unlimited global alchemy

Walking Home

Tonight I walked home on my own. Nothing much, just a 5-minute stroll up the hill from the Olympia café, a place much like many in Hackney East London from which I often walk home. I avoided the Norman steps, thought about a taxi, or ringing the B & B to look out for me.

Instead I just walked home. Of course it was fine; just as it may have been fine to take the train into town, or walk along the beach, or go to that gig I liked the sound of.

There are many voices here that persuade you against such things. The distant ones, on the front page of the Cape Town Times; the B & B landlord who suggests 1st class at peak times; the Malaysian guy who says we’re sitting on a time-bomb; and the people you meet who wouldn’t want what has happened to them happen to you.

The beach is white sand, with a dramatic grey mountain backdrop. The odd shark to watch out for. A bit like Cornwall, or the Isle of Man, scaled up a bit. A train track runs along the edge of this coast, packed full of people, travelling hours from their homes to their workplaces.

Another day. I get off the expensive open-topped double-decker bus, slightly sunstruck, with two women from Switzerland. We’re met by Eric and Lovers, who are going to take us on a walking tour of Imizamo Yethu. It means, ‘Our Struggle’.

On one side of the road, sewage water runs down the open gutter. On the other, a wall is marked ‘Armed Response’. No-one is to be seen on that side of the road.

It is not quite clear who has the arms. Who is struggling against who, or what. Or why.  Actually the why is pretty clear. But more importantly now perhaps, what can be done.

I get back on the open-topped bus, thinking the world could do with a few more Niall Mellon’s who go to a shebeen by to a shack one day and build hundreds of brick houses with running water next to it the next.

What are you going to do.
You could go up Table Mountain in the cable car, or hop across to Robben Island for a thorough history lesson, or wander around the botanical gardens first set up by Cecil Rhodes, where the pines are making way for indigenous plants. Or head to the Cape of Good Hope where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet.

Or you could perhaps do nothing at all, have a glass of fine Sauvignon Blanc chilled by the magnitude of it all, the vastness of the beaches the mountains and the gulfs.

You could feel that you are reinforcing separateness by not getting on the train. And you might clutch on to your bag for dear life as everyone told you you should. Leave your camera at home so your memories fade into a vague unease.

But then you might just lose your balance a bit and catch an angle you had missed - some vibrant lipstick pink, some spring grass green, some glint of light caught by the surfer on the wave. You might get to meet some willful terrier-like insistence on survival, or perhaps a refusal to go down with the blood count. You might get to drop your sums and your branding and your planning and join someone making marks like a dancer across the paper, caring ess for a moment, stepping into the present and walking alone accompanied by the warm breeze rising up from the ocean and no-one behind you.
Nikki Tomlinson ( Co - Producer UGA)

Posted by Rachel Gadsden, 09:10am 21/10/11