“Not all the ravages caused by our merciless age are tangible ones. The subtler forms of destruction, those involving only the human spirit, are the most to be dreaded”. So wrote Paul Bowles in the preface of the 1981 edition of his novel, “The Spider’s House”. I discovered the book in an antiquarian bookshop in Kalk Bay near Fish Hoek, a kind of Hebden-Bridge-by-the-sea on the way to Cape Point. A limited edition cloth bound trade copy at R120; it was one of those rare bargains.
Bowles was a New Yorker who spent most of his adult life in Tangier, North Africa, watching people and writing about them. He lived well into his 90’s. In his early years he was a composer of music, sharing an apartment at one time with Aaron Copeland. So, not a lightweight. Another novel of his is “The Sheltering Sky” which became a film with John Malkovich and Debra Winger. His collected short stories are a fitting salute to the genre.
His writings form an astute commentary on the white man’s naïve and inept incursion into the continent of Africa. As you read, you get the sense that Africa stalks him, seduces him, exposes him and then watches him self-destruct. The stumbling and hapless pale-skin is unaware of the unseen predator in every encounter. The visitor, in a reversal of appearances, becomes the subject of the hunt, an object of stealth, caught in the sights of an ancient invisible menace. Like a lost animal in the savannah who has wandered into the wrong territory. In his stories, it is the innocent who are smart and the smart that are innocent. Bowles unveils the Souk and the Bazaar as amphitheatres of cruel irony in which the white man wanders in the shadows, unaware of the penetrating eyes all around him. He always ends up on his knees, perplexed and shaken, shorn of his arrogant presumptuousness, finally revealed as a fool in another man’s land.
As I look around me through the borrowed lens of a Paul Bowles, down here in the Cape townships, I am all too aware that those watching me are sensitive to the foul odour of pride and arrogance veiled beneath the layers of good intentions. The pride and prejudice of the white man. Subtle forms of destruction…and the most to be dreaded.
I dedicate this blog to my friend Paul Bailey with whom I discovered the genius of Paul Bowles.
Wednesday 21 April 2010
Thursday 15 April 2010
a woman of africa
She’s a black Xhosa woman from the Eastern Cape. Years ago, like so many before her, she made the journey to Cape Town to build a better life. Three of her six brothers and sisters followed her to Khayalitsha. They died tragically. Tuberculosis, cancer and a horrific road accident, common killers in South Africa, had taken them. Because they had followed her, she carried a heavy burden of guilt. She looks after their children as well as her own. Her husband is also dead.
This devoutly spiritual Xhosa woman came to me and asked if the deep pain in her heart would ever leave her.
We talked for a time about grief and loss and her desire for the wound within to be taken away. She spoke of it as of a living thing that had taken up residence in her, an unwelcome visitor who would not leave. Her language reminded me of how the ancient Gaelic language could give living form to human emotions as though they were unseen companions of the soul. “Ta bron orm” meaning “grief is upon me”.
Towards the end of our time together she told of how her neighbours had begun to seek her out when they were troubled, of how her remaining family in the North would travel to confide in her when they had nowhere else to turn. Together, we shared a picture of how the pain in her heart spoke to them of wisdom and experience, of a woman acquainted with grief, who understood their troubles, a woman who knew the road they travelled, a woman they could believe in.
As our talk came to a close, we were thankful in the prayer that went out from our warm embrace that the pain in her heart was a healing instrument in the hearts of others. For the first time I saw the meaning of the words “wounded healer” and I saw that sorrow can be a sign of strength. With a dignified poise, so characteristic of the Xhosa woman, she went her way. Nondima is her name and she is happy for the world to know her story.
This devoutly spiritual Xhosa woman came to me and asked if the deep pain in her heart would ever leave her.
We talked for a time about grief and loss and her desire for the wound within to be taken away. She spoke of it as of a living thing that had taken up residence in her, an unwelcome visitor who would not leave. Her language reminded me of how the ancient Gaelic language could give living form to human emotions as though they were unseen companions of the soul. “Ta bron orm” meaning “grief is upon me”.
Towards the end of our time together she told of how her neighbours had begun to seek her out when they were troubled, of how her remaining family in the North would travel to confide in her when they had nowhere else to turn. Together, we shared a picture of how the pain in her heart spoke to them of wisdom and experience, of a woman acquainted with grief, who understood their troubles, a woman who knew the road they travelled, a woman they could believe in.
