‘Sawubona.’ She is too polite to correct you or break out into paroxysms of mocking laughter, as she should.
‘Can you wrap one up for a takeaway … I’ll eat one here.’
She nods.
‘Any chance of a milk shake?’
‘We have run out of milk, but I can get some from the store.’
‘No, no, don’t bother, a Coke …’
You wait half an hour in a humming under-air-conditioned room. The checked red and white curtains are drawn, and the waitress bustles in the kitchen. Smoke chokes the room, and oil spits. When the order arrives she curtsies, delivers the meal on the tips of her fingers, and retreats.
You feel silly: you have watched American tourists in Australia exclusively frequent McDonalds and KFC, and putter around the Gold Coast as if it were Florida. And here, you suspect, you are moving around in a well-constructed, but poorly imitated Western orbit. So far, not much is different.
How was Africa? Zululand?
Oh, you can hear yourself saying, much the same as here.
The fat oozes from the chips, and you have to wipe your hands on your shorts, as there is no napkin. The burger, a poorly constructed skyscraper of undercooked meat, pickles and onions on a disintegrating white bun, slips and slops over the plate.
‘Wait, I’ll have those. Those are local, aren’t they?’
‘Local?’
You point to a golden doughy plait on the counter under lace and hovering flies.
‘What are they?’
Koeksisters is what they are, but you hear ‘Cook Sister’.
Your stomach regrets eating them as soon as you take the first gooey mouthful. Surely this syrupy, oil-laden heavy dough is not a South African traditional pastry? But as the waitress is watching from behind the bead curtain, you smile and eat the whole thing, nodding. ‘It’s good. Good.’
In Australia, no one leaves a tip at a takeaway. You consider that leaving a tip is a condescending insult that re-installs class hierarchy and power relations. But here, you have been told that it constitutes most, if not all, of the waitress’s wages. You leave the money on the table, but the waitress hides until you are well outside before she clears the table, and then stands by the checkered curtain watching.
Avoid isolated beaches and picnic spots across South Africa. Walking alone anywhere, especially in remote areas, is not advised and hikers should stick to popular trails.
Crowded-Planet (2013): p. 160
Some hours later (there is no need to describe the diarrhoea), you are driving down Msaswe Beach Road, gliding on fine brown sand roads into the high sand dunes, following the signs TO DA BEACH. (No, it doesn’t really say that, but it feels to you as if it should.) The image of the surfboard in the corner of the cottage (and now its manifestation in the boot of the car) has already determined your next move. The dirt road winds through the dunes for a kilometre before opening into an empty car park. You park the car on the sand area under a tree, climb over a dune and spy a deserted beach prostrating itself before the Indian Ocean. A gleaming river on your left is sign-posted Mswaswe River, its brown stream disappearing into the golden sand, and on your right, a mile or so away, another river, or large expanse of water, pools into a gap between the high dunes. You are barefoot; the sand burns into your soles; you have to dance all the way to the sea line.
Mrs Steyn’s wagging finger is not going to deter you. You’re Australian for god’s sake, as everyone keeps reminding you. Run straight into the waves. It’s slimy warm, bitterly salty, rough, and much warmer than the waters off Victoria. Gargle and spit, draw off the energy of the ocean, let the waves toss and pull you into its currents. Surf into the grainy brown sand, again and again, washing the sticky bad faith of the day’s encounters with people.
Celebrate the body.
Celebrate nature.
Celebrate the energy of this symbiotic relationship between the body and the world.
The waves are all dumpers. They pull you into a backwash and hurl you gritty-mouthed onto the ocean floor. You swim as far as you dare beyond the breakers, and then let them roll you back in. The water is murky, and only when you are floating in the calm behind the breakers do you ponder the fact that muddy estuaries make an ideal breeding ground for sharks.
Instantly, the brown water populates itself with dark shapes. The skin of the sea breaks out in dorsal fins knifing towards you; your leg brushes against the hard grey flanks of what can only be a school of Zambezi sharks—Bull sharks as they are known in Australia. In high panic, you strike out for shore but make no headway. And what about riptides, those currents that suck you out to sea instead of towards the shore? You ply your hardest, but underwater currents drag you back further than the waves can propel you forward. Your arms ache, your head throbs and your chest is ablaze. Don’t panic. Swim sideways. Don’t try to confront the current directly. Go around.
You tack sideways out of the sucking current. The dark shapes follow, encircle you. After blind minutes, you catch the surf and, propelled by a large wave which bursts into millions of particles of sand, crash onto the beach. You look back through a star-spinning haze at the sea.
Nothing like a good shark attack to throw you back to your senses.
I must stop seeing myself in the second person. I must stop seeing myself through your eyes, M I must stop seeing my ‘self’ ‘I’ must stop I must I
The dorsal fins pursuing you cut back behind the breakers, not able to come closer. You drag your heavy body onto the shore. The roaring ocean clutches at your feet and draws back with the breath of a million shells and stones and grains of sand, angry that you have got away.
You have been washed up the coast a hundred metres, at the mouth of the estuary of the ever-changing Mswaswe River. You wade across, against the current of a warm, tea-coloured tide, to a lagoon nestling in sand dunes. The sand shimmers, mirages of water stream down them, rubber green Triffids grow out of them. Wind scurries down them and dust devils whirl at their bases. You climb up one of the dunes, and roll down the other side, sticky and granulated with sand, into the lagoon. Lie in the shallow yellow water, and then swim across, slicing the skin of the red-brown depths of the lake with your hands. When you reach the far shore, a green sign with uneven white lettering glints at you. You cannot read it at this distance, so you wade closer.
IT IS DANGEROUS
TO SWIM IN THE LAGOON
BECAUSE OF
SHARKS AND CROCODILES6
6 Saussure states that the relationship between a sign and the real-world thing it denotes is an arbitrary one. There is not a natural relationship between a word and the object it refers to, nor is there a causal relationship between the inherent properties of the object and the nature of the sign used to denote it. The sign relation is dyadic, consisting only of a form of the sign (the signifier) and its meaning (the signified). Saussure saw this relation as being essentially arbitrary, motivated only by social convention.
You pull yourself out of the water, give a quick scout for nobbly crocodile backs, and wonder how far these creatures can track someone on land. You have beached yourself in a mangrove swamp. You trudge through a muddy clearing, and lopsided fiddler crabs scatter to your left and right. Mangrove trees thrust up spiky roots to trip you. Reeds crowd in around you. The smell of the earth is primeval. You have to stamp the ground to clear it of crabs who flee sideways, scuttling away into tennis ball-size holes.
You climb up and leap off a dune and