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STARSHIP Ten Years of Truthspeak 1996-2006 G21 FICTION MPHUTHUMI NTABENI, South Africa ON FILM BRAD BALFOUR, United States JOIN OUR MAILING LIST. It contains more jokes than not. SMOKE & MIRRORS ROD AMIS, G21 World HQ RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT X.N. IRAKI, United States HOUSE OF CARDS YOU The World THE PREVIOUS EDITION MEET THE G-CREW! These are the people behind this jam-band every week. HOME TABLE OF CONTENTS & BACK ISSUES BECOME A SPONSOR OF THE WORLD'S MAGAZINE.
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G21 FICTION - TRESPASSING is the first of a three part serialization of a new short story by South Africa writer MPHUTHUMI NTABENI.
East London, SOUTH AFRICA - The sun was showing little signs of relenting though the day was already beyond sixteen hundred hours old. The heat was not only oppressive but somehow accusing.
Mphuthumi Ntabeni What is it about travel we like; about motion that holds a promise of rescuing us from ourselves? Is it because journeys are the midwives of our thoughts? New landscapes come with a promise of new beginnings.
African borders, especially, are the cordons beyond which the grass starts to get greener. Roads that lead to them are veins of opportunity filled with flotilla of drifting hordes looking to strike it rich somewhere. They supply a rare avenue for the understanding of our difficult African lives.
These were my thoughts as I stood in a border gate between Botswana and Zambia. And then I felt a hand tap me on the shoulder. When I turned, a white man was smiling apologetically at me. He had close-cropped ginger hair and a long thin face. He complexion was ruddy, peeling at the edges, from the heat of African sun. He had what I can only describe as inhibitive blue eyes.
"I couldn't help noticing that your car has South African registration plates. Are you South African? I love Mandela's people." He spoke fast, like someone who was trying to suppress a stutter.
Mandela's people? There was a time when that phrase spoke of hopeful potential of our country. Now it just sounds like a careless insult. There was an air of sophisticated shabbiness about the man who had just used this phrase to me, his outdoor attire perhaps: Merrell sandals, tough khaki shorts and mosquito repellent jeep-grey shirt and all.
"Yes I'm South African," I said, more out of courtesy than genuine interest.
"Howzit china? Viva Madiba!" I felt slightly irritated with this use of South African parlance to suggest familiarity. He continued, "I've just spent nine months in SA; greeeaaat! country. I was mostly stationed in PE; what a friendly place!"
"They don't call it 'Friendly City' for nothing," I said moving on with the line and letting my guard down because he had just mentioned a city I take as my spiritual bedrock.
"Do you know PE? The Windy City?" His eyes beamed with excitement as he asked.
Do I know PE? I spent seven years of my life there studying... myself?
"Yes. It's the jewel of the Eastern Cape."
"I think it's a wonderful city. Where else can you get such wonderful biodiversity and an opportunity to see 'the big six.'?"
"Big Six?"
"Big five plus whales."
"Oh! I see. You sound like a tourist agent from the Eastern Cape, where are you from?"
"I'm American, from New York City but educated in the Rhineland, Cologne to be particular."
That explained the confusing accent I couldn't place.
He picked up a stranded plastic bag and walked about twenty feet to put it on the garbage bin. He left me thinking that enthusiasm and compulsiveness don't usually combine well in a personality. Dull stirrings of benign suspicion upswung in my mind.
Hugging the borders was freewheeling anonymous misery, numerous suppurating people ripe for strange sicknesses, and illegal immigrants hopscotching over fences every moment they get when policeman, with hands deep in their pockets, looked the other way.
"Kerchoo!" He sneezed to announce his return.
"Gezundheit" I said blessing him."It's the dust. Oh! Do you speak German?"
"No. That's about the only word I know."
"It's been adopted to English."
There was some excitement at the front of the queue; some people were desperate to get to the Zambian side before nightfall and closure of the border posts. Most of them were Zambian shoppers coming from their shopping escapades in Botswana returning with striped bags full of groceries, tinned perishables, basic foods, soap, candles, clothes and such.
For the well offs there was also luxury comestibles like international chocolates and cigarettes, electronic gadgets like VCRs, stereos, TV sets, even PCs, and such chattels hard to find in most African countries.
"At least the Zambian side would be quicker." I told him as we moved nearer to the Zambezi riverbank.
Mist was starting to rise and drift on the grey rocks. The green swards were waving their welcome gently from the force of the wind and the coming ferry. The day was far spent; bats had already taken to air, but full evening had not yet arrived. The Shepard's star, ucel' izapholo, was visible in the east where the sky had already paled to a hazy gauze. 'The ewes are rutted and lambs weaned, when are you coming back home,' mother liked to say at that hour when calling me to come inside the house.
