Loss and Rediscovery

A while ago I snapped my knee. It was in the surf but was in no way heroic. A mistimed floater on a two-foot closeout at Jongens, head over heels and the leg stayed put. A snapped PCL, torn MCL, stretched ACL, a torn medial meniscus and a headache. From Jongens it was a long and painful drive back to Cape Town in the back of a rusted Tazz with blown speakers and no aircon. At sport’s science I was told to forget surfing for the forseasble future and think about surgery instead. And with that, I passed out. Stone cold, like a coward running from reality. When I came to, weak as a newborn child in a thick cold sweat, I realized this was all very real. My next thought was of the new suit I’d just ordered for summer. Bummer.

The operation came and went and I was soon strapped into a full leg cast rendering me more incapacitated than I’d initially expected. Any lingering thoughts of surf were quickly banished as my main challenge became getting out of the house in one piece. My day became littered with the most innocuous of obstacles: Showers, stairs, lavatories, raised curbs and street hawkers who heard me coming a mile off and knew I could not escape. Life, in short, changed.

And the surf, as it always does in those situations, pumped. From my bedroom window I watched the reef fire for two weeks straight. One day it got huge and they were riding big boards through the barrels on the right whilst the spongers were the only ones to tackle the main bowl. Then came the most consistent summer in years, with the Cape copping it’s fair share of media exposure as session after session from ‘down the beach’ plastered the surf sites from which I eventually had to abstain. It was too much. I was in surfing purgertory, and for what? I thought i’d done ok.

So slowly I withdrew from the surf scene. I stopped checking the forecasts, stopped reading the mags, stopped ogling the reef from my window each morning and prepared to tackle life from a new, surfless perspective. I read, I wrote, I researched and planned. I spent weeks tying all the loose ends I’d never attended to and built stronger and firmer relationships with my friends in the charity I run in the Cape townships. I got to grips with the manual settings on my camera, I found an old 8mm and messed around with that, anything to keep my mind busy and off my rapidly atrophying muscles.

When the day came for the cast to come off, I took my first steps under the watchful eye of Bruce the masochist, and I learnt to walk again. It was humbling, time consuming and it provided much amusement to the innocent observer. Life, more than at any other time in my memory, reverted to a study of the minutiae, the building blocks. Walking, twisting, bending; every action took time and consideration and it was a journey full of mishaps and immense satisfaction as the simplest of progressions bought huge relief and reward. I learned a lot.

By March the swells had by in large past and the South East set in to blow the Atlantic flat and False Bay a brown, scummy maelstrom. For all that had passed it seemed fitting that I should come right again, in the death rattle. My first go out was at a glassy but hungover and ramshackle ‘berg, suffering after a 10 day South East binge. I was weak, as were the waves, and I cut a forlorn figure dragging myself to my feet on a big yellow rental, but I was surfing again, performance did not matter; I drew relief from a pure line, joy from simple trim or a lazy glide, the simple things. 

As my strength returned, so my desire to surf increased and I took to the waves with renewed vigour, but with a changed outlook. Conditioned somewhat by my still weakened condition I began riding a single fin that had long been resigned to the back of my quiver. A little bulkier than my other boards it was more forgiving and didn’t need to be worked like a thruster. The ride was pure; one fin, two rails. Once more I found myself returning to the basics, learning to walk; trim, positioning, glide and flow. No heroics, no histrionics, just enjoying the ride for what it was, the pure and unbridled joy of being on a wave. No need to get ahead of myself or overcomplicate, just cruising and enjoying what I had. Simplicity, and it felt right. It felt good.

Out of the water things too had changed. I had become reliable for the first time in years, and with this most simple of virtues I had gained the trust and friendship of my coworkers and friends. Work in the townships picked up a pace and the charity developed dramatically over the course of the four months with new staff, projects, legal structures and funding all coming in. I found new leads for writing and publishing, I started a website, a blog for my photos. I even contemplated my first book, but never quite put pen to paper. And I was satisfied, maybe more so than I had been when I pushed it just a little too far.

My housemate insists this injury was the best thing to have happened to me. My dear housemate is also Irish and gambles for a living but, though I am loathe to admit it, he has a point. Time away brings with it perspective and, though the barren months dragged by, the absence of surf allowed other aspects of life to secure a footing and bloom.

Surfing and the ocean are still very important, once they were everything and they still remain close to it. I missed the ocean, I know that much! But life is better in 3D, it’s so easy to get bogged down. Today surfing fits in rather than taking over and I appreciate the time in the water more for it; just cruising, enjoying the ride and trying not to force it; a simple trim, a pure line rather than breaking my back to break an arc.

Sometimes it takes a nock to bring you round, a break to rediscover, to usher in a new perspective. It’s not always pleasant, but it can be constructive to slow down once in a while and focus on the simple things. 

The Deep

It’s strange, from all those days spent sliding across the ocean’s smooth surface, I’ve never glimpsed the life that unfolds in the void below. In truth I’ve never mustered the courage, and I can credit it to a childhood misfortune, fishing with my father in the north of Scotland and the miraculous resurrection of a seemingly dead trout right next to my foot. Since that day, fish have always had an unsettling presence and I’ve avoided their world whenever possible; I’m easy to spot in the surf, I’m the one with his legs curled awkwardly underneath him who splashes feverishly at the slightest sign of an approaching shoal.

So today feels unnatural at best. The boat is a rib with a metal rail running down the centre onto which we all cling to save being bounced into the frigid waters of the Atlantic as we head out of Hout Bay en route for Duiker Island. If you’ve not heard of Duiker Island you may have heard of Dungeons, where mere mortals ride mountains on rhino chasers as the winter swells come charging out of the deep roaring forties and jack on the shallow reef, home to an enormous colony of seals. Today I am not a surfer, today I am a freediver, and I will be diving in the waters off Duiker island, in a thick wetsuit with a weight belt. Up till this moment, I’ve not even snorkeled.

