TRAVELLING AFRICA
2014-5
Table
of Contents - Scroll down to read the story
Blog
1 Arrive Jo’burg
Blog 2 Tanzania 3rd - 8th Dec 2014
Blog
3 Groot Marico Dec 12th 2015
Blog
4 Dec 12th 2014 Arrival at
Tara Rokpa Retreat Centre
Blog
5 – Sun Dec 22 2014 At the Retreat Centre - Xmas
Blog 6
Retreat Centre Tara Rokpa
Blog
7 Leaving the Retreat - Jan 10th 2015
Blog
8 Gabarone Botswana
Blog
9 Francistown, Botswana – and on
to Zimbabwe
Blog 10
Bulawayo Zimbabwe Jan 10-15th
2015
Blog 11(Pending) Joburg to Cape Town to Muizenburg
Blog
12 (Pending) Stellenbosch to Hermanus
Blog 13 (Pending)Hermanus to Hout Bay
Blog
14 (Pending) Cape Town
Blog 15(Pending) Back to Jo’burg and then UK
Blog 1 Arrive Jo’burg
Two days ago I arrived in Jo’burg. Two days
of shock and slow recovery. The healing will take a while. I got the news
I didn’t want to hear, that I’d been dreading in a simple text message. I
got it a few hours after my arrival at Brown Sugar Backpackers, in the Jo’burg
suburbs, high up in the hills, an area aptly called Observatory as from the top
terrace by the little swimming pool you can see for miles across the city. The
shock threw me off my axis and I’m trying to recover my balance.
They say that everyone really only has 4-5 close
friends. At my age you can’t afford to lose one. I feel like reciting
that poem by Auden ‘Stop All the clocks…’ that was made famous in the ‘Four
Weddings and a Funeral’ film. My dear friend Val of 31 years (yes I can date it
quite precisely as we met in the GPs waiting room, both pregnant – she was a
couple of months ahead of me - Jonathan was born in March, Tamlyn in June, both
are now 31).
We became friends immediately and remained so ever
since. Only last week I was told that the thyroid problem that she’d had
for a few months, was in fact cancer and that it had spread so far it was
terminal and untreatable. I wondered whether to cancel my flight, booked
from way back, to Africa. I went to see her in hospital and the day after
that the oncologist told her son she might not last the weekend. We were
all devastated.
On the Saturday night I went and sat with her for
10 minutes, holding her hand, telling her I loved her. She told me she
was ‘in paradise’ and stared past me, but came back and told me she was ‘at
peace’, I was not to worry. I left feeling calm for the first time all
week. I knew I would go on my travelling trip, there was nothing more to
say to each other, the only thing that matters is ‘I love you’ in the end and
once you’ve both said it, you feel you can let go. I saw her briefly the
night before I left, she was in and out of consciousness but she knew I was
there. She died next day at 4.30 pm, about the time I was settling in to my
backpacker’s cabin – I heard 2 hours later.
A wall of grief descended on me, and my daughter on
Skype told me to go down to the lounge and talk to someone, so I would not be
alone. The two young Nordic girls looked a bit stunned by this Granny
woman with tears pouring down her face … they didn’t know what to say and after
a few minutes started chatting to each other – one was from Norway one from
Denmark. I took myself and my grief off and skyped and talked to my
family and friends, chain smoked, drank brandy, until I went to bed. Then
immersed myself in a crime thriller, unable to sleep, until the early hours.
I will grieve for her for a long time, maybe until
it’s my turn to go. But for now I must carry on living and I will send my
emails out to those who like to get my travel tales, including her son,
remembering how much she (and he) enjoyed them before.
The following morning, I went up to the top terrace
and wrote notes/thoughts/draft poems about all the happy times we’d spent
together, Val and I. Those golden days when the babies were small, when
I was working part time and so on my days off we’d meet in Priory Park by
the toddlers paddling pool, drink tea, laugh and talk, while our growing
toddlers splashed about.
Then more recently, meeting every month in Costa
coffee for a cappuccino, laughing, arguing, discussing …
* * *
This morning, I woke at dawn (still on UK time) and
went up to the top terrace and looked across the city to the horizon, where the
sky was palest pinks fading into lilac. The small garden round the pool is
surrounded by springy green turf with small trees with lilac like blossom and
bright pink bougainvillea, it’s calm and peaceful there. The early morning is
cool but I know it’ll get really hot by midday – yesterday it was 32 degrees.
Tanzania’s going to be hotter I suppose.
I’m flying to Tanzania today to Dar es Salaam,
that’s ‘Dar’ to us travellers… I’m off to stay at another backpackers, run by a
friend of a good friend of mine, Mike – another displaced Zimbabwean (they have
scattered all over the world due to Mugabe and his destruction of that once
beautiful country). I don’t know what Tanzania’s like, I’m told it’s
beautiful, so watch this space. I shall buy a candle and set up my shrine
when I get there and meditate and chant on Val’s journey into the bardo realms.
May she achieve a happy rebirth and may we be together again in our next lives
… her journey in this world is over, but mine is on to the next phase …
*************************************************************
Blog 2
Tanzania 3rd - 8th Dec 2014
At the airport in Dar the first official asked me
for my Yellow Fever certificate… I panicked inwardly but kept it cool, smiled
sweetly and said ‘Oh sorry it’s in my other bags in the hold.’ He waved
me through and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I have no idea if I have
the certificate or where it is ... about 10 days before I left I had the
injection … but the shock of Val’s illness threw everything out of kilter, my
preparations were done on auto-pilot. Anyway my brain still isn’t in
functioning mode, as I had no TZ shillings with me to pay for the passport –
luckily Adam, the driver sent to pick me up, was able to go and change some
English currency I’d brought. I had been escorted out by a courteous little man
in airport security uniform to the money-change shop – I saw Adam’s big notice
ANNA MERYT in the throng outside the departure area. He took the money
off to change – 50 U$D for the visa!
And then passport stamped, we were off, driving –
‘Not far’ said Adam – I should have known he was in Africa-time, not far as the
crow flies, would be a better way to put it… city traffic… he kept saying ‘not
much traffic, you’re lucky’. We first drove down a dual carriageway, which was
as chokka as the M25, on the other side coming in, then we got into the city
and made for the ferry – hundreds of pedestrians waited to one side and cars
the other.
A loud argument, shouting broke out amongst the
pedestrians, a woman’s voice screaming abuse in Swahili – the official language
here. I asked my driver what it was about – he said she was screaming at
her husband (and anyone else who’d listen) about him deserting her and small
children, going off with other women and not paying to support her and the
children etc. This provided some theatre for the large throng of black
Tanzanians, mainly office workers, in the long wait to cross the estuary.
My driver said he was Christian, we passed
some Moslems with white lace skull caps and women in the hejab. He
mentioned Al Qaeda and Boko Hareem and another group, as if all Moslems were
extremists. We crossed on the ferry,u with our windows wide open and the
pedestrian throng rammed up all around us
Did I mention the heat? OMG! At first I thought it
was warm when I got off the plane, sunset was well under way, but when we got
to the car, I was sweating and took off my cotton canvas Levi travelling coat
(with many pockets) and my linen shirt … shit it’s hot here, even in a vest
top, that tropical humid heat (TZ is close to the equator). When we eventually
got to the hostel (a short drive after the ferry) I met Jo, a young woman in
her mid-thirties – slim, dark, attractive, another displaced white
Zimbabwean, who runs the place. It’s owned by her ex-husband. She has a 6 year
old who’s returning today, after a prolonged stay with her ex.
I’m writing this from the beach bar, on my right is
the Indian Ocean, a beach with big white-sailed dhows crossing the bay and on
the far distant horizon, the usual vast container ships, crossing to port I
suppose. The tide, which was far out is coming in – I’ll have a swim later,
maybe a swim in the pool first – but the sun is burning hot, so I’ll stay in
the shade til then, sitting at a table near the long bar, a big A- shaped roof
over us with wooden struts and thatched roof. There’s a cool breeze off
the sea.
Before I left SA on the way to the airport, the
driver from the hostel – Solomon, a bright young man, took me to Eastgate
shopping Centre – South Africa is all shopping malls, with tight security, vast
places that make Wood Green Shopping city, in my part of London look small and
shabby. I heard from another backpacker how she’d been talking to someone
and they knew of three car-jackings that week, hence the need for covered
shopping malls with lots of security guards. Anyway we stopped off at Eastgate,
to get me an SA sim card – the young man, plump, glossy dark face, in the big
gleaming white telecom shop asked me what I did and I said I was a writer…. and
a poet. I then looked at him with astonishment as he talked about the
subtleties of poetry, the symbolism and the imagery. He asked me to read
him a poem and the only one I had on my phone was the one I put on FB for Val,
a week ago - In Blackwater Woods, by Mary Oliver and suddenly found myself with
tears pouring down my face and this guy going on about love… imagine a mobile
phone shop in UK where that would happen … it was those last two verses that
did it.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal
to hold it
to love what is mortal
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
And when the time comes
to let it go,
to let it go.
Adam, the taxi driver here at TZ, zoomed
through the throng from the ferry, through the city outskirts and onto a big
road leading out of town – ‘Three minutes, we’ll be there,’ he said and he was
right this time. We drove off the road through a gateway a long rutted dirt
track in pitch dark, barely lit up by the weak headlights on his old car and
then he stopped under some trees in a parking area. As we walked to the
brightly lit bar and loudish pop music, I felt the breeze from the sea… this
place is on the beach I thought, right on the beach– I was shown a dark path to
toilets and showers which seemed a long way from the hut-on-stilts on the
beach, the ‘Banda’ where I was to stay – inside 2 mattresses on the floor
surrounded by a 6 foot square mosquito net, one light bulb, one plug – ‘Oh’ I
thought, 1) I don’t feel safe here, 2) the toilet is a walk in the dark, 3) I
could hear every murmer from the hut next door, 4) there were no windows – only
wide mesh and open sides – easy for mozzies, which I’m allergic to, to get in
and there were some holes in the net and easy for someone on the beach to see
into. One rusty bolt on the inside and a rusty padlock outside. She had
said she had an ensuite and I could move next day if I liked….
On the plus side the sound of the wind and the
waves lulled me to sleep after a freshly cooked veg curry from the bar and a
cold beer.
Today I moved – I may not have the sea view,
but it’s back off the beach and I have my own toilet, sink and shower, so I
feel safer, more relaxed. It costs a bit
more but it’s worth it.
