Tania.co.za

Der rettende Rat

About 22 years ago I was a student of German, and we studied a very short story by Franz Kafka, simply titled Kleine Fabel. This is the story:

"Ach“, sagte die Maus, "die Welt wird enger mit jedem Tag. Zuerst war sie so breit, dass ich Angst hatte, ich lief weiter und war glücklich, dass ich endlich rechts und links in der Ferne Mauern sah, aber diese langen Mauern eilen so schnell aufeinander zu, dass ich schon im letzten Zimmer bin, und dort im Winkel steht die Falle, in die ich laufe.“
"Du musst nur die Laufrichtung ändern“, sagte die Katze und fraß sie.

After the class had discussed the tale for a while, finding no sensible interpretation, the lecturer practically gave us the moral of the story: "Der rettende Rat kommt von der vernichtende Instanz." (Literally translated: "The saving advice comes from the destroying party.")

That's what it feels like when...

The fight

Norman and some of his colleagues are back at work, but the situation remains tense. I managed to track down Agrippa and his relatives to the Harmony Park refugee camp. (Harmony! What an ironic name!) He took several days to return my message because he was still trying to figure a way out of the situation without having to request help. They don't have enough blankets, and I said I would do my best to take them some on Saturday afternoon. I have been stretched thin over the past few days and did not manage to complete Sunday's undertaking to assist with the refugees in Stellenbosch. My bank account was empty until a friend repaid a debt this morning, and I got a hefty parking fine yesterday. The stories which Victoria has been telling are shocking. They now have to travel a long way to buy basic commodities at a high price -- items which could be cheaply bought from the Somali shopkeepers in the neighbourhood before these people whom they knew and saw every day were chased out. But her neighbours still speak of taking things further. "Just listen to yourselves," she pleaded when one of them, swept up in the conversation over what had been started, said, "We must get the Coloureds next!"

Fox Fitness and Leisure

This is an open message to Fox Fitness and Leisure in Bellville. Since you have not listened to my numerous requests throughout the years to both sales agents and management to cease phone calls to our offices, I will tell the story of what happened to me when I signed up for a gym membership to the world.

If you check your records (although it seems that you do not keep records, otherwise you would have it on record that I do not want you to phone me anymore to get me to sign up with you again), you would note that I signed up for only one reason: I have lymphoedema, and I understood that I would be able to get treatment for this included in the cost of my membership, which would save me having to drive to Wellington every week for expensive treatments. I told your consultant how happy I was that this is what would be possible and signed the membership papers. A few weeks later I realised that what I had paid for was a lengthy gym membership with Fox Fitness and Leisure and only a single once-off lymph drainage massage. So, not only would I still have to pay for my treatement in Wellington, I would also now have to pay for a gym membership which I did not need. You would not refund my money, so I decided to try to make the best of what the gym had to offer. The first insult I got was from one of your trainers who insisted that I wear "proper gym clothes" instead of stretch jeans when using the gym. I have lymphoedema, don't you get it? This is an embarassing condition, and there are parts of my body I don't like to expose to other people. Every time I came to the gym there was some new little clothing rule I didn't know about, and eventually I just decided to call a loss a loss and not come again. Towards the end of my contract, I signed the remainder of it (two or three three months' worth) over to a colleague, but he did not use it in the end.

As you turn over sales agents (I guess this must be an unpleasant job, having to cold-call such unwilling prospects), you do not seem to pass on the fact that I hate being phoned by your people, that I have a bad feeling about your company and never want to hear from you again. Why don't you spare them the waste of time and money by keeping a database of people who don't want to be phoned? In fact, you could simply get hold of the DMASA's Do Not Contact database and that would tell you that there are many more people out there who do not want to hear from you.

Finally, I would advise everyone who intends to sign up with Fox Fitness and Leisure to have the contract scrutinised by an independent attorney prior to signing, and make sure that what he explains what you can expect to get, and what recourse, if any, you have if you are not happy.

The zigzagging boundaries of selfishness

Once upon a time there was a woman who had three daughters. Their father worked in a war-torn country and was away from home for long periods during which he did not have contact with his family. The two youngest daughters were happy children, but the eldest, who was twenty-one, was often depressed and, following a series of hurtful and disappointing relationships, began taking drugs. When she told her mother of her problem, her mother assisted her in joining a support group. Eventually the daughter tried to commit suicide, and her mother encouraged her to move back home for a while.

