Every day I ride over a patch of six inch packed sand on my
way to and from work, and every time an image of Stefan arises in my mind. For a brief moment, I return in Zambia.
“Stay straight,” he would yell behind his shoulder, to prevent me
from skidding and losing balance on the sand patches while winding through the jungle paths on our
trek bikes in and on the way to Mwanachama--his village.
I return to the present moment. “Stay straight,” I then myself as I hit that patch on
the highway sidewalk leaving Globe’s downtown district. It’s just one of the
lessons he’s taught me in my time of knowing him. Though this period of
separation has at times dampened our perspective of its inherent worth in the
relationship, our brief times spent together have provided invaluable lessons
and exotic experiences that I wouldn’t change for the world; lessons that stick
with me when the home routine dulls and excitement wanes.
South Africa
OR-TAMBO International airport, named after Nelson Mandela’s
partner in law practice, close friend and former president of the African National
Congress, drew us together once again on African soil. Only this time the plane
wasn’t late. No baggage was lost or left behind, and we smoothly transitioned
back into one another’s arms in the mid-day sun.
We planned this trip to be a bit hedonistic, as a sort of
release from the monkish lifestyles we’ve been leading since we’ve been apart.
While Zambia was about braving the challenges with two heads instead of one,
this trip only required we each use half our brains, for the most part, as
signs clearly stated the way for us and danger was not lurking behind every
warehouse or in every uncooked vegetable. In essence, it was a first-class style
vacation.
After spending our first day fighting off jet-lag and
resting in our bed while catching up, we hopped the Gautrain, South Africa’s
foreign invested public transportation system, to Pretoria, the government seat
of South Africa. It was the last day of viewing Nelson Mandela’s body before he
would be taken to Eastern Cape to be buried on Sunday, two days later.
Stefan navigated with a print-out version of google maps, and we walked from the bus station and
past the seven block long line to stake our claim in it. Instantly our souls
both sunk a bit in realizing we had woken too late and taken too leisurely a
time preparing for the day, and we would probably not make it inside to view
the body of a legend. But since we were there, we thought we’d soak in the
mourning and the celebration with our fellow South Africans; stamping our
cheeks with Mandela’s face and sporting headbands and learning how to pronounce
the *click* in Xhosa, the largest native tribal language in South Africa.
As we began to feel at home amongst the lively singing and
clapping and hawkers and cries, the line began moving more quickly. We wondered:
Had some waiting in line grown weary, or was security moving crowds through
faster? With high hopes we rushed
forward. At one point we heard a woman yell, “You’re wasting your time! The
viewing is over!” Stefan and I paid no heed to her comment and stormed the
government building with the rest of the crowd.
“Give us MADIIIBA!” The crowd chanted behind a police
barricade. We paused in bewilderment, skin to skin among a jostling crowd,
still unable to understand precisely what the matter was. Sweaty South Africans continued
shouting ANC slogans and singing their National Anthem. Stefan
slung me onto his shoulders to catch a better sense of the event.
Next to us, a man hoisted himself up onto his friend’s shoulders,
wrapped his fingers around mine and raised our biracial fist to the sky; an
optimal photograph for any journalist. The Canons and Nikons swarmed, snapping rapid-fire
photographs of us hovering above the crowd of angry faces and fists and cries
to see “Tata.”
While I look happy in the picture, the truth is most South
Africans were disappointed that the viewing shut down early and they weren’t
able to pay their respects to their beloved Madiba. This was a protest-we just
weren’t as invested as the others. While we both revere Nelson Mandela as one
of the strongest spirited men in modern world history, nationally, he was not
our own and it wasn’t our place to take precedent in any viewing. So we vacated
the crowd, satisfied with our experience, and desiring desperately to quench
our thirst.
While sitting outside of a small pizza shop and chowing down
on our vegetarian thin crust, South Africans from the crowd approached us like
we were one of them. “Hey you two, we are going to protest again. Are you coming?”
One man jostled forward free posters of Mandela for us. It became surreal. Even
more so, we knew we were going to be printed in the newspaper the next day.
And low-and-behold, we were:
Three days later we returned to OR-TAMBO to board a domestic
flight to Cape Town, where we would spend the majority of our trip. I applaud
Stefan in his planning, for Cape Town was the best place imaginable for us to
explore, educate ourselves, and relax. Within a few hours of urban foraging
downtown and stumbling upon IPA’s and smoothies, we easily could have cancelled
our tickets, found jobs and stayed there happily for many months or years
thereafter. And though we dreamt, in the back of our minds we knew of our
responsibilities in our respective “corps”, and couldn’t justify the stamp of an
incomplete service on our consciences. So we lived like the trip would end that
day or never at all.
Both locals and travelers were flocking to Robben Island to
view Mandela’s prison cell in the wake of his passing, and luckily I had booked
the ferry tickets three months in advance. On the pier we boarded what was
Stefan’s first ferry ride in two years-a remarkable spectacle- sparking
memories of home.
Our tour guide in front of the luxury bus, a slender, light
skinned man named Abraham, had become skilled at presenting. With flamboyant
animation and carefully planned pauses in his speech, he polled the audience on
their nationalities, carefully making sure not to offend anyone with the story
of the infamous political prison that’s been likened to Alcatraz. And for some
reason he took a liking to me and Stefan.