I am here because of a friend. Hanli is a freediver. She holds records in South Africa. But she is more than just that, she is an adventurer, a free spirit, strong willed but kind hearted and of an infectious enthusiasm for the ocean that keeps her. Hanli also makes good tea, this is important, she has shelves devoted to its various blends and infusions and it was over several cups that she persuaded me that it was time to conquer my fear and discover something new.  He who wakes breathless and sweat sodden after nightmares of swirling baitfish balls. This was her idea, but who was I to say no? The tea was good, and it sounded like an adventure. Something new, something different.

So we meet in the harbour at 10am. Hanli with her bespoke carbon fibre fins, and me, in dilapidated surfing suit and an ad-hoc selection of boots and gloves to protect against the colder waters of the Atlantic.

It’s a bumpy fifteen-minute trip out through the kelp until we arrive at the boiling waters just off Duiker. When dungeons is breaking, this is the graveyard Inside, where fallen surfers and battered jet-skis wash ashore, but today there’s only a whisper of swell on the reef at the back, and the seals are out in force, playing in the waves. Hanli hands me a mask and we fall over the side, into the blue.

Previous excursions under the surface have always remained satisfyingly blurred in the absence of a mask, with the finer details of ocean life rendered blurry and indecipherable, and therefore non-existent to my mind. However through the mask the deep becomes visible for the first time and I make out purple anemones through the flotsam of the disturbed kelp beds. The water flushes cold around my suit as I struggle to bring my breathing under control and relax. Peering beneath the surface, this ocean environment I know and love so well seems strangely foreign. Beside me I feel a reassuring grip as Hanli takes my hand, her hand signal indicates five long breaths, then we’ll be going under. I close my eyes and try to focus as I fill my lungs to what feels like their very limit, and then we dive.

With the assistance of the weight belts we slide through the thick kelp canopy that sits just below the surface and brush aside the vast swathes of deep green to revel a forest of thick stems climbing up from the bottom, swaying eerily on the tide in deathly silence. I feel pressure and equalise for the first time, and with the release comes a wave of sound. I hear the reef crackling below and soon the beat of passing seals. From land they seem so cumbersome, but below they are bright and playful, cart wheeling around us with small echoes of delight, animated and brimming with personality.

I feel the burn in my lungs for the first time, but she leads me on and to the bottom where we sit and watch as light falls in silent shafts from the silhouettes above. The burn grows deeper, I have to leave. I rise slowly, exhaling a stream of bubbles in the silent blue-grey. I break the surface and breath deeply. Overhead the sentinel looms large and I am intently aware of the sound of gulls and crashing surf. The ocean’s surface gleams in the daylight, impenetrable, a marble lid on the world I just left below. To my left I hear the groans of a large male seal as he shuffles awkwardly to mark his territory. I feel a smile on my lips, I want to go back, and I compose myself and prepare to go back under.

I’ve found a new passion. Not merely freediving but the deep. It’s been so close for so long but has always seemed a distant, unreachable and, in many ways, an impersonal space. Like many things that I deemed out of my reach, rendered untouchable by an irrational fear, I experienced it through other mediums; books, television, movies, but it was never a place I thought I’d experience so closely and it was so alien to me that I could never fully understand and appreciate its intricacies and fragility in full. For each brief descent, for each brief glimpse of life below the water, I became increasingly overwhelmed by the volume, complexity, beauty and sheer personality of the world under the surface. I saw it; I understood it and I appreciated it. These days, that’s an important realisation.

Scotland is...

Scotland is....

Smile is updated

You'll see a load of new content, it's all the things i've contributed to various publications and sites in the past, all put into the one place. They are mostly out of sync, but they are all there and labelled for you to read.

From here on, who knows.

Two minutes at the spring

‘Here, I’ll get that for you’

It’s late; the stars have finally pierced Cape Town’s sodium glow. From the outfall pipe comes a steady flow of fresh spring water as it bubbles up in the most unlikely of locations, between gated estates in Cape Town’s southern suburbs. We thought we'd be alone.

The policeman hands down two plastic bottles, both empty. One Coke, one Stoney’s, it’s sweet smell still lingers. He struggles under the weight of his flak jacket and his pistol cuts into his lean waist, his night stick jingles against menacing, slightly rusted cuffs. 

‘It’s ok boss’ he replies

‘I’m not your boss, come, pass them down’

‘Sorry boss, it’s just an expression, you see.'

Politics - South African style

As you head east out of East London on the Eastern Cape of South Africa and rejoin the N2 national highway, you descend through fertile green valleys until you reach the muddy brown waters of the Kei River. A relatively new two lane concrete bridge dwarfs the old rusting iron structure that once served as the single track crossing of the R102, guarded by the now decrepit concrete shell that was the border post between the Eastern Cape and the Transkei. It’s an inauspicious crossing these days, perhaps purposely so, and you barely notice the corroded, ivy encrusted iron fence that used to divide white and black.

The Transkei is one of the Xhosa homelands created by the Apartheid governments who cut up and re-drew the South African map, in so doing relocating millions of black and ‘coloured’ South Africans away from their traditional tribal homelands and into large vacant expanses onto which American style block towns were built and heavy industry moved in. Away from the new towns and tar roads, the old small rural communities remained where the traditional tribal way of life of the generations before was continued with emphasis of self-sufficiency and self-governance; a way of life that still continues today. Exit was not permitted without correct paperwork and ID, to be caught outside the border without sufficient identification meant an immediate return. It was only in 1994 that the border post was decommissioned and movement between the Eastern Cape and Transkei was freely permitted.

It’s election time in South Africa and registration was in early February. Those with ID books signed up at their local offices whilst the many without did not. As you trundle along the N2, joining the dots between the small settlements that scatter the surrounding empty green hills, you pass endless signboards, banners and posters championing the various candidates for whom there is little hope: The ANC have held an unassailable majority since 1994 when Nelson Mandela took over the presidency. His success; in taking an objective view on South Africa and transcending the injustices of the apartheid governments in the name of all South Africans, has not been mirrored by subsequent leaders who have been more inclined to adopt a more hardline approach. The pendulum analogy is a common anxiety and one which many fear will be realised in full should highly controversial ANC Leader and probable election victor Jacob Zuma come to power when the votes are counted in April.

