The High Cost of Living

To confirm my acceptance into the JET program, I had get myself checked out by a doctor. Even after having been a salarygirl for 1.5 years, I still scrape the bottom of the barrel, come end of the month. So when I found out that all the local rip-off doctors were going to require a few hundred rands from me for tests and x-rays, I decided to phone a friend.

Eric has been one of my friends for years now. We even went to our high school matric farewell together. Our paths split during uni years, and after tertiary education, we ended up living half an hour’s drive away from each other. He’s a doctor-in-training in a government hospital, and he totally agreed to play doctor in order for my JET form to be completed. I drove through after work, arrive, eat a chocolate Easter bunny’s head, and mission off to the hospital.

First, I have to open a file. Eric hands me a slip of paper which says ‘CASUALTY’. Cool.

“Go to the counter. Tell them that you drank a lot of pills. You need to be admitted. Remember: You’re overdosing on pills.”

I hadn’t planned on playing sick. Pills? What a siff way to try and kill yourself. Stomach pumping and all that. I take my place in the queue of three people and try imagine why I’d drink too many pills. I decide that I’d been visiting some dodgy friends, who dared me to swallow a handful of pills, which I did, because I am dodgy. And I wait. I hold my stomach. And I wait. I run my hands through my hair, repeatedly (all the better to shape an afro, my child). And I wait. I rock back a forth. And I wait 25 minutes before the guy at the counter finished flirting with his dying patient, and I get to open my file.

I shuffle over to the counter (pills. I drank pills), take my seat, and groan a “Sawubona” to the chick behind the glass panel. She doesn’t return my greeting. She just stares at me with crazy eyes. Finally, she speaks:

“Don’t take this the wrong way but.. are you a man or a lady?”

Her comment shatters my suicide facade, and I burst out laughing. So much for dying, eh? As a fan of androgyny, she unwittingly gave me the biggest compliment. I quit pretending to be dying, and she happily fills out my form. I become an official patient of the inadequate South African Governmental hospital system.

Next step: x-rays of my lungs, to check for da TB. My suicide becomes stupidity:

“Just tell them that you swallowed a pin, and you experienced shortness of breath afterwards, and you need to get an x-ray of your lungs”

Another 25 minutes wasted on cheap plastic seats. I walk around, reading leaflets on breast feeding and poems about death. I get my x-rays and have it analysed. Even with a history of smoking, my lungs are in prime condition (I thank Taoist breathing exercises). My clavicle has healed (I have the best collarbone x-rays, defined by screws and plates). My piss is pure. My blood pressure is textbook. My eyes are 20/20 all the way. My heart beats 80 times per minute. I am sane. I am free.

Slavery Is Not Job Creation

If I were a vegetarian, I’d probably be a mellow fanatic. I wouldn’t wear leather shoes, I wouldn’t eat jelly babies that contains gelatine form mammalian sources, my catfood would be dolphin friendly. When there’s a mindset that I disagree with, I refuse to be part of anything that supports that mindset. And this leads me back to my job.

Obviously, the aim of any major company is to make money. Minimum expenditures for maximum profits. But when is the price you pay too high? The company I work for is situated conveniently close to an informal settlement. This means that they (I refuse to say “we”) can dip their greedy hands into the struggling community and provide them with jobs. Some job creation is better than no job creation, but after hearing some behind-the-scenes info, I cannot imagine how the company’s owners sleep at night.

a) Some big bosses came to visit the factory, and noticed that we were using raw materials that had expired more than a month before. They made a big hoo-ha, the managers made a big hoo-ha, and everyone passed the buck until it landed on the poor sod who issues the products from the fridges. They opened a disciplinary action against him, humiliated him in a few shouting matches, and finally suspended him from his bottom-of-the-barrel fridge-packer job. Once the big bosses left the building, our managers recalled all the rejected raw materials and insisted that the factory continue using them. Because it still smells alright, and is worth a lot of money. They are rolling around in double standards and new cars, and the fridge guy now has no way to support his family.

b) Yesterday I found out that some people get payed not per hour, but per weight of raw material/product they prepare. This is grand, because the harder you work, the more you earn. Incentive? Not here. The line of ladies who spend every day on their feet, from 6 am to 3 pm, cutting raw meat into 1x5 cm strips are paid by the bucket. R6.00 per bucket filled. It takes them a goof few hours to fill a bucket. The ladies who cut spinach have it even worse: They are paid 50 cents per kilogram of spinach prepared. Spinach is feather-light, especially when cut. It takes them an average of four hours to cut a kilo of spinach. That’s 12.5 cents per hour. South African cents. That translates to $0.01 per hour, working with sharp knives and standing on your feet for 9 hours.