* * *
In retrospect.
I actually didn’t stay at the Mikadi Beach, Dar-es-Salaam for the full week but left early. It was a beautiful place, but for me it was too hot, too humid, I found the 12 hour power cuts difficult in the evening – sitting in my cabin in pitch dark, under a large mozzy net, sweat pouring off my face onto laptop or Kindle ... became an ordeal.
It was noisy - about 500 metres from the Mikadi
plot, right opposite the clearing where my cabin was situated, was a dip in the
ground in a large copse of trees. Music was booming out from there all
day long, it was so loud you could have been standing in the middle of a club
in my cabin. There seemed to be large groups of young males there – some
tuk-tuk drivers, gambling ... whatever. It was impossible to sit in my cabin
during the day as the noise was so loud.
My shower stopped working – I used the bucket
and scoop – cold water for a couple of days, but there was no water to refill
it with, so gradually the tub emptied..
Although, Jo who ran the resort was lovely and very
kind, all these factors were beginning to make me feel unhappy and using the
internet was expensive (you paid by the hour) and intermittent too.
I emailed the travel company who’d booked my flight
on Sunday morning – they offered me an early morning flight back to Jo'burg on
the Monday. Adam (the taxi driver) picked me up at 4 am and we crossed on the
ferry again, on the way to the airport, this time with empty roads.
Soon I was being picked up by Solomon from Jo'burg
airport again and I was back in the peace of the Brown Sugar hostel, my own
clean, bright cabin, having a hot shower, day temperatures of around 22-25 C
and cool night temperatures of c 16-18C, with (almost) constant electricity and
not-too-bad wi-fi. No more crashing music, 12 hour electricity
outages, and in the hostel, various terraces and a big lounge to sit in with a
large clean kitchen to cook my own food … time to regroup for a few days before
the next adventure – the 25 day retreat in rural South Africa.
*******************************************************************
Blog 3 Groot Marico
Dec 12th 2015
On Friday I left Brown Sugar backpackers in Jo’burg
for the Buddhist retreat. The retreat’s being organised by a Tibetan
group, whose founder was murdered in Tibet last year by a former monk. A
quite extraordinary event, I’ve never heard of any such thing happening with
in Buddhist groups of the present day. He was a man of
extraordinary reputation, a very senior Tibetan monk who had worked tirelessly
for charitable causes in both Glasgow, where he’d founded a centre 50 years ago
and in Tibet, where his fundraising supported various orphanages.
This group is a very different lineage to my own
Buddhist organisation, which is called Triratna and is adapted more for
Westerners and was founded by an Englishman, demobbed in India after
WWII. Sangharakshita became a wandering ascetic monk. He says he
became a Buddhist after finding a copy of The Heart Sutra, in a second-hand
shop in Tooting (of all places) when he was 16 years old. He became a disciple
of several very senior Buddhists in India and after a few years was ordained by
two of them. After running a centre in Kalimpong (near the Nepalese border) for
many years returned to London and founded the Western Buddhist Order in the
late 1960s, a time of course , of great change, free-love, the Beatles and the
Maharishi Yogi, made popular by George Harrison. His group now has centres in
most countries in the world and there are four in London.
My buddhist group, Triratna, as it’s now called,
did not, under Sangharakshita’s guidance, align itself to any of the great
schools of Buddhist thought that had developed since the death of the Buddha,
500 years BC, ie the Mahayana (Great Way), Hinayana etc. Bhante (as we
call him ie ‘Teacher’) took his focus back to the earliest Buddhist scriptures,
many of which were not written down, but passed down by oral tradition,
hundreds of years after Buddha’s death.
He concentrated his teaching around the Buddha
himself and also some of the great teachers/proponents of Buddhism since then
as well as using the rich symbolism of the Buddhist pantheon, Avalokiteshvara,
for example is the Boddhisattva of Compassion and Buddhists will meditate on
his likeness to develop those qualities of compassion. Jung called them
‘archetypes’, aspects of positive qualities we can aspire to and use to develop
ourselves.
Have I still got your attention or have you
switched off yet? Never mind. It’s just a bit of background to the next
part of my travelogue. You see, this particular Buddhist group is
basically Tibetan. Tibetan Buddhism does not focus on the Buddha, but on
an aspect of the boddhisatva Avalokiteshvara, called Chenrezig, all Tibetan’s
meditate and chant with a focus on Chenrezig.
Very different to my Buddhist lineage, so I was
somewhat apprehensive how they would operate on a retreat. I have done
hundreds of Triratna retreats. How would it differ?
* * *
There were seven of us meeting at the airport in
Joburg, and I found the first few quite easily as one on the list of names was
oriental and there was a group of people with an oriental woman in their
midst. I tried to make conversation with her, a couple of times and was
met with mono-syllabic replies and she stared at her smart phone pointedly…. OK
... The woman organising us, a bustling small friendly woman gathered us
together and put us all into the mini bus. The last to arrive a woman in
flowing pinks and purples, dark curly hair, in her fifties, had so many bags my
jaw dropped – including a large electrical food processor (?), ‘No it’s my
juicer’, she said, she talked a great deal at the airport about her background
(Jewish), daughter, diet, past history and that she was a counsellor. She
seemed to be an expert on all things South African.
I kept a low profile around her and sat next to Guy
a tall skinny Brit in his early 30s, very bright. There was a very slim blonde
woman (50s/60?) who turned out to be a Yugoslav from Kosovo also.
The road seemed to be long and straight, heading
north. I’d already checked out the map and seen that in fact the retreat
centre was close to the border with Botswana and in fact not too far from the
capital of Botswana, ie Gaborone. We’d been told it was a four hour drive and
for the first 1-2 hours, the landscape was flat, everywhere the tall eucalyptus
tree of course (introduced by the first settlers from Australia), towns dotted
along the route.
Eventually, a line of tall hills (or rocky outcrops
appeared in the distance and soon the road was climbing and I got my wish, no
more flat landscape. In fact when we reached the summit of one of those
hills I looked down on hills and valleys that reminded me of a rather drier
browner version of the Sussex Downs – hills and valleys into the distance.
We had a pitstop at a garage and I bought a Crunchy
bar and some chips – well I thought, probably the last carbo rubbish for a few
weeks! The other women on the mini-bus frowned at my unhealthy choice of diet
(or so it felt) and the woman with the juicer, caught me having a fag round the
back on her way to the loo. Guy was definitely up for sharing the chips
though.
Back on
the road, mile after mile and then the driver was turning onto a wide
gravelled, pot-holed dirt track. Not long now we thought, but this road
went on for MILES. All around a green and rural landscape, much of it
seemed to be African bush, small scrubby bushes, swathes of grasslands and the
wide red dust road ahead. Suddenly, he swung off to the left into a
turning I’d not spotted and we were bumping down a track into a wooded area and
a notice saying ‘car park Tara rokpa’. We’d arrived.
Blog 4 Dec 12th 2014 Arrival at Tara Rokpa Retreat Centre
Somewhere
near Groote Marico, South Africa, near northern border, close to Botswana.
We walked along a red dusty path that meandered
through a little woody area. Suddenly we were in front of a wide raised
level with wooden tables and chairs, about 50 foot across. Above it was a
reinforced metal corrugated roof with wooden struts. On the right I
noticed a long shelved area with cupboards below. There was a large tea
urn – jars of tea-bags, cartons of milk. etc. were ranged along it. A
mental list that had been swirling around in my head got one tick. I
could make myself tea when I liked.
We stood in line and were told we were to check in at each of the three tables
that were occupied. At the first table sat a largish woman, with a shaved
head and the mustard robes of a Buddhist nun. She had round thick glasses
and a very pink complexion. She fixed me with a strong look – she was checking
who had paid in full for the retreat.
I’d had huge difficulties
both in UK and in SA in trying to pay without incurring large fees and a long
saga at the bank the day before, trying to avoid ridiculous fees. She
asked for the return fees to O R Tambo airport, Jo'burg. ‘Well I’m not sure at
the moment if I’m going straight back to Jo’burg, I might go on to Gabarone
(Botswana) from here as it’s so close.
There was a lot of huffing and puffing about that, how it was very
inconvenient - I shrugged and smiled apologetically. I was moved on to an
older Scottish woman, white frizzy hair in a halo round her head, big
smile. At least she felt warm and welcoming. She looked me up on a
list – I was down for sharing a room, the room I was to be in had 3 beds, but
no one else was booked in there so far. She handed me on to this tall bloke
with short white hair - he showed me the room and said nothing.
I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe a dorm with bunks or
whatever – not a large room with three single beds, all to myself. I was
actually humming to myself, when I saw it … windows on two sides, looking over
lawns down to trees and a wooded valley, green hills beyond that, rolling into
the distance. Glass doors opened on to a balcony and a wide red-tiled terrace
and then a couple of steps down to the lawns - this is ok, I thought to myself
cautiously, that’s a few more ticks on my list and I felt delighted as I had
the room to myself. Fantastic! I started unpacking, there was a wardrobe,
chest of drawers, bedside table – it was lovely. I began to relax.
Later, a really tasty veg soup was laid on in the dining room and we
were told that there would be silence every day from 9 pm until after lunch at
1:30 pm. That was fine, I’ve been on many retreats where there were
silent periods. Some people hate it, but I love it. It means I
don’t have to make conversation, just think my own thoughts, but there are
people around.
And so the days seem to have slipped past. Today is Thursday
already. I’ve been here nearly a week already. I’m beginning to
know some of the characters. And my emotions have been up and down like a
roller coaster. People think that going on retreat is all calm and
peaceful. It’s not, retreats are full of people and people’s issues and
personalities are unpredictable. My friend Anne wrote a lovely poem about
going on retreat, the gist of it is, that you start off thinking you hate
everyone, then you think they all hate you, then you go through lots of
emotions from boredom to excitement to rage. You can feel very vulnerable
and exposed on retreat especially if there are little groups of friends and
you’re not part of any particular group. Also you bring with you (as do
all the other participants, a whole range of stresses, pain, grief, anger,
emotions, from positive to negative.
As I said, to start with I was told that I had the room with
three beds to myself. Imagine my annoyance then when this woman opens the
door of MY room at 10 pm on the first night and tells me that she’s just
arrived from Jo’burg, and she’s sharing my room with me. I’d spread
myself about, taken over the cupboards …. Shit!