Championed by the ANC as an uncomplicated and passionate man of the people many fear that Zuma, a loyal and aggressive Zulu of proud working class heritage, will continue the descent from the days of Mandela and move South Africa into a new era where politics will once again be used to marginalise rather than unite. New splinter party COPE (Congress of the People), a result of the recent power struggle between Jacob Zuma and former president Thabo Mbeki, and began by former ANC members loyal to Mbeki and Mandela, offer a credible but ultimately unlikely threat as do the DA (Democratic Alliance) who have had a surge in popularity uniting both white and black voters, but it is the ANC who are roundly expected to keep their absolute majority in the April elections.

Leaving the N2 and pointing towards the hills and coast the roads degenerate, soon becoming little more than dust trails between maize fields and small gatherings of green washed rondavels. Children play innocently in the road; the speed and frequency of the passing traffic poses less of a threat than an opportunity to ask for “Sweeeet, sweeeet”. Men in handsomely cobbled uniforms flag passing pick-up’s for lifts as the signboards and posters of the N2 vanish, as does any semblance of the urban environment inland. Life here is viewed from a very different perspective.

Sitting on a hill early one morning, contemplating a surfless day ahead after heavy overnight rains had swollen the rivers sending brown floodwaters sweeping through the line-up, I meet Meniswa. I watch her idle up the hill in the heat and bid her good morning. Though I am sat in boardshorts with surfboard resting across my lap she mentions she is selling beads and asks if I would like to buy some. I pat my empty pockets and apologise but rather than move on as many of the other local craft sellers would, she drops her bag and sits next to me taking in the morning air as we look out across the bay.

She is 36, though she looks younger, and was born and raised in the Transkei. She is one of 18 children who live with their parents in a small cluster of rondavels at the top of the adjacent hill, marked by a small column of chimney smoke rising through the early morning haze. She spends her days making and selling beads, making enough money to buy bread and rice to accompany the Millies (corn) they harvest from the small field at the back of their huts. If she needs extra spending money she will act as a guide to the local Marijuana plantations hidden in the hills. Though she doesn’t smoke it’s an easy way to make a few Rand and she doesn’t mind relieving the eager tourists of money they are only too willing to flutter.

When I ask if she plans to leave the Transkei she says no. This is her life and was the life of her parents, why would she want to change when all she needs is here? I ask about the rest of her family; her brothers work in the mines north of Jo-Burg but Transkei is home and they always return at every occasion to share their money and honour their family - a trait I have found with most working men I have met in the cities. When I ask her of the coming elections she smiles a soft smile and shakes her head but not in disapproval of the question, it’s clear she pays little heed to politics, family comes first and governing is left to the chief. I am suddenly aware that the ideal of ‘home’ here is far stronger than anywhere else I have visited. The conversation ends and she gets up to go leaving me to trudge the puddle strewn mud path back to my hut and contemplate the simple life.

The more you travel in South Africa, the more people you meet, the more places you see, the more that you are confronted by the huge discrepancies not just between rich and poor but the cultural differences that exist between the different tribes, races and societies of the ‘Rainbow Nation’. The complexities of attempting to govern such a diverse population really hits home as you travel from province to province, interchanging between societies each one the polar opposite of the next, the only tangible link being their South African nationality – a concept only really created in 1994. It’s not just a South African issue, but a problem endemic to African politics. How will politicians who have emerged from the poorest backgrounds and with strong tribal heritage put the needs of a nation ahead of their own people? Their people to whom they are deeply loyal and with whom, have suffered at the hands of previous regimes?

Pride has no place in politics, especially here in Africa. As Barrack Obama cited in his inauguration speech, it’s time to look above and beyond the needs of the individual and to act for the common good. This is the challenge that awaits South Africa’s next president, how he goes about this will determine the future of one of the last peaceful democracies on the African continent.

Volcano days

So for six days, Earth spewed it’s guts and extended to us mere mortals a reminder that we are, and always will be, only human.

The cloud’s gradual precipitation across mainland Europe was really a gift, and I wander if in time we’ll come to mourn its passing. In my highly romanticised opinion, it wasn’t simply an inanimate object but a living, breathing, pulsating reminder of our own existence, the unpredictability of life and the beautiful serendipity of chaos. A poke in the ribs as if to say ‘ Don’t take life too seriously, have a few days on me’.

As stranded tourists made the mad dash for Calais, the Navy awaited in it’s own modern day kitsch rendition ofDunkerque. ‘It’s the spirit of the blitz’ some claimed. Mankind was set to be reunited and rekindled in the spirit of love and kinship, if only for a moment. All it takes is a war, or a volcano. ‘Nah, it’s all just an election stunt’, cried the miserablists.

Back in Sweden, the trains were gloriously blocked and the hire cars all vanished. People, people everywhere and not a lift in sight. From a little island retreat in the Stockholm archipelago, I watched the weather drift through the dreaming spires of the old town with visions of Kerouacflittering in the wings as I contemplated a mad dash across a Europe, now littered with legitimate bums. But the days were bathed in warm spring sunshine that were ushering in colour after a heavy winter, so I decided instead to wander the streets and enjoy this little gift of time.

In a tea garden over cakes and pastries, I met Stina who was hosting her radio show - an open mic session for the disabled where the laughs are real and never self-deprecating. It was real life for all that it is and could be, where there were pancakes with blueberry syrup and cream. Free pancakes that buttered smiles all across the room. Then there were the galleries where I discovered Lee Lozano and her enviable collection of phallus’s and choice use of language. I never knew art could be penises and rude words, never were we taught that at school. Maybe I could have made it after all.

And then the snow came and sifted through the cobbled streets. And with the flurries came Gordana, the Romanian with the kaleidoscope eyes that took me back to the streets of my childhood flicking marbles in the gutter. She took me to a vegetarian café full of arty types. We walked the back streets where she told me of her homeland and the ogre count Dracu who impaled criminals on the street for all to see, from where Bram Stoker drew some inspiration for his Dracula. And somewhere in the cold, a little spark and a memory of tenderness as she held my arm, and I willed the eruptions to continue long into the spring.

