Ammi: My People

An elderly in a weathered wardrobe (safe for the polyester doek), the sky blue shweshwe dress and safety-pinned tjale, slumped to the dry tall grass, exposing her KY greased gaunt legs. Next lingered a close up shot of a pink broken sandal. Dried-eyed, she reappeared dabbing her grief-stricken face with a dry-snuff grimed handkerchief. A few feet away the police unit draped what looked like a charred mound with a white sheet.

Andréa prosily ad libbed the usual protocol inwardly when the scene cut to the high ranking officer speaking into the news microphone. The national crime-line flashed at the bottom of the screen, above the double-marquee pitting the markets against the current affairs.

The silent news came through a few of many aerial LCD screens suspended below the continuous clerestory of the crowded University of Free State cafeteria.
The difficult-to-read face of a shrink – a quirky feature to her freckles dusted pale skin and petit frame which typed her as an ingénue – with which Andréa watched the headlines, wouldve remained unchanged if she was displayed as the most wanted.

Stacked on the lime bistro table before her were books of nature conservation related titles. The one on top had an iridescent optical illusory image of the Earth cupped inside the woman’s hands. Looking from one angle, the planet was a paradisiacal caricature, and from another a post-apocalyptical noir.

On her left, framed by the glass curtain wall that ran lengthwise to a rather narrow hall-like cafeteria, the sprawling city of Bloemfontein rippled to the motions of its dramatic landscape.

The scenery outside failed to capture her imaginations, and neither did the next song that came from the campus radio situated in the middle of the cafeteria. She cringed somewhat when more than half of the cafeteria glowed two seconds into the club-banger.

Begrudgingly, she resigned herself to overtures of a stranger seated across her. The first thing that stood out from him, besides his slightly orient-ish eyes for a black guy, was his fashion sense: the thick scarf fit for Antarctica expeditions, and the over-sized beanie that hung loosely from over his head, partly showing neat cornrows of dreadlocks.

A cologne reeking fop…great.

“I’m thinking,” said the stranger, “why not bring the old man’s vision into fruition, redefine Madiba magic and start a rainbow village, ‘know what I mean? Our own little Nkandla…”

As he tapered off, or heightened into lofty allusions of which she was not conversant, she could not help but take stock in his left eyebrow. It rose high, as if aiming for his hairline as he talked, rising above his retro-geek glasses. She felt uneasy about a can of drink before him, too.His hands more than handled the talking.

An innocuous rejoinder, beginning with ‘as irresistible as the offer is’, had taken form on the tip of her tongue, but then on impulse:
“For the life of me I wish I could divine your sign language, ’cause…I speak only three languages and…garbage is not one of them.”

Beside her husky voice, something else must have registered, because he paused and searched her eyes with a wooden look. He seemed to stifle the edge to sneeze before resurfacing somewhat redeemed. He tried to refrain working his magic. She realised there was ‘no network connection’ for he ended up saying something vaguely akin to sacking Nkandla for her, or thereabouts. The can of drink in his hand crackled.

“So, um, what did you say your name was?”

Mumbling in response inuadibly, he had a look of someone who misplaced something important.

“Do you mind if we do a bit of trivia, you know, just to break the ice?” Her eyes bulged as she said the word trivia. “On the scale of whatever ratio, what is the likelihood that some innocent tween is a goose that lays the golden eggs for some pimp as we speak? Go.”

As she nodded matter-of-factly, her face almost resembled a Guy Fawkes mask. While he appeared to mull gravel, his took on a blank cast. He almost asked ‘what twin?’ were it not for what followed.

“Hey, why the long face; it’s tri-vi-a. You know, the kinda info stats you hear then do nothing about. Besides, I’m almost certain they are statistical outliers, and…there’s margin of error to consider; the estimated two million kids being trafficked for sexual exploitation figure by the UN, for instance.”

Though she tilted her head and delivered a smile, her eyes betrayed the fury that had begun to seethe behind them, even in her sing-songy tone.

“My advice?” She continued. “Do not believe the hype, if ever that. That a woman in South Africa is more likely to be raped than get an education…another textbook margin of error, if you ask me. Epic, epic staticians’ failure.”

She gathered all her stuff abruptly, and stood facing him. His breathing showed that had she not stopped, he might have hyper-ventilated while his eyes searched the blank table as if it was a confusing avant-garde painting.
“Alrighty, my people will call your people, and, uh…we should do these more often.” Her auburn curls bounced to her nods.

The mordant tone in her parting words felt like a splash of cheap wine to his face as she turned around to leave. As if she had remembered something, and almost causing him to flinch, she turned around.