‘Oh!’ I said not very graciously, ‘Well just to warn you, I may
snore and I have the light on by my bed late (I read a lot) and I get up in the
night to use the loo… are you a heavy sleeper or a light sleeper (I’ve
travelled with a light sleeper before, who woke if a pin dropped, it’s NOT MUCH
FUN believe me).’ Anyway I asked the question. Yes all that was fine with her.
‘Not a prroblem’, she said in her Russian accent.
‘Then, (I said firmly), we’re going to get on, good!
So, this is what I discover about Vera, my room-mate – she likes
to chat and laugh a lot. She is married to a South African/Chilean and
comes from somewhere between Moscow and Siberia …. don’t ask. She has 2
kids and assorted cats and dogs and a big garden with an orchard and vegetable
plot. She seems to grow EVERYTHING! I like her immediately.
She has a gardener of course (this IS South Africa), she’s studying for a
degree in psychology and is a qualified counsellor. Apart from that she’s
always ferrying kids to extra-curricular classes.
On the second night when she asks stuff about me, I start talking
about my dear friend, who’s died and suddenly end up in floods of tears.
Now for a counsellor and student psychologist I have to say that Vera is at a
loss to know how to deal with all this grief. However next day, she
brings me over to Sarah (you know the money woman with bottle glasses) and tells
her about how upset I was. It turns out that Susan is a Clinical
Psychologist (although I've met a few of those who are barking).
But in fact, Susan takes me to a private spot in the garden, I bawl my
head off and talk, she listens with complete attention, offers little bits of
soothing words and advice, and then I feel much better. Well at least the sort
of better where you’ve had your feelings acknowledged and heard and not at all
dismissed. So my initial assessment of Susan did a turn around and I
decided I quite liked her after all (that went through a few ups and downs
later).
Then there’s Rob, who’s leading the retreat – he’s a very senior member
of this Buddhist organisation, who gave up working in Criminal Justice as a
Criminologist, many years ago. Well my feelings towards him went from
like, to not-like, back to like in the end. He is one of the main reasons I
chose this retreat, due to his reputation as a renowned mindfulness teacher My meditation
practice has been struggling for years and so I thought his teaching might give it a boost.
I’ve now done 5 days of variable amounts of meditation – today I began
at 6 a.m. and have been at meditation sessions all day till 4 pm, then again
from 7-8:30 pm.. Rob teaches morning and evening. Most of the real
devotees in the group treat him with a kind of godlike reverence. I’ve had
three one-to-one sessions with him and I told him some of my work background
and writing and poetry stuff. He’s given me some useful tips for improving my
meditation practice – his teaching has very cognitive behavioural methods,
which I’m used to of course.
We all go to the big shrine room to meditate (it’s at the bottom of the
garden and about 50 foot across, octagonal with a slate roof, overlooking a
lily pond with huge carp). Rob misinterprets something I’ve said in a negative
way occasionally. And today, towards the end of a long period of
meditation (I had picked up my notebook and was writing a poem), he got very
cross and said that ‘it was an insult’ to him to see someone writing during a
meditation session. I put down my notebook quickly and was quite upset by
the tone of voice he’d used. He then went on to talk about the discipline of
meditation, but I didn’t hear any of it. No one in my Buddhist order
would speak to a retreat participant like that and our retreats are very
relaxed about what you do in the meditation room, as long as you’re quiet.
I went for a long walk afterwards up the rocky hill to calm down and
burnt the poem, because it now felt tainted with an unpleasant memory. And
smoked two cigarettes. A bit later, I had a lovely chat with a Buddhist
monk called Tenzin (he'd lived in Scottish Buddhist centre for many years), it was not about
Rob as Tenzin’s a devotee) but he was so sweet I felt OK afterwards, so now I’m
letting it go. Later I realise from talking to people that Tibetan High Lamas
(and this order was founded by and is run by these), are treated with so much
reverence that no one would dare to do anything but listen in utter 2014-5
when they are teaching. Rob is in fact the number two in this worldwide
organisation and so it would be seen as his right by many of the devotees to
expect complete reverence and utter silence and attention when he is teaching.
Anyway, what of the other participants – there’s about 25 of us I think
– an elderly woman with white hair ‘from Rhodesia’, very grand in her attitude,
but also quite sweet, several older couples (who have their own cabins) and
several younger couples too. It’s odd to have couples on a retreat,
because our retreats are mainly single sex or where they are mixed, men and
women are in separate dorms. Sexual activity is seen as a barrier to
focus on spiritual practice.
There’s a sweet couple – he’s ‘in business’ and she’s a Transactional
Analysis psychotherapist – but they both seem to be pleasant and
friendly. I’m his friend for life as I gave him an anti-histamine when he
got a coughing fit, due to an allergy to something he’d eaten.
Oh and that woman on the bus, the one who had loads of bags and a
juicer? I found out yesterday she has breast cancer and is trying to
avoid a mastectomy and chemo….
Me n Vera went for a walk to a little waterfall one day
And let’s not forget the German-Swiss guy Ollie, early forties, good-looking,
short pepper and salt grey hair, startling pale blue eyes – lots of afternoon
conversations about the economies in Europe, his attractive, slim Russian
girlfriend joining in. He has strong but informed views about Putin and the
Crimean War and the UK economy and the EEC in general. Really
interesting. I asked him yesterday what he did – he said ‘I’m in banking’
[in Switzerland]. Later, I said, but what’s your role at the bank?
He said ‘I’m the Managing Director’. Of one of the main Swiss Banks… Oh
My God!
Continued next day – on Friday …
Oh and by the way, re revising opinions – Giles who I sat next to
on the bus and who I thought was nice – he’s a total fanatic… he sits at the
front in the meditation room, as close to Rob, our teacher, as possible, asking
deeply esoteric questions, looking eager and alert. His eyes remind me
of the slow Loris – big and round and staring. He’s complained
several times about people talking after 9 pm. Apart from all that he’s a nice
guy …. like the school prefect nice ... Ha ha.
I’m enjoying all the different characters and slowly making
friends, so feeling less isolated than at the start, some people are quite fun.
All the meditation must be doing me good too as I feel more … centred,
peaceful.
* * *
However, I’ve heard from my
daughters about Val’s funeral tomorrow. I sent them my poem and they like it
thank goodness, but am feeling very sad again, that I won’t be there to support
them, that they have to go through it all without me beside them. Tomorrow I
will be doing all the Buddhist devotions I can think of while the funeral is
going on, for Val in the Bardo….
*******************************************************************
Blog 5 – Sun Dec 22 2014 At the
Retreat Centre - Xmas
Vera, my Russian roommate left yesterday. I was sad to
see her go, but we’re going to meet up in Jo’burg sometime, as she lives by the
backpack hostel I was staying at. She has kept me entertained for the
last 10 days, with her constant chatting (even when we were supposed to be on
‘silence’). I will be having a new roommate in a few days, so I don’t know what
she’ll be like…?
I also made friends with an older couple – Glen and
Sharron. I mentioned Glen I think in the last letter –I gave him an
anti-histamine when he had a coughing fit. So I went for a drive with
them one afternoon to a place called Oog Marico – The Eye of Marico (pronounced
like the Welsh ‘wch’. A spring comes up there, supposed to be the best purest
water in South Africa. It is crystal clear and full of minerals.
The drive there took about 20 minutes on a long
gritted red dust road, the scenery was what’s called ‘veld’, - big wide
open green spaces right up to the distant hills. The retreat centre is in
an area more like typical African ‘bush’. I didn’t realise you could swim at
this ‘Oog’ place, so didn’t bring a cozzy, but it wasn’t that hot that day –
only about 20C. Anyway, I thought it was gonna be a sort of large bore hole,
but it was more like a small lake, there were steps going down – a bit like
Hampstead ladies bathing pond in size, surrounded by tall green reeds, but the
Hampstead pond has dark murky water, here the water is clear, you can see far
down – not to the bottom though – that’s c 50 foot deep!
We had a good stroll around, Glen took pics of us
all with his rather big, fancy camera and then we went back to the car.
We stopped at the gatehouse and Glen chatted for ages in Afrikaans to the young
chap whose family lives at the house on whose land the spring is on. Me and
Sharron chatted about her work as a Transactional Analysis trainer/psycho-analyst.
Her daughters and grandchildren are all in England, so she wants to live there,
but it’s so hard to get a permit to work when you’re older, Glen is not keen,
he’s a South African through and through. He runs his own online business
now (after working for years in medical supplies). His business involves
supplying health products to health shops. He was very interested in my daughter's
Essential Oil business – I have my bottle of Nio Essentials Lavender Oil with
me and use it constantly to soothe mozzy bites (it really works).
He thinks he can probably add a link to her business from his – but he’s going to get in touch with her, when they’re in England in April. We also made a date to eat out together in Devran – my favourite Turkish Restaurant in Green Lanes.
I woke early next day, the day of Val’s funeral – I
lit a candle by the small shrine, in my room. I wanted to do a ‘puja’ at
the same time as her Roman Catholic mass was being said – 9 am UK time, 11 a.m.
here. There was a lot going on here too – the night before, there’d been
a ritual to end the first part of the retreat (most people were leaving before
Xmas). There’d been a rota of people chanting in the big shrine room all night
long, with many candles burning and a large bonfire outside. I’d done the
11 – midnight slot, chanting Om Mani Padme Hum for an hour – except I fell
asleep (sitting up) after half an hour. That day the usual morning silence was
being largely ignored, small groups were round tables. I like being with
the boys – Tenzin - the sweet-natured monk, he understands my droll sense of humour (lots of people don’t). He lived at
a monastery in Scotland for over 8 years – he did two 4 year silent
retreats. He told me he’d been a very troubled teenager with a big
alcohol problem, then he met Rob and ended up in Scotland where this Buddhist
group have a large monastery – his grandfather came from there.
There’s also Thesen, a quite diminutive young
Indian man who kept asking me if I had a ‘delicate’ side – I just glared at him
and said ‘I don’t do delicate, forget it!’ But he’s decided he loves me
anyway and that I AM ‘delicate’, as he puts it, but I hide it well.
Hmmm ... I like him though, he’s so cute and a bit naughty and always
asks Rob searching and penetrating questions which are often quite interesting.
