Chapter Two

This entry ought to be an account of the events that brought me finally to the game, but once again, events have overtaken my ability to chronicle them. Last night I had the privilege of witnessing a ceremony of spirit possession and prophecy in the Shona tradition. I had spent the day wandering Johannesburg in the company of my recently acquainted friends because the one bus that hadn’t left for Maputo by the time I got to the station was already full.

I began the day in a plaza called Gandhi Square, after the Indian revolutionary who had spent his early legal career in South Africa (I think that’s all accurate). There was a coffee shop I’d been to the day before where the serving girls were friendly (NO, it’s not like that) and I figured they could point me to a bookstore as I’ve forgotten to bring anything to read. First, I finished my entry for the game at a pizza place (Debonair’s, it’s a local chain) and then I headed over. The place is called Urban Coffee or Urban Café, I can’t remember, and it’s the only place on the entire continent, as far as I can tell, that has public electrical outlets for the clientele. Anyways, something about Africans is that they always want to show you the way, no mere bad directions will do, they’re gonna come get lost with you.

So while I wait for the server girl, who’s just closing the shop, I chat with her boss, a beautiful black woman (here, they’d call her colored, ‘cause she’s clearly mixed race somewhere back). Anyways, she’s just opened the place three weeks ago and we’re chatting, when her friend walks in, a kooky, Professor Trelawny type who tells her friend she needs more African styling in her place (she’s an interior decorator). I assure her it looks great, all it needs is a space heater until she socks away enough for a real system.

Why am I telling you this? No good reason actually, it was just a pleasant hour and this is a journal.

Anyway, the girl takes me to a bookstore specializing in textbooks, tells me it’s too late to find another one on a Saturday, so she commences to monopolize my afternoon. Now don’t get me wrong, I had fun, met a friend of hers at a dark bar with loud DJ music and quite a crowd for a Saturday at two. She says in SA they literally just party all weekend in the bars and seems amused that we prefer to relax at home until nightfall. Anyways, she doesn’t seem to feel too comfortable about my safety there, so we begin bouncing around, she and her friend showing me the inns and outs (how’s that saying actually go?) of a neighborhood called Hillbrow, just outside the CBD, Central Business District. Long story short, (too late!) I get picked up at a McDonald’s on Gandhi Square at 6:30 and I’m asleep in bed at the school by 8:00.

I wake up to the sound of drums and choral music at probably midnight. At first, I think it’s the CD player (yeah, primitive, right?) that my host leaves on with a Luther Vandross album to go to sleep to. It’s clearly not Luther Vandross playing, but I figure he must have changed it. Later, I wake and think perhaps some people must be having a drum circle and party upstairs, where I know some other guys sleep. I check my phone which, thankfully, I remembered to plug in overnight. It’s fully charged. Its 4:30 pm, Pacific Time; 1:30 in the morning. I’m awake, and its beautiful music, so I switch on my voice notes recorder.

The first song lasts for ten minutes and I don’t want to stop recording to check if its working until it’s over. When it ends, I take a listen, but its seems like the microphone is only catching the very loudest sounds. I’m fully awake now. I decide to go looking for the party. Why not?

I get out into the hallway and realize that the music is coming from the classroom next door. There are about twenty people, mostly women, wrapped in painted cloth and western coats, many with leggings or jeans on underneath. It was a strange scene, and for much of the next three hours, I would be saying to myself again and again that there was a part of this scene that was both ridiculous and absurd, and another part that was completely sane and kind of otherworldly holy or sacred.

They were standing around in a circle, singing and dancing, and a couple of women were banging the wooden backs of erasers against the wooden part of a push broom like clavés. A couple of women come over to the doorway and I half gesture, half speak to ask if would be alright if I recorded them on my phone. They nod yes and slowly edge back into the group.

For the next half hour I filmed from the doorway as they danced and stomped and sang. At one point, a man holding two mallets and an animal hair whisk fell to shaking and shivering on the carpet and another, a woman, began moaning and groaning, eventually dropping to the floor and rolling around while the others continued singing around them. Eventually they all sat down and, since it didn’t seem appropriate for me to remain standing in the doorway, I slipped past the unhinged door laying on its side across the opening and sat down against a wall.