"Kerchoo!" My newly found friend wasn't doing well. He took out his Asthavent EcoHaler and administered three doses on his mouth. "Ahhh!" He said calming down. "The humidity is high in this place."
"Yes. We're surrounded by forests."
"Listen. I was told I could find a taxi to the next town, which is. . ." He was consulting his guidebook.
"Livingstone." I pitched in to assist.
"Yes, Livingstone, but I don't see any signs of taxis here. Would you mind very much giving me a lift to?"
I was not keen on taking hitchhiking strangers but he seemed desperate. I also felt the terrain we were on was not for cachexiacs and took pity on him.
"Sure, why not."
"Super. Let me get my bag. My name is Itzchat by the way."
"Ruru."
He came back with a budging duffel bag on his shoulder.
"Put it on the back seat, we only have about eighty kilometres to drive." The last of the sunrays were fiery behind the mountains. Then we had to take care of business.
"That was quite a hefty sum you paid there just to get on the ferry. Twenty US dollars is a little too much don't you think for so small a strach?"
"Tell that to the UN, they are suppose to be running the ferry."
"I feel I should pay half the cost since I'm here."
"Don't worry about it. I was already go this way, you didn't add anything on my burdens."
We were pestered by vendors and conductors with offerings of underground money changing 'from Rands and Dollars to Kwachas', cheap petrol, places of fun with 'clean women' or 'do you like playing with boys,' or 'some mind blowing smoke, or would you like some dried fish, fresh from the river this morning.' We were even given offers to 'sorting your papers in thirty minutes,' or you need a 'guide around the city to take to hotels and tourists places.'
The borders were closing. Illegal immigrants were beginning to shuffle from the nearby forests, some burying themselves among the truck cargoes, others jumping over high fences. I couldn't help wondering about the long perilous journeys most would go through, travelling through clusters of trees infested with wild animals and landmines, only to be welcomed by what, disdain of nostril flaring contempt like the unrelieved xenophobic resentment in countries like South Africa.
He said, "It feels like an honour to watch Africa's glorious sunset. The sky is so vast around here;" making himself comfortable on the front seat.
"My mother use to say the skies weep blood at dusk and dawn in Africa. 'Oozing like scabs' was her exact phrase. She was a nurse you see."
"And minnesingers also." When he caught my baffled face he explained, "More like a poetess."
I nodded my head. A gibbous moon that was scrutinising the reverent evening silence eyed us from the corner of its eye. There was still a sense of that vague awkwardness of strangers that are compelled to be in proximity between us.
"Linzertorte," said he in a sigh.
"What's that?"
"A Linzertorte is the moon in German. So tell me, what's a beautiful South African lady doing on her own so far from home?" He made an attempt to break the awkwardness."Trying to get to her job in Tanzania."
"You couldn't fly?"
"I prefer driving; you see so much more."
"Ditto that. What do you do, if you don't mind my asking?"
"I'm a medical doctor who works for an NGO called Doctors Without Borders."
"I've heard of it.
"Why so far? Don't you stand a chance of making better money in private practise back home."
"We all have our reasons for choices we make. I'm sure there's a much more interesting story for your being here."
"Just slumming it. Passed my College degree, the old man bought me a World Ticket to see the world before I get on with the rat-race. I was... Wow!" We were interrupted by a troop of elephants crossing the road. "Look at them, walking on leisurely and casually as if there was nothing wrong with elephants crossing the road. Or as if this is a zoo or a circus. . ."
"We are on their terrain. We're the ones who are trespassing."
He opened the window and shouted. "Sorry Mr. Elephant, just passing by. We'll mind where we are going next time, don't mind us, just continue going to do whatever elephants do at this hour. We'll be on our way now."
He amused me with his naivety. "Man I can't believe this, my dudes would be so bombed when I tell them about this."
The moon had travelled around the car. It had acquired a rainbow halo that made my passenger sigh, "Africaaaa!"
"The moon is shepherding us." I said in appreciation.
Still silence fell for a moment until my passenger said, "If only I could shake this sense of... trespassing. . .I feel, I could easily see myself home in Africa." He made the word Africa sound like it were an alien, beyond this world place. I felt him scrutinise me like a different species. He looked as though he was suffering some kind of cultural indigestion.
"How do you mean?" I asked, wanting him to explain.
"Du kannst nicht. . . You would never understand."I always feel a certain apprehension, a moment of panic, approaching a destination. Pascal was of the opinion that the source of all worldly troubles is our inability to sit quietly in a room for three minutes. One can almost generalise by saying the frantic entertainments, competitive stimulants and diversions of the present culture are nothing but fear of drowning in boredom and introspection.
When we reached Livingstone town daylight was done. It wasy after twenty hundred hours. I drove us to the Backpackers I knew usually swims with expats.
[CONCLUDES Next Edition. - Ed.]
© 2006, GENERATOR 21.
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