"Please keep up your visits to the support group," said her mother. "I am out of my depth with this. I need assistance in taking care of your emotional needs."

But the daughter did not want to go. "One of the other girls there invited me to visit, and said that she would phone me, but she never phoned. I don't want to go back."

"Then please let me take you to a psychologist," said the mother.

But the daughter answered, "I have been to psychologists before, and they do not understand me."

So the mother did the best she could without assistance, and her daughter became increasingly emotionally dependent on her. As time went by and she became busier and busier at work, she seldom saw her friends, spending most of her free time with her daughter.

The daughter did many things for her mother around the home. Not only did she cook and clean when her mother was at work, but she did many extra things, like arranging flowers, and putting little chocoloates on her mother's pillow. Although talented in the arts and well qualified in science, the daughter failed to find permanent employment. She contributed to the household income whenever she earned money from short-term part-time jobs, but her depression grew worse every time she was rejected for a full-time position. This pained her mother too, because she admired her daughter's abilities and longed to see her happy. "You are my best friend," her daugher told her, "and I love you more than anyone else in the world."

"I love you too," the mother would say, and hug her, and smile at her. They spent many hours together, chatting until late into the night after the younger children had gone to bed, and going to town together. They enjoyed each other's company.

But it wasn't easy.

"You always talk about your friends and what fun you had when you went to tea with them!" the daughter would say. "But I feel that you judge me because I can't talk about the things they talk about! And they judge me! People always judge me! I don't want to go out with you when you are with them, because I don't fit in. And the superficial things that excite you don't excite me, and it feels like unless I share those interests, I am not good enough for you!"

And so there were many occasions on which the mother would try to reassusre her daughter, but the reassurance would last only a while, and then there would be some new source of insecurity.

One night, after many weeks of working hard for long hours, the mother came home tired. Her daughter came in shortly afterwards, having gone out to buy milk, and found her mother lying on the floor crying.

"You always comfort me, now let me comfort you," she said.

The mother accepted her daughter's hug for a while, and then she said, "Please let me go now. I miss your father. I want to go to the bedroom to think about him and long for him. I need to be alone."

Her daughter withdrew and as her mother was about to close the bedroom door, she said, "You have to do what you have to do. Understand that I also have to do what I have to do. I know that you care about me and pity me, but what you feel for me is not love. If I can't be the person you love the most, I need to go out now and take whatever substance will kill the feeling of rejection I have."

What happened next was wrong. But if I had known the right thing to do at the time, I would have done it.

Behind the curtain of my tears

Mourning on Africa Day

I could not have have guessed a year ago that I would have set my alarm clock for four in the morning to mourn over something like this.

Yesterday was Africa Day. How I would have loved to celebrate it in my heart. Those who know me well will know how I have been scheming to visit Tanzania and the Southern Sudan and all the other countries in Africa that would have me. I speak two of the languages native to Africa, but whenever I have met someone who speaks any of the others, I have tried short-cuts to learning them as well -- Venda, Siswati, Zulu, Kiswahili, Setswana -- knowing that I will never be able to speak them all, but searching for the commonalities and being fascinated by the differences.

About two weeks ago, out of the blue, a friend sent me an SMS asking me whether I would leave South Africa if I could. What a curious question, I thought. I can leave South Africa. I am educated and experienced; I do not think I would have a problem finding employment elsewhere. "If I had to leave," I replied in my home language, "I would want to live in one of the other countries nearby, like Botswana, or Namibia. But I do not want to leave."