The one holding the whisk began speaking at great length in Shona, during which time he called up individuals one at a time who came forward on hands and knees to listen as he spoke directly to them. At some point, someone rolled him something that smelled suspiciously like pot when he smoked it.

From time to time, they would break into song again, and eventually an older woman took the leader’s place. She continued calling people up one by one and then suddenly, everyone was laughing and looking at me. The leader guy gestured to me and whispered in English (the first I’d heard in an hour) that the ancestors were calling me up.

I had seen enough to know what to do. I approached on hands and knees, clopping my cupped hands together and bent my head before the woman. The leader guy kept whispering in my ear. First she was asking for the white water so the ancestors could share in my good fortune. Then she was giving a prophecy. Now, someone brought a basin of pure water which she drank from as I bent my head, listening for the end of the prophecy when I was supposed to say something, kind of like an amen.

All of a sudden, I hear a pfffft! and I feel water spraying across the top of my head. Everyone laughs and cheers and I figure I’m done, so I crawl back to my corner. Then they bring a gourd out with some milky, spiced liquid. She takes a sip from a dipper then holds it out to me, crawling forward with her eyes closed, so I jump back up to her and take a sip, hoping this stuff doesn’t end up all over me too. But I hand the dipper to the leader guy and he downs the rest of it.

Now they all get up and start dancing and singing again. One of the ladies comes over and translates what just happened for me. Apparently, they’ve been consulting with the ancestors about their problems and the ancestors have been giving them prophecies in return. She tells me the woman had dreamt of me the night before and that the ancestors have prophesied that I would have good luck.

By now its four am. Johannesburg has been in the midst of the coldest June in memory and I’m beginning to shiver, although maybe it was just the effect of the ancestors leaving me. They try and oblige me by moving me away from the door, then when they start dancing again they give me a spot beside the space heater, which helps. But I have a bus to catch at 8:45, and I’m starting to get travelers’ diarrhea, although I haven’t admitted it to the point of taking the antibiotics in my dop kit. I run to the water closet, come back, say my thank yous and go back to bed. By seven, they’re gone. I wash a little bit from a bucket of boiling water over a drain, miss the bus at the main Jo-burg station because Ken, Rex’s friend who I’m staying with, thinks it’s at 9 and South Africa is the only country in Africa where busses actually leave when they’re scheduled to. But we catch up to it at the stop near Ellis Park. I don’t know if you call that good luck or bad, but here I am, we’ve just dropped some Portuguese and Italian fans in Nelspruit and the next stop, barring a lunch break, is at the Mozambique border.

Bye for now, plenty of stories to tell, so I’ll be back soon. Peace.

20/6/10

Chapter One

Did I call this just chapter one? It feels as if ten chapters worth of activity has gone by since I finally caught my plane from LAX to Dubai. From the sixteen hour plane ride to my first night in Asia to Nairobi and four bus rides through three other countries to Johannesburg there is plenty to reflect on, but I’ll start with today, while it is still fresh and the vuvuzela are still calling outside.

The United States have come from behind to draw Slovenia two-two, which should have been a win two different ways but for the officials. I arrived in the eighteenth minute after an adventure through the streets of Johannesburg and Soweto that is a story all its own, but includes my first right-hand driving experience in the most beat up little manual transmission Nissan pickup you can imagine. In my pocket were an unused ticket to the Greece-Nigeria game in Bloemfontein the night before, which I had them print up anyways, a handful of used bus tickets and coins in various currencies, and the phone number of a Boer security guard who’d said he’d hold on to my Swiss Army knife until after the game. I found my seat at about the five meter mark from what I believe was the south end of the pitch. The U.S. were defending on my end in the first half, so I actually got to see all three goals happen on my end. The score when I sat down was already one-nil Slovenia and the pretty thirty-something English-South African woman sitting beside me with her very enthusiastic husband told me the U.S. defense had been “stupid, and the keeper didn’t even move” for the shot, although later she allowed as how it was a really nice shot that he would not have stopped anyways.

