Durban Poison Read online

  I don’t make it to the plastic chairs. I turn to the Indian fellow next to me. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I just can’t do this.” He smiles and nods, sad that I’m giving up but pleased that he is one place closer to window four, the kingdom of heaven where unicorns romp and prance in the Elysian fields of bureaucracy.

  A bag of DMT and a shack on the outskirts of Maun might be the way to go. Bring on the elves.

  TCHAU AND OBRIGADO FOR ALL THE PEIXE

  It wasn’t long before I was convinced that Mkuze Game Reserve had no animals. Judging by the size of the staff, it was entirely possible that they had eaten the lot.

  I went into a hide where a section of fence along the walkway had been smashed either by an angry elephant or a hungry Ezemvelo Wildlife employee after discovering that someone had wolfed the last impala.

  Inside the hide was a family of three. The man had a camera with a zoom lens the size of a 420-millimetre howitzer. I put my phone on vibrate and laid it gently on the wooden counter. Five minutes later it vibrated.

  “Shh,” said the woman, holding up her hand. I was about to apologise. “I heard a lion!” My phone vibrated again. “Did you hear that?” she said excitedly. I casually slid the phone into my pocket. “Yes,” I said. “He sounds close.”

  The thing about sitting in a hide is that often the animals aren’t aware that you have paid to see them. I waved my receipt through the slit but still nothing. I spotted three turtle doves and a tree trunk that I kept mistaking for a baby elephant with a crocodile’s face. Animal sounds drifted out of the bush at fairly regular intervals, but that’s easy enough to arrange with a few cleverly concealed speakers.

  Driving through the reserve, I came around a corner and almost ploughed into a flock of rhino. One of the reasons I hate poachers is because I will never again be able to look at a rhino without thinking, “That’s the price of a Ferrari he’s got on his nose.” I drove closer to inspect this lucrative appendage and the bastard had the nerve to charge me.

  “Fifty bucks for a look, mister,” he said. No, he didn’t. He lowered his head, snorted and took three or four lumbering steps towards my car. I am accustomed to things lowering their heads, snorting and lumbering around my apartment, but this was altogether more frightening. He stopped in his tracks before I could even find first gear. We gave each other the lazy eye, then, having made whatever primeval point he thought he was making, he ambled into the bush.

  Back at camp I saw a sign warning that hyenas were attracted to braais. It said they were opportunistic and would grab food whenever they could. Please. I have been to conferences and seen what civil servants are capable of when the buffet opens. Hyenas are amateurs.

  The next morning I headed for Mozambique. After a couple of hours on a dodgy road, I arrived at the border. Or, more accurately, I arrived at the back of a long line of parked 4x4s. My heart sank. I would be there for days, possibly weeks. I would have to sleep in the car and beg for food from local villagers. I would probably go mad and kill myself.

  I had apparently forgotten it was Easter weekend. This is the price you pay for being an atheist.

  It was mayhem. People milled about like sheep, bleating, “Where am I meant to go now?” To their credit, the South Africans and Mozambicans were doing their best to get people through as quickly as possible. Forms were snatched, passports stamped, money exchanged for worthless pieces of paper and, finally, tyres were deflated. Well, other people semi-deflated their tyres.

  I think it’s an urban myth perpetuated by men who like to cut a rugged image by dropping to one knee and sticking a match into their valves. I let people down, not tyres. Launching the Landy down a sandy track, I had gone about nine metres when someone on the side of the road shouted that I was going the wrong way.

  I pretended that I was merely trying out my non-deflated tyres before making a U-turn. The Land Rover sank up to its ankles. I got out and shouted at the car. I kicked its tyres and slapped its face. With a dog, you need to bite its ear to let it know who is boss. Land Rovers are no different to dogs except you need to use more violence. For all I know, they enjoy a bit of the rough stuff. That’s probably why they break down so often.

  Anyway, it seemed to have learnt its lesson and got me out of the hole it had dug for itself and onto the right road. Not that you could call it a road. You couldn’t call it signposted, either.

  I was booked into a lodge called Gamboozini in Ponta do Ouro, which means Place of Gold in Spanish or whatever the hell language it is they speak in these parts. It was supposed to be 10 kilometres from the border. I had been bouncing along for a lot further than that when I arrived at Ponta Malongane.

