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Published: February 19th 2007
Lush Llandudno
In its beautiful setting backed by the Little Lion's Head and facing the topaz-blue Atlantic Ocean, it's no wonder the house prices rise like hot-air balloons. Long was the road that led to
Llandudno, and as the fairy passed the shipwreck of
Antipolis she was very tired, and she had still a long distance to cover.
It was already dark as she looked down upon all the lights that shimmered out from the over-sized villas and lavish manors that clung to the steep mountain slopes of Llandudno.
As she descended into Llandudno she was very tired. Many times had she considered leaving the pipe and the flute somewhere, and at one time she’d even thought about leaving her wings. Luckily she didn’t, since left or forgotten things have an exceptionally high probability of ending up in someone else’s pockets here in South Africa.
Gate after gate she faced. Huge steel gates and high concrete walls was all she could see of the beautiful houses.
“A suburb of fortresses I must have entered.” She thought. “Electric fences for personal freedom? Warning signs signalling danger to ensure personal safety?”
She walked through the whole suburb down to the beach, and nowhere was she invited to spend the night.
She sat down in the sand that was still warm from the sun’s hot rays during the day.
She
A sign of welcome
An electrified nation. What would happen if there was a long-lasting powercut, when everyone that's got anything of value protects it behind electric fences? sat watching the waves break, listening to the soothing roar of the
Atlantic Ocean when she heard a chattering voice. Then another one, and suddenly there were several chattering voices, all except one apparently chattering about her.
“Look, she’s all alone on the beach.”
“Maybe she’s heartbroken?”
“Maybe she’s a bandit?”
“No, she’s too small to be a bandit.”
“Then you clearly haven’t seen the bandits of today!”
“I have!”
“Have not!”
“Maybe we should talk to her?”
“I’m hungry.”
“Well who’s not!”
“So what should we say?”
“Maybe you can crack that joke about the online mermaid?”
“What about just saying hi, to her.” The voices chattered.
“Hello!” The fairy called out into the starlit night and the voices became silent.
Playing in the surf next to the beach was a school of dolphins. As they breached, long tails of glowing green phosphorescence light followed and outlined their swift movement like luminous brush strokes.
Suddenly, as a really big wave hit the shore, one of the dolphins jumped up on the beach close to the fairy.
“Hi. I’m
Amarula.” Said the dolphin and waved with her flipper.
“Eeh, hi!” Said the fairy. “I’m looking for the elves of Llandudno,
Great Surf
Llandudnos beach is famous among Cape Town's surfers. But there's a strict hierarchy among the surfers of whom will catch the next wave. To commit the cardinal sin - to steal someone elses wave, is done by the locals, and there's little you can do if you're an outsider. would you know where I can find them?”
“The elves, sorry to break the news but they left long ago. Most left already before the group areas act forced them to move, the few that stayed, fighting for the land that they’d been born to, more than a thousand years ago; either died in sorrow over the crimes committed by the apartheid government, or left Llandudno for a place were racial hatred didn’t exist.
Nowadays, as the speculations of real estate agents have skyrocketed land-prices, a tangible economical segregation prevails.”
“Oh, that sounds terrible!”
“Well, nothing new really. Life has been, is, and will always be unfair. After all, what’s fair or not is always in the eyes of the beholder.” The dolphin replied a bit too spirited, the fairy thought, and discouraged from the sad news about the elves, asked Amarula in a pitiful tone:
“So what can I do then?”
“Not much for tonight. Find somewhere to sleep on the beach, then as daybreaks, start walking towards the Indian Ocean. It’s on the other side of the peninsula. There you’ll find a colony of penguins, ask them. They speak fourteen languages, and with the hordes of tourists going
Hout Bay
The entrance to Hout Bay, from the Llandudno side. Vivid Aloes are in full bloom along the slopes that lead down to the beach and the harbour. there they hear more in one day than most people do in a year.” Amarula said and smiled, wobbled from one side to the other with her silver-grey body, and with the next big wave she was gone.
The fairy then dragged her wings to the nearest bush where she built a small shelter using her wings as a cover.
Little could she sleep that night, and long before anyone of Llandudno’s inhabitants had awoken in their queen-sized beds, the fairy had started walking. In the afternoon the fairy looked out over the sickle shaped beach of
Hout Bay. As she eventually got down to the municipality, she was both tired and hungry, not to mention her staggering thirst.
From a multi-coloured shack on the opposite side of the road to the fairy, a middle-aged woman called out to her:
“Hey, hawwa yoo?” The woman stood waving with her hand and on her face she had a smile that filled the whole area with positive energy.
“Yoo mus to came over here and let yoo sit down, becoos yoo look de too tired!” The woman said, not resting her embracing smile for a second.