“I’m Andréa, by the way. ‘Pleasure meeting you.”

“I’m…Ean5….Senza.”

He clenched his jaw at his sheepish response to a rhetorical pleasantry. When he lifted his eyes, she was nowhere to be found.

***

The sting in Senza’s right hand grew sharper from an apparent building frostbite. Coming to, it seemed to dawn on him there was something in his possession the entire time. Slowly, he pried his fingers from the crumpled, sorry-looking aluminium container. Images from his past flickered before him like a damaged reel of a horror flick. He rubbed and kneaded his eyes with intensity as if to gorge them out. He took off his beanie, and using his thumb, squeezed it all in his palm into a taut cotton ball. The tennis ball he used as a pressure ball was left in his car.

Communication class was next on his roster. His not so user-friendly feet carried the shell shocked remains to his destination.

“Next time I’ll unroll a red carpet, Your Fabulousness! Nxa.”

The student Senza bumped into, one among many, would have had to time travel if his remark was to hit home.

He ascended the last aisle of the theatre-style class. Seated at the last row, he unplugged from the world with his headset and buried himself in a book.

An hour passed before students voices, mostly girls, began to fill the class with the latest celebrity gossip. He did not bother to attach heads to voices that greeted him.

At the right moment, Ms. Lo, aka Ngwana-leColoured, whose stride was said to have come from the days of strutting her stuff on the catwalk, made the much anticipated entrance. It never ceased to rivet the boys. Girls were left in limbo; they coveted the aura she so effortlessly exuded; she so effortlessly exuded over ‘their men’.

Any movement saw her figure test the very fabric of the corporate number that hugged her. Baritoned groans were in order.

“Okay guys!”

She so-so restored the order. Senza’s clique – Orion, Tendai, and Vusi – swaggered late into the class young and restless. They were co-owners of an award-winning multi-media company, Phylum, which parlayed into PR for UFS, and a silly all-access rights to each others’ classes.

“I’ll have to take disciplinary action against you boys.”

Her body language said otherwise. When they reached the back of the class, they were too occupied with the lecturer to notice the current state of their friend.

“It’s a Communication class, ma’am.” Said a male voice masked with curled accent for anonymity. “We’re merely demonstrating various non-verbal forms of expressing suppressed, er, impressing upon…”

The class rippled with laughter. Ms. Lo, with indifference and seriousness, chipped in.

“I have something for you.” She said connecting her Tablet to the projector. “An excerpt I’d like us to discuss. By now you all know my number one guilty pleasure – poetry.”

“The name I go by in many circles.” whispered the same male voice.
Laughter.

“Okay, Tendai, ‘mind furnishing the class with details of our trysts?” Only Tendai read the doubledare lurking between the lines. “I want us to discuss the artistic spirit shared between different disciplines, if we may.”

With an air that revealed a bibliophile, and her back against the projected article, she closed her eyes to begin. Her poetic intonations never failed to elicit music from every eardrum within earshot. Instead of beginning her lecture, her forehead gradually creased.

“Has anyone…” she took off her glasses, “Phylum, where is Senza?!”
Along with Tendai, a self professed ‘Cougar Wisperer’, Senza was one of the most unruly of Phylum, and stand-ups were usually bandied between the two. An anomaly all now found strange to have missed.

All eyes found the culprit sobered up at his usual spot. It was only when his name was called that he emerged from under his dark cloud. He tried to seem okay. The corner of his mouth barely relented.

“Senza,” said Ms. Lo, “are you alright?”

“He, uh…drew contrast…he is playing with the light…”

“That’s not what I asked.”

He fell silent. The heavy breathing started.

“Senza!”

His name echoed in the hallway long after he had closed the door behind him.

***

Aikhona, mchana! A faint memory of his grandfather, remarking at the city youth who indifferently drag their feet before an oncoming traffic, yet run for their lives at the sight of anything that bleats, failed to cheer him up this time.

He received middle fingers for his long and loud hooting for his right of way into the Mandela Drive from the long-walking bunch.

Near the Bloemfontein Train Station, his moods were surprisingly accommodative towards taxi-drivers notorious for hogging this section of the town during the rush hour.

Senza’s stay at home mother, Mme Malla, received calls from her daughter’s school. Senza wanted to take her home during school for no apparent reasons, they said. A search party of three white Minis (Phylum) arrived whilst Mme Malla was still on the phone.

She had greyed considerably since the incident, waiting for the day when this would happen. He refused to talk to anyone about it. If anyone even hinted it, he would leave the room.

