Durban Poison

by Ben Trovato

  Right. That’s it. I’m going in. Three flights, four airports and five double whiskies, please.

  ON AUSTRALIA’S MOST UNWANTED LIST

  After flying halfway around the world, I arrived hungover in Joburg, hysterical with sleep deprivation and barely able to walk upright on my mangled economy-class legs. It was freezing cold and I was still dressed for Bali. Everyone else looked as if they were going to business meetings. Poor bastards.

  Changing planes for Cape Town, we waited half an hour before the pilot decided to say something. “Guys,” he said, “you’re not going to believe this.”

  What? There’s no beer on the plane? Jacob Zuma has agreed to pay back the money? God is a woman?

  “Our battery isn’t charging.” I summoned a stewardess and offered to round up a dozen guys to give it a push-start. She said it wouldn’t work. I looked around. She was right. There were only four or five darkies on the flight. They’d never be able to manage it.

  Someone must have come along with jumper cables because two hours later we were banking over Table Mountain. I got home and did what most people do when they’ve been away for some time – read the papers. Catch up on the news. Sigh heavily. Start drinking. Plan to emigrate. I hadn’t unpacked. I could call a taxi and be back at the airport in an hour. Get the last plane out. It doesn’t matter where. Just away. Away from the tyranny of democracy.

  Whoops. That was the jet lag talking. I have since discovered half a bottle of Jose Cuervo beneath the sink and feel much better, thank you. I suspect comrade domestic worker has been using it as a household cleaner, which would explain why my place always smells faintly of tequila. I thought it was me.

  Skipping past the stories about politics and crime – it’s increasingly difficult to separate the two – I finally found something to read without risking an aneurysm. The London-based Economist Intelligence Unit has released its latest list of the world’s most liveable cities.

  Top of the list is Damascus, the capital of Syria. That can’t be right. Ah, wrong list. Damascus is the least liveable city. Africa puts in a good showing, though, with Lagos and Tripoli romping home in fourth and fifth place, nudged out of the medals by Dhaka and Port Moresby. Looking at the cities, it might be more accurate to describe this as a list of the least liveable cities for white people.

  Top of the list of the most liveable cities is bloody Melbourne, mate. And if you think that’s outrageous, let me tell you that Australia takes another three spots in the top 10 with Adelaide, Sydney and Perth, leaving Helsinki, Auckland, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver and Vienna squabbling over the scraps. It won’t have escaped your notice that this is also a list of the most liveable cities for white people. Who mostly speak English.

  Cape Town, incidentally, our only reasonable facsimile of a well-behaved city, never even made it into the top 50. Thanks, Cape Flats. Thanks a lot.

  So. Europe and Canada are out of the question. Too many people, too cold, too alien. That leaves Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth or Sydney. Tough choice. I have family in Perth, so I can’t go there. Just kidding, Uncle. Uncles. And cousins. That’s my father’s mob. My great-granny on my mother’s side was a true-blue Aussie and is almost certainly the reason I am genetically predisposed to petty crime.

  A lot of mainly white South Africans choose to emigrate to Australia because there is plenty of sunshine and alcohol. And also because … well, as Queensland author Stephen Hagan puts it, “Australians are the most racist people in the developed world for their treatment of the First Australians and I make this claim comfortable in the knowledge that I am sufficiently supported by incontestable statistical data.”

  I imagine being among worse racists than oneself can only be good for one’s self-esteem.

  Australia is also an option if, like Adolf Hitler, you prefer dogs. The government announced last month that it would destroy two million feral cats by 2020 in an effort to protect indigenous wildlife. They will use poison traps and attack dogs to kill the cats. You can’t get more humane than that, Bruce.

  Hundreds of South Africans emigrate to Australia every month. I doubt I will be among them any time soon. I’m not smart or mad enough to understand the visa process, which appears to have been formulated by a statistician incarcerated in an institute for the criminally insane.

  If you go over on a 189 visa but don’t have your OTSR because your job is on the CSOL list and you’re still on a 186 but haven’t submitted your EOI for a 489 you’ll need a 457 sponsor and the DIPB will want the IELTS.

  Australia is crawling with migration specialists dedicated to helping South Africans reach the promised land. Well, they call themselves migration specialists. They’re really just human traffickers in polyester suits and pencil skirts.