Tenzin the monk told me he was trying to get hold
of his ‘preceptor’ as he’s decided he no longer wants to be a monk, he doesn’t
want to be celibate anymore. I asked him if that meant he kept dreaming
of beautiful girls and he said ‘Yeh, something like that.’
Ollie the banker would usually be there too, into
some deep conversation about political stuff. Somehow we got into a long
conversation where I explained a little about my former role with domestic
abuse survivors and the profile of abusers, with all the ‘controlling
behaviours’ they use. Then the ‘juicer’ woman came over and talked about 3
years she’d had with a DV abuser. He was emotionally controlling and abusive,
and she thought she’d never get away from him, but she eventually did.
She became upset talking about it.
Ollie tried to talk over this display of emotion,
but I made him stop and wait and pause in his flow of words, while I gave her a
long hug. He then talked about how his father (who had been an eminent
consultant) was abusive (verbally and emotionally) to his mother and we
discussed the profile of men who abuse their partners, how the emotional and
verbal abuse is extremely destructive. (In fact in UK a new law is going
through Parliament as I speak to criminalise these Controlling Behaviours that
abusers use to control, punish and intimidate their partners).
As it was now coming closer to 11 am (9 am in UK),
the time set for Val’s funeral, I absented myself from this lively discussion
and went to the small shrine room, put some fresh flowers out, lit candles and
incense and did a Sevenfold Puja, which involves going through various prayers
and supplications to the Buddha and bodhisattvas’ (archetypal figures that
Buddhists meditate on) Chenrezig (Avolokiteshvra) is the embodiment of
compassion. You meditate on him (or on the female Green Tara), in order to
strengthen and build on, the qualities of compassion in yourself.
Then I read out the poem that I’d written, cried
and closed with a series of chants to the various bodhisattvas. And then
went for a walk up the hillside. It was now midday and the sun was quite
fiercely hot. I found some shade and a phone signal, but remembered I had no
minutes left.
Later I went to the office with my laptop and Skype
called my daughters who were by now at the ‘wake’ in a pub in Crouch End. They
told me about the funeral mass and the short ceremony at the Golders Green
crematorium. I had a short chat with my friend’s son too. It had been an
emotional day for all of us, but a very tough one for them.
Here’s the poem I wrote:
You’ll be waiting
You’ll be waiting when I go,
cracking your Irish jokes
‘Oh there y’are,’ you’ll say
‘You took your time.’
I’ll say, what’d’ya mean,
y’old bag, you Irish potato,
you left me first you know. . .
it’s been ages …
so let’s go down to Costa’s
or the World for our cappuccino,
I’m paying this time, so don’t argue.
‘Y’are not,’ you’ll say, ‘I am’...
‘Hmm’, I’ll say 'we'll share a carrot cake, yeh?’
‘Grand,’ you’ll say.
And then we’ll be jawing on,
two hours’ll fly by,
talking of days in jobs,
dealing with customers and clients,
when we were younger.
Talk of days in Priory Park,
meeting at the toddler’s pool,
Pas at school,
Jonathan and Tam running
in and out, naked, splashing in the sun.
me and you drinking our coffee,
chatting, laughing …
one of them comes crying –
slipped and fell, bumped their head…
kiss, kiss, kiss it better…
Want an ice lolly? Twister?
Soon running round laughing again.
And me and you smiling
knowingly at each other,
remembering our golden children
playing … that’s what it’ll be like.
one day when I get up there,
won’t you, Val?
Blog 6 Retreat Centre Tara Rokpa
Mindfulness Meditation
A crystal clear mind
waits behind
a sunami of thought,
a fog of wants and desires.
Part the cloud,
without going to war,
cast forth Indra’s Net,
observe but don’t engage
the thinking patterns of the mind,
drop the critic,
be open, gentle and relaxed,
until awareness,
that polished diamond,
glows in front of you.
© Anna Meryt Dec 2014
Day 16 on the retreat, Day 21 in
Africa
The days are skimming by. Most days have a
pattern, a schedule to follow:
5:30 am the first wake-up gong for 6 a.m.
meditation in the large octagonal shrine room, down the garden by the carp and
frog pond. Occasionally I get up for that one. but usually I turn over
and go back to sleep and wake up c. 6:30, breakfast is at 7-8 pm – hot porridge
or muesli or granola and yoghurt (kefir it’s called), fresh milk from local
cows, toast and Marmite, marmalade or Marula jam, eggs, scrambled, poached, or
boiled, lots of tea (those are the options, not what I have...).
I had put myself down for breakfast washing up
duty, I clear all the jars, plates and bowls and wipe the surfaces. I’m done by
8:15 and now free of jobs all day (I’ve done a LOT of retreats so know the
score on work rotas).
8:30 a.m. Back in the Octagonal shrine room
for teaching from Rob. Although he’d upset me in the beginning, we’ve now
settled into an amicable enough relationship. He has a great deal of
knowledge about meditation and how it works. The poem above is based on
his teachings, the essence is there. He starts with questions thrown out
to the room (Socratic method) ...
‘On a scale of one to ten how present are you in
the room?’
I say ‘three’, most say from one to five. Someone
says what would it take to be at 10? He says for most of us almost never,
unless you’re in a life threatening situation. I remember a week long kind of
retreat I did in Wales once called ‘On The Edge’, belaying with straps and
ropes down a 50 foot mineshaft – that was a 10 I think. I felt totally present
as I went over the edge.
That’s the first step, next is looking at how the
mind works – many people think that meditation is about stopping thought, it’s
not. It’s about observing the habitual thinking patterns of the mind and
retraining it gently, gradually so that instead of following every thought, you
bring your focus back to either counting the breathe or, Rob likes to get us to
focus on sound. Since I am a bit deaf, sound is not a good one for me, so
I use the breathe - unless the frogs are at it... sometimes they all start
together this rasping croaking – it’s so loud we shut the huge glass sliding
doors, much louder than the cicadas. I still can’t concentrate on that frog
sound though – it fills my head.
After 40 mins of teaching, and a further 20 mins of
meditation, Rob asks the room more questions about the progress of these
meditation techniques. Most admit they got sucked back into following
their thinking patterns. Then he leaves and we do another half hour meditation
before a half hour tea break.
Then there’s a movement and relaxation class for 45
mins followed by more meditation until lunch at 1 pm. I go occasionally.
Lunch today, baked potatoes, roasted butternut
squash, bean sprouts, fried halloumi and olives mixed with green beans and
other cooked fresh organic veg, (from the garden), a huge dish of local
tomatoes vinagrette with avocado, followed by baked bananas in sesame, with
vanilla custard and/ or watermelon. I am going to be so fat when I leave
here.
After lunch there’s more meditation - several one
hour sessions (I don’t usually go) and a long walk is organised at 5 pm in
variable directions. It used to be P leading the walks, and her two dogs
- small, slim, white-haired, brown as a nut and revered by all, due to her
tireless work for the centre and for the local African villagers. But now
she has gone on holiday to New Zealand, leaving her 2 dogs (an oldish fattish
Jack Russell and a bigger, springy young mongrel) bereft. Anyway, her
walks (so I heard) were up hill and down dale at a pace of knots – so I never
went as it sounded torture. I tried a walk with Guy (who’s about 6 foot
4”) leading one day - me and this Afrikaans woman got stuck halfway up a long
slippery rocky incline. I sat on a rock and she sat with me and we were
miles behind everyone by now. We gave up and slipped and slid back down
to the road, hoping not to encounter any spitting cobra or black puff adders or
scorpions on the way.
BTW they had (lots of excitement) - a small
spitting cobra in the kitchen last week – the intrepid Pippa (above), put on
glass goggles (so no venom in the eyes) and got the cobra into a bucket, put a
lid on and took it out to the bush and let it go (carefully).
We had a new group intake of about 20 people on
Friday, as a new 10 day retreat started on Saturday. The old lags like me (hey
I’d done 14 days by then) looked them over with some suspicion. My new
roommate is a mature Indian woman who has a permanent scowl on her face and
does not answer when spoken to. (Come back my lovely Vera). She wanted to open
the windows at night (it’s been so hot) but it’s impossible and I kept having
to explain to her – hoards of insects come in and then immolate themselves on
my hot-bulbed bedside lamp (I left a small window open one night when I was out
- by mistake - and when I got back, had to go get the dustpan to sweep my
bedside table of dead bodies).
I have by now acquired a mozzy net over my bed so I
wasn’t that bothered ... well except for the three HUGE spiders I had on
the wall and ceiling last week – the young monk – Tenzin came and got the
biggest (black hairy flat, the size of a man’s hand), then I woke up Giles in
the middle of the night to get one, then Ireen (Juicer lady) did the third one,
which was not quite so huge. Anyway over supper that same night, Susan, the
admin woman/ clinical psych, told them all the stuff about the camp and said
‘don’t open the windows at night due to all the insects’ so when I got back to
the room, she’d shut everything again. Since then she has maintained absolute
silence towards me – I mean in the room ... which is fine – each to their own.
My new friends are Petra and Hannes (a young couple
in their early 30s) who are camping by the river. They have been extra kind to
me – they treat me like I’m their Mum – but I digress, I was talking about the
programme for each day – it’s always been the same except Xmas Day when the
programme ‘relaxed’ a bit (this just meant no evening teaching, a bonfire and
sing song instead – I sang a couple of Beatle songs, a young Irish woman sang
some beautiful Irish ballads.
Back to the programme - 2 one hour meditations
after lunch (that’s when I go off to write or read or go off to sit outside the
office (about 5 mins walk down the road), to use the internet and get bitten to
hell round the ankles, by the fleas there. At 5 pm there’s a walk (I only go
with friends who take it easy – no big hills).
Supper is at 6 pm, I’m usually still full from
lunch, so only eat the soup, but there’s loads of other left overs. After
supper is eaten and washed up, we have to hot foot it back to the octagonal
shrine room for another teaching from Rob plus meditation – all that finishes
about 8 pm and then most people either go and hang out in the dining area (you
can talk til 8:30 pm – silence til after lunch next day) and then go to their
rooms to read or fall asleep.
So that’s the pattern of my days. Except
yesterday I did a break out with Hannes and Petra(the young couple) – Hannes
has a big huge 4x4 thing and we zoomed off straight after Rob’s teaching
finished in the morning – drove about 50 kms to a kind of Wild West town packed
with farmers’ ‘bakkies’[1] and Africans walking about in
bright colours, a DJ with 12 foot speakers was rapping on one corner (I
had to cover my ears to walk past) – I got some plastic chunky slip-ons shoes
for 30 Rand (about £1.80) – as my flip flops had broken.
