Paternoster is always for me a place of solitude where things contradictory and befuddling can come together like a flight of geese wending its way across an evening sky. Even the painful troubles of a region seem to fade in the reddening light of dusk. This pair of geese flies home today after nearly three months immersed in the wonders and tribulations of the Cape. Our thoughts come together in a formation of sorts. Perhaps a formation that will set a pattern for the return journey.
The problems of the male loom large in the picture before us. Toxic masculinity and the failure of the male identity. Followers of Capewonders are familiar with this territory. Murder, rape, child abuse, gang warfare are all features of a society in travail. And not just here, but everywhere in one degree or another. But, what to do?
Two Sundays ago I spoke of the problem at three Catholic Masses in one middle class parish of Cape Town. The people who spoke with me afterwards were women. Each had a story of family relationships disintegrating, unhappy husbands, aimless sons, insecure daughters. Modern sociological thought emphasises the role of inevitable global trends as the cause. Psychology looks to the fragmentation of the individual in the face of powerful social forces. These and other disciplines of our 21st century world seem to wobble and waffle in the face of the challenge.
For many it is difficult even to know how to frame the question. Does the world need its men to be restored? And to what? This community, perhaps like all other communities, does need its men to be restored. And it needs them to be restored as true fathers of their children and the wider family around them. It’s the piece that’s missing. Men do the biological bit; the rest is left to women. Women long for a new generation of men who will be true fathers; who will cherish rather than abuse, affirm rather than destroy; men who will protect rather than endanger, love rather than hate.
As I prepare to leave Paternoster and the Cape today, I wonder if this dream has wings. Or is it just another flock of pies in the sky.
Monday, 3 May 2010
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
pride and prejudice
“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.
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.
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.
Saturday, 27 March 2010
three men of africa
Adrian is a coloured man from the Karoo. He looks taller because he is thin. His profile is elegant and composed. He speaks precisely and gently and with great feeling. A year ago, his father, with whom he was living, denied paternity. He said, “You are not my son”. Adrian, devastated, moved in with his grandmother. For many weeks he cried when he was alone. Together we spoke the words of the psalmist, “when your father…abandons you, Yahweh will gather you up”. He has forgiven his father and although he no longer sees him, he gives him honour by reporting to him of his progress at work. To give honour to a father is part of his tradition. Adrian is thirty four years old, now looking to other fathers to feed his soul.
Don is white. His intense eyes look out from deep set hollows that look like caves, partly obscured by lush black brows. At seventeen he wound up in prison and served three years. He began studying during periods in solitary confinement. He told a story of adventurous drifting through jobs in Botswana, Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique. He took to working on ships. In Maputo he met his wife. Their daughter is at school in Europe and she likes his nomadic life. Some time ago, his grandmother died and left him some money with which he bought some land. Developers have their eye on it but he has a dream that one day he will build a centre for poor kids. Don is a waiter and he lives with other waiters in town. He is forty one years old and remains a rolling stone in his heart, surfing the crags of this strange and beautiful country.
Sandile is a Xhosa black Anglican priest. His huge smiling face gives no hint of age. At the end of coffee in a small courtyard bistro, he stands and prays aloud with us for the people of Africa and the two white visitors and their own little dreams. The diocese has placed him in a downtown apartment in a white area but he will not stay there. Sandile is a true black African. Proud of his ancestry, he tries to draw the “traditional healers” into the Christian narrative refusing to adopt the European view of them as demons. In ancient Israel, the leaders of the Hebrew faith brought the “seers” into the prophetic community as did the Irish with the druids. His passion is to have more Xhosa priests who will mediate the Christian passion with a truly African voice.
Three men of Africa, one in search of a father, one with a dream set like a gem in a piece of land and one with a vision for a Xhosa nation fulfilled. Each looking to a new and distant horizon.
Don is white. His intense eyes look out from deep set hollows that look like caves, partly obscured by lush black brows. At seventeen he wound up in prison and served three years. He began studying during periods in solitary confinement. He told a story of adventurous drifting through jobs in Botswana, Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique. He took to working on ships. In Maputo he met his wife. Their daughter is at school in Europe and she likes his nomadic life. Some time ago, his grandmother died and left him some money with which he bought some land. Developers have their eye on it but he has a dream that one day he will build a centre for poor kids. Don is a waiter and he lives with other waiters in town. He is forty one years old and remains a rolling stone in his heart, surfing the crags of this strange and beautiful country.