And then the cloud shrivelled and we parted ways. The televisions celebrated ‘a swift resumption of normal service’. There were cheers from industry types, ‘hey, we can make money again!’. A swift resumption of routine, a swift return to normality. One of the seats on the flight was mine, and I had to take it, as for me like everyone else, normal life waited. What a downer.

It felt as though for a little while the world woke up from the deepest of slumbers, and we opened our eyes to the skies and our hearts to one and other. For the briefest of moments, we were all alive and well and open to the wonders of the world. And it felt good.

But tomorrow won’t be like today. It’ll be back to reality, and I’ll miss the volcano.

Come fly with me

It (is) the longing, romantic, reasonless, which lies deep in the heart of most Englishmen, to shun the celebrated spectacles of the tourist and without any concern with science or politics or commerce, simply to set their feet where few civilised feet have trod.' - Evelyn Waugh, preface for A short walk in the Hindu Kushby Eric Newby.

I turn the page and glance around the cabin, now dimly lit as we drift slowly into the night that’s been creeping in from the east. Below, the dry folds of the Kalahari have vanished amid mists of high cloud, so I settle into my seat and read on.

When I was a kid, we often travelled by train. I remember revelling in the journey, becoming lost as we crossed into the wilderness between civilisations and immersed in the transition of countryside and culture, never once stopping to read, I hated to read, just staring out of the window as the world streamed past all blurry, longing to be lost. Then we flew, and it was cattle class all the way. Again, I never read, just watched TV. First on the big fold down screens, then on a Virgin flight in the early nineties we discovered the mini TVs. So it was TV and video games whist we sped across the world below until we were served our destination. For all those days in cattle class, I longed to recapture the romance of the train. I longed to be lost again. So today was a little fillip, a testament to one of those old adages.

Two months in a cast after a dislocated knee had been pretty tedious but in my pocket lay consolation. For years, I’ve been crammed and packed into the cheap seats but today I board the plane and turn… left, to the front, business class with torn canvas shoes, missing laces cobbled with ribbon, salt-encrusted shorts and a sun bleached t-shirt.

“Sir,” she said with a smile. “We are delighted to offer you an upgrade.”

I’ve never been upgraded, let alone called ‘Sir’. I could have kissed her.

I should have kissed her.

Regrets soon pass with a champagne welcome. And for the first time, I’m unprepared for take off, engrossed in the orgy of in-flight entertainment in my own personal lounge bed-cum-home cinema; an unaccompanied minor at the age of 28. The engines roar and we are airborne.

The south easterly has blown away the clouds and Cape Town is visible in the evening blue skies. False Bay wraps away to the right, thousands of feet below us as we climb higher and head north, into the Karoo and beyond, headed east out of Africa towards the Middle East. The engines fade and the cabin is wrapped in the warm hiss of passing air torrents. To the west, the sun is beginning to set and the horizon is glazed in deep pastels. Below is Africa: huge, empty and barren. At first, there was Cape Town then mountain passes and fertile valleys until soon the folds and contours submerge amidst the browns of the Great Plains, and all that is visible is a great and empty nothingness. Small dirt roads alongside twisted river valleys lead to lonely and distant farms. Across the plains stretch majestic empty roads, straight for as far as the eye can see, linking nothing to nobody until the fields grow ten fold and giant crop circles, irrigated green against the dirty brown, come hulking into view. And there arrives Bloemfontein and then Johannesburg, out of the desert as we trace a lonely white line overhead. The dark fills in from the east and we pick our way through flashing thunderheads, allowing me to settle back into my seat, giddy and revelling once more in the romance of travel, air travel, at last after all those cattle class false starts.

But as I looked around, I was alone. As I sat fixed to my oversized window pane, drinking in the surrounds, plotting adventure, sipping my fresh pressed mango juice and nibbling my salmon canapés, the romance of air travel was alive and well. But all about, privacy screens had been erected, noise blocking head-sets snapped on, TV’s blurred and that same romance flowed out of the cabin like the expensive booze being guzzled down by the half-wasted clientele.

Is the size and beauty of the world below no longer enough to draw us from our little business bubbles? Or have we become lost in the little dainty pleasures? What happens to that sense of wander we have when we are kids? I wonder where we lose it; I wonder where it goes. But I find it as I travel, so I suppose that’s why I go. It’ll be cattle class next time, from my business class bubble.

Never lose your sense of wander, somebody once sang.

Localism?

Out beyond the kelp beds, there’s a bunch of surfers. So tightly packed are they that you can only estimate their numbers. Black wetsuits morph into one and other as the pack bobs over the incoming swells. Occasionally one peels away, paddles hard as the swell draws off the reef and drops behind the emerald curtain, emerging some 20 metres down the line in a shower of spit and spray as the wave exhales the last of its energy into the cool morning air.

Standing in the car park, bare foot amongst the grit and glass and looking out onto the reef, I start to feel the burn in my stomach. I want one of those.

The pack are inseparable in their dark wetsuits but on occasion, it’s possible to pick the odd white face as they turn to shore, distinguishable beneath the veil of a neoprene hood. The minutes tick by and soon more faces turn shoreward, alerted by the presence of another somewhere on the beach, eager to paddle out and swell the ranks. Soon all eyes are on me and, standing some 100 metres away on the shore, I feel the weight of their gaze and wander if I really want to paddle out.

As another set approaches, the faces turn, the water recedes as the swells draw close and soon three perfect barrels peel off, each with a surfer perched eagerly at its mouth. My feet are no longer my own as they carry me over the rocks and into the channel. All the while, I remain transfixed by the perfect waves in front of me. My gaze follows each one from start to finish as I stroke onwards towards the pack.

The set passes and with it, I emerge from my trance and into the present. In my fixation, I forgot about the pack outside and soon I become intensely aware that at least 14 sets of eyes are following my every paddle, analysing and dissecting every last movement I make as they try to assess my place in their line-up. It’s uncomfortable and awkward but I can’t turn back. I made my decision and my actions from here will determine as to how successful this surf will be. My fate is my own.