So I sat down, ate the Wimpy burger I’d snuck into the stadium in my bag and waved my flag a bit and took some photos of the crowd, the field, etc. and chatted a bit with the South African couple next to me. They were from Jo-burg and were drinking Budweisers, which are an international beer now, I guess, and it looked like they were the only ones being sold, though I didn’t drink. I told them about how I’d missed the Greece-Nigeria game on account of being held up at the Zimbabwean border for eight (count ‘em, eight) hours by two women who tried to bring in, literally, thousands of Rand (South African currency) in goods to sell without declaring them. By the time the South African customs agents caught on, they were so suspicious of the whole lot of us, which included Zambian government officials on diplomatic passports, dancers with the Zambian national dance troupe and random individuals like me that they went through every single bag and suitcase twice and checked out immunization cards, to boot, something that hasn’t been done at any other of the half dozen borders and airports I’ve passed through so far, and which I don’t expect to happen again the rest of the time I’m here.

All of a sudden, the crowd roared and I looked up in time to see a Slovenian forward making a break for goal and a lob coming off the foot of his teammate. “Oh, they’re clearly going to call this one back,” I thought to myself, “he’s obviously offsides.” But I look to the line official and his flag is down.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I yell, as the Slovene picks up the ball in space, streaks up the near side and tucks it past a diving Howard, who, it must be said, did everything that could have been done in the circumstances. The South African guy beside me is going wild but showing me sympathy at the same time. Still, he thinks the guy was onside until we see the replay on the jumbotron, at which point we can all agree that, although his feet are on and the moment the ball is struck, the lean of his body has him clearly offside. So, what can you do? The U.S. is down two-nil and not looking very energetic, although by the end of half they’ve put together a couple of dangerous looking attacks. The South African guy and I agree that nobody really wants the ball. They keep laying off to each other looking for a better look and they end up serving lobs that will have a good result if they get lucky, but come to nothing when they don’t.

I buy a couple half liter Cokes and wander the stadium at half time. The U.S. fans look pretty dejected and only the Slovenes and the international fans seem to be having any fun. I walk past a sad looking cowboy smoking a cigarette (“Ellis Park Stadium is a non-smoking area,” blares over the loudspeaker, “please refrain from smoking anywhere in the building.”). I see the first pretty white girls I’ve seen in weeks. Mostly it’s pretty bleak.

(I couldn't figure out how to rotate it and I'm tired, it's late)

But the U.S. side finally shows some urgency in the second half. Landon shows the first spark of true brilliance I’ve ever seen from him when he receives a ball in space on the far side near touch in the forty-eighth, dribbles in, keeping the goalie honest by showing cross and then coolly slotting it over his head into the roof of the net. The stadium goes wild. The South Africans, who clearly just want to see good football, are high-fiving me and jumping up and down shouting U-S-A, U-S-A along with everyone. I’ve never been a fan of Landon Donovan, I’ll admit: I’ve always thought he was just ‘OK’ in an international context, but he’s earned himself a truce from me with that one, it was absolutely clinical. Clutch. I’m sure he’s been holding his breath.

Everyone knows the rest of the story. The U.S. equalize a few minutes later and the Slovenian side startgetting pretty nasty, booking three or four yellows in about twenty minutes. The only thing worth mentioning is that I took a photograph that proves beyond doubt that no one was offsides on the third U.S. goal. I don’t know what the actual call was, but the picture clearly shows the ball airborne and an easy three or four meters of space, so if it was offsides, someone’s career needs to be ended.

Oh, well. I left in the ninety-first minute even though the Americans were making good attacks to the end because that security guard said he’d only be on duty til six and it was already ten to. I’m glad I found him, because that phone number is useless to me given that I don’t have any international roaming. I’ll probably need that thing in Tanzania and it sure as hell was a comfort walking back to the empty school my friend Rex’s brother owns which I’m staying at these two nights. These two guys were about thirty paces behind me for like eight blocks so I opened up the knife blade and the nasty looking (and FUCKING sharp) saw blade and held the thing inside my hoodie pocket all the way home. I walk around enough to know that no one stays the same distince from you for that long without dropping back or catching up and I hear that’s what they do around here; follow you until you’re somewhere isolated, then they just stab you, bam! Well, I got back alright, but I had to keep the knife out for a while when a rather hostile, possibly drunk guy showed up just as I was looking for a nice stoop under street lighting in the courtyard to write this. Rex’s contact who I’m staying with was gone dropping his girlfriend off and I didn’t feel like hanging out in his room alone. Guess I’ve learned better than to do that in Jozi.

18/6 – 19/6/10