Our first viewing was of Robert Sobukwe’s cottage, a South
African teacher who branched off from the African National Congress to form Pan
Africanist Congress once he deemed the ANC too inclusive of all races and
cowardly in their efforts against apartheid. There on Robben Island he lived in
solitary confinement with his own guards and dogs. We had a chance to view the
dog houses, which were bigger than the D class prison cells where Mandela spent
18 years of his 27 year prison term. Inside the cottage were letters of
correspondence between Sobukwe and his wife, and Stefan and I slung over each
other as we read them. We were caught by our beloved tour guide.
So once the bus rolled to a stop at the snack shop where we
could break and snap some pictures, Abraham warned us that the last person back
on the bus would have to sing a song to the group before we would head to see
the lime quarry, where Mandela, Kathy, Walter, and the rest of the gang of ANC
leaders labored for 13 years.
Once inside the snack shop, Stefan and I took our seats on a
bench, and as we were munching, Abraham joined us and sparked conversation
about our stories and regaled us with his own. But this was all part of his
plan. Abraham looked to the bus and informed us we were the last passengers to
board. “Looks like you’ll have to sing!” he laughed. We boarded and waved and
laughed shyly in front of the crowd, and he asked us to sing a song in Bemba,
which Stefan didn’t know. He lightheartedly just told us to sit, and we were
off again. Relieved we weren’t forced to sing, we also felt a tinge of sticking
out in the crowd. I think we both accepted that.
As our group unloaded the bus and bid Abraham farewell, he
yelled to us, “Bring your family back soon, eh?” and winked. We jumped a little
in our own skins, but just looked to each other and smirked. Maybe he really
saw It, and whatever It becomes is up to us.
Nelson Mandela’s cell was riddled with flowers and
well-wishings from visitors. The room was set up as it had been prior to 1979,
when political prisoners won their fight to sleep on mattresses. It was
difficult to sense the remnants of immense tension and to mimic emotionally
what he must have felt during his Robben Island years while we were being
carted around in a large group, but I would feel it later throughout the trip,
especially at the Apartheid Museum.
Nelson Mandela's Prison Cell
Our new guide had spent five years in Robben Island in the
general ward as a convicted ANC organizer. He drew his stories from first-hand
accounts, which added a great power to the experience. As we sat in a large,
maybe 500-square-foot room that housed 50 or so political prisoners at a given
time, the guide regaled us of tales of stealing newspapers and discussing
political events in hushed voices, and of directing and acting in plays to serve
as entertainment, and plotting moves the outside ANC would make once certain
prisoners were released. Their comradery inside prison allowed their spirits to
remain strong until they could finally step foot on the mainland.
I kept churning over in my mind how much the white South
African tactics actually served to strengthen the ANC and lead to the overhaul
of their government. Some flames inside the political prisoners surely would
have died out if their comrades weren’t there rekindle it every time it dimmed.
The comradery helped them to “stay straight” without wavering off the path
toward freedom. It allowed them to continue the fight.
The waters were choppy as we headed back to the pier, and
it sprayed us in heavy loads. Stefan hugged me tight and shielded me from
the spray, soaking himself and leaving me dry. Some tourists on the opposite
bench asked me for my camera to take a picture:
"Come here," he said, "Ill give you shelter from the storm"
The next and last largely spoken of tourist destination we
visited was the famous Table Mountain, now regarded as one of the Seven Natural
Wonders, which Stefan and I joked changed every time some deal is cut to
attract tourists.
We hiked the way up under the hot sun, and had little idea
of what we were in for. Stateside, I had heard that Table Mountain is a
rigorous day hike, but as we strolled along the beginning path, we were haughty
in our physical strength and endurance. That quickly switched off as we
approached a series of switchbacks between two ravines that would last the
remaining two hours of our hike to the top. The Earth humbled us as we took
breaks and paid attention to the eco-adventurer scriptures on the rocks
exclaiming, “You can do it! Don’t give up! Almost there!” For the last half
hour the trekkers descending told us, “Five minutes to the top.” We learned to
laugh at this advice, and greatly enjoyed and engaged in the spirit of the
hikers.
The sun was setting as we approached the top, and the
mountain’s shadow spread itself over the city of Cape Town like a sundial, a
thought Stefan expressed as we were gazing at the city view. I wondered if the
locals would tell the evening time by knowing when the shadow falls on their
homes. On the north side of the mountain, clouds spilled over into the sea in
golden hues.
A large part of the rest of our time was spent relaxing and
exploring together, playing card games and creating our own games. Stefan swam
in the frigid Atlantic waters and I ran along the tide barefoot. We walked at
sunset and held hands and did all those other corny things that lovers like to
do. Only for us it felt different. We weren’t on some exotic getaway from our
comfortable American lives together. Our time together was for a brief moment
in the midst of two years of chaos.
Now I don’t know if to say now that I’m back home in little
old Globe, Arizona, if Stefan’s presence has been reduced or enlarged to a
patch of sand. For not only do I find him in a patch of sand, I find him in the
saguaros he spelled wrong, in the teflon pans he reminds me not to mix with
metal, in the bedtime reading and the cedar wood and the historical references
and the Greek plays and the hung-to-dry laundry line. I’m reminded when I see
him and leave again that “everywhere” is right here. And “right here” lives in
the heart.
I do know that riding my bike through town on a winter day,
thinking “stay straight,” offers more warmth than space heaters or mittens or
hot chocolate.
“Stay on the straight path which never waivers,” Stefan
always says. In due time, it leads to that which you are fighting for. And
there is no sweeter success.