The take off area is minute and we’re packed in tight. Rails bump, feet tangle, leashes snare. It’s uncomfortable, unnatural and the inconsistent sets exacerbate the problems as we jostle over the three waves that come our way every so often. Everyone knows each other. Nobody knows me. There’s little eye contact but plenty of sideways glances and half smiles. Jokes I don’t understand, everyone laughs as I smile awkwardly. These are a tight knit crew with even tighter cliques sewn into the already complex patchwork. The youngest can’t be more than 12; the oldest must be towards 50. There’s a history here and I’m not part of it. I shouldn’t be here. But then the set pulls through and I can’t bring myself to leave until I’ve had just one shot at that barrel.

Several sets and a little small talk pass. My confidence grows and a smaller set approaches.

“Go man, go!” someone says among the crowd.

I put my head down and paddle, eyes fixed on the water ahead of me as it begins to draw off the reef. The ocean begins to warp around the shallow rock, visible beneath the surface, covered in barnacles and disconcertingly close. I paddle hard as the wave begins to grow, down the line the wall stands up and horseshoes as the bottom begins to drop. I pop, grab my rail and pray, freefalling to the bottom and grasping for the wall with my free hand as I feel my fins bite and I guess at a line. The wave curls over my head and I’m enveloped by a soft roar. The light recedes and the moist air is thick with water droplets until suddenly I am in the channel. The crowd is now distant, I am alone in a moment of euphoria with a barrel under my belt at last. I paddle back slowly, with more confidence, enjoying the moment.

I approach the pack once more, once again their stares have followed me back but this time I am happy to meet them. But still something feels off. One by one they turn to face the horizon, all except one, who fixes me. Once more I feel awkward.

“A fun little one,” I offer.

“Yeah?” comes the reply.

There’s muffled laughter from the pack and I feel my face begin to flush.“Try that again and see what happens,” he follows up.

More laughter from the pack and once again, I feel the burn of their stares on my back as I lower my head and offer an apology. But before I finish talking, he’s looking back out to sea. I’d dropped in, and on my first wave. As I concentrated on catching the wave, I never even saw him. I drift slowly to the outside of the pack and gingerly paddle in.

Not long after that experience, I returned to the reef. It was mid-week, inconsistent as ever but a good size when the waves came. We were a small crew, no more than four and we surfed in rotation and shared plenty of waves. As the schools finished, the crowd grew so I decided to take one last wave and head in. I turned to paddle, popped, grabbed my rail and got dropped in on. The barrel engulfed me and sent me spinning over the reef, bouncing a couple of times before emerging in the wash with two fresh urchin spines in my foot and two more waves to negotiate on the dry shallow slab before I could make my way to the channel and safety. I never saw the perpetrator, only the certain folding on my head and the reef lurking hungrily beneath the shallow surface.

Propped against the car, wrapped in a towel and hoodie and waiting for the warmth to return to my bones, I gathered my thoughts and related this experience to my last. When I’d last left the water, I’d bemoaned the cliquey attitude of the locals, though perhaps more out of my own embarrassment and ignorance of the wave and its dedicated crew. But now, standing with urchins in my toe, I could understand.

When I dropped in, I was challenged, and rightly so. In a wave of consequence such as this, I’d put someone else in harms way as I escaped untouched. Though I’d broken the rules, I had, more importantly, put someone else at great danger. Luckily on that occasion, there were no further repercussions. We both escaped unscathed. And it soon became clear that his challenge was less an act of aggression than it was a simple warning. Localism of a sort I guess, but necessary none the less.

There are waves out there that can do more damage to you than the crowds that invade them. And these waves need marshalling to avoid serious injuries or worse. That these marshalls are the ones that surf the wave day in and day out, that know the place inside out and that have put their time in, waited on the shoulder in the howling wind and rain, and deserve the good sets when they come, seems only natural.

Striking the right balance, however, between marshalling and intimidating is never easy. You could look at localism as just another simple analogy that can be extended far beyond surfing and into almost any realm of human existence. It’s a sad facet of human nature that power corrupts, and we see it on a daily basis. Simple tales of those that fought the long hard road to the top and once there used their influence to plunder their own for all they could, to the benefit of themselves and their immediate entourage.

As surfers though, and more specifically as locals, there is an opportunity to set the right example on our own doorsteps and practice what we preach. On a small scale, through the local surfers associations and organisations across the world, it’s possible to enforce the rules evenly and fairly. It’s possible to succeed in governing without corruption where others have failed.

It’s a minute step but it’s got to start somewhere. All you can do is try.

Soetwater revisited

July 2008 seems like a long time ago. I’d just landed back in South Africa off the back of disturbing images appearing all over the news. Townships were ablaze and refugee camps were springing all over the country as the local population rose up against the foreign national community in what has become known as The Xenophobia Riots.  I visited a couple of the camps and met some of the locals, before bidding my farewells and leaving for the coast and 18 months worth of traveling. I never expected to return to the camps as I expected the situation to right itself in due course.

So today there is a grim sense of déjà vu as I pick my way through the sand drifts on a lonely road somewhere between the sprawling townships of the Cape Flats and the endless beachfront of False Bay. I am alone and feel slightly apprehensive, as I am not sure what lies at the end of the path. It’s hot too: boiling hot. I drive in just a pair of shorts and feel more than a little conspicuous. A wrong turn has already taken me into a rutted dead where I had struggled to escape the clutches of the deep dirt and sand, the screeching engine drawing a couple of bedraggled onlookers from the surrounding shacks.

I am headed to the Bluewater camp. It the area that the Somalis I visited in July 2008 were moved along to, having previously sheltered in the lee of the Slangkop lighthouse towards the oceanside hamlet of Kommetjie. Of the three thousand or so I visited then, six hundred still remain. I recognise the tents as I pull up towards the wire gate. There’s nobody around but as I lean on the gate and it creaks slightly ajar, a man springs to and asks me my business. It’s eerily quiet and the exchange draws interest from tents close by.

“Where is your pass?”

“I have no pass,” I reply, patting my pockets.

“You must go.”

