Monday, October 27, 2014

A Chess Mom Loose in Durban -- Part two

I am almost alone on the beach at sunrise, except for the few women walking to work with their colorful headscarves fluttering like love-struck suitors behind them. The other day Josh and I noted that Durban is strangely absent of dogs, stray or pet. We resolve to research why this is, but never do. There is too much else to see and understand.
Students at KwaPitela Primary School, in the Drakensberg Mountains above Durban
Rising early I walk on the beach, leaving Josh to sleep as much as he can before another day of World Youth Chess. Signs are staked in the sand warning that swimming is forbidden and the usual array of young surfers are absent. The ocean is certainly riotous and unruly this morning, throwing bawdy stories and broken shells that stick in my bare feet, whipping the sand at me so that my skin and mouth feel gritty, a sensation a friend who lived as a child in the Sahara recalled and had once described to me. "Yemajah," I shout into the wind, "I have not forgotten you." Immediately my calls are answered by a deep-voiced singing:  rich, melodious and unmistakenly African. I turn around startled and squint up and down the coast. The beautiful song seems to be coming from a man I can barely make out ahead of me through the midst of sea and sand. For a moment I wonder about the prudence of continuing on toward him, alone as I am on the beach, but his singing is soothing and pleasurable -- I cannot believe anyone who sings like this can pose a threat. The singing continues and grows louder, but I cannot discern the words which I assume must be Zulu or Xhosa and the melody too is allusive, broken as it is by the sounds of the wind and ocean. The man himself I only see in bits and parts as I get closer, as if I am watching him painted onto a canvas. His sinewy dark figure is erased and redrawn in a constant whir of motion and when I am almost upon him I realize that he is going back and forth into the ocean -- either he hasn't read or has chosen to ignore the posted warnings.  He is sopping wet and dressed in only the flimsiest of white underbriefs. When he comes in from the sea he crouches in front of a line of plastic soda bottles which he appears to be filling with sand and ocean. My initial thought is that I have come upon a madman. Again I check myself -- should I turn around and bolt? But the man has stopped singing and he is smiling at me, a bony arm raised in greeting. He is so thin that his chest recedes and I am afraid his hand will disintegrate when I take it into mine, but am instantly surprised by the strength, warmness and firmness of his handshake. We introduce ourselves. He spells out  his name so I can say it properly. W-I-T-O-L-D -- it takes me about three times before my diction satisfies him. "I am Zulu," his skeleton chest puffs out with pride when he tells me this, fills up as if there is something much more substantial than the skin and bones that make him. "My language was Zulu, but they taught me English in school. I can barely speak Zulu anymore,' he says, not complaining but as if trying to make me feel better about my lousy English-centric pronunciation of his name.  I think of all the bands of South African children Josh and I have seen on school trips to the beach, combing the souvenir huts for cheap toys and marching in line behind stern, poker-faced teachers into the public swimming pools, orderly and neat in their crisp school uniforms. The discipline of South African institutions  reminds me of our years in Mexico. I imagine little Witold marching upright with his classmates, reciting English phrases. His English is near perfect.
"I had a good job with a big corporation but I was laid off, so now I sell these to the gas station up the road (he points to the plastic bottles of sand and sea). I look into his face, which is solemn, stubborn and brave, and  wonder again if he is just a bit insane -- why would a gas station want ocean water? (but later, when I make friends with three women from Limpopo I learn more about this tradition).
"Your singing is beautiful," I tell him. "but I could not understand the words," still thinking it must have been in Zulu. He looks abashed suddenly, as if realizing for the first time that he is standing in front of a strange woman in his underwear, underwear that is wet, transparent and practically falling off his small frame. I try to make him feel more comfortable by turning away and squinting out at the sea. I have not in all this time looked down below his waist. He follows my gaze and answers less shyly: "It is a song we learned at school," -- and recites the words which sound like Zulu to me. "Yes," I say,  "but what do they mean?" Again he repeats the words --  this time with the slow, even,  patience he showed when teaching me his name. "What-the-Mighty-God-Gives-Us," he repeats and then he begins to sing, in that deep sonorous voice, like the ancient African wind that once whipped around King Shaka and Durban before the obscene Coca Cola tower shown haughtily over the highrise hotel towers and elephants and leopards roamed the beach. And with that, Witold walked majestically back into the sea with his bucket and plastic soda bottles, leaving me alone again in Africa, surrounded by coastal fog, and I turned back toward the hotel to wake Josh for another day of chess.

No comments:

Post a Comment