A note on 'escapement', from The Edge

Waterval Boven, Mpumalanga. The day's been very quiet and peaceful. Have mostly been reading & writing. It has warmed up and the sun's come out. I've been watering parts of the garden. Most likely illegally. And pottering around in it. 

Now I'm back in the kitchen: A brandy & Coca-Cola (the wine's finished) and going to braai a little later, with the large steak, lamb chop and boerewors I chose at the butcher late on Thursday afternoon. That I'll have to do from my rickety garden couch, outside, before the temperature drops to the forecast -1 degrees. 

Deeply peaceful and quiet; I'm thoroughly content as my first week of recess winds down.

My house and garden are at the very edge of the village. The village, in turn, is on the edge of the escarpment. The predictive text tool first auto typed out 'escapement', which probably best describes this space. And, also, this trip 'home.

Place

I have a place tucked far away from the madding crowd. I'm returning to there for two weeks over Easter. My last, brief, visit was, just, over two years ago. I've had neither the inclination nor the money to return. Until now. 

I had lived there for just short of seven years. Before sinking beneath the weight of a major breakdown. After which, and only when I could, 'suddenly' moving to KwaZulu-Natal. Where I searched for (different) work and for a (different life). It mainly entailed following love. And, crucially, beginning the struggle to absolve myself of (all) debt. 

Since leaving there, I've had a love-hate relationship with it. Despite that I'd happily spent some of the most interesting years of my life there (a David in the cave experience), in the end I'd hated it, felt trapped there. 

That's why I've had it up for sale since mid-2012. Recession and all It hasn't sold and up until now has felt like a telephone pole draped over my shoulders (I've, literally, experienced that, a story for another time). While there at the end of March and into early April, I'm going there to make a decision as to whether to take it off the market and to to begin to use it again. As an escape. From the (recently) extraordinarily hot summer months that I, unlike many others, put down to. climate change. My fantasy is use it as a place to recharge and to get my writing (in the humblest sense) done away from the distractions of work (even though it is work) and life. In. The. City. 

The old house is in a rundown but beautiful village on the very edge of the Mpumalanga escarpment. It hovers in the slim pizza slice of Middleveld that's thrust gracefully between the Highveld (Johannesburg is only three hours or 239 km away) and the Lowveld. Mbombela (previously Nelspruit) is 98 km or an hour away. Kruger National Park is close, as is Mozambique's Maputo relatively nearby: I've already left early on a Sunday morning for Maputo, had fleshy Mozambiquan- prawns-and-beer on the very edge of the Indian Ocean, thereafter bought fresh fish in the market before making it back home the same day.

There's not a pretentious bone to the house and the village; it's not a town.

Most of all, I miss the 3am train through the shunting yards; that's when I groggily wake, grin, then pull the thin duvet closer to my naked body. I gulp in deep the pure mountain air, the awesome (I'm not worthy) view of the Milky Way, the deep silence, summer electric storms that catapault terrifying blasts of thunder to ricochet off Imemeza. Imemeza is the the mountain behind my house. Imemeza means, quite perfectly, 'place of shouting'; how apt. 

Here is where I am closest to my God; nothing comes between us here: with my ears I'm able to truly hear, with my eyes I'm able to truly see. We're in a constant and beautiful conversation that picks up from my last pee in the early hours of the morning, tapers off to an unconscious level when I close my eyes.

When I bought the home (another awesome and long story) it had been standing empty for two years. The garden was devastated, most of the original was gone. My hands in the soil, dirt under my rough nails as I got it going from scratch again, was part of my healing process as I recuperated from a few heavy-going years in Johannesburg's cutthroat media industry. I'd thrown up all of that, and it's trappings, to move to a village without even a single set of traffic lights. 

I lived an isolated and quite life there, travelled extensively through Mpumalanga and SA, even finished a masters degree from there. But in the end collapsed. When I resisted my new chapter.

Blogging is for babies

Yes, consistent babies! The last fortnight has been crazy for me. I've not got to blogging, nor to writing (except for churning out the thousands of the churn words that pay my salaries, but that aren't my art and are delivered like droplets of blood on hectic, city-style deadlines). Instead I've gone with much less than my desired amount of sleep and entry into a vortex that was extraordinary - but it was all about incredible projects (more later!) thar will come into fruition later this year. In summary, and to mix my metaphors, I've not touched sides, I've not been able to come up for air from where I was chucked into the deep end.

I'm just back from the Heartlines sponsored soccer tournament at the Vusi Masina soccer park in Emgwenya, Waterval Boven. After a days of rain it was an afternoon of sunshine and football. Now I've downed a Castle Milk Stout and rubbed my stubble in the fur of my most favourite dog, Serra. The sun's baking down, burning my bare legs, while the wind of change is blowing and warning of a rapidly approaching winter. The peach trees' leaves are yellowing and rattling on the still emerald green lawn. Now we're off to Stone Circle Bistro for a pizza. I couldn't be happier... God is good.

Youth power

Again I'm privileged. I've been taken beyond the parameters of Waterval-Boven's 'white town' and into the 'black' Emgwenya township.

The town / township, white / black divide born of the apartheid era is as stark and as well defined as ever, and still very much a reality. It's a blunt pencil line drawn between haves and have-nots.

Yet again I'm privy to the boundless creativity, talent, yes-to-life 'joie de vivre' that prevades the township in rejection of the odds ... probably because of the odds. It's an overwhelming energy that renders the potholes, rubble, the poverty invisible.

I'm in a small church hall (one of many in Emgwenya) where the roof's about to be lifted by a youth choir so new that they're still without a name. But despite the winter cold tonight, they're resonating with love, energy and rhythm.

Later this year (November to be exact) they'll be mourning - through song and dance - the sixty or so Mozambican migrant workers who died in a horrific train crash just outside Waterval-Boven in November 1949.

The miners were on their way home after a year of labouring in the Reef's gold mines. Most of their families didn't even know what had happened to their husbands, brothers, fathers or lovers who never returned home.

A memorial, where they were buried, was erected a few years ago in the old cemetry in Emgwenya. Emgwenya was originally the old railway compound for the train town of Waterval Boven.

The choir is hoping, nay expecting, Nelson Mandela's wife Graca Machel (former First Lady of Mozambique) to grace the anniversary of the tragedy later this year.

Trina Matheson (+27 82 8921364 / ian.trina@imaginet.co.za) of the Emakhazeni Tourism Association is doing her utmost to raise money for the choir... to get a teacher, skills and training assistance from the Youth Orchestra, as well as transport, and whatever else she can get to empower these talented youth.

Do you know of anyone who can help this exceptional cause ... a cause that has the potential to attract international attention?