Border Hop
Cape Town is a thick and textured tapestry of humans. The air is sweetly scented by the breeze of two oceans carrying salt, spice, and life through the streets. Mountains grace the views in all directions. Fluffy February clouds paint postcard sunsets. All manner of languages, skin tones, and dress shuffle through the busy metropolis. A surprising dominance of European style and sentiment.
This is civilized Africa. Where the women wear pants, tattoos, and crop tops. Where nothing is carried atop the head. Where you can pay a street vendor with your credit card. The disparity of wealth shows as starkly as any U.S. tourism destination. Slums seen within the same journey as luxury resorts. Millionaires sipping wine tastings poured by workers who walk over an hour home. People begging for a loaf of bread outside downtown convenience stores from wealthy foreigners on urban safari.
This is consumerist Africa. As any tourist town, the service industry dominates. Food from any culture available in gluttonous portion. souvenirs everywhere. Beautiful jewelry, textiles, carvings, antiques, collectibles. Hotels and hostels at every price point, ready to host global travellers. Boutiques, spas, luxury restaurants, and high end gallery art all available at the swipe of a card.
This is progressive Africa. The people are noticeably larger and more expressive. Openly queer humans walk confidently with their partners, piercings, and playfulness. Lighting up a joint on the sidewalk is common culture. Dispensaries dot the landscape. Cannabis clubs allow patrons to smoke on site and enjoy the company of their fellow stoners. The afternoon breeze carries the scent of a thousand workers walking to the transit station, lighting up on the first leg of their commute.
This is organized Africa. There are street markets of fruits, toiletries, and clothing, but supermarkets supply the vast majority of food. Motorcycles here carry grocery deliveries, not people. And all the drivers wear helmets. The roads are smooth, unblemished pavement and every pedestrian "zebra" crossing makes a little chirping sound at the push of a button. Light rail trains can take you to suburban tourist destinations along the picturesque coastline. Tour busses, wine trams, open-air safari trucks, and sightseeing trolleys all carry wide-eyed tourists snapping photos of commercialized Africa.
This is white Africa. Most visitors are white Europeans on holiday in the San Fransisco of the southern hemisphere. Their bank accounts of Euros making them feel much wealthier than they would in California. Xosa and Afrikaans are heard, but English is the dominant force. Lingering evidence of segregation is still plainly obvious amongst the neighborhoods, suburbs, and townships. It hasn't been very long. Tension still lies right beneath the surface. Anyone in middle age lived their childhood under apartheid. In the busy, touristy city center our white skin garners no additional attention. No one is staring or hollering at me. No one is calling me names. We blend in with the sea of visitors passing through.
"Where are you visiting from?" Is the most common phrase of the trip. I fine-tune my response the more times I practice. I have now re-entered life where I am "from" one place but "visiting from" another. My job garners curiosity and more questions. A surprising number of people tell me what they think my village needs. I feel a kindred sameness with the other westerners, yet a stark and sometimes uncomfortable disconnect. My culture shock relates to washing machines, hot showers, chocolate, and freeways. Theirs, I assume, relates to the blackness of rawness of this newly developed place.
I eat, I drink, I smoke, and make merry. I rest, I write, I photograph, and creativity finds me. Art is everywhere in this place. The people, the food, the clothes, the streets, the shops. Art can prevail when people have time and space enough to create - and people from across the globe arriving in droves every day with heavy pockets.
After a week of indulgence, I feel uncomfortably full. In body and in mind. The cost of modernization is buying into the western pace of life. Everything here is fast, loud, and busy. My mind floats to my morning walks through the village fields and immeasurable gratitude finds me. The land itself is the art of my current home, labored as carefully as a carving, and commodified only for the nourishment of the body. My home where there are no visitors and everyone knows my name. Where tradition is painstakingly preserved. Where etiquette and love make my neighbors more civilized than any city dweller.
Redundance, vibration, suspended
Heartbeat moved across space and time
Stretched farther than you could ever get
As far as you have ever been
Impossible far
So far, that it feels you are right there
Back home
Through a wormhole a lifetime long
Taking you painfully across
To the same place
Dimensions colliding with symmetry
Far enough to give you a new shape
Stretch that will never return
To the original form
Unconcerned, unrestrained, new