People I know, with names and faces

Douglas and Siphokazi, I still remember with what appreciation you received me in Swaziland, and how you touched me, Sabelo. I see your faces in my mind, behind the curtain of my tears. Monty and Mpho, I have never experienced such hospitality before as I received from you in Botswana. It is from you directly that I learned the welcome appropriate to visitors from a foreign country. And so, Linda, when you came from Kenya, and you, Justin, from Tanzania, after so many years of wanting to come to South Africa to study, how I wished that I could have received you in a country that reciprocates that which the rest of Africa has given me. Norman, the insight which you added to the business, and the hard work which you and your colleagues, all refugees from Zimbabwe, put in to save the company after the violence and destruction caused by your local predecessors last year brought it to ruin -- all this was admired, as I am sure you know from the many plans Marius tried to make to ensure your safe accommodation in the months before the destruction began on this scale. Agrippa, it broke my heart to send you that SMS last night to say that although I had invited you to tell me your needs, they would not let you and your family stay with me, and that the best I could do was to buy you tents. Because I want to do so much more. And what shall I say to George, and to the woman in the headcovering who sold me my wheelies at Milnerton Market (she called me "sister"), and to Corinne and the other security guards who are without security themselves, and the man at the fabric shop, and...? What I want to express is not a political opinion. It is only my brokenness for you.

"Seven tears ran into the ocean..."

I drew a thousand bucks from my bank account on yesterday and sat down with my flatmate to figure out how to spend it. That, and some money given to me by my mother, and my flatmate's money due to him at the end of the month. The Argus listed a number of charities that were taking donations, so we phoned the nearest one, a soup-kitchen in Athlone, to ask what they needed. While I went to work, he went to buy the supplies and delivered them to the Mustadafin Foundation, which he reported to be running well from a domestic building, and serving a massive number of displaced people. The donations were definitely needed though, he said, and he would have added his labour to that of the other volunteers, had we lived closer. He began contacting friends to ask if they had anything they wanted to give.

As I got ready to deposit my remaining salary into the bank account of another organisation, I realised that if I found a way to help Agrippa and some of the others personally, I would need some of that. So I held it back. After work, we drove to the Kayamandi police station, where we had been told there were about a hundred people in need of fresh food. And I didn't tell him, but I was glad in that moment that my flatmate was not White, because I preferred that we should not  be perceived as having the misguided colonialist philanthropy typical of people who have no idea of the needs of the community which spawned the violence. I think that we were perceived that way anyhow because he too was not of the right race and tribe, and we came in a car. I asked one of the policemen in Xhosa what we should do about the people who needed help. "Oh, you mean the foreigners?" he said after trying for a while to figure out what I was on about. He sent us to Stellenbosch police station, and they sent us to the fire station, who knew of nothing. The duty officer phoned around until eventually she reached someone who was in the know. There are about 30 children under the age of 12 amongst the group of 120 people consisting mainly of Somalis, we were told; the youngest of them is 2 months old. The fire station was indeed the right place to leave the goods. We began to plan what to do about the need, but I had to leave again for my evening work, so we could not complete our task.

Dawn is breaking. Another day. I have learned to get by with very little faith, and I expect that in some things, I may have to learn also to get by with very little hope. But may I die before I learn to live without love.

And that is why I cannot give up.

Speaking of which...

Geekspeak
Sowat 'n week of twee gelede het ek saam met 'n versameling Geek Dinner-vriende gaan treinry vanaf Nuweland tot in Simonstad en weer terug. Ons het by Kalkbaai afgeklim, langs die kaai gaan stap en vis en skyfies gaan koop by Kalky's. Gits, jammer oor die deeltekens; daar is mos fout met hierdie blog -- sodra ek hulle tik, dan scramble my teks. Anyway, Arno and I were in the queue together for fish and chips. "They also make a grilled version," he said, "you just have to wait longer".
"Nah," I said, "I believe that when you go to a place for food, you should order what they do best. That's why I play it safe by ordering just the regular battered fish with chips."
"Ah," said Arno, "it's called leveraging their core competencies."

Newspeak
Last November I was working in Swaziland. I was waiting for Nqobile (one of my students) in her car one day with her friend Siphosintle, one of the network network administrators.
"That's Nqobile's sister on the radio," said Sipho when the DJ started speaking. I listened carefully. The DJ had a pleasant, semi-sophisticated, semi-sultry voice, and a curious accent -- like a middle class news commentator British mixed with a smattering of American and something which sounded like a vague north-from-here African English beneath all of that.
Nqobile got into the car.
"Where has your sister lived?" I asked. "I can't make out the accent. It seems as though she must have traveled a lot."
"Everyone asks that!" Nqobile laughed. "When she first came onto the radio, everyone said, 'Who's that girl and where is she from?' The accent is entirely man-made. She has lived in Swaziland all her life."