But I’m in no mood to leave so I press him for some answers. Who brings food? Is the government helping? What’s going to happen? The government were thwarted on numerous occasions in 2009 when attempting to evict the remaining refugees. Are they still pursuing this? But he offers nothing.

“Do you think this is fair?” is my last question.

“No,” is the response I get.

So I trudge back to my car, along the doubled-up wire fence perimeter and in doing so, I catch the eye of a couple of men idling by their white UN-embossed tent. I smile and they smile back. They come over and we chat a while. Their names are Hassan and Ali and they come from Tanzania. Ali speaks little English so I talk mostly to Hassan, who speaks it fluently.

Their story is similar to those I heard back in 2008. They both ran small businesses that were looted and burned in the riots. They fled the townships and fear to return. They can’t return home to Tanzania for differing reasons. Hassan’s father was killed and their family home burned down for his father’s political allegiances. Death surely awaits if he returns. Ali remains silent all the while, shaking his head softly. The UN came, took their details, their phone numbers and left. They’ve heard nothing since. They receive food now and again from local NGOs but the Metro police have taken to blocking food parcels in an attempt to drive the refugees away. There is no running water, no power despite the power lines that hang mockingly overhead and no sanitation. One NGO worker I met later in town told me how many survive on the rats that inhabit the nearby dunes. They are cooked over the fires, the only source of energy in this almost primeval camp.

“People didn’t even live like this 2,000 years ago,” says Hassan.

Hassan tells me he is free to leave if he wants but recounts how the last time he went to Khayaleitsha, the nearest township, he was singled out immediately as a kwri-kwri(foreigner) and robbed. He went to the police station but the officer on charge waved him away as he tried to give his statement. If he has rights, it seems the government has long since written them off.

“Only God can punish us”, he says. “But the government wants to play God.”

Time passes by slowly here but life goes on regardless. There have been several births in Bluewater but medical aid is short in coming. Newborn babies have been delivered in the dust whilst sick and ailing patients are afforded little quarter, instead ushered to the city healthcare clinics, which are all but out of reach.

“It’s a miracle, there have been no deaths here, people here bounce,” Hassan says with a melancholy smile.

As before, conversation dwindles and I bid my farewells, exchanging a bit of airtime with Hassan so he can call friends on the ‘outside’. As I drive home, I am humbled by the circumstances these people face. I’m also shocked that the government seeks to wash their hands of the situation through sheer neglect. I think where I was in July 2008 and just how long they’ve been here. More than anything, I feel helpless to make any inroads as it’s being made all but impossible in an attempt to force the last remaining families out, bar telling their story. So here it is.

When I last visited the camps in 2008, there seemed little hope. The refugees were stuck in an impasse between a government unwilling to repatriate and a UN unable to operate. Again it seems so. True, many others have been reintegrated to the townships but personal experience of those that I see day-to-day in my township workplace say they are still harassed, still not welcomed and barely tolerated. Simply kwri-kwri.

It’s an embarrassment for a city expectant of the World Cup in just a few short months, and it will be interesting to see what happens. If evicted, Hassan says he will take to the streets, he’ll never return to the townships. What the hordes of tourists will make of it all, who knows. As to whether they will even know about it, again, is anyone’s guess.

But this is Africa and everyone here has a story. So if you’re coming down here in June, come with an open mind, an open heart and maybe you can make a difference.

Mini-World Cup

There are around 300 kids convened in a long line by the entrance to Ocean View township. They are gathered around banners and brass bands and wearing their team colours as they prepare to march along the streets and inject some colour to the downbeat concrete housing blocks. There’s kids from all over and with a carfeul listen it’s possible to pick out Afrikaans, Twsana, Xhosa and English being spoken - just four of the 11 indigenous languages to South Africa. Around the kids, there are adults fussing and cameras clicking as the procession prepares to set off through the pot-holed streets and ultimately to the civic centre where the draw for the Mini World Cup will take place.

Today is the launch day of the Mini World Cup, a street football tournament convened by the Democratic Alliance, the Western Cape’s provincial government, in an effort to harness the positivity around June’s big kick-off and unite the people of one of Cape Town’s most disaffected townships. Ocean View was created in the 1960s as part of the Group Areas Act and became home to the ‘coloured’ inhabitants of the ‘white only’ communities of Simon’s Town, Fishoek and Noordhoek, as they were forcefully evicted. Today it houses 30,000 people and is listed as having the second worst drugs problem in the Western Cape.

The street football tournament comprises teams from three surrounding townships. The ‘coloured’ townships of Ocean View and Da Gama Park, and Masiphumelele whose 25,000 ‘black’ inhabitants are part of one of South Africa’s largest tribes, the Xhosa.

It’s around midday and the summer wind is pumping, whipping dust from the parched surrounding scrubland through the concrete streets. As the squalls pull through, the kids shelter their eyes as they stand milling idly in their groups, until the drummer initiates a beat and the whole area is suddenly drenched in colour and song. The groups merge as one and the procession lurches off drawing spectators from every nook. The young ones can’t be more than five, and they trail the elders clinging onto fingers and clambering onto shoulders as the procession gathers a pace.

They pass the old concrete housing blocks strung out between spider webs of washing lines, the newer private concrete builds, the concrete schools, the concrete library, the concrete community centre and eventually wind to a halt by the tin shed civic centre. The procession draws to a halt and the line becomes a scrum of bodies gathered around the band as dance circles open up to rapturous applause, and the drum beat quickens.

A programme of events is handed around. The civic centre will be the home for the draw, where the 32 teams will each be designated a group and a country which they will represent. The matches begin in a couple of weeks, and run over a period of six weeks.