  I thought I’d get in touch with one of them for an assessment of whether or not I stood a hope in hell. I knew the answer before I even filled in her questionnaire. Age, skills, academic qualifications and financial means are apparently important to the Australians, and unless there’s a critical shortage of borderline indigent middle-aged columnists who make a living out of shaming and ridiculing the rich and powerful, then I’m probably staying right here.

  My migration agent said she had taken the liberty of stalking me on the internet. “It is quite evident you have a very successful career,” she wrote. It’s not quite how I would describe it, but it seemed a promising start. Then it went downhill fast. My occupation – her word, not mine – is on some kind of red list and, because I’m not a teenage virgin, I would need to be sponsored by a state or an employer and work for them for four years at an annual salary of at least R1.2 million. If my current remuneration is anything to go by, I am not worthy of sweeping Sydney’s streets.

  Perhaps sensing that my special skills would do little to enhance Australia’s reputation in the eyes of the world, she offered me another option. Something called the 457 visa stream allows an offshore company to sponsor the employee to work in Australia. In a suggestion that smelled strongly of loophole, she said, “If we can get your current business to qualify as a sponsor, we may be able to get you the 457 visa.” With a masterful use of understatement, she described this as “a long shot”. She clearly sensed that my current business operated largely on cold beer, loud music and leaving the cat in charge while I take long absences from the “office”.

  If my personal human trafficker were to handle the visa application, she would require the modest sum of R30 000. The loophole option would cost me another R40 000. And the Department of Immigration would want R18 000 for both. So, that’s almost R100 000 in return for an email from the Australian government three weeks later saying, “We regret to inform you …”

  I’m going to unpack, open the gin and have a little lie-down.

  MINIMALISM RULES AS THE CATATONIC CONSUMER RIDES AGAIN

  I bought a container of cherries the other day because it’s been a while since I had a cherry. In more ways than one. Cherries are the heroin of the fruit world and they were down my neck in 90 seconds flat. I needed more, rather badly, and considered going from door to door slaughtering anyone unable or unwilling to feed the monkey on my back.

  Luckily for them I got distracted by the price sticker on the container. R65.99 for 180 grams. No, I didn’t know the price when I bought them. That’s not how I shop. If I like the look of something, I put it in my trolley and when I get to the checkout I avoid looking at the display on the cash register.

  It’s only when I get home that I am exposed to the full horror of the retailer’s greed. There was another sticker on the cherries. “Imported from UK.” I almost had a stroke. We grow cherries in South Africa. I know this because I once went to the Cherry Festival in Ficksburg and was nearly killed. Not by the cherries. It’s a long story involving military policemen, a box of matches and a sleeping bag soaked in aviation fuel. Brandy might have been involved.

  There are 500 hectares of cherry trees in the eastern Free State. With 250 trees per hectare producing an a
verage yield of 10 tons per hectare, that’s, like, a trillion cherries.

  Don’t tell me we are importing because it’s not cherry season. We grow marijuana all year round and there’s no reason we can’t do the same with cherries.

  As a freelancer, I don’t get an increase. This means that, at some point down the line, the cost of living will overtake my earnings and a trip to the shops will get me two potatoes and a mouse from the pet shop. If the price of mice goes up, I’ll have to forego the protein. There’s no point in complaining. Might as well laugh. Drink and laugh.

  I remember a time when shopping for groceries was fun. We’d stalk the aisles surreptitiously scoffing biscuits and guzzling wine from screw-top bottles before posing as security guards and frisking the elderly. Sometimes we’d pretend to shag inside the show tent in the outdoor section. Well, she was pretending.

  That was when we were a we. Now I am just an I. A lot of things aren’t as much fun when you find yourselves on unexpected early release after a long stretch in the connubial correctional facility. Sex is one. Shopping is another. Unlike sex, though, women generally take the initiative when it comes to groceries. They have to or the contents of the trolley would resemble the handiwork of a child with foetal alcohol syndrome.

  Shopping is a drug and men are the pushers. Women are the users. Draw your own conclusions. I have pushed more trolleys than I care to mention. It’s only right that the man retains control. In the wrong hands, a trolley is a dangerous weapon.

