Site of struggle

If I had known when I first stopped drinking how much change and conflict lay in store, I don’t know what I would have done. My heart would have quailed within me.

Because I had to change. The alcoholic compliant shrug-it-off self could not go on in the same way. Something had shifted and the shift was irrevocable.

Everyone was glad to hear that I was sober and had stopped drinking. But not everyone liked me sober. And not everyone liked the changes.

I didn’t set out to change. I didn’t want to venture into economic insecurity. I didn’t think I was ready for a new relationship. I wasn’t sure I wanted my body to come to life in such a troubling way, I wasn’t ready for the emotional tsunmi of early sobriety.

But here I am. It is painful and at times I fel very frightened. Scared of some recurrence of the abuse I suffered as a child. Afraid of the consequences of taking too many risks.

But the changes are bringing me to life and I cannot deny that. I plant up the garden, cook, write, dream, connect. Right now I am waiting to hear news from the country of my childhood, wondering if Zimbabwe might finally be free of the old crocodile Mugabe. Looking at an image of the Pungwe River in flood, upstream in Nyanga. The political change to come might not be an unmixed blessing. But change is necessary and sometimes conflict is the point of growth.

Holding my breath

The Zimbabwean elections are underway and there are long queues of patient voters reported in Harare and Bulowayo, along with unconfirmed reports of intimidations, arrests of South Africans in Zimbabwe and sms messages flying back and forth with secret messages of support and subversive encouragement. I think of the wide colonial avenues and flamboyant trees, old white courthouses, potholed tarmac. The singing in Ndebele and Shona, the queues of would-be voters waiting for buses and taxis out in the country amongst the maize fields and the conical kopjes, the deep blue skies like a promise. All the new dug graves for the young who died of Aids or TB, the intimidation, the fear of the West, the country dying of starvation. My homeland, the former colony in which I grew up. Closing my eyes I see the granite kopjes and displaced people, I see women farming with budzas (women are the land workers of Africa) in the stony but mineral-rich soils, recalling what it was like before cash cropping (the bright red pumpkins, the gourds and thirst-quenching melons, slightly bitter juices so welcome after a long walk) the vulnerable lands in the years before DDT. The locusts smashing into the car windows, the sky black and green as nausea. No easy answers, ever.

And I dash up to the farmers’ co-op for yellow-green citronella oil to ward off mosquitos,  buy dog food and look at Cadac gas lamps in case of further power cuts.

Thinking of the violence in Kenya, the underlying desperation and manipulated rivalries. But also thinking about possibilities, about change and the power of renewal.

Walking wild

Snapping away happily at everything I see, a little raw and defensive, self-conscious as a schoolgirl because I am letting others across the visual horizon of my world.

Going out into the garden and seeing it through the eyes of others, an unkempt African garden, thickets for native birds, unwatered lawn that I am trying to lose, subdued greys and browns and dull greens. Not a cultivated pocket handkerchief. Usually this doesn’t bother me. I plant waterwise and the garden thrives on benevolent neglect.

But I am not talking about the garden, I am talking about pride and wanting to control others’ perceptions of me — something one can do through words but not through real-life images. Photographs don’t lie, even styled or cropped. They show what is there, untidy, dusty, of its time and place. A small part of me struggles to accept the reality of all that cannot be transformed by the charm of language. Ageing. Tiredness. A garden contrived by clever planting but not much money. A cottage that needs to be repainted.

Magic wearing thin.

To stay closer to the truth of lived reality when I write. Ula so tired and unwell, the dog unable to get comfortable on his bed in the kitchen, cracks in stoep walls and along the brick paths. An imperfect process, all of it. So deeply cherished, the friendships, the garden-making, the loving and focus of hard work, and all the slightly ecstatic hope sobriety has given me. Reaching for the impossible and wanting the truth to make its home in my daily existence.

A small brown house sparrow in the shadow of a scarlet double petalled hibiscus, very much there but unshowy. Terrible photograph even when explained.

Thoughts in a garden

Mediterranean weather, dry and pleasant, the wind fragrant with herbs and grasses.

I take pics with my new cell phone and try to capture something of the wild grey, green and silver in the garden, the mauves and dirty yellow, colours of any Cape garden that is waterwise and not created from a catalogue.