The hall is hot and the congregation of coaches, kids and organisers glistens with a thin film of sweat. The heavy mesh wire on the windows prevents any breeze penetrating inside. As per the programme, the meeting kicks off in prayer, but the fervour of the pastor is lost amid the feedback from the monophone amp that sits next to the oversized Yamaha keyboard that pumps out the pre-programmed drum beats and the odd saxophone solo. Though his musings are mostly unintelligible, the hallelujahs are easily distinguishable from the fuzz and greeted with increasing rapture. Next up, in a move away from the scheduled address from the local councillor who is away ‘because of circumstances’, the keyboard is reprogrammed and there begins a very formal rendition of the South African national anthem. Halfway through, the speakers give out only to be quickly replaced by a drumbeat, all formalities are ditched and soon the anthem gets a motown-cum-gospel makeover. As the congregation gathers it’s collective breath, a young girl graces the stage and begins her best Brandy impersonation. Her warbling is heartfelt and the crowd drawn in till a child bursts in from outside and the belch of his vuvuzela horn rather spoils the moment as the room falls over itself in laughter.

The show moves on. The programme seems to have gone awry. The police address was meant to be now, but there’s a rapper on stage. A botched job’s been done on the speaker and the rapper does his best to fuse his gutteral Afrikaans with the 1980s Yamaha beat. It’s all gone a bit wrong and there's a distinct flavour of South Africa’s Got Talent on a bad trip, until the compere restores some semblance of order and calls the coaches on stage for the draw.

From two empty five-litre ice cream tubs the balls are drawn. The compere works his was through the line-up until none remain. The coaches leave the stage save for two whose teams have still not been drawn. There’s a quick scramble and much muffled conversation over the mic, and soon it’s all rectified. The crowd look on patiently, or impassively, despite the heat.

It ends with another heartfelt address. The lady’s name is lost in feedback and her words are consumed by the blown speaker. Instead, the congregation follow through her passionate gestures. However, as she draws to a close, the words ‘there was hope, there is hope and there shall be hope’ are clear and unmistakeable. Rapturous applause flows.

The hall empties into the baking courtyard where there’s a friendly netball match under way. The local police chief is offering advice to the coaches about how to tackle the drugs issue.

“We need to take a stand otherwise we’re going to sit with a broken community…. It’s all about the children and we salute you for taking a stand. Sport is one of the most powerful tools for bringing people together,” he says.

As a first taste for the pride and the passion of the South African townships, it looks like this June is going to be a lot of fun.

Money and Stadiums Galore

Football: the beautiful game, the people’s game, the language spoken by the world over.

Football, as FIFA would have you believe, has the power to unite, to challenge and to change. And so the World Cup is coming to Africa for the first time and, at last, African football will have its day. All under the glorious guidance of Sepp Blatter and his visionaries at FIFA…..

I’m sitting in traffic around Green Point, Cape Town, site of the new multi-billion rand project and one of five brand new stadia being built for 2010. Five more stadia across the country are undergoing major upgrades and the total cost will be somewhere around 9bn rand to be split between government, city and regional councils, the private sector and therefore, the good old taxpayer. Or those that actually pay their tax.

Sitting in the blazing sunshine, going nowhere fast as road workers beaver away about me trying to complete the complex new road system deemed necessary to bring the 65,000 supporters to this secluded enclave of Cape Town, it seems entirely unnecessary and a complete waste of valuable time and money.

Cape Town already has the 45,000 capacity Newlands stadium (built for the 1995 Rugby World Cup) and the city recently completed a 322m rand facelift of the purpose built football stadium at Athlone, specifically for 2010. Given that this is an African World Cup and FIFA wants to embrace the grass roots feel of African ‘soccer’, both stadiums are more than ample to host a quarter or semi-final. But both have been given status as mere ‘training grounds’ and expensive training grounds at that. So why then the need to splash out 4.3bn rand on a stadium that will become obsolete once the tournament has ended?

The issue goes back to 2005, when FIFA delegates arrived in the Cape to check out potential grounds to play host to group, second stage and final stage games. FIFA had earmarked Cape Town as a prime location with it’s obvious marketing and advertising potential. They spelled out the benefits of hosting high profile games in no uncertain terms to the city council before, as top SA newspaper The Mail & Guardian reports, rejecting the Athlone site on the grounds of the unsightly low income housing that forms its backdrop.

"A billion television viewers don’t want to see shacks and poverty on this scale" one delegate is alleged to have said.

For the 65,000 plus fans flying to the Cape, this is exactly the site that will greet them, as Cape Town International sits between two of the largest informal settlements in South Africa. Yet FIFA earmarked Green Point as their ‘preferred site’. They wanted the wealthy high-rise flats, the waterfront location and Table Mountain in the background, not that Newlands stadium doesn’t boast stunning views, and not a shack in site to offend the eye. And Cape Town wanted the high-profile matches.

So 4.3bn rand that could have been spent alleviating poverty, one of many mission statements banded about by FIFA prior to kick off next June, has been spent on a soon to be redundant stadium. All in the name of marketing. Good one. I wander if Blatter and his cronies have spent a winter in Cape Town, you’ll never even see the mountain. It’ll be lost amidst rainstorms and howling north westerly squalls.

So next June, when you tune your TV into one of the many channels that will be blurting out the ‘beautiful game’ amidst ads and sound bites, spare a thought for the millions in the shacks you won’t see. Spare a thought for the local businesses that will fall foul of the sales and advertising exclusion zones around all World Cup venues retained exclusively for FIFA-endorsed companies, many of whom have no business here in Africa. Yet.

Spare a thought for the street kids that are being rounded up and dumped at the city limits by the metro police. NGO’s such as the highly respected Umthombo Organisation in Durban have reported on metro police dumping street children at city limits prior to FIFA inspections and there are reports of tented compounds in the countryside being set up during the World Cup to keep the street children hidden from the cameras. So spare a thought for these individuals, and then have a think as to exactly what FIFA are up to and where their true motivations lie.

Football is no longer the beautiful game but about the marketing potential and moneymaking spin offs. The football and the footballers and really just pawns in the middle of an otherwise multi-billion pound industry with as little soul as the people that drive it.

It begs the question why FIFA chose Africa in the first place. Any semblance of the grass roots tournament they initially romanticised about is well and truly gone and all we seem to be left with is an airbrushed makeover of a continent in need, for the advertisers to drape their banners over. And when it’s over, all that will be left are shells of multi-billion rand stadiums with nothing to fill them.