  Gripped by a raging thirst and nursing a belly full of badly rattled organs, I spotted a man beckoning me towards a shack made entirely of sticks, straw and bottles of alcohol. It seemed rude to ask for directions without purloining a local beer at least.

  After a couple of hours it seemed rude to leave at all. Ever. The local Dos Em beer was delicious. The reggae was fabulous. The company good. I could sleep on the floor behind the bar. I’d wash glasses and repair the fittings, not that you could call them fittings.

  My new friend urged me to try a local delicacy called R&R. It consisted of a beer mug half filled with ice, half filled with Tipo Tinto rum and half filled with raspberry Sparletta. It was a mathematical impossibility. As was walking, after a few of these red rascals. It’s a good thing one cannot drive faster than staggering speed along these roads. And if you do happen to fall out of your car, you land on soft sand.

  There are several rustic bars on the road between Ponta Malongane and Ponta do Ouro. This helps make the journey longer or shorter, depending on a range of factors. I suppose a seven-kilometre stretch can’t strictly be called a journey, but it certainly felt like it at times.

  There are no tarred roads. It’s just a question of how thick the sand is. The road forks constantly and it doesn’t seem to matter whether you take the left or the right fork. Like our opposition parties, they usually merge at some point. However, one needs to do a fair amount of veering off the road if one wishes to avoid having a drunk quad-biker land on one’s lap.

  Soon enough I discovered where the multitudes from the border had got to. They were all in Ponta do Ouro. Going by their number plates, most of them seemed to come from Joburg. Going by their physiques, most of them seemed to come from Mordor. Orcs and Uruk-hais recuperating from the great battle littered the shores of the bay.

  A howling onshore wind meant surfing was out of the question, so I bounced off in search of Gamboozini. I found it on the far end of the bad part of town. Not that Ponta has a good part. My accommodation, which I assumed would be sumptuous at R800 a night, turned out to be a room barely bigger than Nelson Mandela’s cell. The other guests were juvenile orcs whose shrieking and braying alone would have kept me awake, even without the giant anopheles mosquitoes launching raids at my face every 30 seconds.

  White South Africans have done terrible things to Mozambicans. For a start, the locals have been led to believe that we all love rave music. For that alone, we should hang our heads in shame and, as penance, dispense cheap sweets to their tattered children and learn how to say obrigado. That’s it. “Una cerveja e dos R&Rs, por favor. Obrigado.” That’s all the Mexican you need to know to survive in Mozambique. And if you’re hungry, chicken is frango. Whatever you do, don’t ask for a frango smoothie.

  The other name for Ponta do Ouro in season is Gouge City. From a hundred bucks for a toasted bacon and egg to 20 bucks to park at the beach, the locals were out to get as much as they could before the aliens returned to their planet.

  Here, babies are weaned on prawns. Stray dogs have prawn suppers. Homeless drunks are half-prawn, half-people. But herd a bunch of whiteys into a restaurant and suddenly prawns are priced according to the gold standard.

  A gamboozini is a small pink hairless creature with a long snout that may or may not lurk in the undergrowth. After two nights, I
felt myself turning into one and fled back to Ponta Malongane, whereupon I checked in to the Tartaruga Luxury Tented Camp. It was like going from Mogadishu to Maui – all dune forest and peace and well-behaved monkeys.

  I was allocated a beautifully appointed tent with en suite bathroom, set deep in the bush, and my own personal fridge up in the self-catering area. Inexplicably, I had brought no food with me. I put six beers in my fridge, lest the other guests took me for a pauper, and drove off in search of sustenance. I didn’t have to go more than a kilometre or two before coming upon a place that offered views and alcohol.

  The Land Rover protested and suggested we rather repair to an eatery that did not entail clambering up the side of a dune, but I put my foot down. Mozambican music was playing as I chose a table overlooking the endless flatlands of the south. A waiter brought me a cold beer. It was perfect – right up until a pack of feral Gautengers arrived, full of muscles and tattoos and R&Rs, and within minutes the music had changed to that execrable electronic shit.