Tomarillos

They’re called tree tomatoes and grow better in sub-tropical places but here next to the old garden shed the shrub is sheltered from wind and frost. Smooth streaky fruits dangling from the branches.

You avoid the bitter thick skins, get right into the sweet dark red pulp thick with tiny seeds. It makes delicious jam.

Blessed reprieve

And Dr Hans the kind vet was very unhappy about the dog’s condition. A raging temperature. No white blood cells on the slide he took, which might indicate a tumour. But no cancerous growth in the paw — just arthritic joints I will rub in the evenings. He prescribed a course of antibiotics. Yes, the cancer is at work in his system and it is just putting off the inevitable. But the dog ate some supper and slept when we got home. This morning Ula came in with a new thermometer which she delicately inserted into the dog’s rectum, to his amazement. His temperature has fallen considerably.

One hurdle over for the time being. Busy with planned projects, thinking about raising money for my UK trip. Work, work, work.

But in between I am planning roast vegetables (baby gem squash, small turnips, potatoes and sweet large carrots, a dash of cumin and black pepper) for supper; watering the new seedlings; listening to small birds, white-eyes, squabbling in the cistus and lavender bushes.

Heartsore to read of the death of an old activist friend, someone I have not seen in more than a decade but whose memory is green and painfully fresh to me. IvanToms, director of health for the city of Cape Town, head of SACLA clinic at Crossroads squatter camp during the years under the States of Emergency, those fraught times of riots and harassment. A founder of the End Conscription Campaign, spending nine months in prison at Pollsmoor for refusing military call-up. A gay activist with OLGA later fighting for retrovirals to help those living with Aids. And Ivan’s own death sudden and mysterious, a tragedy, his body found in his Mowbray home. Too soon a passing — tributes pouring in from the TAC and the mayor of Cape Town and health workers.

The blue skies and stillness of early afternoon. Plants watered — today was the last day of the mountain leiwater running in sluits down each street of the village and into back gardens. Tienie calling us at 5.30am, his gumboots crunching on the gravel. Pure cold water spreading in shining pools across the lawn and under the olives and lemon tree. Another marker that summer is at an end.

Uncertainty and hopefulness. Grief deferred. Another day immersed in life.

Facing loss

My ridgeback not eating, limping heavily. We will take him through to the vet this afternoon and, if necessary, agree to his being put down. Such dread and heartache in me that I walk around with stone in my belly.

I have loved this dog so fiercely since he lay as a tiny puppy curled on my shoulder burping a smell of toast and milk after we chose him from the litter in Stellenbosch. The sweetest and bravest nature I have ever known in a dog. And irreplaceable as a companion.

But I will not let him suffer if nothing further can be done. And he has enjoyed his life to the full. The grief and loss is ours alone.

A large red ridgeback sleeping in the sun outside the kitchen door. Barking at bicycles (his only enemy). Rubbing his head against my thigh to comfort me when I was in pain after the hysterectomy; leaning against me and yawning contentedly after his supper; shivering with fear during thunderstorms, a big baby who hated thunder in the mountains; wagging his tail when I sang to him. Praying this need not happen yet, craving his company a while longer, though my heart is like lead.

And for security reasons we will have to get another dog or dogs very soon, which violates the need to grieve his uniqueness. But if the house is left unguarded, there will be a spate of burglaries and the risk of attack of intruders. How the eroded quality of life in an unsafe South Africa tires and depresses me.

What remains important is to stay present to the loss and anguish and ‘nowness’ of all that is happening. Still weak with flu, trembly with anticipation about my trip to the UK in May, working through issues of boundaries with Ula –living all of life as much as I can, sober and grateful, asking for the gift of humility. Humility from humus, the great leveller, the rich loamy leaf mould and dark compost full of nutrients, where growth begins. The seedbed, the beginning. And the dust to which we shall return, as all ordinary living creatures do, dying in our turn. Si le grain ne meurt…

Instant flu

Woke to the rhythm of drumming on the mountainside, the rituals for Easter dawn of the African Zionist church. Scratchy thraot, bleary eyesight, hot and cold and achey.