Don’t get me wrong. If you are a football fan you have every reason to be excited. South Africa is a wonderful country full of passion and energy, and in South Africa the World Cup has found a good home. I have every hope that it will be a spectacular success, in spite of FIFA. And I have every hope that the plaudits after will go to South Africa and its people. I just take issue with the blatant profiteering of an association that should know better.

But then look at football today and the machine they’ve created.

But then nothing’s certain down here. And maybe Africa will win the day after all. And Blatter will whimper on home to his holiday mansion with his tail firmly between his legs.

Crime Sucks

Crime sucks

September 18, 2009 | Words By: Tim

Crime sucks. Unless, that is, you’re a criminal. In which case you’re just another coward.
Being a victim of crime is debilitating, humiliating (when you’re left on the roadside with nothing but a towel and damp wetsuit) and mind-numbingly infuriating as you trace back through all the variables that put you in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Here’s my story. Arrive at the beach on a Saturday evening, day after my birthday. The waves are small and perfect, the sun is low so the white sand sparkles all iridescent in the early evening light. It’s pretty as a picture so I pull up, call a friend to share something beautiful, sling on a suit and run down. I put the key in my wetsuit pocket, chuck my clothes in the back and hide the immobiliser and house keys under the mat in the boot. There are loads of cars about but I learned that lesson a few years back. The surf is fun; it’s a weekend so there are lots of characters and a cool crew of dads with their young kids out. It’s fun and free and we surf with smiles. Then I catch a long wave and the paddle back out looks a long way, so I go in.

I walk back to my car and pass one of the dads. He gives me a smile and hello – I smile back. His is a familiar English accent; I think of home just briefly. I open the boot, grab a towel, slide my board in and dry off. But the bonnet’s off the latch and looks a bit skew. And the driver’s door is unlocked. Did I unlock it? I can’t remember. The glove box is open; that’s strange… and where are my trousers? It takes a few seconds, I check and recheck. Trousers are still gone, and with them my wallet, phone, credit cards… And the keys from the boot: house keys, gate keys immobiliser. And my iPod. My precious iPod with my deliberately obscure and obsessively manicured record collection gone, with no back-up. And my jacket, my favourite jacket. My one and only brush with fashion, gone. I didn’t even need it today – it’s a balmy winter’s afternoon and everyone’s wearing shorts.

OK, think.

Breathe.

Cards: whatever, take ’em, they’re all maxed out anyway. And the phone, it’s a nuisance and falling to pieces. But my jacket and iPod – they were mine, me.

And then the reality kicks in. The immobiliser was on those keys. I can’t drive; I’m stuck here. And even if I could, my house keys are gone so I can’t get into my home. I don’t have spares. It’s late and a weekend, and with my phone I’ve lost my landlady’s number so I can’t even call from a borrowed cell. I have no trousers. I am stuck in t-shirt and towel. And it’s getting dark. Laugh or cry? Laugh first, cry later.

So I walk back to the father, with a smile. His name is James. He’s from the UK but now lives in Hout Bay with his two young kids, both of whom surf far too well, and he helps me out, for which I will be forever grateful. That was Saturday night, now it’s Sunday and I am home at last. My cards cancelled, car towed to a garage, house re-opened and in mourning for the iPod and jacket: South African radio sucks, like salt in a fresh wound. It’s been a while since I was on the receiving end of crime and it’s been a lesson.

Like it or not we need each other. Be it your friend or your total stranger, at some point we will need each other’s help. But for the kindness and generosity of James and his family, I would have been sleeping in my car that night, far from home and very much at risk. To James I was a total stranger. In the water, as pathetic as it sounds, James was another surfer; competition amidst the crowd and, as is the norm at most surfing beaches, we hardly even interacted. Yet as we drove from the beach to his house, where he poured me a glass of wine, leant me his cell phone to call the UK to cancel my cards and drove me the 20 minutes back home, I found we shared a lot in common. It seems so sad we never interact more with one and other and instead choose the path of least resistance, because for the most part we want the same thing.

And the second lesson: crime has a terrible habit of polarising opinion. Victims of crime often become embittered and resentful towards the perpetrator and, in a country with a history as divisive as South Africa, this can only be a dangerous thing. But every country has its minorities, fundamentalists and fanatics and South Africa is by no means a unique example.

Just after James had dropped me off at home I walked to a pay phone to make a quick call to a friend. We talked for a while on the petty change I had left in my pocket before I walked back. As I neared my front door a dishevelled looking man in a torn overcoat approached me. I became unusually concerned. He was an older looking man and I had no need to be worried, but as I passed I bowed my head, doing my best to ignore him. As we passed I lifted my gaze and our eyes met briefly. He said nothing, merely fixed me with a soft smile and walked by. He asked for nothing, and nothing about his body language insinuated that he was after anything; it was a genuine smile to me, the complete stranger showing no interest whatsoever. I walked on, stopped, considered a second before turning and giving him my last 5 bucks. He was surprised and thanked me. I could easily have lumped him in with the same thieves who had broken into my car and stolen all my possessions, leaving me here on the street. Just vented my anger on him and continued. But then where’s the logic in that? That’s not how it works.

No matter who you are and how much you like to think you can rely on yourself, you will one day need someone’s assistance. One day you will be alone and you will need help from the person you least expect. And in that measure, we are all equal, we will all need one and other one-day. I think back to my years at Uni studying French philosophy (every bit is dull as it sounds). Reading about how in others we see our own failures and insecurities, and that in them we find only weakness; that alone we are strong and free. It’s a load of rubbish.

Alone you become isolated, bitter and jaded. We are good people, for the most part, and by acting together we can do more than going it alone. Compassion can go further than contempt, and empathy further than arrogance. It’s not all about an altruistic trip nor a drive for selflessness, it’s about treating others as you’d like to be treated yourself and having the balls to show restraint and common sense when you get burned. It’s just common sense in an age where we’ve been over run by histrionic and reactionary media, an age where we’re loosing a grip on perspective.

Crime’s always been there. And it sucks, it always has. But the good outnumber the bad and together we’ll be stronger, if we’d only just pull together more often.