Change In Plans

Greetings from Cape Town!

 I have been listening to a lot of talk radio on SAfm as I drive around in the car, usually going to or from the kids’ school.  SAfm is part of SABC, the government-owned public broadcaster.  It takes the public-service part of radio seriously, so a huge percentage of the airtime is devoted to call-in shows discussing politics and issues of the day.  What amazes me is how frequently the on-air guest will be the government minister who is relevant to the issue at hand, fielding calls from cranky and frequently disrespectful listeners.  Democracy.

That introduction was a long-winded way of saying that I feel qualified to opine on what South Africa is talking about.  If not the whole country, at least the cranky and disrespectful part that calls in to radio shows and berates government officials

2010 Soccer World Cup - the tournament starts here in about four months, and it is a national obsession.  Mostly it is just referred to as “2010,” although apparently FIFA, the soccer governing body, hates that, and insists on “the FIFA 2010 World Cup.”  This topic is discussed from every possible angle on a continuous basis.  Sample topics: How will SA’s prostitution market be affected? Will the roads be ready? Will the South African team score even a single goal? Would all of the money spent on stadiums and aiports have been better spent on houses and schools instead? Why are there no women refs in the world cup?. 

Vuvuzelas - this is really a sub-topic of the 2010 conversation. A vuvuzela is a cheap plastic horn that a soccer fan bows.  One vuvuzela is loud.  If  25% of the fans in a 100,00-seat stadium are blowing vuvuzelas, the sound is continous and mind scrambling, like something that the army’s psychological ops unit would use to persuade hostage takers to surrender.  The question is whether to allow them in the stadiums during the world cup.  The topic immediately brings up issues of race and class and “traditional culture” (vuvuzelas are popular among poorer and blacker South Africans), of national pride and insecurity (”Won’t Europeans think we are uncivilized?), of individual vs. collective rights.  Not sure what the decision will be on vuvuzelas in the stadium.

President Zuma’s love life - in January, in a traditional Zulu ceremony, President Jacob Zuma got married for the fifth time.  One wife divorced him many years ago, and one died, so the marriage represented only his third simultaneous wife.  The marriage seemed to burnish President Zuma’s credentials with some constituencies, and led to a polite national discussion of “traditional African values”, and “tolerance of many lifestyles in the New South Africa.”

Three weeks ago, the story came out that the President had fathered a child, his 20th (!)  born last October.  The mother is not his new wife, but the unmarried daughter of a hugely powerful and (allegedly) ruthless soccer-team owner named Irvin Khoza.  Khoza’s nickname is “the Iron Duke,” and he is a giant of South African business and is the chairman of the … FIFA 2010 World Cup organizing committee.  The closest analogue I can think of in the U.S. would be if President Obama fathered a love child with Ivanka Trump.  Weird, for sure.  President Zuma has acknowledged paternity, and paid “damages” to his erstwhile friend, the Iron Duke. 

The love-child scandal has been big news, but not so big that the President resigned, or got impeached or anything.  He has sort of promised that he won’t do it again.  Keep in mind, that President Zuma was acquitted of raping (but acknowledged having sex with) the unmarried young daughter of another friend a few years ago, and that South Africa has a tremendous HIV/AIDS problem.

Lifestyle audits - like in many places, a lot of South African politicians seem to live a lot better than you would expect on their government salaries.

Greetings from Cape Town!

Tallulah has been going to an after-school art class for the last few Tuesdays. Today, the project was for each child to decorate the outside of a goldfish bowl with paint.  After the bowl was finished, the teacher poured in some gravel, some warm water, and a gnarly looking, big-headed black fish.

So, this explains how it came to pass that India was driving back from town this afternoon with Zola, Tallulah, and Tallulah’s new pet, Flounder.   Having seen “Finding Nemo” a bunch of times, Tallulah made a point of telling everyone in her class that she was “no fish killer,” not like Darla in the movie.

On the drive home, the open bowl sat in the middle of the back seat, braced by backpacks. Tallulah fell asleep. The road above Camps Bay is twisty and narrow, and with every turn, some water sloshed out of the open bowl. Zola kept telling India, “Water is spilling out. Danger, Mom. Not much water left.”

On one hairpin turn, the bowl tipped over entirely, and Flounder found himself lying on the backseat of the car, gasping for water. The splash woke up Tallulah, who burst into tears, screaming, “Flounder is dying!”

Fortunately, India happened to be passing the only convenience store for miles around. She screeched into the parking lot and stopped the car. She sent Zola into the shop to find warm, non-carbonated bottled water. Then she lifted Flounder off the seat (yuck), and dropped him onto the dry gravel in the bottom of the bowl. Tallulah continued to cry.