 

This company is grating against my moral grain.

 

Vanilla

Very tired. I've been almost falling asleep all over the show. Today, the rest of the country is sleeping in and having breakfast in bed in the name of Family Day. The bakery manager asked me what the date is. "It's the 17th today," I replied. "It's supposed to be family day." I haven't seen my family in months. I also haven't even seen an easter egg, and Easter is basically over. After having spent my Easter at work, the bakery man crushes the last little wakefulness I had by replying: "Oh, but this is where you should be today. This company is your family now."
Three months and counting. I'm resigning on the 14th of June.

The past week or so has brought forth a series of extremely ironic events. So many absurd interactions with semi-strangers that I'm not quite sure what to make of it yet. I suppose I'll have to let it sink in first, do some mental filing, sexual admin. But first, I need to get through the day. QC sessions and cleaning training awaits in a company that go against the grain of human rights. They are slave drivers. Im referring to the poor black people they use as the cogs & wheels for profit. This is me, digressing. Back to the point:
I do believe that, as humans, we rock individually and connect invisibly. But I forgot that we do. Until recently I've been picking up small connections between me and the semi-strangers. Picking up the phone just seconds before I get an sms from samesame - six times in a row. Or dreaming the burn's blog address - and being out with two letters. It's always the little things that kill, the little things that thrill.
And the main act in this lip-synch circus has yet to make his entrance..

I Am Near

In three months' time, you'll find me on a different corner. I'll be here. Where? Somewhere. I don't know yet. I'll know by mid-May, and I'll steal another map from Google and add it into a post. All I know at this moment is that I still have to get arond to a doctor so that he can analyse my piss and observe my cough.

And tell the friendly JET people that 'm lesharpa to cross the ocean. That I'm free of TB and HIV and MSG and LSD.

The other thing that I do know, is that I'll be taking ground in Tokyo on 31/07. Damnit, we're only in 04 now. So close, but yet so far.. I love saying it. "I'll be landing inTokyo...." The words sound alien, coming from my mouth. But I can get used to it. Let me say that again.. I'll be landing in Tokyo...

I Am Here

This is where I am currently geographically situated. If you follow the red arrows, circling around a specific spot like patient vultures, you will more or less get an idea of where I stay.

Ag shite, no arrows. Well, this is the town where I stay. I live in the "Bester" area, which consists of the main square in the map. "Erasmus" is to the left, comprising a grand total of 15 streets, most of which have animal names. Elephant Street. Lion Street. Zebra Street. I don't know or care much about the "Masada" area, but I suspect that alcoholism and wife-beating is a national sport on that side of the dorp.

Drive straight North across the bean-shaped province, the province that is neither Orange, nor Free, nor a a State. Cross the border into the former Transvaal, now remaned to a more politically soothing "Gauteng Province", GP, gangster's paradise. Drive on and on like a halycon, until you reach the Other Mother City. Ons sal lewe ons sal sterwe, ons vir jou Pretoria. Five years of my life spent there. Five years that changed me so much I have no idea to return to what I used to be, and no desire to do it either. Pretoria swallowed me whole, chewed me up, spat me out, played with me and wiped off the film of drool. I'm still clammy and slightly dented, but I've been to places I cannot describe with words.

When you get to Pretoria (also identifiable by the name "Tswane") turn right and drive for 30 minutes. I'll be waiting on the corner. I'll be the chick with the frazzled grey-and-white beanie tripping over my words, spare toothbrush in my pocket. Because you never know.

Map of the World

So I've been accepted into the JET program.
I have three months left in the country with the most beautiful sunrises
(rumour has it)
only three months left in the job that I lost all passion for
I'm too sleepy to type now.
Maybe later.