As our talk came to a close, we were thankful in the prayer that went out from our warm embrace that the pain in her heart was a healing instrument in the hearts of others. For the first time I saw the meaning of the words “wounded healer” and I saw that sorrow can be a sign of strength. With a dignified poise, so characteristic of the Xhosa woman, she went her way. Nondima is her name and she is happy for the world to know her story.
Thursday 8 April 2010
toxic masculinity
There is a problem with men here in South Africa. Readers of Capewonders are familiar with the theme. I have tended to discourse the problem in a spiritual framework because that’s the way I’m wired. But, a few weeks ago, the review section of a Sunday paper carried the following headline:
“Battle against toxic masculinity”
A secular writer in a secular newspaper saying “the abuse of children and women is a scourge that needs to be addressed”. Not very different from another writer, a Christian, Leanne Payne, who names the cause as “failed male identities”.
“Toxic masculinity”. It is an image that fits the problem very well. And not least because the whole body of men in a society is affected. I remind you of Paul in the township of Lentageur who does not visit vulnerable families “because the women and children are afraid of a man”. Any man. Even this good man Paul, who is shackled with a broken image not of his own making. Every encounter with a woman or a child is a battle for him. As for myself, I too have to drink from this cup. How do poor, black people view a white man with white hair who moves around in their midst? What have white men with white hair done to them down the generations? Every encounter is also for me a battle, a battle with an old and very toxic image. One I did not know I had until I came here to this place.
We went to help with the soup kitchen at Kleinvlei on Wednesday. Five large tureens went in fifteen minutes to a long row of little ones, each carrying a small plastic container, some grasping the hand of a parent as they waited in line. Of course it was a heartbreaking sight. But also triumphant. The women of St. Kizito were feeding the children. This day at least they would not go hungry. This day they would not be abandoned. As the last vestiges of burnt remnants were scraped from the last of the large, heavy containers, only one went without food, an old woman who vented her disappointment in guttural Afrikaans. But it may have been about the white man with the white hair. Marian did not translate.
The ingredients for the five tureens cost around R200. That’s about £20. In the evening with our two visiting friends from Skipton we ate at our favourite Italian restaurant around the corner from the Salesian Institute. Including a generous tip, that came to R900, a little less than £90. The doggy bag from two leftover pasta dishes went to a youth bedding down for the night on the pavement around the corner on Chippiani.
Enough to digest. For now.
“Battle against toxic masculinity”
A secular writer in a secular newspaper saying “the abuse of children and women is a scourge that needs to be addressed”. Not very different from another writer, a Christian, Leanne Payne, who names the cause as “failed male identities”.
“Toxic masculinity”. It is an image that fits the problem very well. And not least because the whole body of men in a society is affected. I remind you of Paul in the township of Lentageur who does not visit vulnerable families “because the women and children are afraid of a man”. Any man. Even this good man Paul, who is shackled with a broken image not of his own making. Every encounter with a woman or a child is a battle for him. As for myself, I too have to drink from this cup. How do poor, black people view a white man with white hair who moves around in their midst? What have white men with white hair done to them down the generations? Every encounter is also for me a battle, a battle with an old and very toxic image. One I did not know I had until I came here to this place.
We went to help with the soup kitchen at Kleinvlei on Wednesday. Five large tureens went in fifteen minutes to a long row of little ones, each carrying a small plastic container, some grasping the hand of a parent as they waited in line. Of course it was a heartbreaking sight. But also triumphant. The women of St. Kizito were feeding the children. This day at least they would not go hungry. This day they would not be abandoned. As the last vestiges of burnt remnants were scraped from the last of the large, heavy containers, only one went without food, an old woman who vented her disappointment in guttural Afrikaans. But it may have been about the white man with the white hair. Marian did not translate.
The ingredients for the five tureens cost around R200. That’s about £20. In the evening with our two visiting friends from Skipton we ate at our favourite Italian restaurant around the corner from the Salesian Institute. Including a generous tip, that came to R900, a little less than £90. The doggy bag from two leftover pasta dishes went to a youth bedding down for the night on the pavement around the corner on Chippiani.
Enough to digest. For now.
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