whatamess

...at least everything is in heap-like heaps. It's a start.

Who's prepared?

Instead of ripping the last 15 cds, I'm going to go visit Gert, who wants to make me a skirt with the most beautiful material on earth. This guy is great, and I've known him since childhood days. My first memory of him is seeing him walk with my brother in the garden, while I was chilling on the roof.. Or maybe I'm thinking of someone else. Nevermind.
There's often an occasion where we're all broke and hungry, and Gert would say "do you have eggs and some cacao", and 20 minutes later we'd have brownies. No recipe book. Nothing to wear tonight? No worries, he'll just make a jacket to cover his shoulders. Car troubles? Fixed if Gert is in the neighbourhood. He's like a McGyver of sorts. I really wish he came in a travel-sized pack so I could take him with.

I am a sum total of the phases I go through

The past week was spent in a petrol-consuming daze of red wine and pasta, couch-hopping from one friend's house/flat to the other. I was spoilt enough to make me not want to go home (?), but I had other people in other towns/cities to see, so I filled up my tank with unleaded and moved on.
Also, I was in dire need of some fresh clothes, and was itching to check my mails. My packing skills have always let me down, and I spent a week in Pretoria with 3 pairs of pants, 2 shirts, and 8 pairs of socks.

Friday evening we decided to go against the grain, and payed a visit to the local alternative club in Pretoria central. Zeplins is located right next to the biggest Adult World that the city has to offer, giving it a slightly more dodgy feel than it perfectly well managed to exude on its own. We spotted a dog unit police car in front of the club, but our mild paranoia never realised, and we figured that they were probably busting the porn shop, or perhaps stocking up on handcuffs. (Or selling theirs, you never know.)
A long time ago, in a previous life, I used to frequent clubs that were even more alternative and more dodgy than the aforementioned Zeplins. Clubs where the only lighting was fluorescent, and people danced as if they were just resurrected from a miserable death. My mother always left me to go through my many phases, so when I told her the one day that I wanted a full-lenght body-hugging halter-neck black pvc dress, she said:

"Let's go buy material"

and she made one for me.

On Friday I donned it for the last time, danced for hours, inhaled yellow smoke from smoke machines, smelled my retinas burn in the persistence of the fluorescent tubes, and realised that I'll never wear it again.
It is being passed on to my dearest Tish. Use it well.

Gallerie d'Prinsloo 70

(Closed Recently)

Some of the images that have travelled with me for years. The Pinkish siamese twin poster, I fished out of a garbage bin in front of the Uni radio station (blocked on wood and everything), and the brown little girl faces are years older than I am. Projects and presents..

Every object has a history
every picture tells a story

Petroleum Powered

Sasolburg was established in the early 1950’s as a town to house a host of Engineers, specialists, mechanics, fitters and turners, the people who were responsible for making SASOL work. SASOL is the main company responsible for petroleum manufacture in SA, and Sasolburg was filled with great minds who worked long hours and built a giant energy corporation. It used to be a town with culture, where the trophy wives kept themselves busy with raising kids with high morals, and drinking tea at quilting clubs. My most frequently repeated quote about Sasolburg is “It’s the perfect place to raise kids. It’s not big enough to be a city, and it’s too big to be a small town. It’s a well-balanced town with well-balanced people.”

I spent the biggest part of my life in this town. Walking through the streets brought back memories from being in primary school and riding my bike, nearly being hit by a lightning bolt once and speeding back home, white as a sheet. Or the eye-to-eye I had with some insect, causing me to crash my bike into a fence and cutting open three of my toes as I never wore shoes in those days.

There’s this wonderful thing called groenstroke (green strips) in Sasolburg. This is basically a network of cement roads for bicyclists and pedestrians that snakes through the neighborhoods like a network of veins, keeping kids out of the streets and getting people to walk down tree-lined backroads. After 5 o’ clock, you found families on bicycles, families walking their dogs, old people walking hand in hand. Maybe I just had a beautifully disillusioned childhood.

Now, walking through town is like walking through a faded snapshot. Everything is still there, but neglect is spray-painted on the walls and overgrowing the pathways. Corrupt municipalities and apathetic government systems has led to the downfall of the town. Faded wrappers and empty cooldrink cans decorate the unkempt bushes. Plants grow through in cracks in walls and slowly creep over the man-made structures. What I like about it though, is that it almost seems like nature is reclaiming the land. With no budget to trim the hedges and cut the grass, plants are given free reign once again to grow over and around the structures put in their way, back when Sasolburg was still in it’s prime.

Expectation vs Realisation

With just over 2 weeks before I hop the ocean, you'd think that I'd be frantically organising those little things that requires organisation.. tying up loose ends, working out budgets, making lists of things to do.. being productive, is what it comes down to. So to recap:

What I was planning to do during my stay in Sasolburg:
- Unpack and repack my room full of boxes (to figure our what the hell is going on there)
- Go shopping for clothes that I can teach in, i.e. that weren't bought at the Salvation Army for 5 bucks and a piece of gum. In 1997.
- Study some Japanese that goes past 'konnichiwa' and 'arigato'.
- Brush up on hiragana and attempt katakana
- Figure out my finances
- Sort out my photos and make beautiful, cheesy photo collages for my blog.
- Mail a thousand friends
- Fill in my tax return forms

What I actually did during my stay in Sasolburg
- Walked around the town of my youth with a friend from my youth (who's still a good friend)
- Did hours and hours of reminiscing in nostalgia mode.
- Went for mid-morning walks in gardens with carel after which he gave me a crapload of movies and anime, and showed me a beautiful, silver flute.
- Watched countless episodes of Robot Chicken and Simpsons, and experienced braincell death because of that.
- Channelhopped (quite a novelty for someone who hasn't had a tv in years)
- Drove around town, in forgotten areas, past forgotten streets
- Sat on the back of a bakkie drinking beer, watching the sun go down and seeing two dudes play around with a bulldozer, breaking up logs for firewood.
- Chatted on MSN
- None of the planned things

For those with a short attention span, here's a picture of a rose.
(to be added later)

Ukulimala koyedwa ukulimala kwethu sonke

The end of the financial year means tons of paperwork for some, day-long stock-takes for others, and for the plebian slave-workers of this factory, it means the legal fight for wage increases.

Led by COSATU, driven by fear and swept away by the crazy sense of community that black people have and white people will never understand (whites being driven by the fight for the individual), the first tendrils of an upcoming strike are already creeping into daily production.

As I started typing this, the veggie department (just around the corner) started singing, chanting: “Gerela yo.. Gerela, a nyamazane”

Loosely translated, this means something to the like of We will hunt until we find our animal.

Interpretively translated, this means We will not back down from our 20% increase demand, we will take your factory down, we will toi-toi in the streets and watch as you lose millions of rands per day because we won’t stand around like human machines for measly pay that is less than the legal minimum wage.

Personally, I’m rooting for the underprivileged, unschooled, underpaid, uneducated staff.