And I had been looking forward to lunch up at the farm with Erna’s excellent cooking, a quieter time and a chance to talk with Karin as we walked through the orchards in the afternoon sunshine.

Instead, making chicken soup from a Claudia Roden recipe, chopping celery, carrots, onion and flat-leaf parsley, shivering and thinking of my cool bed, a darkened room.

Wondering if this is in part stress — the relationship and renewed intensity, the conflict here at home, concern about work and money. I am not sure. Right now too headachey to think.

Going out to water pot plants, afraid they will dry up in the heat, and seeing the tatsoi and chives coming up, needing to be pricked out and replanted. Such munificence, so many seedlings.

Heat and fever working in me. The still afternoon light, a glaze like applied gilt over the fields and trees and garden. Gold and green. Thinking about travelling again, writing, working, embracing a new life.

But for now there is only the sickbed, the creased pillows and drawn curtains. Glad to be just sick and tired. No need to self-medicate moods, no impatience, nothing getting in the way of letting the illness run its course and pass over.

Full moon in Libra

Saturday afternoon, cloudy and cold. Standing out in the garden sucking the red sweet seedy pulp out of smooth-skinned tree tomatoes (the trick is to avoid the bitter thick skin) and wondering about my custard apples. Unable to recall anything about Easter last year when I would have been newly sober and very subdued.

But of course Easter was later last year – this is the earliest date in 95 years, coinciding exactly with the equinox and full moon. Yesterday went up to the Catholic for the Good Friday service. A clueless and officious deacon in charge, Sotho women crooning to the black Madonna in lilting strong rich voices, the reproaches echoing in me as I kissed the nailed branches of umzimbeet wood. Ave Maria, plena gratia — outside, the glare of hot sun, the dust of the township, the children’s voices, the eucalyptus trees casting almost no shadow. A strange hour, 3pm on Good Friday, a chill on the soul.

Young owls whistling in the liquidambar tree next door as I write.

Conscious of holding relationships in balance, wanting to be scrupulously fair to those I love. Una threatened by change even though she understands it is not abandonment. The need to take one’s courage in both one’s hands and begin to live. Pushing through fear.

Thinking too as I wandering under trees in the garden, about past Easters, those archetypal ‘lost weekends’. That reckless hedonistic euphoria I thought was intimacy, flinging myself into chaotic love affairs and breakfast on the rocks… Wrong about everything and never quite able to work out why. Not present to my own life, gatecrashing into my future.

And I mused on this while searching for any last overlooked figs or gooseberries. Not ashamed or bitterly regretful any longer. Just musing and grateful to be in another place now. I got off so lightly, come to think of it.

And now I am going forward into uncertainty again, but aware and choosing to do this. Some deep instinct guiding me: it may be a mistake, but I doubt I will regret the adventure. Reaching for the impossible is not just the prerogative of drunks.

Practical ritual for Mabon

The autumn equinox almost upon us. Went out in the gathering darkness and spaded up wild fennel stalks, tenacious and sharp-edged. Planted starry flowering bushes of lemon verbena. Singing an old griot melody about palm wine drunkards from Mali that I have heard Sibongile Khumalo sing once in a smoky cabaret in Long Street. Long quavering, melting notes and lyrics full of the sea and the fields wet with  sea dew, and palm trees dropping coconuts, and the breasts of women moving as they walk with water in jugs from the river.

Then the moon, almost full, was coming up and I was soaking the new lemon verbenas with buckets of cold water, my ankles muddy. Barefoot and smelling like sweaty liquorice, the fennel in my blood. Mindless happiness, the dog lying under the avocado tree waiting for me to come back to the lit kitchen and feed him.

There is nothing so ancient or wicked as digging in the black earth and uprooting, transplanting, seeding, planting, tamping down and watering. Conjuring new life, making the earth fruitful in partnership with mysterious forces, mineral, animal, vegetable and inconnues. The full moon slanting in on my busy work like a delicate shining power. A drumming in my spirit. How curious that gardening has never been outlawed, made taboo.

There is something unleashed in the mud and rich dirt and roots yielding, a satisfaction and rightness of relationship. New bushes set in place before the winter rains. Next summer they will be as high as my waist in the river-silt soil.

The autumn equinox drawing close now, all is ready.