Petra is very slim, with quite dark Mediterranean
looks – maybe Portuguese ancestry(?), but is through and through Afrikaans now
– she and Hannes speak Afrikaans - it’s their first language (except they try
not to around me). Petra has a bubbly personality and constantly makes me
laugh, it was lovely to get out of the retreat for the day, with good company.
The drive was undulating green hills, miles of bush and small towns along the
way. Everything is so green at this time of year coz there’s been so much
rain. From May to October there’s very little rain and the countryside
would be browned to a crisp (hot days, cold nights).
The town we went to was crammed with vehicles – all
the farmers coming in to shop on a Saturday, long queues in Pick n Pay (like
Asda) and I found a Woolworths (M&S) with a sale on - Hannes had
insisted on escorting me round the shops and waiting outside for me and
standing by me at the ATM too..
Then we drove around looking for somewhere to eat –
but there was a power cut (again), lots were closed and eventually we drove out
of town and found a kind of mad pub – a big sign said ‘Gents on the left as
Women are always Right’ - they did burgers and chips (it even had a veggie
burger for me) and we had a beer – it was great. I had such a fun day...
* * *
Next day – Sunday, I was writing on my laptop in my
room – I saw Hannes and Petra through my window and they came rushing over –
they are leaving tonight, coz Hannes work colleague died suddenly and the
memorial is tomorrow, and they’re not coming back. I was sad as I enjoy their
company. They tell me they are going to Hermanus together on Feb 14 – I
might be there around that date. Herrmanus is this vast ocean bay where 60 foot
whales come to spawn from Oct to Dec. I’m hoping to see some whales (as I
did in 2007) when I'm there in Feb and it’ll be nice to see Petra and Hannes
again too.
********************************************************************************************
Blog 7 Leaving the Retreat - Jan 10th 2015
The rest of the retreat went by – I
missed having H&P there, but soon January 5th was approaching, my last
day. I was looking forward to it ending, but also wondering how I’d cope with
travelling on my own after a very structured daily framework, including 3 meals
a day, never having to think about bills or worldly concerns. It was going to
be a shock to my system.
* * *
I spent my last few days wondering
what this next leg of my journey would bring me and not doing a great deal of
meditation, although I never missed any of Rob’s teachings. By now he and I got
on much better, we’d had a few chats and he admired my poetry, especially the
ones I wrote for the retreat that encapsulated his teachings – which he called
‘beautiful’. One day, walking up from the shrine room together he’d put his arm
round me suddenly and said that he really loved me ... which was nice.
Some of the other retreatants also took
my poetry books and read them and I’d been very touched with the response which
was overwhelmingly positive. One woman, an Afrikaner, not given to any display
of emotion came back with one of my collections, putting it down on the table
and was about to walk off. ‘Did you like any of the poems?’ I asked quickly.
‘Yis’ – she flicked through until she
found her favourite one and jabbed it with her finger – it was the simplest and
shortest poem in the collection, and somehow the one she chose, because I knew
something of what she’d been through in her life, brought tears to my eyes....
How to be happy?
Voices in my head
keep telling me,
you did that wrong,
you said that badly,
you’re not good enough,
you could do better,
you shouldn’t have,
you fucked it up again.
Why don’t they say,
you did that right
you said that well,
you ARE good enough,
you could do worse.
Yes you shall.
Yes you can.
YOU WERE BRILLIANT AGAIN?
Another retreatant, a rather genteel
woman from Rhodesia, with white hair in a bun, in in her 70s, returned the
Dolly Mix collection, which she’d borrowed for a couple of
nights,. I was talking to someone and she said nothing, just put it
down on the table next to me, so I thought she probably didn’t like any of
them. Later, she came over to the dining table where I was sitting with some
other people and said ‘I just want you to know that I loved your poems.’ ‘Oh’ I
said, ‘any in particular?’ I was thinking she might have liked 1 or 2.
‘I liked all of them,’ she said. ‘Every
single poem in the book was good, so clever, every word counted!’
I was stunned by that. I could barely
believe it. But she was not the sort of person to flatter you or to make it up,
so I had to believe that was how she felt. Wow!
One memorable
evening after Xmas, we had a bonfire in the huge garden area. One of the guys –
a lecturer at Rhodes University, a quiet man, very modest about his guitar
playing abilities, suggested playing, as I did one of my poems. So I picked out
Felucca Night, a story poem about a night I spent on the Nile in a felucca -
and he played along as my voice weaved around his playing, another guy had
picked up some bongos – the result was magical and everyone listening seemed to
be entranced, it ended with spontaneous applause. I’ll always remember that
night.
In the last week I did the 10 minute
walk to the office several days in a row to get wi-fi. I booked a ticket
on the Intercape bus from Groote Marico to Gabarone and saw that I could get a
train from Francistown to Bulawayo on the following Saturday. How was I going
to get transport from Gabarone to Francistown? I didn’t know – it was 420 kms
and nothing came up on the internet – someone said it was because the bus
companies operating there didn’t have websites. And who would take me to
the pick up point in Groote Marico - at a service station? I was asking
everyone and got offers but they were all going in the morning. My
coach pick up was at 4 pm.
Eventually, I was offered a lift from
one of the volunteers, a stout young woman who worked in the city as an
accountant I think. who was v quiet. I’d worked out early that she liked
to observe and was brighter than her quiet demeanour hinted at, she also had a
good sense of humour and so I liked her. Anyway, she was driving to Jo’burg
quite late and could drop me on the way at the petrol station where the
Intercape bus would pick-up for anyone going on to Gabarone.
I hate all those goodbyes at the end
of a group – some people, who you’re not that keen on, feel obliged to say
goodbye smiling and some even hugging you. Go away. Those that I had liked we
had already exchanged emails, phone numbers – some you do stay in touch with,
some you don’t. Some people are fine, but maybe you just didn’t get to know
them for whatever reason. The last day is often a long tortured process.
Me and Angel (as she turned out
to be) set off in plenty of time c. 3 p.m – the service station at Groote
Marico was about 20 kms away, I’d get there early and get a drink, maybe some
chips or something, go to the ATM. We stopped first with Susan (administrator)
following in her car, at the TRC shop as I’d asked Susan if I could buy this
lovely red and orange handmade T shirt I’d seen in the shop and hadn’t got
round to it.
Then I got back in the car with Angel
and off we drove – 8+ miles of dirt track gravel and then onto the dual
carriageway – we were 5 minutes from the petrol station, it was 3.20 pm,
lovely!
That was when I realised my handbag,
my beige canvas handbag containing money, passport, credit cards EVERYTHING was
not by my feet, not anywhere in the car. I worked out it must be in the TRC
shop, where I’d bought the T shirt. Total panic – Angel pulled over and turned
the car back. THERE WAS NO WAY WE COULD MAKE IT BACK (the shop was locked and
ANGEL didn’t have a key) and get back to the coach in time... but I decided we
had to try and Angel was willing. She raced back down the dual carriageway,
turned onto the dirt track and went as quickly as she could over the bumpy
gravel track.
Even though I’m a Buddhist sometimes
I pray to God, or maybe make an offering to a particular boddhistava
occasionally or the Buddha himself. This time I prayed ‘Give us wings, help me
to make it... ‘ the alternative if I missed the bus was to go back to the
retreat centre and stay the night there on my own (Susan has a house about 2
kms away so could unlock a room at the retreat centre for me), or I’d have to
go to Jo’burg with Angel and stay the night there. Both options felt horrible.
We had to make it.
We got back to TRC and by then Angel had
remembered where a spare key was. She parked and zoomed off for the key and -
well I can only think it was a miracle – it was now 3:35 pm,. We drove to
the shop, grabbed my bag and then full speed back down the track. Somehow we
made it to the garage by 3:55.
I couldn’t
believe it – my prayer for us to have wings had been answered. The coach,
didn’t arrive in fact until 4:15, by which time I’d had enough time to go to
the ATM, get some cash, go to the shop get a few bits. Angel insisted on
staying, guarding my bags outside and waited until the bus drove off
before she would leave, waving me goodbye – what a trauma it had all been – I
will always be grateful to her.
Now I was on the coach to Botswana, feeling so relieved to be finally on
my way. I’d read all the books about the First Lady Detective, which are set in
Gabarone and finally I’d get there. I settled in the coach for the four hour
ride and wondered what it was going to be like.
Blog 8
Gabarone Botswana
A
very modern city, with big fancy gleaming shopping malls, was what Gaborone
turned out to be. I arrived in a suburb
near the city centre and it was hot, bloody hot – around 35 degrees. The hostel reception area was in a quiet wide
avenue with bungalows and big metal fences, with security gates. The reception area was air conned so
blessedly cool. Then we went out, the
woman at reception wheeled my big bag down the road and pulled open a heavy
metal sliding gate and we entered a courtyard around a large bungalow. Inside she showed me the kitchen area – clean
and white with cooker and fridge, the lounge next door with heavy dark wood
furniture and big windows all around.
She pulled all the curtains and took me down a corridor with doors on each side, to my room at the
end – with a big double bed, own en suite shower room, gave me a key to the
door and was about to leave when I asked where I could buy food, as, having
come straight from the retreat, I had none – down there (she pointed to a
narrow space between a fence and a building, cross the road left then right –
there's a Spar. 'Is it safe to walk
about in the dark?' (it was 8:30 in the evening) I asked, 'Yes it's fine', she
waved a hand dismissively.
I went back to my room, unpacked in the big
wardrobe and then ventured out, locking the front door, and pulling open the
big steel gates. There was two security
guards outside the big building by the gap I walked through. I asked them for help and one took me across
the busy main road, round the corner and pointed to the Spar down the way.
Eggs, bread, butter, milk, tea, porridge, a bag of chopped vegetables, some
rice, chocolate – back to the bungalow.
I was set up for a few days – I was going to be there from Sunday to
Thursday.
The
first few days I rested and soon discovered I was the only guest in the
bungalow. This was not ideal at night as I felt isolated and if there were
security guards everywhere and big wals round every dwelling – why were they
there?
In
the daytime I went to the hostel reception and sat in the dining room with my
laptop and wifi. I went to explore the shopping area – a long wide street with
all the main chain stores you get in South Africa – Pep Stores for cheap
children's uniforms, clothes, pound shop stuff.