Speaks with forked tongue
Ek: "Ek dink nie ek sal ooit weer 'n TV wil he nie."
Marius: "Ek sou nie graag heeltemal sonder 'n TV wou wees nie. Ek wil darem kan sien hoe Hilary Clinton lieg."

Money speaks
Ek: "Van wanneer af lees jy die Kaapse Son?"
Christopher: "Ek het nie vanoggend genoeg geld gehad vir 'n Argus nie."
Ek: "En wat dink jy van die Son noudat jy hom gelees het?"
Christopher: "Hy's 20c te duur."

God speaks
In Swaziland, discussion about the prevention of HIV infections and the treatment of AIDS is strongly encouraged in all the media. When I say all the media, I mean in newspapers, on the radio, on billboards, on the back of toilet doors, at music festivals and any other place that's possible (Swaziland doesn't have its own TV station, and the Internet isn't that huge either. I mean, side to side it's not a very big country anyway). Swaziland has a very religious -- or superstitious -- population. Even the Catholic Church, which has many Swazi adherents, advertises its point of view. I was in Swaziland just before World AIDS Day. There was a big concert organised to take place in Manzini, with international stars, and the ticket price was in the region of E100 (roughly the same in ZAR), which my students considered to be good value, considering the high profile of the entertainers.
Nqobile's sister was hosting a phone-in discussion on the radio, and the topic seemed to have turned to: "Should you have to consult your partner before you get an HIV test?"
To me the answer was so obviously "no" that it surprised me that there were so many arguments and counter-arguments from the listeners who phoned in. There were four of us in the car as we listened to this -- three women and one self-confessed promiscuous male.
Then a man phoned in and said, "I think that it is not as important what the partner thinks, as what God thinks. So before someone decides to be tested for HIV, he should pray to God and then God will show him whether he should be tested or not."
We were all quiet for a moment, and thoroughly perplexed. Then the man who was with us said what we were all thinking, and we all laughed at the same time. "Funny how it is important to pray to God before you get tested for the disease, but praying to God was the last thing on your mind before you did that thing which potentially gave you the disease in the first place!"

Hiatus

I read their manifesto. I would have to confess that I am powerless over this. I am not ready to confess that yet, in spite of the fact that I know I am not exercising due control right now. Not ready to subcontract my responsibility to others. Sometimes when you're an addict, you need help and support, but right now I don't really want that. (And anyway, as I mentioned before, I can only imagine that any support group I could conceivably visit will probably be amused to have a sugar addict -- and a non-smoking teetotaller at that -- in their midst, even if they don't say so.) This is not a psychological addiction, but a physical one, although psychology -- talking to myself -- will be an important part of the cure. When this busy time is over towards the third week in May, I am going to take time off to formulate a strategy. I already have some ideas. I want to do this alone if I can.

Addict

I have written about this addiction before. I was convinced that I had the willpower to break it. Maybe I could do it if I just tried harder. But I am not doing it right now.

I said to my mother a while ago, wouldn't it be embarassing if we checked ourselves into some rehab centre, and when the group are all together for their first support therapy meeting, a conversation like this ensued?
"My name is Clint and I am a crack addict."
"My name is Tammy-Lynne and I am addicted to crystal meth."
"Hi, I am Johan and I am addicted to crystal meth and morphine."
"My name is Louisa, and this is my daughter Tania, and we are addicted to sugar."
"Sugar... you mean heroin? Or coke?"
"No, I mean, well, there is sugar in Coca-Cola too, but sugar specifically. Like Huletts or Selati. Or Cadbury's Mint Chocolate, or condensed milk, or five spoons of the stuff  in a mug of tea. Sucrose. Sugar."
Silence. Then:
"Will someone please get these people out of here so we can focus on the guys who have real addictions?!"

A sugar addiction is as real as any of the others, but sugar is legal at any age, and you don't start selling your family's DVD player to afford it. You also don't usually drop out of university or get fired from your job, because it takes you a while to develop the resultant ailments. So no-one really notices that you are an addict.

I wonder if the people at Narcotics Anonymous are going to take me seriously when I pitch up at the first Monday night meeting. But I have got to start somewhere. I can't figure out what else to do.