skipping ahead

We drove back along the coast and through the narrow, windy mountain passes by sunset and sunrise.  The last day, we drove 160 km for twelve hours past clusters of turquoise villages blossoming across burnt green hills, past rows of elongated lumber pines planted perfectly in dotted lines, past people returning and arriving and in between.  We drove over one final mountain pass, climbed a hill, turned a corner and the world opened up to a sheet of human stars enveloping the land, Cape Town lit up by night.  We nearly cried from relief and exhaustion.

Skipping ahead.

The past couple of nights I've gone out to our favourite club, Chez Ntemba, a fantastic place vibrating to South African house, Congolese, American pop, and glistening black bodies.  It's located on Long Street, the place to be night or day, transforming from a world of cafes, boutiques, and bookstores by day to a pulsing hub of clubs and bars and scents of falafel, sausage, tobacco, and beer by night.  I am writing this at 4:30 in the morning, my body collapsed on my bed but my mind still active after spending the night with a huge group of friends from Norway, America, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, Germany, and Burundi.  I love it.

I loved it last night too, when I went out with my girls and was either drenched with sweat in the club or freezing in the wind outside.  After we left the club, we walked to a falafel nook to wait for a few other friends who wanted to dance a bit longer.  We were approached by a slight willow of a boy with his dirty hoodie pulled up over his head and his long eyelashes crowning his wide dead eyes.  Like all of the other homeless children haunting Long Street at night, he approached us with open palms and a soft voice asking for money.  One of the girls gave him a few rands.  I do not like giving money.  Instead, I asked him if I could buy him something to eat.  His face lit up.  We shook hands, my own cupping his small one with overgrown, greenish nails and colourless skin.  His name was Edward.  He was twelve years old.

I followed him through the hoards of people on the sidewalk as he darted through the small narrow spaces between couples and crowds in the same way I used to do when I was too small to be noticed.  He walked into a convenience store, and pointed to the cornflakes on an upper shelf.  I stretched up on my toes to reach a box, pulled it down, and handed it to Edward.  He grabbed a bottle of milk out of the refrigerator.  He looked at the bags of chips, and looked at me, asked if he could get one.  He picked out shiny green bag and said, "It will be for, what do you call it?"  

I responded, "A snack?"  

"Dessert!"  His smile was genuine, but injured.

I asked him how he would be able to eat his cornflakes and milk, and he said he had a bowl and spoon.  I stood in line with Edward beside me and paid for the food.  R27, about US$3.  The cashier put in a gray plastic bag.  I handed it to Edward.  He looked at me in the eyes and said clearly, earnestly, "Thank you."

I said "You're welcome."  He walked out the door before me and evaporated into the night.

I returned to the falafel stop to breathe and talk with my friends.  Aya left the restaurant, came back 10 minutes later.  She said that she had seen an old woman with a gray plastic bag with cornflakes and milk.  She asked the woman, "Is that boy your son?"  The woman said she had no idea what Aya was talking about.  Aya responded, "You took that food from that boy!"  The woman stuttered, insisted that a woman had just bought it for her.  Aya told me this story.  I nearly screamed.  Maybe I did scream.  In moments of anger it's difficult to determine the volume of your own voice.

I hate that children are roaming the alcoholic streets like rats at 3 in the morning.  I hate that it's cold outside and they don't have any warm clothes to wear.  I hate that I was wearing black suede boots and a low-cut black dress with a sash and dark kohl on my eyes with a jacket wrapped warmly around me.  I hate that they are begging for money and food.  I hate that my belly was full of Savanna Dry cider and tapas.  I hate that we berate them for poor manners when they keep pestering us for money we do not give.  I hate that they are all black.  I hate that they are too small to defend themselves.  I hate that someone bigger and meaner can come by and rip generosity out of their cold hands.  I hate that I didn't buy something that Edward could have eaten immediately.  I hate that Edward did not choose candy bars but chose something healthy, something that would provide meals for the next several days.  I hate that Edward lied to me and said he attended school to appease me.  I hate the system that pushes children into this world with no escape route, no white flag.