There were all the shops you could need.
On the second day the taxi took me to a giant shopping mall on the
outskirts of town – big dual carriageways, massive roundabouts to get
there. Inside all the same shops you get
in S Africa shopping malls – Woolworths (the kind of Waitrose of Southern
Africa (posh M&S) Clicks, like Boots, trendy expensive clothes shops,
pharmacies with huge health and vitamin sections, fancy shoe shops everything.
My first task was to find some good walking
sandals as I'd lost mine at the bakpak in Jo'burg and just had some cheap
flipflops. I had to pay a lot in the end for a good make – I was going to do a
lot of walking and got some Grasshoppers (my feet liked them!). Then found a
Mug and Bean – oh much better than anything in UK – lovely cappuchino, roasted
veg and feta salads – food is so much cheaper in Southern Africa, expensive by
their standards but 4-5 quid to you n me.
Sat down and picked up their wifi to check my emails and facebook.
At
the border I'd been given a new sim card for my phone and told that S Africa sims
dot work there – the sims are free but you have to buy airtime. It's essential
to have a cell phone(as they're called in Africa) for calling taxis etc.
When
I came out of the mall I called my taxi driver – he'd be 10 mins he said – the
heat hits you like a furnace when you come out of the cool air-conned
shops. I stood in some shade for a bit
and called him again – 5 minutes he said so I stepped out of the shade and
fried for the next 20 minutes, until some lovely ladies in a shop near bye
heard me having a frustrated phone call
with him about where he was and pulled me in to their cool furniture
store. Eventually he arrived, it was
traffic, he'd got lost etc - I'd texted
him my exact location in the end, as he didn't understand over the phone. Before that one of the girls started pumping
me for info about how to get a visa into the UK, was she hinting that I might
sponsor her ? This happened a lot. By
then I was so hot and cross the driver got the sharp end and then sulked all
the way back to the hostel. I gave him
his Pulas (Botswana currency) and he drove off – I got a different driver after
that.
The
day before I left, I asked the new driver – a young chap called Tomas – to take
me sight seeing – there's a mini game reserve in Gaborone and I also wanted to
see the statue of Seretse Khama (the architect of the peaceful democracy that
Botswana is and has been since independence) in the town centre. We agreed a
price (which he argued about at the end – but I was on firm ground as I'd
checked with the ladies in reception –
more than they earn in a week I should think) and set off – the game reserve
was, like the rest of Gaborone and that part of Botswana, flat dry hot bush
country. There wasn't going to be any
big game there – zebras and khudus and a few wildebeest, a few monkeys, oh and
my favourites - warthogs – we got there about noon and of course – mad dogs and
English women – it was bloody hot by then – drove around wilting, got out of
the car a few times, took a few pics – I don't think the taxi driver had ever
been there before – he certainly didn't know the names of the animals – but I
saw a mother warthog and babies all trotting behind – so cute, love them, they
are very ugly!
Then
we drove into the centre – I walked
around the main large open modern city centre – there were trees and flowers
and there in the middle was the statue
of Seretse Khama – I took some pics and then went into a Barclays bank – I
shoud be able to get some dollars for Zimbabwe I thought. An hour later after a very frustrating time
dealing with African bureaucracy and them making phone calls and me getting
increasingly irritated, I got some rands but no dollars – I gave up in the end
and stomped out gritting my teeth – they made me feel that they were doing me a
favour by letting me have some of my money.
My driver took me back to the hostel.
I left the next day for
Francistown on the bus, having checked the temperatures in Bulawayo – it was 10
degrees cooler there. Francistown was
still hot but only one night there in a hotel as no bakpaks available then
taking the train to Bulawayo next day. I
was looking forward to the cooler Zimbabwe weather. I was glad to leave my bungalow there as had
felt isolated there, as was alone for 4 days, which was OK after a month of
communal living on the retreat. But it
was great to be on the road again.
***********************************************************************************************
Blog 9 Francistown, Botswana – and
on to Zimbabwe
Saturday 10th Jan 2014
Je suis Charlie
Today I am wearing ‘Je suis Charlie’ on my T-shirt, having watched the events
unfold on the TV in my hotel room – it was so shocking, partly because the
drama went on so long, and then there seemed to be not just the two brothers,
but others, a man and a woman- and partly because it was an attack on freedom
of speech and journalism – which made me want to wear those words - - you may
think of it as an empty gesture, I don’t. I think a collective worldwide
protest against violent extremism raises consciousness and makes these
extremists see their denial of our common humanity. I feel sorry too for
all those peace-loving, law-abiding Moslems who are also joining the ‘je suis
Charlie’ protests, angry at the continual hi-jacking by these nutters of their
religion to be used to promote this warped and twisted cause.
Yesterday, I arrived in Francistown and
amid the usual chaos of the bus station, I got a taxi to take me to my hotel
(yes hotel for a change, I couldn’t find a backpackers place with rooms free
online). I’d been 5 hours on the bus and I was not in a good mood.
When I got on the bus/coach in
Gabarone, I have to confess, I was expecting a better standard. A blonde
aloof Russian woman on the retreat who lived in Gaborone told me to get a coach
from this particular company. The cab driver, from where I was staying in
Gaborone – Thapelo, took me...the day before he’d taken me on a whistle stop
tour of the attractions of Gaborone(Botswana) – we’d driven round the small
‘nature reserve – which had taken an hour or so – zebras, impala, monkeys and,
my personal favourites – warthogs and a funny little furry animal that stood up
on its hind legs’ and looked at us- I’ll post up some pics, no idea what it was
called – nor had Thapelo – he didn’t seem to know hardly any of the animals.
Anyway, now we got to the big huge area
outside of town full of coaches and mini buses, all going various places... we
threaded our way through all the crowds milling about and got to this
coach. I found a place inside – next to an aisle, in a row of three, a
man was sitting near the window. The bus filled up, there were no other
tourists, I seemed to be the only non-local. Thankfully, the empty seat
in the middle, which I’d put my small bags on, remained empty. Great, I
settled myself down with my Kindle and a bottle of water. Then five mins
later, the bus stopped and picked up a few more and Oh horror an African woman
of ‘traditional shape’, with a child aged c 6 was standing next to me pointing
at the middle seat. Suddenly I found myself squished up tight to the
arm-rest, which was jabbing in to my hip on one side and a large fat sweaty arm
was stuck to my arm like Velcro on the other, the child was howling and trying
to curl up in the ample lap. Sigh! A five hour journey lay ahead, it was
hot and there appeared to be v little air con ... there also did not appear to
be a toilet (maybe there was hidden at the back but I couldn’t see it.)
After a while of inner cursing and
shifting about, to the least uncomfortable position, I decided to make the best
of it and looked out of the window (across various bodies). The landscape
was just endlessly flat featureless bush, mile after mile of it. Dusty
red dirt roads crossed it occasionally, but it was just low grey-green shrubs
and trees right to the horizon. read my Kindle for a while, then put Jimi
Hendrix, All Along the Watchtower, on my headphones, very loud, followed by
Captain Beefheart’s, There Ain’t No Santa Claus... this was a good antidote to
discomfort. The coach stopped twice along the way for brief toilet stops – each
time about twenty hawkers got on, selling bottles of water, packets of crisps,
peanuts and assorted stuff like headphones and phone covers, they all stopped
eagerly at the only ‘white’ face on the bus and various rapid patter in broken
English was tried out on me.
A bit later some people got off further
up and a nice tall thin man near my seat pointed it out to me, I moved forward
and again had an empty seat next to me as long as it lasted …
Which brings me back to arriving at the
hotel and being VERY bad tempered with the receptionist who said, No there was
not an ensuite bathroom (which I’d paid for) and No their wi-fi was not working
and looked surprised and irritated that I was asking for someone to carry my
bags up the two flights of stairs to my room.
After I’d had a tantrum, stamped around
in reception for a while, I went up to the room – it was in fact very nice and
it DID have an ensuite – a large walk-in shower and toilet and hand
basin. Later, it transpired that because I’d said ‘ensuite bathroom’ she
thought I meant with a bath ... that girl was another of those ‘literalists’
you encounter in life – you ask a question and they interpret it literally and
narrowly and seem unable to use common sense to work out what the question is
about. It also had a large flat screen TV (whoa! luxury) and by the time I’d
had a lovely hot shower, watched an unmemorable movie, had a rest on my king
size bed, I was restored to some measure of humanity.
I then went in search of food – a pizza
would be nice. I discovered the hotel, which faced a busy road, was next
to a huge shopping mall. I entered the shopping mall – it had, oh heaven,
all my favourite shops – Pic-n-Pay( like Asda), Woolworth’s (M&S),
Clicks (Boots) and LOADS of others. Maybe it’s because I’ve been on
retreat for a month in the middle of the bundhu (as my mother used to call it),
but whenever I spot a shopping mall now, I feel cheerful, like whistling.
So much for my spiritual life, I know ‘wanting stuff’ is one of the causes of
suffering, but being completely cut off from all civilisation for too long has
left me with a complete obsession with ..... well, er, shopping.
(Oh dear, looks like I’ll have to be reborn a lot more ....) I get powerful
withdrawal symptoms, I must have shops... what would happen if I run out of ...
what ever? Sorry, I like the country in short bursts, but I’m just a city
girl at heart. The first shopping mall I hit (in Gabarone) after the retreat
was like manna from heaven, I went a bit mad ... it even had a Mug and Bean
(fantastic cappuccino and feta salad).
Which brings me to say, if you think of
Africa as kind of shanty towns and mud huts still, you are definitely living in
a different century. The media still portrays Africa as if it was like
that. Well let me tell you about Botswana – there was not a mud hut or
shanty town to be seen in the modern city of Gabarone – big shiny glass banks,
grand and imposing modern government buildings, huge fancy shopping malls. I
gave up going in to mobile phone shops, as there was always a queue to speak to
an assistant, a queue of well-off looking people, smarter often than you’d see
in my part of London. The roads are full of cars, I’m watching them stream past
me now, from this cafe, not one looks old or battered or unroadworthy, most are
gleaming, less than 5 years old.