In the middle of the city laid Naval Hill. It loomed dark and large at dusk. Bloemfontein’s own mini Table Mountain sans Mons Mensae. Besides their conspicuous flat top contours, they are revered for their environmental significance and location; the former for the latter, and vice versa. It’s the very hill where they had spent their time before they got hijacked. He returned there now and then to salvage the now static mirage of their last moments together.

Upon entering the gate of Franklin Game Reserve, Senza downshifted the gears carelessly, “leaning on it” with each bent of the winding route ascending the west side of the Naval Hill. Cruising toward the middle of the hill, the car swaggered along the uneven trail, gently rocking him to and fro as it crushed the gravel below.
Atop the hill, he hastened to the car boot, and reached for his cooler-bag like it was a first-aid kit. The third empty bottle suffered the fate of the first two as he smashed it against the rocks meters away. His trembling hands pushed the cooler-bag and the folded camp-chair aside frantically, and out of the toiletry bag, slowly and deliberately he pulled out a battery powered hair-clipper. In the next moment the hair-clipper whirred like a lawn-mower inside his skull, as dreadlocks fell all around him. By the time he was done, his shaven scalp had a fair share of reddish nicks.

He placed all his deadfall inside the beanie. Now on his knees, he contemplated over them in silence for a good while. He brooded over them with palpable languor, occasionally swaying indecisively like a witch-doctor delirious with herbal incense.

With the hand holding the beanie poised behind in medieval catapult fashion, he cantered sidelong and launched the package in the air with all his might, followed by his blood-curdling scream of someone feeling a spear piercing his stomach.

It landed only a few feet away as if to mock him while he watched on heaving.
For a hill, he could not help but contemplate over its sheer plateau against him and his car. They were but insignificant specks to the world around them. The world could still go on with or without them should they disappear, it seemed.

He was now resolute. A note saying his sorries would do. It was whilst scribbling what would have accompanied his eulogy the very next weekend that a comic relief moment by an unlikely member of Naval Hill’s fauna crashed the outdoor pity party. The ruminating head of a giraffe calf rustled the trees as it craned its long neck on his right. It laboured to spread its fore-legs. Below was an indistinct heap of something it could not resist. In its strained position, its long tongue came in handy. He pitted its handicap. Right then, his knees failed him when it dawned on him what he was about to do.

Beyond the city, the Pelonomi Hospital, dominated the southern skyline and the townships in which it was located. He recalled waking up on a cold canvass soaked with his blood at the very hospital. Writhing in and out of consciousness, all he heard was medical jargon thrown around him. The stretcher busted through the hospital’s swinging doors with him crying out for her. That part his memory did not register.

Staring at the hospital, his bearing took refuge in the distance between Pelonomi and the hill, seeming to lend a modicum of space between him and that fateful night.

A sudden change in temperature and the smell of rain dragged him back to earth. It drizzled and vanished as soon as it came. His descent dragged for a while. Cruising down the main southbound road leading out of the city, other motorists had to repeatedly remind him they too were tax payers.

Light rain poured steadily. Distorted reflections of the street lights melted ghastly onto the beaded windscreen. The wet road hissed at the monotonous hum of the tires slicing through it.

Usually, he avoided the route that passed by Pelonomi. Clutching the steering wheel, he braced himself and ventured in its direction. Inching towards the traffic lights that glowered in red, he picked his mobile phone and turned it on. Missed calls and SMS’s splashed incessantly on the strong glare of the screen.

To put everyone at ease, he instragrammed a photo of the foggy windscreen with a tag ‘shegure’. A Japanese handle, accompanied with dates, replied in Japanese text. It was from his ex-turned-friend, a contemporary dance student, who flew to Japan a weekend before. The resolve between them was not about his unwelcomed Freudian-slips so much as it was about him stuck in a time capsule.

Leaving the traffic lights behind, he dug his eyes with his palm. The windows of the car reflected the cockpit-like dashboard, dimly imposing itself on everything he drove past. The blurry tail-lights of the cars overtaking him appeared to leave splotched trails of blood in their wake. A tinted Gusheshe whizzed passed him accompanied by what sounded like an aqueous heartbeat from a Sonar.

South bound along Dr. Belcher Road leading to Pelonomi Hospital, a distant and yet familiar sound echoed from afar. His ears anticipated a discordant cry of seagulls, and his nose the sea-salt. None came, but that long and doleful tuba-like sound again. It sounded like the horn of a ship, and it was much closer, and as a result louder.

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