  I went inside and insisted that they return to Portuguese music. Three minutes later, the music went off. There was a long silence. It occurred to me that they were desperately searching for music from Lisbon. Music that reminded them of the bastards who had colonised them. A waiter came by and I attempted to explain that I had meant they should play Mozambican music. He listened politely and then, in perfect English, said, “I’m sorry. I don’t speak English.”

  Just then, a shaven-headed brute who looked as if he had been designed by Armscor rolled around the corner and headed towards my table. I closed my laptop and readied myself to fling it at him. MacBook Airs are aerodynamically designed for the express purpose of beheading troublemakers. He lurched to a halt and stood there, swaying gently. I was about to decapitate him when he spoke.

  “Does you mind if we get the bar okes to play Bob Marley?”

  Was this some kind of trick? To what end? It made no sense. “Sure,” I said. “Go ahead.” He flexed his muscles and made a grunting sound. “Come join us,” he said. “We playing drinking games.” I declined on the grounds of being on deadline. Also, drinking is not a game. It’s a damn serious business. People have died doing it.

  He snorted and pawed the ground. Our eyes locked. Just then, the music kicked in. It was a message from Bob, via the barman.

  The song was “Crazy Baldhead”.

  BELLY OR THE BIKE – A TOUGH CALL

  Pregnancy has been on my mind of late. I caught sight of myself in a bottle store window and, had I been a woman, it would not have been unreasonable for passers-by to smile and say, “Do you know if it’s a girl or boy?”

  A little light cycling, I reckoned, might improve my abominable abdominal profile. When I heard the Durban city council was dishing out free bikes to staff, I immediately applied for a job. It didn’t matter what the position was. Anyone with access to the internet can learn to do anything. Fly a plane. Perform brain surgery. Make a bomb. I’m surprised anyone still bothers with universities. Later, it occurred to me that it might be easier to simply hire a bike.

  I ambled down to the beachfront and got me one of them fancy jobs with Hell’s Angels handlebars and a bunch of gears. It lacked, as all bicycles do, a saddle the size of a large dinner plate. I say dinner plate because that’s roughly how big my arse is. These ridiculous sliver-like saddles can cleave a man in two.

  I hadn’t ridden in 30 years but there was nothing to worry about because it was just like riding a bicycle. Standing up in the pedals like Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider, I wheeled over to a sign in front of the city manager’s pathetic excuse for a dune belt. I needed to determine the rules of engagement. No alcohol, littering, open fires, public disturbance, sleeping, unruly behaviour, weapons, bottles, braais, music, urinating and defecating. I was pleased to see that shagging wasn’t on the list. But, as tempting as it was to have hot monkey sex right there outside Circus Circus, I was paying more by the hour for this bicycle than I would have done for a mid-week special from Point Road.

  I pointed my snout northwards, engaged first gear and set off at a blistering pace for Kosi Bay. I hadn’t gone far when I was forced to swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid the sorriest pair of paddling pools you are ever likely to see. They were cordoned off with razor wire. Shade cloth hung in tatters. The paving was cracked and the grass overgrown. It was the Auschwitz of paddling pools. Two men with clipboards wandered about pointing at things and shaking their heads.

  Blue Lagoon wasn’t much better. It has been a construction site for as long as anyone can remember, and still it looks like nothing more exciting than a giant parking lot. On the positive side, I was fortunate enough to witness the legendary KwaZulu-Natal work ethic at close quarters. I felt like Richard Attenborough observing a rare species in one of the planet’s more remote locations.

  “We have to be very quiet. Two of them are on their feet. They are slowly making their way to what looks like a hole in the ground. Another is already there. He is picking up some sort of implement ... no, he has put it down again. Golly! That was either a very big yawn or a silent scream. We aren’t sure yet how they communicate. Or even what they do.”

  Nobody could call Blue Lagoon a hive of activity unless they were talking about one of those hives that have been smoked out by beekeepers, pillaged by honey badgers and poisoned by Monsanto.

  Even though it is almost impossible to accomplish, it is vitally important to look cool when you are riding a bicycle. What you don’t want to do is go about in shiny Spandex shorts, gay shoes and the silliest helmet seen since the Norman conquest of England. I rode with my left hand in the pocket of my camo rods and the index finger of my right hand resting lightly on the handlebars. I kept my eyes on the ocean. Only nerds look where they are going. I was fortunate to have a sturdy child from the hinterland break my fall after sideswiping a desperately unhappy palm tree.

