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.  

The Relatives of Fabulousness

I could bear my self-pity no longer. I needed to get away from Heartbreak Hill and into loving arms. So I pointed my little white car, Princess, in the direction of Tzaneen and headed down the dizzying Magoebaskloof Pass to have lunch with my aunties and uncles at the Nut Village.

Reasons to be cheerful 

It’s a beautiful, soulful drive and luckily for me, they live next door to each other, so it’s like two for the price of one: One roast chicken and a bottle of wine gets you two momma bear hugs and two avuncular cuddles, on tap. Plus, jackpot, they also have wine. And both uncles are called Mike, so that’s one less name to remember after the wine.  The Nut Village – its real name is the Macadamia Retirement Village – sits calmly and quietly on the banks of the Tzaneen dam and has gorgeous gardens, indigenous trees and a host of extraordinary characters including my fabulous rellies. I always sign into the Nut Village as the Ministry of Fabulousness, and I always cite the reason for my visit as: G&T. 

And it’s always so good to lunch with the aunts and uncles. 

Billo Tooley

We all stem from one Billo Tooley who came farming in Agatha, near Tzaneen, in 1904 and begat the wild Tooley clan who are still alive and kicking and doing everything from politics and cheese making to brewing beer and having their hearts broken. There is strong ancestry and deep love; never a shortage of gossip or wit. I never met him, but Billo Tooley was a strong and handsome (ahem) man, they tell me. He married twice – once to Muriel Frances who started this particular Tooley branch that I lunched with; and then second time to my grandmother Elsie Margaret whose branch and lineage I’m afraid, is unquestionably madder.  Oh dear, that’s me. 

My grandmother Elsie

But I love my aunts and uncles stories. Depending on their moods and the weather, they regale me with tales of avocado farming and the perils of growing cucumbers in subtropical climes; the goings on at the old tennis club and how they found the biggest mashatu tree in deepest Africa. They tell me about how they once took ten children on a flatbed truck to camp in Mozambique for a month, how my mother once hung naked from a tree with my godmother Jean Solomon, how that lot lost everything and that bunch turned out disastrously, how so and so married twenty times and how one aunty once left her baby behind at a party. Mostly we just love each other and love each other’s company. I draw deep from ancestral wells when I lunch with my aunts and uncles at the Nut Village. I leave them with a fuller heart and belly.

The road to the rellies

They are older and wiser people, they have known deeper, greater life and they ease my broken heart, up my humour. They impart love and wisdom and the sense of this lovely quote I found from author  Louise Erdrich that: "Life will break you. You have to love, you have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree (or in our case an avocado tree) and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."

The best of times, the worst of times

Tintin my man! 

If I hadn’t have fallen in love I wouldn’t have had my heart broken. But if I hadn’t had my heart broken I would never have found out that I am related to Tintin! 

OMG can you believe it?! 
It’s almost worth the pain.

Mysteriously, there is no Belgian blood in my veins. I am thoroughly South African, but ancestrally English, Scottish and Irish, and I had a bit of Welsh in me recently until the fucker betrayed me and went back to the environs of Cardiff.  But Tintin himself actually wrote to me in person the other day, and the fact that I had a cat called Snowy once is now extraordinarily auspicious.

“Dear Bridget”, wrote Tintin – after my last blog about meandering morosely and miserably about the local cemetery - “What a wonderful blog. You are my 1st cousin of the husband of my 6th cousin Eleonore Dorothy Melck. My Mum’s ashes are in the Haenertsburg cemetery and so will mine and my partners be one day. Also buried there is the wife of my 2nd great-uncle. Eliza Devenish nee Short. She knew General Piet Joubert and her father was a friend of Charles Dickens.”

Tintin Joubert 

At this point I feel I must mention that this Tintin’s surname is Joubert. Not that that changes anything of course. If anything, it adds a certain frisson to the overall mystery. I am obviously delighted to be connected to Tintin, who according to both popular mythology and Wikipedia, “had a sharp intellect, could defend himself, and was honest, decent, compassionate, and kind. Through his quick thinking, and all-round good nature, was always able to solve the mystery and complete the adventure.” That’s pretty much me, isn’t it?  Apart from the completing the adventure part, perhaps, and er, maybe solving the mystery. Mmmmm, decent, compassionate, kind, ok well whatever…

But to be entirely honest, I am not that happy about the Joubert connection, since Commandant General Piet Joubert was the man who ordered the beheading of Chief Makgoba, a local chief here in Magoebaskloof in the 1800s. During what they call the Boer-Makgoba Wars, Joubert ordered a team of Swazi bounty hunters to flush Chief Magkoba out of the deep forests, and return with his head, which they did. There is a great deal of local lore and legend about Makgoba, and the whereabouts of his head remains a mystery although I have it on pretty good authority that it’s somewhere in Germany in the household of the family Altenroxel.

