I was grumpy. It was early and I was at the department of home affairs reapplying for a new South African ID book. When I reached the front desk an unhappy-looking woman told me I needed a more recent ID photo because apparently I’d unrecognisably aged. That was great news.
She directed me outside, around the corner to a photography booth housed in a construction container. Well aware of my history of horrid ID photos, with looks ranging from serial killer to victim of, I put my mind to stretching my early morning stupor into a smile. A metre from me the photographer shuffled some settings, stood back, raised his camera and just before shooting, he stopped. He lowered the lens, looked at me, and almost grimacing, he asked, ‘Why you putting your teeth like that?’
It was 8 am in the middle of winter and I was at the department of home affairs, why was I putting my teeth like that, what was there to smile about?
As a literature student I've always been interested in the various ways of saying things. A couple of years ago I was teaching a Zulu-speaking gentleman how to read and despite his usual painstaking politeness, whenever he made a reading mistake he’d mutter “fugged up” in the same way I’d say “whoops”. Teaching the ‘oa’ sound in a homeless shelter, when I asked what the ‘coast’meant or where the coast was, a 10-year-old boy told me that the coast is something you need to keep clear when you want to steal something – which was technically correct. The way we understand words and how we phrase them reveals the different worlds we see and the lives we’ve lived. Which is why getting to know a culture through learning its language is a good route to go.
And when travelling to foreign countries slippages in language and accents can colour communication in hilarious hues – should we have the beef stewganoff or the tequila sun rice? It’s one of my favourite parts of travelling. And travelling is one of my favourite parts of life. But four years ago after a long bout of itinerant travels, I returned home to the prospects of comfort which inevitably made way for discontent.
I grew up quite satisfied with where I lived but after a few years of travelling I returned suddenly unsure of how to live in country without bike lines, organic markets and artisan bread. You know, survival sort of stuff. Despite knowing these omissions existed in a country where 4 million people have limited access to clean water and a quarter of the population are unemployed, on a Saturday morning I still wanted to walk to a cafe to read ballsy journalism and drink freshly-roasted coffee. Call me a sinner.
This dissatisfaction was exacerbated by working for a travel magazine at the time. I proofread my way through New York’s finest espressos. Sleuth-like, I found passwords for bars I’d never enter. I had late-night rendezvous with Germans about Berlin’s hippest hostels, over email, so what. And although I was googling and ogling over the bilious heights of urban coolness, I continued to be regularly invited to breakfast at Mugg & Bean.
So I would dream up and save up for travels far from home and embalm them in posts about the coolest coffee shop in Tokyo or the most Balinese beach in Bali. But four years later, I find myself wanting to write about somewhere a little closer to home. Claustrophobically
close, synonymous really.
Last year I did a road trip from Jo’burg to Durban to Cape Town along the coast. I got to see South Africa as a traveller. And what I saw was a staggering spectacle of coastlines, good people and urban finds. Theatre like The Epicene Butcher at the Grahamstown Festival had me in stitches with its pre-manga girly giggling crossed with a Japanese telling of Robben Irerand. In Knysna, Ile de Pain‘s sourdough rivaled San Fransciso’s and bettered it when smothered with their garlic porcini mushrooms. In Cape Town, Chandler House on Church Street invited me into a curiousity shop of good taste. Waterfalls of detailed fabric flow across shelves and with designs siphoned from a seemingly secret past VOC emblems sit pretty on porcelain plates. All the while owner Michael Chandler is likely to offer you a drink as you browse.
And although a rickshaw ride on the Durban promenade has felt cool since childhood, from what I can tell local experiences and quality offerings are growing exponentially. In the last four years, South Africa has (and I’m going to take the liberty of using the word in its original incarnation) transformed. Well as far as coffee, bread, markets and bike-riding goes… things that give travel magazines something to write about; and things that make for fun businesses, cool products, hip jobs, interesting tourists and prouder citizens.
Whereas Capetonians have always been a little smug, a wave of Jo’burg pride has swept the reef – and in both cities with good reason. These days you can’t swing a cat without hitting a local market. But none of us are swinging cats. Instead we’re spending Saturdays eating paella and drinking Citizen beer. Or we’re browsing and accidentally buying beautiful things at the Collective market, a design market on a
rooftop with champagne and a view of Jo’burg’s endless trees.
And although good coffee has become a neighbourhood norm, in Braamfontein Father has perfected the caffeinated cup. The spectacle-clad baristas roast, swirl and serve up what has quickly become the finest coffee in the city, all without steaming up their hipster lenses.
And it’s not that foreign models of quality are simply being replicated. Innovation with a specifically South African bent makes the Joburg hullabaloo not only a hullabaloo but also genuinely interesting.
Twin brothers Justice and Innocent Mukheli, and Vuyo Mpantsha of iseeadifferentyou photography collective portray the city’s emerging spirit of effortless cool. They’re capturing the stirring beauty in a place of hybrids. From Soweto self-portraits in suits, leaning against an old beige Merc; to 4th Avenue Parkhurst where in wee-hour-darkness Vuyo sits on a chair in the middle of the street reading a book, wearing tweed. Intermingling props of iphones and old cameras, braces and sneakers, skylines and shebeens, result in images that work within a kaleidoscope of influence – of times, of fashion, of people. They embody a current self-assuredness in a culture aware of its own locality and the creativity it inspires.
Local innovation is moving in an increasingly quirky realm. Film-makers Team Best recently broke the world record for the fastest film ever made, in a film capturing one night in Jo’burg. Another world-first has emerged over at Jo’burg Zoo where a live-tweeting badger shares tidbits of squawking hadedas or a little boy visitor picking his nose.
Another young entrepreneur has established GANG, a mentorship programme that pairs promising students with inspiring professionals to create
a platform to share knowledge and build relationships, avenues to grow talented youth.
This spirit of possibility seems to be all around, most of the creators I’ve mentioned are friends of mine. Balls to the wall friends who decided to make something they love because they live in a place that inspires and allows it. It was a liberating realization to find that the things I thought were missing in South Africa weren’t missing but were simply yet to be created. So if I felt annoyed about living in a city without postcards, I could ask local artists to make our own, or if our croissants weren’t as deliciously flaky as they were in Paris, we could learn how to make them; and if adult illiteracy made you cry at night, you could teach people how to read.
But an image of South Africa as a land of opportunity and innovation is often drowned out in the bog-down of foreign media. The trouble is South Africa is a place that needs to be felt from the inside. From the place you can hear the reverberations of a gospel choir practicing in a back room; and where you can lie on the grass between mountains and watch an outdoor film with someone you love; and where you can dance with a generation of Joburgers on a rooftop in Maboneng, while the sun sets and everyone’s coloured in a balmy dusky pink. And although the country is still steeped in issues, a visit to the heart-rending and impressively curated Apartheid Museum provides a space to look back and remember how far the country’s come.
The irony about this post is that I’m leaving South Africa this week. And like the poorly timed obituary, why pay tribute to a place you love once you leave it? Perhaps it has something to do with my ineptitude to wholly appreciate the thing I have while I have it. Instead I tend to commemorate things just after they’re gone. Life’s an obituary I suppose. So for years I’ve written posts about foreign countries I very much liked but I've never said much about South Africa - a country that peels you back, breathes into you and on a scale of beauty to brutality unstiches you from the inside.
But I think this post is more of a disclaimer. Something to say that although I think travelling positively humbles us, and I know the world has plenty to teach me (about postcards and croissants and who knows what else) and that I’m desperately excited to go; I’m also desperately sad to leave. So I wanted to say these things, mostly just to say, that not everyone who goes, goes to leave.
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