  Tekweni Beach – formerly known as the beach for darkies – was utterly deserted. Thirty per cent of the province is unemployed. Where the hell was everyone? There is no excuse for not going to the beach if you don’t have a job.

  The trouble with cycling is that at some point one begins regressing. By the time I hit Dairy Beach I was riding with no hands and scaring the elderly. A couple of hundred metres on, I was trying to pull wheelies and ramp off the stairs. I rode up behind a mounted policeman and smacked his horse on its rump. I was going pretty fast. The animal obviously thought I wanted a race. It caught me in about three seconds flat and carried on going. It’s probably in Knysna by now.

  At this point I must have covered at least 250 kilometres. Surely by now my stomach was rock hard and I could stop? I gave it a feel. It wasn’t pleasant. It was clear that cycling does nothing at all for your abdomen. My legs, on the other hand, were ballooning by the minute. As the muscles in my calves and thighs developed, so the leg fat was being squeezed up into my stomach. It was a terrible discovery.

  But not as terrible as discovering that there was nowhere to have a beer between North Beach and uShaka. Oh, the restaurants are there, alright. But they are reserved for pigeons only. The council built them in case the city’s precious sky-rats fancied sitting on something other than Addington Hospital, which, I might say, is looking far more attractive these days as a Jenga puzzle of rusted scaffolding and old bricks.

  I came through South Beach like the explorer Ranulph Fiennes, were he ever to pluck up the courage to take on a challenge as perilous as this. The clock on the lifesavers’ tower permanently reads 9.30. It probably froze when black people were allowed onto the beach. Seismic events are known to have this effect on horological devices.

  Wahooz appeared like a magnificent mirage. I dropped the bike and crawled to a table, my bottom minced and bleeding. I could barely sit down. Boil up some spaghetti and one could have made a decent Bolognese from my butt.

  Even the adverts for uShaka Marine World bleating from a scratchy PA system failed to annoy me. King Shaka, by the way, would have undo
ubtedly been delighted to have a theme park named after him. His love of water slides is well documented and he was frequently seen drifting down the Tugela in a rubber tube.

  I overdid it on the carbo-loading and had to ask an ancient rickshaw-puller if he’d take me and my bike back to North Beach. He gave me the lazy eye and demanded a scandalous fee. It was clearly some kind of payback for apartheid. Nobody charges those rates anymore, though. The price of penance has plummeted since 1994. Someone should tell him.

  LIVE FOREVER WITH A ZULU FIGHTING STICK

  I have noticed a burgeoning fascination with youth that turns my bloated stomach. Look at the fuss made over that mewling royal whelp spawned in London. The running dogs of the media will soon lose interest and slope off to sniff out a story involving someone younger. Maybe a two-day-old Puerto Rican suckling who can speak seven languages and play “La Borinqueña” on the bars of its crib.

  If I sound bitter it’s because I am. I went to buy supper from the Spar a few days ago, which is depressing enough on its own, but when I bellied up to the checkout point, the wage slave scanned my half loaf of white bread and bottle of methylated spirits and said, “Pensioner?”

  My mouth fell open. I looked at her in disbelief. “Excuse me?” I said. Had I misheard? She looked at me blankly. I turned to the people in the queue, expecting them to join me in staring at the teller as if she were a sight-impaired person recently escaped from an institution for the criminally insane. Instead, they gave me indulgent smiles and looked away. Their faces suggested they were thinking, “Shame, he’s obviously hard of hearing.” WHAT? How could they not detect the incredulity in my voice? How could they miss the twinkle in my eye and the spring in my step?

  Okay, I was limping at the time. I suppose it could have been misconstrued as gout. I prefer to think of it as an old surfing injury. And my retinas have been ravaged by too many years of sun, surf, tears and beers. Also, it has been the kind of year that bleeds one’s hair of colour long before its time. It probably didn’t help that I have a couple of teeth missing, thanks to a former dentist who reached for the pliers at the first crack of a molar. I suspect he was hoping to cash in on all the implants I would no doubt be wanting. Tough luck, buddy. I’d rather look like a car guard than pay for your next trip to Thailand. That’ll teach him.