Deep in the Magoebaskloof forests 

Never mind. The fact that my Tintin’s relatives – and therefore mine – knew Charles Dickens is of course a huge upside. So let’s skip the heartbreak and the beheadings and the torrid stuff – and let me leave you with this Dickensian profundity, which could apply to anything from politics to heartbreak. It’s from A Tale of Two Cities, and it reads thus: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”

Love, loss and the leather jacket

It is a great relief to move from the Visitor of the Week at the local bottle store stage of heartbreak, to the Visiting the Local Cemetery phase. It may seem odd to want to visit a cemetery whilst under emotional duress, but it’s like less Chateau de Nervous System, for goodnessakes and more gentle philosophising. At least you’re still alive.

And Haenertsburg has the most beautiful cemetery among ancient trees at the top of a hill with astonishing views. Views to die for, that’s what the locals say, and everyone visits it all the time: happy hikers, grieving relatives, drunken lovers, curious historians, late night teenagers toking and groping, daytrippers, the heartbroken.

You can sit upon a memorial bench and gaze upon the Iron Crown, highest peak in the district, and the Ebenezer Dam beyond the grasslands. Or you can browse the graves. There lies he who started the first sawmill, she who made the most beautiful garden and once walked all the way to Louis Trichardt when it was still bushveld. Pioneers, adventurers, traders. That one was the last Duke of Atholl, that one over there was once married to that one back there, and that one there. Ja, that caused some kak. Aah that one, head on collision with a kudu; that one, drank herself to an early grave. 

There are beautiful groves of ancient hardwood and exotic pin oaks. Some lavish headstones and moving inscriptions. Around a hedge, remnants of the apartheid days, is the black part of the cemetery; fewer graves, more humble, one just a mound of earth with a chipped blue enamel cup on it.

The cemetery is cared for by a cemetery keeper who lives here; there were reassuring puffs of smoke from his little cottage in the wild flowers. But since I didn’t think he was up for the heartbreak chat, I sat a while with young John Allen, who was taken too young in a car crash. His mom Minki, who owns a coffee shop in the village, gave her late son’s full length black leather Uzzi jacket to his friend Alex. Alex’s mom Nina, my friend, lent it to me last year when I went in search of love in Hawaii.

How fucked up is that? I said to young John. Not that I needed your jacket in Hawaii of course, it being in the middle of the Pacific you know, like surfing and six pack stomachs and lank military okes. I needed it to get through New York en route. It was seriously cold bru, so thanks for your jacket which kept me warm and strong. I had to have the hem taken up by the way, since you were a tall lad. I took it to an upholsterer in Tzaneen.

Anyway, me and your jacket - and you in the pocket of course - hit the coldest winter like evah, but we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and walked the entire length of Central Park, checked out Manhattan and MOMA and the graffiti in Williamsburg. Got lost in damn Bedford Stuyvesant, Bed Stuy, a rough hood. Nighttime, wrong station, no more travel pass or cash. Jeez, blonde hey? Had to walk seventeen blocks and got home with the helpful directions of a Jamaican, a Congolese and a real New Yorker. Even bummed a smoke in a Hispanic spaza shop. I told the oke I was from Jozi, he didn’t argue. Anyway John it’s been lekker talking to you about life, death, heartbreak, damn lies and statistics. Your jacket is back with Alex now.

A tragic comedy

Perhaps it is as Charlie Chaplin said that life is a tragedy in close up, but a comedy in long shot. Here I lie weeping because a man I truly loved has lied, betrayed and left me. I run out of toilet paper. I get an electricity  bill from the Greater Tzaneen Municipality for R 1 546 426.80.  Then there is a power failure. 

Edison, Edison give me the medicine.

I head for the local bottle store. It’s the fulcrum of the village in which I live, it's a daily news source, informal bush telegraph and modern confessional booth all rolled into one. Obviously very little is secret. Not for us hushed voices and delicate sips of communion wine, this is Jagermeister bomb country, plus brandy and coke; tequila, shooters if you must.  

The bottle store can tell by the nature of my purchases not only that I am having one moerse pity party but which friends I am rallying to my side. She likes a Springfield, she only drinks a Cab Sauv; he prefers that brand of Scotch. Don’t even think about dooswyn for that one! 

In exchange for baring my soul-pain and vulnerability, I get to hear all the local news and cross paths with couleur locale. On Monday, I heard about a young man who died after being beaten up at our local pub a few weeks ago. By cage fighters from Polokwane whose fathers are apparently lawyers and make dockets and hospital files disappear. On Tuesday I chatted to a local Alzheimer’s resident about her former love of breeding Beagles. On Wednesday I heard that a rich old man who was recently robbed and beaten by a gang, is recovering well. Yesterday I heard that the local schizophrenic, a beautiful woman of 47, blew her brains out with a gun. Today I got the number for a guy who delivers firewood at good prices.

You can read two things into this. Either I am visiting the bottle store too much as I dance on the hell-coals of heartbreak. Or that the country is caught in a bad magic and we are all going crazy from apartheid’s sequelae - the aftereffect of the disease, or we're going crazy at the sheer disbelief that things have gotten so Zumalarly fucked up. Or maybe it's just cold and wintry and as the country loadsheds and dims its lights, we all stare down our own darkness. Perhaps it is as Robert Ardrey said: It is not in our powers but in our paradox that we should search for the essence of man.