To the land of the rising sun

Plane's are practical. But, transport by road is my preference; I want to visually - in fact with every single one of my senses - join the dots between my departure and arrival. I want to see, smell, hear, taste and feel my  journey.

I desire for my senses to jangle with life like raw nerve-ends that have just been severed by a blunt axe. It's for this same reason that wherever possible I prefer not to use the underground transport systems in the cities I travel to that have them. I want to see people in the real-time action of living their lives in their 'real life' environments. As opposed to watching them with their masks on while sitting or standing in steel and glass tubes. Going nowhere, with me, fast.

I left Joburg on a bus. It's only 239 km to 'home' on the almost dead straight trans-sub continental N4 toll route that connects Maputo, Mozambique in the East with Walvis Bay, Namibia in the West. Sunrise, sunset.

That relatively short journey eastwards, 'home', was made much wonderfully longer by memories. Countless memories. Mostly good. Some bad, but for good in the end. It's called life I believe.

I'd travelled this road a zillion times, mostly for work as a journalist and then as a newspaper owner (humblest sense); quite often for love; sometimes to escape my self-imposed isolation; other times to escape Joburg, Gauteng, people, squeaking and squealing like a bat outta hell desperately seeking the peace, quiet, solitude, books and sane-making garden of my sanctuary. I've travelled it at the craziest and most extreme times. I thrived on my nomadism, the illusion of freedom that was incorporated in it - smoke and mirrors. All smoke and mirrors.

Isn't life exactly that, the illusion of meaning that we desperately clutch and squeeze out of it, not at all dissimilar to the fragrant but fleeting and sweet juice, I raped this morning, out of the voluptuous ruby grapefruit I bought at Gardens Pick 'n Pay on Saturday.

Was fucking worth it.

[That pic was one of many over even more years that I've taken at Milly's on the N4 outside Machadodorp; its border post transience has always allured me.]

Welcome 'home' Charlie Boy. And for fuck's sake stop being so prissy about the words your pour into this always-empty pisspot; no-one (thankfully) gives a toss anyway.

When they flow

It's become a favourite place: the hard plastic garden table and two white chairs at the edge of the garden, between the pool and the eastern wall, up against the fern fronds and elephant ears, beneath the low hanging trees. Lee covers the table with a sarong he bought on Durban's beachfront for R50. It, the sarong, reminds me somehow of Mozambique, probably because of its colours. The cotton is soft and cool, soothing. I sit here now.

Summer's being rather quickly nibbled around its edges by the autumn rat; the hardly noticeable changes tend to catch me by surprise. Shadows falling for longer and far earlier, an unexpected early morning chill, the blue of the sky much deeper, the sun more mellow. Aah the passing of time I think to myself as I finger The Pulse. 

The sun rays have not yet pierced the pool whose leaf strewn surface I shattered with delight much earlier. Towelling myself off bare--foot on the paving my focus was on the steaming tea mug on my table: strong with the bag intact, sweet and milky; the coffee's finished. The seasonal changes are not that obvious in this subtropical paradise. 

I've been mired in fear and self doubt, my words had dried up, my skeleton's been protruding. Wasting away I've been deadly close to self comprimise. That's why today I make my plan.

I took the photo on my back porch in Waterval Boven. I was there for over a week for a smidgen of work that bought me some of the mobility-freedom I so crave. It was an interesting time of hovering introspect, not unlike a fat green fly on shit. And of being sick. I regret neither. 

The leaves are already turning 600 kilometres to the north, and the veld grasses have gone to seed. Soon the burning will begin, then the sweeping fires as winter deepens and green dies down to tawny lion coloured. But not here.

Lebombo border post

Approaching the SA / Mozambique Lebombo border post: It's a dead-heavy heat that's lacquered across a mostly colourless, tinderbox-dry pan-flat landscape. It's a parched landscape desperate, and begging, for summer's rain.
As my eyes get bored with staring, they unfocus into a non-present moment. That's the direction of where Samora Machel's plane hit the ground in 1986.
Then, suddenly, the bleakness left over from winter is destroyed, and interspersed, by vast, wonderfully lumo-green banana plantations: for contrast's sake the luscious, flailing palms stand, ironically, soldier-stiff in rich-red loamy soil.
Komatipoort passes in a flash.
Then the wide-flat blue beauty of the Komati River, in less-of-a-flash, flowing fast and hard from last week's first, but faraway rains.
Passport's out.
"No smoking & alcohol allowed", and "no blasphemy", is inscribed on the inside of the luxury bus we're traveling in.
A fresh, strong wind's blowing aggressively from Maputo's direction; amidst this bleakness of the landscape - and the litter-strewn devastation of the no-man's land between borders - it's surreal to smell, and sense, the exotic Indian Ocean so close-by.
I'm also well aware, because it was during my life time, of the ghosts of the war that shredded Mozambique. Also an awareness of the loss of life, mostly always of the poor and downtrodden, and of the ghosts of land-mines (and body parts) this now fine road is built upon.
Nor should we ever forget the sublime 'wars' that the former SA apartheid regime inflicted upon its neighbours.

Machadodorp

Machadodorp is the nearest town to Waterval Boven. Although a mere 13km away, one of the most expensive toll gates - the Machado Toll Plaza - divides the two towns and make them further apart than their actual geographic distance. Notwithstanding, the N4 toll route is an exceptional, world class highway that traverses the 600 or so kilometers between Johannesburg, Pretoria and Maputo in Mozambique.

Quiet time with coffee

'Round about this time on most days, when I've got rectangular eyes from my laptop screen and can no longer think straight, it's time to hit the N4 and to travel the approximately 20 or so kilometres to the Seattle coffee shop at Millys, just the other side of Machadodorp, on the way to Belfast.

Here, through the three dimensional lens (yes!) of a tall cafe mocha (no cream) I make sense of today, yesterday and sometimes tomorrow. Today, just before getting into my car to travel home I took this photo facing the sunset as I gave thanks for the day.

There's an unusual not-quite-chill on the air: the leaves are turning, they are falling from the maples, the sun is setting earlier, birds are packing up home and heading north. I'm looking forward to a time of much less light, hibernation, rest and contemplation. I'm ready for the winter.

Tomorrow, while researching the book, I head down the N4 and past Nelspruit and on to Komatipoort and the Mozambique border. Especially after Nelspruit, relatively unchartered territory for me, I want to take in as much of that heavy-with-history road just south of the Kruger National Park, and to the eastern edge of the country - especially the Lebombo mountains that triangulates Mozambique, Swaziland and South Africa.

On Friday I'm expecting to fly to George and then, at the ocean's very edge in Mossel Bay and with my beloved Klein Karoo at my back, write up the parts of the book already researched... and again seek guidance and inspiration beneath the St. Blaize lighthouse.

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?