the trading store the other day, let me give you a big hug. You look cold said my new neighbour, here’s a hot water bottle. You look like you need a tequila said a new best friend, here’s a tequila. I may have overplayed the pity card a bit, but this little village has given me so many kind things, from hangovers and takeaways to heaters, hot gossip and colourful tales of their own lives. I am deeply grateful. 

Tired Rasta mop

And since I’m still so tired and yet starting to have fun again, I'm in no real rush to, you know, actually sort out my cage. It's currently a nest of blankets, unpacked boxes and badly stacked books. Only today did I stop using my ice bucket as a fridge and borrowed a real one. I’m not particularly known to be a domestic goddess – I only have one very tired mop that looks like an emaciated Rasta – but I don't care. It's my cage.