The fairy crossed the
Typical Township
A jumble of makeshift houses. Thi sis how most Capetonians actually live. The biggest township Khayelitcha is said to contain a third of Cape Towns 3 million inhabitants. road and exhausted, walked to the smiling woman’s shack. It was red and orange on one side with white stripes of different size and looked a bit like a huge barcode. On the front side - which was a haphazard cluster of wooden planks, orange, light pink and baby-blue was painted in a mix of floating patterns and rectangular shapes. In big bold letters written in dark navy-blue with white outline it read:
SMILIN’ NELLIS
FORTJUN TELLIN’S
4 KURIOOS MIND
AND HANGRY BELLIS!
REALLY! “Pleese, yoo come inside and yoo sit down. Yoo look so verry tired.”
The fairy, who was too tired to even say hello, was just about to do what the woman suggested when a small boy came running and bumped into her so that they both fell. The boy excused himself, helped her to her feet and hurried away among the shacks. The fairy then walked into the woman’s house.
“Wellcam to
ImiZamo Yethu. I will make yoo samthing to drink and as much mielie-pap yoo can eat. Yoo can sit over there.” The woman pointed to a homemade couch filled with colourful cushions and covered with a brown and mint-green piece of cloth with; WHO
Mielie-Pap to the people
The staple of a sub-continent. Mielie-meal (grounded maize) is the food of choice among the poor population. Pap means porridge in Afrikaan, and is just another wonderful way of enjoying the wonderful Mielie. Pap! ARE YOU? written in big letters over it.
Resting in the corner of the couch was a flask.
“Someone must have forgotten their flask” Said the fairy and held up the blackened flask of hammered brass.
“What is forgotten is forgotten, what is remembered is of more importance. My name is
Memory, but most people call me
November.” The woman was dishing up mielie-pap on a plate and was still smiling. The fairy opened the flask and was stung by the smell of
Klipdrift as she took it to her nose.
“Yoo can take the bottle if yoo please.”
“Thanks, but I can’t. I already carry too much.” The fairy said and pointed to her wings, the pipe and the …
The flute!
It was gone.
“I had it in my hand just now. I must have dropped it as I fell.” The fairy thought.
“Have yoo dropped something?” November asked as she put down the plate in front of the fairy.
“Yes, I think so. Just before I entered your house a small boy ran into me then disappeared. I believe I must have lost my flute then.”
The woman dropped her smile and shook her head.
“I
Typical Township 2
Cape Town is still extremely segregated. Even within the townships there's a strong segregation between different ethnic groups. In Cape Town most of the people in the Black community belong to the Xhosa ethnic group. For other black imigrants to get into the Xhosa dominated townships is very difficult. am most sorri. Did the booy have curli black hair and big black eyes?”
“Yes.”
“Then it must have been
Despair. Him and his bigger brother
Poverty have been causing too muuch misery to us here in the township. Come!” She took the fairy outside her house then swept her arm proudly across the vista of ramshackle huts and shacks that embodied the vast squatter camp.
“Our streets and alleys are not only prowled by Poverty and Despair, they’re also watched over by the spirit of
Ubuntu. Before nightfall I will have the fluut back to yoo, and that is a promises!”
The fairy and November went back into the house again and the fairy had a big meal of fluffy mielie-pap.
The whole afternoon they spent together - the fairy and November. The fairy firing away questions like a small child and the big African woman with her warm laughter, answering as well as she could. As the sun sank in its habitual pattern towards the horizon, November left the fairy alone for some time, to explore the shack’s odd and peculiar interior. There was a big glass jar filled with a dark sludge of nameless stuff, brightly coloured
Trippy Porcelaine
The fairy didn't remember if this was before or after the space-cakes, since everything November had in her house was new and strange to her. kitchen utensils and more spices and herbs than the fairy had ever seen before. A pot of fluffy pastry, carved wooden jugs, a deck of tarot cards with ancient voodoo-witch masters depicted, feet-high figures made of wires and plastic bottles and a cracked crystal ball.
As she held up the crystal ball and looked into it she saw nothing but her own reflection. Then, as she stared deeper she got mesmerized by a dark void, which suddenly sprung to life with tiny stars and a man, in pale primrose clinging onto an umbrella - falling in slow motion through the void. He slowly dipped his left hand in a bag at his side, turning his sedate and serene face towards the fairy; then with a swift - yet gentle - move, held the hand in front of his face and blew a glittery, tingling dust in the direction of the fairy. Then smiled.
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fred
non-member comment
Touched by the spirit of Ubuntu!
Hey Bobbie....where are you?! I hadn't taken a close look at your blog for a quite a while (too busy getting lost in India again), so i just spent a good one and half hour reading the previous entries. Then came the little fairy's adventures, which really made my evening here in Paris, where believe it or not, no such creatures are to be seen. At least by me! I love it Bobbie! You're a story teller that can make one forget about one's reality in a few lines. Again, your photos make me want to know Africa, if only the other sub-continent (the Indian wallah) ever lets me go one day! Tell me one thing my friend...if i plan to visit you and Aili again...will i have to fly over to South Africa? Please.....say "YES!" Love to you both! Keep smiling and never let the camera down!