long days and nights with the joburg boys

Sometimes its easier to throw your toys and walk against the tide. I had two of my Jozi boys surprise me and hit Slaapstad this weekend. Good to see them. Unfortunately their surprise tactics required that I pick them up at the airport at 23:00 Friday night. Hard to keep things quite if you gotta get the surprisee to get your sorry asseses at the airport midway through his Friday night.....

And it had been a long Friday starting with a team building afternoon that saw circles ran around my still faltering soccer skills. That venue was an old bowling club with bowls green converted to rough pitch and club house to tae kwondo gym. Bizarre. But fun. One skyward shot vaulted the razor fence between pitch and Greenpoint Virgin and very nearly bounced neatly into the open benz convertible cruising by. I'd have loved that.

Not to be out done four other CT venues played their part before we made the airport:

1. Dodgy Kloof bar for jobdowners with Becca sporting her new shoulder scar and Pete pointing out local characters, including John Cleese lookalikes and men with parrots. Hello Polly parrots.

2. Great family pizza restaurant for supper w extras from a Hugh Grant movie and Good Will Hunting; and James swearing excitedly at the call from
the airport two feet away from the 5 year old with her crayons and
paper and the death staring from her mom. Oops.

3. The flash cocktail bar where my shorts and slops where frowned upon in Nigerian.

4. Then Walmer Estate Estate to prep sleeping quarters. Got the notting hill extra to pump the air mattress while I sorted myself out.

Then airport and Joburgers.

Was so good to have those shared history's to banter about and introduce to my local mates. Fun all in all. Had two hours sleep before my soccer tournament in the sun in Athlone but fun. Except the bit where the Big Guy wanted to call his mom at 04:30. Don't ask. I think his mom was as surprised as we were. I've not seen a grown man throw toys like that. Ever.

The baking in Athlone went well and included a run out to Khayelitsha to show our big wigs around. Three months in and I know my way around quite nicely. Could stop and braai Nyama and scoff pap on the sidewalk. Nice to be feeling comfortable.

I'll give this town its summer days. Blazing sun and the darkest green on the mountain as you drive in from the flats. Umi broke through Kloofnek around 15:00 and then drifted to a parking spot half way up the mountain.

You can hear the laughter and humming energy from Clifton 4 from 200m back up the cliff, well before you can see it. Its also so good to have faces I know now, to bump into crowds. From the Hoff directing the 18 year olds to save lives, to the crowds of yuppies under shade. Nice to slowly have a crew building.

Wrapped up with a swim around sunset watching yachts bob from ocean level and I shower and a chat in the Clifton Surf club.

Very cool. The week before I'd lounged with leftest campest afr. crowds and loved it and met a cool jhb couple who'd gotten the cold shoulder at a wedding. Definitely not joburg but not mars either. I like it. And this banter is unlocking some work flow I hope....

guns, arms and heartache...

This morning I realised this blogs gone a wondering...it's supposed to be a about places and instead its about head spaces. On my coffee table here in Slaap Stad, I didn't have one in Joburg, lies a copy of the Design Indaba Mag. In it are 10 pages of Jozi worship. I loved it. I nearly cried. Perhaps I will share some with you.

At the same time I'm loving Sleep Town. It's the combined spinning of new work and new places that make it a little hard to settle but that's what I came here looking for. A space for thoughts and perspective, and those are here in spades too.

For my head there's the realization that even as the city and orgs like mine scramble to make things better we're losing the battle, nothing new. Only now I'm starting to get my head back around the bigger picture...

Here's a quote that's fitting: (It's from a paper by a CT resident about theories of change from a cool as hell community development resource centre)

“My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance.

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are;
a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.”
Rainer Maria Rilke

Dude.

There's heartache but its of the longing that I like. The kind that tugs you forward. Before I puke there's been development of another kind.
My.Fat.Ass.

I've been lugging it to the rough gym in our office block. Yesterday's 90 minute storm looked like this:

1. Wedged into the little change room between Wesley Snipes, senior and junior, I lace up. Looking hard.

2. I punish the cross trainer thing its setting on stupid high for twenty minutes sweating like Sly in the forest while trying to casually watch Super Sport three. Sports fishing in Limpopo some place. Three huge over weight men, one skinny presenter/poplap and a dam of terrified fish. Not entertaining.

3. Crawl across to the treadmill. Casually key in my weight. 90. The
program. Random Pain. The speed. Blade Runner. And hit it for 20
minutes. The first 10 minutes of incline shifting and mat pounding flew
by cause I was trying to outrun the girl next to me. Turns out she was
a guy.

4. Free weights. There's me in my Rwandan soccer shirt nestled between the four biggest francophone Africans on the PLANET. I powered, strained, swore through exercises with dumbbells that made them chuckle while they threw around weights heavier than me. See 3. Messy.

2 more months of this and I'll be Jean Claude Van Stupid. But younger. And lank more witty and intellectual like...