With the fish bowl tucked heroically under her arm, and the doors to the car standing wide open, India ran into the store. Zola had gotten distracted by the ice cream display, and had not found any water. India found a few bottles, opened them, and poured them onto a seemingly very relieved Flounder.  Zola asked, “Why does he keep opening and closing his mouth, Mom?”  And then Zola asked for an ice cream.

As India waited in line to pay, with the full fish bowl balanced in one hand, and three empty bottles in the other, her cell phone rang.  She set down the fish bowl and answered.  It was a colleague calling from Nairobi to review some line edits on a document.  “Can I call you back?”

She had Zola hold the fish bowl in his lap for the rest of the drive home.  He got soaked. It turns out that the paint on the fish bowls was not waterproof (seems like a pretty basic oversight) so he may have ruined yet another Reddam School cricket uniform shirt.  Flounder appears to have survived the experience, although the cat has been eyeing him with more than casual interest.  Flounder may end up finding a happy home in the stream that runs next to our house.

An afternoon of drama and heroics. Almost as exciting as when we discovered, at the end of Zola’s first-ever swim team practice, that he had been wearing his new Speedo backward. Whoops.

Greetings from Cape Town!

Just before school started, I promised Zola and Tallulah that we would have a family celebration at the end of their first full week of classes. 

Because they started on Tuesday, January 19th, the end of the first full week was January 29th.   I guess  I don’t make many promises like that, because the celebration became a rallying cry and a countdown for both kids. “Only five  days until the celebration, Dad!”  “When you get back from Johannesburg, we have the celebration the very next day!” “Hooray, today is the celebration!” 

In the end, the big celebration turned out to be a family lunch and a trip to the mall.   On Friday afternoon, India and Tallulah went to the extremely popular “Grand at the Beach” restaurant to hold our table, and I waited at school while Zola had tryouts for the cross-country team.  In their school uniforms, the kids ran seven laps, barefoot, around the inner perimeter of the school’s courtyard/synthetic turf field.  It reminded me of a scene in the movie “Chariots of Fire.”  Zola ran pretty well, but another little American girl crushed the rest of the kids, literally lapping the field.

Tallulah and Zola were practically the only kids in the ’see and be seen’ Friday lunch and drinks crowd at the packed resturant.   It looked as though most tables were groups of work colleagues who had gone to lunch together, and decided to start the weekend early. Wine was giving way to mojitos, and many people had taken their shoes off to walk on the sand outside the restaurant’s open doors.  Cape Town is a little relaxed in the summer (unlike the rest of the year??).

At the Waterfront Mall, Tallulah had her long-awaited visit to the Build-A-Bear workshop.  She chose a flattened she-wolf, named her Lily, and helped fill her body with stuffing.  Then Tallulah was given a red satin heart, and told to rub it on her arms, to give Lily strength, on her belly, to make sure Lily always had enough to eat, and on her own heart, so that Lily would know that Tallulah loves her.  After all of this rubbing, Tallulah thrust the heart into Lily, and the kind attendant started sewing Lily up.  Tallulah performed her part of the ritual with the seriousness and barely contained joy of someone joining a secret society, or taking an oath of office after a tough election.  Tallulah typed the information for Lily’s birth certificate, and she selected a golden satin dress and high heels for Lily to wear.  Tallulah and Lily have become inseparable.

Zola took us to the hobby shop in the mall, and selected a set of ‘Warhammer 40,000′ soldier figurines.  He has been mildly obsessed with these for months.  We also had to buy paint and glue and brushes and a Codex catalogue of the Tau Imperial Army.  The young, tattooed, hobby-store clerk, said,”This is only the beginning, man.  We’ll be seeing a lot of you from now on.”

Zola and I spent many happy hours together over the weekend, gluing tiny plastic body parts together, individualizing each soldier with curved swords, and skulls on chains, and huge multi-barrelled pistols, and then painting them with teeny, tiny brushes.  Most of the time while we were working on the models, Zola made a “thut-thut-thut-thut-thut-thut-thut-thut-thut” noise with his mouth, imitating the noise of a machine gun.  Ten-year-old-boy bliss.

So, we survived the first week of school, and felt we had much to celebrate.  Zola has been thrown in the deep end of a pool called “everything’s different” - new country, new school, new educational approach (uniforms and clunky shoes, switching classes), new sports (cricket, surf lifesaving), new friends, new, new, new.  I am very proud that he has handled the changes with grace and joy.  Tallulah has had an easier go of it, but has been equally adaptable.

Our re-entry is becoming a little less ragged.