Sandile is a Xhosa black Anglican priest. His huge smiling face gives no hint of age. At the end of coffee in a small courtyard bistro, he stands and prays aloud with us for the people of Africa and the two white visitors and their own little dreams. The diocese has placed him in a downtown apartment in a white area but he will not stay there. Sandile is a true black African. Proud of his ancestry, he tries to draw the “traditional healers” into the Christian narrative refusing to adopt the European view of them as demons. In ancient Israel, the leaders of the Hebrew faith brought the “seers” into the prophetic community as did the Irish with the druids. His passion is to have more Xhosa priests who will mediate the Christian passion with a truly African voice.
Three men of Africa, one in search of a father, one with a dream set like a gem in a piece of land and one with a vision for a Xhosa nation fulfilled. Each looking to a new and distant horizon.
Friday, 19 March 2010
The other side of the track
There is another side to Milnerton, away from the beach and the lagoon and the eight pelicans that caught my eye as they lifted off like a line of bombers in the direction of Table Mountain. Its border begins less than a mile away at the Loxton Road intersection. It’s the other side of the track that separates the affluent from the rest. It straddles the Koeburg Road that runs all the way to the N1 near the city. From around 6pm, young prostitutes ply their trade there along a deserted three mile stretch, each one standing like a lone sentinel on their allotted corner. You notice the cars slowing down as the girls glance momentarily in their direction. The pimps wait up side .streets. Near the Loxton end stand faded malls, signs of earlier aspirations, with mostly empty interiors.
This morning I waited near our loan car for Karen to return and noticed a man heaping angry abuse on his partner as they pulled away. I saw her tears and they convicted me with shameful memories of my own. It was 9am and around the corner another couple were already drinking bottles of beer at a street bar. We were hunting for a breakfast eatery and found three. They were shut. Milnerton, of course, is not the waterfront with its tourists decanting daily from five star hotels. More Scunthorpe or Dewsbury than York, crumbs from the World Cup table will not blow this far.
Early every morning Table Mountain, its high angles tinted with orange light from the rising sun, is visible across the lagoon from our large bedroom windows. It is sometimes easy to forget about that other world that stretches across the endless flats beyond to the north east, beyond the membrane of this bubble we occupy. But we are slowly getting to know that other world. The other night in Kleinvlei we listened to the women as they reviewed their caseloads. For one of them, every child lived in a HIV household. For all of them, the children came from desperately poor families, going to school without uniforms on empty stomachs. Strident, assertive and undeterred by the scale of the challenges they face, they talked of their need for more money to get more clothing and more food.
Cecilia, tall and elegant, with a waspish sense of humour, said how working with St. Kizito was transforming her own life.
They treated us to a short account of how they prepare the five or six tureens of soup every Wednesday with an assortment of vegetables and soup mix and the sorrow they feel when there is not enough. On a Wednesday in early April we will join them on the soup run. The Kleinvlei women are one small group in the teeming Cape Flats making what difference they can.
This morning I waited near our loan car for Karen to return and noticed a man heaping angry abuse on his partner as they pulled away. I saw her tears and they convicted me with shameful memories of my own. It was 9am and around the corner another couple were already drinking bottles of beer at a street bar. We were hunting for a breakfast eatery and found three. They were shut. Milnerton, of course, is not the waterfront with its tourists decanting daily from five star hotels. More Scunthorpe or Dewsbury than York, crumbs from the World Cup table will not blow this far.
Early every morning Table Mountain, its high angles tinted with orange light from the rising sun, is visible across the lagoon from our large bedroom windows. It is sometimes easy to forget about that other world that stretches across the endless flats beyond to the north east, beyond the membrane of this bubble we occupy. But we are slowly getting to know that other world. The other night in Kleinvlei we listened to the women as they reviewed their caseloads. For one of them, every child lived in a HIV household. For all of them, the children came from desperately poor families, going to school without uniforms on empty stomachs. Strident, assertive and undeterred by the scale of the challenges they face, they talked of their need for more money to get more clothing and more food.
