SA Rocks

You know when you get one of those comments on your blog that are a little unusual.. they have the beat of a different drum? Something cuts through like a signal through static. The reason is most often that the carrier wave it’s come in on is passion, unflinching undeniable PASSION.
Such was this comment we got on SARocks! from this African addict

You get morphed into a South Afrophile. Every pore on you skin then breathes South Africa. You stink of South Africa. It is a smell that you acquire over time. There is a sheen to you. You radiate and sweat beads and rivulets of South Africa. Your entire being is South Africa and you have eyes that have a special glint in them.

You don’t live in London and not miss home. (you’ve GOT to read the rest! it ends with..) I am in love with the South African song. It is called life.

Good gracious! homesick doesn’t come close to describing this. Love gives a richer cadence to what we write & there’s no doubt, this is a man in love, with Africa. Nic invited him to play with in our fun SARocks playground. So I grabbed the opportunity to discover more & introduce him to you – who could not be curious about someone who writes so evocatively about our homeland? I’m a hunter of genius: curious by nature.
Come with me on a little safari & see what I hunted down >>

The epicentre of this finds itself in the being of Robert Bruce, he of iScatterlings. I had to wrestle a little intro out of him.. so reluctantly:

Born in Namibia. Schooled in South Africa and UK. Dropped out of Brookes College at Oxford, backpacked Europe to escape the wrath of my father then joined a national corporation in SA as a management trainee where a 4 week cover for the Credit Manager turned into a career.
Along the way from Namibia to now I learned that humans and their ability to develop themselves, their communities and nations, must be encouraged. Stop spoon-feeding and give the person a fishing rod and you engender self-reliance, self-development and confidence to fend for themselves and their community forever. Nothing breeds success
like success but I quickly learned the frailties of human nature all too often prevent success and talents being nurtured to their full potential.

Max, this is crap when all I want to say in I love Africa and its peoples and want to converse with them to get them to realise their potential and nurture the talent within to help them succeed.

Eish, I should’ve known, but when you ask someone impassioned about stuff they love, don’t expect 3 sentences!! (so grab a fresh cup of coffee with an Ouma rusk or Windhoek as the case may be [LOL] & dive in, it’s deep ..)

[aside: head to last.fm & load up the soundtrack to this post: of course Johnny Clegg's Scatterlings of Africa - for all of you in the African diaspora.. we miss you too]

Max: What do you miss most about Africa?

Robert:I miss so many things. Like the smell, the stink of Africa and having my guts know they are home. Elsewhere on other continents ,I experience a whispering lost butterfly feeling in my tummy. But in Africa my internal compass knows I am where I should be.

Apart from the sunshine, braaivleis and Chevrolet aspects, what I miss about Africa includes:

I miss the extremes of Africa. Like the deep green and lush undergrowth juxtaposed against the barren rocky veld.

I miss the wide open spaces. The big blue cloudless skies. I miss watching the buildup to the daily highveld summer afternoon thunderstorms that dump millions of gallons of rain and hail amidst a breathtaking display of lightening and thunder. Then within 10 -20 minutes the clouds disappear, the blue sky and sun reappear alongside the smell of the wet earth. That smell is so special.

The heat melting the tar on the roads.

The smells and stench of the open air markets. The roadside butcheries where cow’s heads are sold alongside other meats. On inspection, you can see the rudimentary cutting of the flesh. A long way off the professional machine sliced supermarket pieces that are vacuum packed. At least here it is see it, smell it, touch it and buy if OK. If not, move on to the next stall and repeat. I respect the way nothing of the beast gets wasted.

My memories are not compartmentalised so at random I recollect this special picture which I hold onto from when my grandparents used to live off Greenmarket Square. I loved it when the Imam at the mosque called the faithful to prayer. It was goosebump time. It is such a special memory to me. There was a coherence happening. The sun was setting, the colours and hues of the day changed to rich magical colours just for that special time when the call went out from the Malay Quarter mosque’s minaret. I still squint my eyes at the memory of the late afternoon sun burning laserlike directly at the windows, scattering bright rays across the glass and in the middle creating a halo of bright light while the lace curtains fluttered in the breeze coming in through the open window.

In Namibia, South Africa and Uganda seeing black men holding hands as they walked and talked together is something special. To me this exemplifies the close bond between men from the same tribe that honours their community’s traditions and signifies an appropriate communication to others. Trust. But we civilised and educated ‘Europeans’ scoff at this type of intimacy as being the ultimate effete behaviour and not to be condoned. Pah! What do we know?! We programme our children to be brave and upstanding against adversity but we fail to cover the essentials – how to be human.

I miss seeing animals walking in the roads. I miss the concentrated grouping of the shacks at the impromptu (as it originally began) townships like Crossroads. Sad and bad as it is, this is a part of the African fabric that we keep in our memory banks for recall at future dates.

I miss the colours of Africa. I miss picking fruit from their trees. I miss walking barefoot. I miss the laughter. I miss being part of a huge family that endures hardships together, has fallouts, fights and kills one another, that reconciles and shares life again.

I miss the ad hoc soccer matches using stones as goals. I miss the farm shops alongside the Eastern Cape roads. Fresh pineapple juice by the litre. I miss the Transkei and the rondavels. I miss the traditional dress of the Xhosa. I miss seeing the young initiates covered in the ritual white clay walking in groups on the road between Port Elizabeth and Jeffries Bay or in the opposite direction PE and Grahamstown.

I miss having the life scared out of me by SAA everytime the plane comes in to land at East London. I do say a prayer and swear I will never fly there ever again. But I am a befokkde male and do it again and console myself by asking why should I deny myself another adrenaline rush?! Oh the wind at EL airport!

I miss the approach to Windhoek airport too. But not the 10 hour drive to town from there! Kidding. The drive is an excellent time to view the topography of my country. I cannot describe it.

I miss Africa the mother of life. I will return.

..and you’ d be warmly welcomed back by your African family – thank you iscatterling

[BTW edited for length.. I promise! there was more African yummyiness, but won't overstay your welcomed attention.. I'll convince Robert to publish the full length at iscatterlings for you far-flung expat African addicts. Sadly, no space to pop in photo's: though if I had space, I'd be decorating with the beautiful lensscapes of Coda]

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