I’m sure there’s still poverty and some
shanty dwellings hidden somewhere, but I haven’t seen them. Last
night a young staff member in Woolworths very kindly guided me (a 5 minute
walk) to the pizza place. The President here, he was reminding me, is
Seretse Khama’s son – this chap had been too young to vote for Sir Ian Khama in
the previous election. He said he will not vote for him in the next election,
‘there are lots of problems in Botswana, high unemployment – it’s about
17-20%’, he told me.
In spite of what he said though, I
should remind you that Botswana has one of the most consistent economies and
political situations in Africa. This was largely down to Seretse Khama’s
ethical and stable leadership, when he took over the new independent country in
the late 60s. And although his son (Sir Ian Khama) took over the mantel
after his father’s death, it was not through corruption and nepotism, as I
understand it – he rose through the ranks of the Botswana army, joined
parliament as an MP in the early 90s and worked his way up to Vice-presidential
level, by legitimate means. Anyway, this young man from Woolworth’s reflects a
desire for change now – whether it will be for the better, remains to be seen.
* * *
I was writing the above when I decided
to check the train time – it was then about 12:30 pm... I thought it left at c.
4 pm – oh no - it departs at 12 noon, have I missed it…. hold on this is Africa
.... I paid my bill, raced back (next door to the hotel) to get my bags – this
time there was a lovey helpful receptionist – she rang the railway station –
they said the train was delayed but would leave in about 10 mins - she called a
cab (which took 5 mins and then meandered behind every slow bit of traffic), we
finally pulled up at the station ... no train to be seen, shit shit shit! I’ve
missed it, I thought - the guy got my bags out of the taxi – a man pointed way
down the platform, I looked round a corner and there was a train, with all the
doors shut - I waved to them to hold on (big arm gestures), shouted at the taxi
driver to bring my bags forward, then grabbed the other ones ( I have one on
wheels, one largish khaki rucksack and my handbag (canvas, shoulder strap) and
small black old looking rucksack for laptop and a few papers ...I was running
down the platform, the taxi driver was strolling behind me, saying take your
time, don’t worry – no not that carriage – that one down the bottom. I
climbed on, up a vertical ladder into a doorway, taxi driver behind – he found
me a seat, next to a black Zim woman, who looked ‘churchy’ if you know what I
mean, pursed lips, long floral skirt ... he got off, waved goodbye .... and we
sat there waiting for train to get going for about another 45 mins.
Then I looked round – the train was
rammed. I’d kind of pictured nice upholstery, little tables some rows –
like in UK. It was coming from modern Botswana after all. What a bloody
laugh, I should have known. I travelled in the overnight sleeper from
Harare to Bulawayo in 2003 – filthy, crawling with cockroaches, overflowing
toilets, doors that wouldn’t close ... that was then – things had moved on
since then right? Wrong. Although not as bad as that train – I saw no
cockroaches, the toilets were not overflowing, it was still dilapidated, dirty
– dirty floors and walls, the fold-down table in front of me kept dropping down
– no Formica – filthy. I found some cellotape and taped it
up. And I looked down the long corridor of seats in front of me, yes I
was the only white person. This meant I was a bit of a freak – I kept
catching people staring at me surreptiously, from behind their seats – each
time I waved and they quickly looked away, embarrassed.
My chief admirer became a little boy
sitting opposite me in the aisle – he was at that age – of curiosity, of never
ending questions, 9 years old and small for his age, he reminded me of my
youngest brother Ed when he was that age – full of ‘insatiable curiosity’ as
Rudyard Kipling called it .... he was also extremely cute with irresistible
charm and intelligence. He kept asking questions which I couldn’t answer,
mainly because I couldn’t hear due to the noise of the train and his very quiet
voice.
The train stopped at the border –
before that a Botswana border official gave out forms, we stood in queues – he
stamped our passports. That’s done, I thought then more forms given out – name,
address, passport number, cell phone, home address etc. After a half hour wait,
the train shuddered forward to the other side of the border. Zim border
officials got on, Queues – I was told to sit back down when it got to be my
turn, he would find me (one white person on the train ...?) I trekked back to
my seat. He pitched up, half an hour later – I gave him the blue paper
form, he examined it minutely, ‘where’s the other one?’ ‘Oh sorry.’ I
said, ‘I thought I’d done them all.’ He glared at me, I hunted in my bag, found
another I hadn’t filled in. His face was set, he looked down the carriage,
making sure he had an audience ‘if you’re not going to cooperate’ he snapped,’
why would you think that?’ I said, ‘Look I’m filling it in now ..’. he snatched
it and stalked off ... he was obviously showing the carriage how to deal with
these whites ... c/o the example of Uncle Bob!
By the time the train arrived in
Bulawayo, the sun was setting, it was getting dark. My little companion
Godwill was now a firm friend, his Mum, Stella told me she’d called a cab and I
should go with her – drop her and the kids in town and then I could carry on to
Burkes Paradise Backpackers ... I’d chosen it for the name ... bad move...
We got off onto a pitch-dark platform
and a chaos of people that reminded me of India – thank god Stella just
gathered me up with her kids and somehow, after standing in a big crowd of
people jostling, carrying huge bags, some on their heads, babies strapped to
backs, Stella whipped us through and out through customs, dismissed a voracious
hoard of taxi drivers and there we were driving in to Bulawayo at last.
One thing I had noticed. Looking out
the train windows before it got dark – the landscape changed dramatically as we
got in to Zimbabwe - Botswana hot hot hot – miles of flat dry bush,
Zimbabwe - much cooler, lush, hilly, varied landscape – lots of thick green vegetation
and trees. It felt like I was coming home.
*************************************************************************************
Blog 10 Bulawayo
Zimbabwe Jan 10-15th 2015
I keep thinking of that young chap
from the Woolworth’s (M&S) in Botswana, He was complaining of the high
unemployment in Botswana – 18-20% .... and what is it in the UK, lower than
that? Psha! Guess what it is in Zimbabwe? Approximately 82% -
yes you heard right. I’ve been putting off writing this, as the
overwhelming feeling I left Zimbabwe with, was sadness. A great oppressive
sadness. Everywhere I encountered, what for me are the nicest, most
gentle people in Southern Africa (maybe I’m prejudiced as it is my birth
country – but many people agree with me) – articulate, well-educated, well
spoken, perfect English from the mission schools, many taught by Jesuits.(Not
now though, all that is ending). When I left there I wanted to close the door
on all the sadness, but dammit it just won’t close, it haunts me constantly.
Let’s start with Burkes Paradise
Backpackers – my taxi driver drove up this dark side road, wide and tree lined,
up a gravel track to a car park in a copse of trees, about 5 miles out of
Bulawayo. We could see a low building across a dark lawn – they were expecting
me, so someone should be around – it was about 9 pm. No one was about,
apart from a little Japanese man looking at his tablet computer. He
barely glanced up. The taxi driver Omar (lovely guy) waited while I went
to the big house round the back of first building and shouted out. A chap
in his thirties appeared, he fetched a key, rushed me across a lawn and round
onto another large lawn with swimming pool in the distance, gleaming in the
dark, – opened the door of a small log cabin, where I put my bags, showed me
bathroom next door, then walked me rapidly back to first building – a guest
lounge and tiny old and tattered kitchen. There was no food except a tin of
baked beans which he pointed to and I could buy. Could I have a few slices of
bread? I asked (thinking I haven’t eaten nowt but a sandwich since
Francistown), he was not sure but might be able to find some... he’d ask wife.
There were teabags (some backpackers
provide, some don’t). So I made myself a cup of tea (I asked for a drop of
milk) and made myself baked beans on toast – by then Omar had gone and mein
host had disappeared. I struggled to remember the way back to my cabin in
the pitch dark night - across this lawn, was it down these steps and now, how
to find the other lawn, shining my cell phone torch along this old stone wall –
finding a gap ah yes there’s the lawn, there’s the path, there’s the three-in a
row wooden cabins, find the light switch.
So when I finally got a look at the
cabin I was not particularly impressed by its rustic charm – bare red brick
walls, twin beds, tiny space, NOWHERE to put clothes or hang any out, too tired
to think now – fell into bed and slept til 7 a.m. Luckily, we are good
sleepers in our family.
I shall hurry over the next day – I
woke up tired and fragile, went back to kitchen/lounge to see mein host and his
3 small children, piling into his station wagon – they were off to church. ...
He had vaguely said the night before
that there was a minibus you could catch to some shops from the main road – he
had gestured vaguely – down there. I was feeling like crap – I had
nothing to eat but an uncooked bag of brown rice and no idea if it was safe to
walk about, let alone go get a bush taxi... I tried asking a black guy outside
the lounge (he was texting on his cell phone) and the Japanese guy (who was
back on his tablet) – neither of them knew or were interested – and to my
embarrassment, I found myself with tears pouring down my face. In the end
the Kenyan, as he turned out to be, (exasperated at the nuisance I was causing)
told me there was someone up at the big house who could help. I found
her, a young woman with blonde dreadlocks –it turned out she’d been deputised
to keep shop - she sat me down, was sympathetic, gave me a map, told me it was
safe to go down there and explained how to get to the shops. She had several
children with her including a petite, bright v. skinny, little brown-skinned
girl child who it turned out was also hers – the father was a Shona (ie Zimbabwean)
musician in a band currently touring USA.
I walked down, stood at the side of the
main road and soon a minibus stopped - I paid 5 Rand (about 30p) and soon they
dropped me at the crossroads – now a 5 min walk to the tiny shopping centre at
Hillside. I found a small SPAR there and soon I had bread and milk, butter,
cheese, eggs and tomatoes – plus a ready prepared pack of chopped veg for my
evening meal, mushrooms and onions – I was all set.
I went back to Burke’s Paradise – mini
bus and long walk, the gardens there were lovely – full of lush tropical trees
and bougainvillea gushing cerise pink flowers all over the hedgerows and
borders, with jacaranda and other tropical blooms I cannot name. I
went to my cabin, it felt isolated and had no cupboards, not even a hook to
hang anything from – I had been hoping to spend a few nice relaxing days here,
but another night of not another person in sight, sitting in my cabin with the
door locked, not feeling particularly safe, no one within shouting distance ....?
Then there was the kitchen – tiny, a few cracked plates and even less cups, no
surfaces to prepare food and what there was, old and cracked and not very
clean... I sat in the lounge and searched the internet and found Lily’s Backpackers
– reviews said ‘warm and friendly and helpful’ – plus it was in Hillside, where
I’d been to the shops - a nice leafy suburb of Bulawayo.