Cecilia, tall and elegant, with a waspish sense of humour, said how working with St. Kizito was transforming her own life.
They treated us to a short account of how they prepare the five or six tureens of soup every Wednesday with an assortment of vegetables and soup mix and the sorrow they feel when there is not enough. On a Wednesday in early April we will join them on the soup run. The Kleinvlei women are one small group in the teeming Cape Flats making what difference they can.
Monday, 15 March 2010
Broken images
Men do not attend St. Kizito meetings. Paul is an exception. At the township of Lentageur the other night, this small and gentle man described his difficulty in making home visits to vulnerable families. “The women are suspicious of men, afraid of them”, he said in answer to a question from Karen. He sees the fear in their eyes as they recoil to safety. He was touching on something here, something that men like him inherit from the behaviour of other men. A broken image.
I have seen this before. Catholic priests, devoted men, exemplary lives. Some of them say they get the same knowing look even from close family, a look that says “are you like those others who have abused children?” They too feel soiled by the behaviour of other men.
Paul, and other men like him, climb this mountain alone, each step making a firm foothold before the next step is made. Every solid and honest encounter with women and children is a building block in a restored image. Trust is remade the hard way and only the braveheart sets out on the journey.
The R27 runs from Cape Town to Milnerton and beyond to Blaauberg then on to Velddrif before it becomes another number and ends up in Namibia. The city is funding a multi million rand road transit system that reaches Blaauberg. Rumour has it that once the world cup is done, the new buses will be mothballed and the system will be suspended. In the meantime, a report in the Cape Times gave details of an incident involving one of those ubiquitous white taxi’s which ferries people to and from the township settlements. On pulling one over, the police counted out 103, that’s one hundred and three, children. They are licensed to carry eighteen! We struggled with the maths and the packing skills of the driver. We struggled too with the bent logic of the city fathers and their priorities. The taxi men, by the way don't want this state of the art system. It will put them out of business!
Our rented home overlooks the lagoon at Milnerton. The other morning in the early fade of orange that highlights everything like dew, I caught sight of five magnificent pelicans working the water like silent cruise ships. When they are contemplating a take off, they raise their giant wings in preparation. I rushed for my camera. I missed the picture I had already formed in my mind and witnessed instead their majestic flyover. I dedicate this exquisite blend of pleasure and frustration to my friend Stephen Garnett whose similar stories are most probably numbered in the thousands.
I have seen this before. Catholic priests, devoted men, exemplary lives. Some of them say they get the same knowing look even from close family, a look that says “are you like those others who have abused children?” They too feel soiled by the behaviour of other men.
Paul, and other men like him, climb this mountain alone, each step making a firm foothold before the next step is made. Every solid and honest encounter with women and children is a building block in a restored image. Trust is remade the hard way and only the braveheart sets out on the journey.
The R27 runs from Cape Town to Milnerton and beyond to Blaauberg then on to Velddrif before it becomes another number and ends up in Namibia. The city is funding a multi million rand road transit system that reaches Blaauberg. Rumour has it that once the world cup is done, the new buses will be mothballed and the system will be suspended. In the meantime, a report in the Cape Times gave details of an incident involving one of those ubiquitous white taxi’s which ferries people to and from the township settlements. On pulling one over, the police counted out 103, that’s one hundred and three, children. They are licensed to carry eighteen! We struggled with the maths and the packing skills of the driver. We struggled too with the bent logic of the city fathers and their priorities. The taxi men, by the way don't want this state of the art system. It will put them out of business!
Our rented home overlooks the lagoon at Milnerton. The other morning in the early fade of orange that highlights everything like dew, I caught sight of five magnificent pelicans working the water like silent cruise ships. When they are contemplating a take off, they raise their giant wings in preparation. I rushed for my camera. I missed the picture I had already formed in my mind and witnessed instead their majestic flyover. I dedicate this exquisite blend of pleasure and frustration to my friend Stephen Garnett whose similar stories are most probably numbered in the thousands.
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