I rang her (by now I’d acquired a Zim
sim card from my shopping trip) ... she sounded ‘warm, friendly and helpful’ –
I decided to check it out - got a lift there from a nice grey-haired woman at
the crossroads in Hillside near the shops – I stopped her in her car to ask for
directions ‘Hop in,‘ she said, ‘I live near there.’ All the roads round there
had the names of English poets and writers from the 20th century –
Lily lived in Masefield Road, we passed Coleridge and Milton Roads – Lily came
out to greet me warmly, and chatted to the woman who’d given me a lift – she
showed me to a big room in the house, dark polished floors, a large kitchen and
bathroom – it felt so much safer and warmer than where I had been. She
was a woman in her fifties, kind and reassuring and eager to make me feel
welcome – so different to Burke’s. We agreed that she would come in her
car for me next morning at 10 a.m. and I’d stay with her c. 3 more nights. She
got her son (a trainee chef) to drive me back to Burkes. I told them I’d leave
next day and endured another night there.
Lily fetched me next morning, as
agreed, we talked a lot – I had a big room with floor to ceiling wardrobes to
put stuff in. I began to relax at last. She gave me detailed directions
how to get to the New Orleans cafe/bar down the road – which had good coffee
and internet and lunches. Next day she took me into Bulawayo, gave me careful
instructions about my safety, showed me the shop her lovely daughter worked in,
(where I could leave my rucksack while walking about) and went off to work
herself, in the back of a little Indian shop selling small bits and pieces to
locals. She had started the shop her daughter was working in as a
business venture, it was bright and clean, selling second-hand stuff – not many
customers there yet.
I suppose it took me a few days to
realise how hard Lily’s life was. In Southern Africa, the mixed heritage
peoples are still referred to as ‘coloured’.
The black peoples of Zimbabwe belong to either one of the main tribes
ie. Ndebele or Shona or a host of other smaller tribes or you belong to the
separate mixed race groups who come from white and black intermingling from
several generations back. And this group doesn’t really fit in to either
side. Her grandfather was Scottish and like so many of the men who came
over to South Africa or Zimbabwe to find work at the turn of the last century,
ended up with a black ‘wife’. Unlike most of them, her grandfather
married his Ndebele wife and, as there was no possibility of acceptance of
either him or her in Salisbury (now Harare), they moved south to Bulawayo and
she had 6 children. He stayed with her until he died. Lily wondered
if he might have been lonely without his own people, and I guessed that he
would have been.
Also living in this big sprawling house
in the genteel, mainly white suburb of Hillside were her two daughters (the one
in the shop and the other daughter who was a championship level tennis coach
and her son (the trainee chef – very bright and articulate also). Out back in
what would have been the small ‘maid’s’ bungalow in different times, lived her
sister. She was very thin and had cancer. Her sister’s daughter-in-law
and 3 small children were also living there in the bungalow. Lily slept
there at night in case her sister needed help. It transpired that her
sister had run out of morphine and there was none to be had in any of the
medical units in the hospital or GPs in the area. Other medical equipment
that she needed was also missing.
On the first two nights, just as I was
about to cook for myself c. 7 pm (usually some kind of veg curry or stew with
rice) there was, what’s known all over Southern Africa as an ‘outage’, ie, the
electricity went off. It’s a deliberate policy by the electricity
companies and they rotate it around different areas or the national grid gets
overloaded. It happens here in South Africa, where I’m writing this, for 2-3
hour stretches. In Tanzania it was more like 12 hour stretches.
Lily had returned from work and,
because there was no power, was cooking out back by her sister’s cottage on a
wood-burning stove that fitted 2 pans. Then my pots were moved there and she
told me to go sit on the veranda at the front and she’d finish cooking my
food. I refused to let her and came out back and oversaw my own
cooking. I had to take my turn as there were so many other mouths to
feed, but that was fine, I was in no hurry, so I sat around talking to her and
her sister, while their food was cooked too. They were fascinated by my
former work and pumped me with questions about domestic abuse – there had been
quite a bit of it in the family and both these ladies were now on their own
having escaped it.
Everywhere I go, if I talk about my
former work (and most people ask what I do/did), I find a few survivors of
domestic abuse (1 in 4 women have been victims of violence at some point in the
UK, it’s a lot higher in Africa). Some were adult children whose father had
abused their mother, men and women (several on the retreat) who wanted to tell
me their story. I told them to Google the Power and Control Wheel
and tick all the examples that apply to them – sometimes it’s more about the
emotional and psychological abuse, which often for some of my clients (they
used to tell me) was worse than the physical abuse. I always also recommend looking
at Hidden Hurt, an excellent BBC website.
Sometimes people ask me ‘but what about
the abusive women?’ and I say OK about 82% of violent abuse is by men, of the
remaining 18% about 8-9% are same sex couples – males and females, now the
remaining 9%, of which about 4% are women who snap after years of abuse and
attack and sometimes kill their partners. So yes now you want to focus on
the 5% left – they don’t usually cause anything like the physical damage that
men cause, but hey, you want to focus on them fine. My work focused on
the large percentage of survivors who are female, whose lives are often
blighted by long term abuse and the after affects – PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder).
Some of the women in Lily’s household
eventually talked to me about their abuse. One thing I did say to them (as I
would often say to my clients in the UK), after hearing excuses for one of the
men involved – Oh he was going through a
bad time, couldn’t find work, struggling to feed his family, he was depressed
etc etc. is this - I won’t listen to excuses for violence. Well (I say), why did he not go out and
punch a friend or neighbour or boss or cousin or man in a bar? It was
not, in all these stories told to me, something that happened once, but was
systematic, over a number of years. I said, why was it directed at you, half
his size and strength and the mother of his children? And how many people did
you smack around when YOU were feeling frustrated and stressed and desperate?
People often make excuses for men as if
they’re all naughty boys and can’t help it. Or they blame the woman – what did
she do to deserve it, is implied, not said directly ... or ‘why didn’t she
leave, I would have etc...’ none of these statements is tolerable if you have
any knowledge of domestic abuse.
Anyway, as I said, my overwhelming
feeling by the time I left Zimbabwe was sadness. Everywhere I went,
anytime I asked for information or help, in shops, in the street etc., I found
articulate, intelligent, gentle people who tried hard to make sure I was OK,
took me where I wanted to be, made sure I was safe. Walking about in the streets
of Bulawayo one day, I was shocked to see three little boys lying in the shade
next to a building, filthy dirty, just lying there, listlessly staring at the
sky. I walked past not knowing what to do. I saw some worse sights in
India sure with children, toddlers in the street. That shocked me too.
Each time you feel helpless, perhaps I shouldn’t, perhaps I should rush about,
start a charity do something ... but a sense of hopelessness pervades you
somehow in Zimbabwe.
One day Lily took me into town and I
walked around looking for an ATM and passed a tiny art gallery. Inside it had
books by local Zim authors – including one by a journalist, writing about his
father and mother, who somehow survived Mugabe’s pogrom against the whites by
all sorts of unauthorised methods – they turned their farm into a backpack
place called Diggers (The Last Resort by Douglas Rogers). They lived on the
brink of having their whole place land-grabbed at short notice, for years(as
had happened to so many) and for all I know are still there.
Then I called Omar the taxi driver and
he came and picked me up and took me to the Natural History museum - full of
rather dusty stuffed animals from all the wildlife that had been in Zimbabwe
once upon a time. I found it fascinating, but sad – now 80% of the
indigenous wild animals – from rhino to giraffes to lions to zebra and impala
have been wiped out, most in the last 10 years, by poachers. Omar took me
back to Lily’s - except we couldn’t find it and she wasn’t answering her phone
– eventually I asked a white guy at Hillside shops and with great kindness and
enthusiasm, he put on his satnav and guided us there.
Another day, I bumped in to him
again and in conversation he asked me if I knew someone, (Tracy) who I had
known from the days when I was an activist for Zimbabwean asylum seekers who
were escaping from the troubled times when Mugabe’s operatives were at their
worst, torturing and attacking MDC supporters black and white, and murdering
and ejecting white farmers, who were the mainstay of the Zimbabwean economy–
many of whom had to flee for their lives to any country which would take them –
many went to America, Canada, Australia and UK.
As Tracy’s Dad lived near Lily, the next day I
called by for a cup of tea – after five he brought out the Johnny Walker Black
label and I left there swaying somewhat, luckily he drove me home. The older
generation of whites, any left there, are often quite bitter about what has
happened to a country they love and feel they belong to, with all they have
lost – most built up through 4 - 5 generations. They have been badly
damaged too and throw blame around. It is understandable really. Mugabe,
while expanding his beautiful palace, has destroyed the economy and left many
whose lives have been destroyed, both black and whites.
I began to look forward to
getting out, going back to South Africa, which in spite of what some people
said to me while I was there, has a feeling of vibrancy, progress, life
changing for the better, things improving, things working.
I booked my Intercape ticket and left
lovely Lily on the Thursday. She met me at the bus station with my taxi
driver Omar and we exchanged hugs and promises to stay in touch. The bus seats
were wide, comfortable, club class, reclining, as it was an overnight sleeper,
for the 16 hour journey. All went smoothly, until we got to the borders -
on the Zim side we were told to disembark, queued and got back on, drove across
the border a short distance, got off again. This time the S Africans made
us jump through hoops – long queues to get our passports stamped, long waits
with no seating, just waiting, waiting. Then, we were told that all our luggage
had to come out of the large baggage tow-box at the back, next we had to haul
it all through customs, take it back, stand in a queue again then wait wait
some more etc. Altogether the whole border crossing took c 4 hours – I
spoke to one white guy and his wife, both short, plump, battered looking –
their daughter’s crossing had taken 9 hours the week before – I guess we were
lucky.
At last we were on our way – I’d booked in to Brown Sugar Backpack
again. We finally arrived back in Jo’burg around 9 am and lovely Solomon
came to fetch me again. I was unhappy to leave Zimbabwe but also glad to
be away from all the sadness
South Africa 23rd Jan- March 30th 2015
Blog 11(Pending) Joburg to Cape Town to Muizenburg
Blog 12
(Pending) Stellenbosch to Hermanus
Blog 13 (Pending)Hermanus to Hout Bay
Blog 14 (Pending)
Cape Town
Blog 15(Pending) Back to Jo’burg and then UK
2014-5
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