  What often happens, though, is that the female will take command of the trolley in mid-shop. This is done in silence. It is conducted like a prisoner swap between two hostile countries. The male does not know why the trolley has been taken from his control. He says nothing but follows at a respectful distance. Now and again he takes something off a shelf and hesitantly puts it in the trolley. Less hesitantly, she takes it out and puts it back on the shelf. Later, the trolley is found abandoned, allowing the male to once again assume control. Assume being the operative word.

  I have somehow become a subsistence shopper, buying just enough for one day. This is perhaps what happens when one lives alone for too long. One begins to see no point in planning ahead because at any moment one could go mad or drive to the airport or simply kill oneself.

  There are times when I reach the till with two items in the trolley. This sends a message to other shoppers that here is a man with ascetic tastes. A strong, heterosexual man with no need for luxuries. A Spartan, if you will. Or a loser with no lover and very little money. But that’s not it at all. I have money. No woman, yes. But no cry, either.

  Every time I go into a supermarket, I have every intention of stocking up. However, I am almost immediately overwhelmed by the choices I am expected to make. A great heaviness takes hold of my brain and I have to fight the urge to lie down. Sometimes I cry.

  My cupboards are full of rotting food and it’s maggots against weevils in a very ugly fight for domination of this repulsive kingdom. The inside of my fridge looks like a science experiment gone terribly wrong. It’s not my fault. Everything comes in bulk.

  Why are there are no little portions for single people? I want to buy two eggs and three rashers of bacon. I want one pork sausage, not 12. I don’t want a whole loaf of bread – I want four slices. I also want a shot glass of apple sauce for my sausage because I can no longer bear to throw out one more virtually full jar of apple sauce that has mutated into an ecosystem of evil.

  Speaking of which, did you know that a third of all food produced in South Africa – worth R60 billion a year – goes to waste? Let’s not tell the 13 million people who go to bed hungry every night. They wouldn’t be happy. Then again, they’re probably too weak to protest.

  Anyway. Back in the supermarket, I find myself in a staring match with the Salad Bar. It doesn’t have what I want. Why use the word bar if your customers can’t order a Bloody Mary? It’s false advertising and the premises should be torched. I counted 18 bowls of unlabelled noodle-based substances. They should have a user’s manual.

  Being Durban, people tend to congregate around the dead animal section after they’ve been sweating in the aisles. It’s not so bad now, in winter. But in summer management frequently uses dogs and teargas to encourage people to disperse to the non-refrigerated areas.

  Chilling with the dismembered livestock, I saw something called Box Flavoured Flatties. The contents looked like donor organs. I shan’t be buying one any time soon, even if they do taste like the yummiest of boxes.

  I thought I’d seen every cut and form of frozen chicken, but I hadn’t yet seen Rainbow’s Walky Talky Chicken Heads & Feet. To describe it as a grotesque horror show in a bag wouldn’t come close to doing it justice.

  I needed to be around some kind of produce that hadn’t been forced to live a cruel life and die a violent death. Pasta, then. I don’t really understand pasta, but I’d like to. What I don’t need is 48 different shapes and strains to choose from. Macaroni, gnocchi, fusilli, bucatini, ricciolini. Really? Capelli d’angelo looks like Donald Trump’s hair and conchigliette could quite feasibly be a rank in the Sicilian Mafia.

  If I stay too long in the supermarket, catatonia sets in and people have to push their way past me because I’m standing slack-jawed and drooling at the olive section, unable to decide between black or green or Calamata, pitted, sliced, tinned or buffet, stuffed with garlic, anchovies or wildebeest spleens.

  Why stuff them with anything at all? Is it not enough of an indictment on humanity that someone thought to stuff a duck into a turkey and then a chicken into the duck and call it a turducken? How about a sautéed sparrow for starters? Would madam like a flambéed flamingo for dessert? Oh, go on. I’m sure you could squeeze another bird into your grotesquely distended belly.

  Fraught with indecision, I made the rookie mistake of wandering into the cereal section. There are 947 different types, ranging from the kind that will turn your poo into ceramic bricks to the kind that will make you run in circles for an hour before vomiting up a Technicolor rainbow.

  Having pushed an empty trolley around for 20 minutes, I panicked and began grabbing stuff off the shelves. When I paid, the teller gave me a couple of Stikeez. Apparently these things are the equivalent of crack cocaine for children. Not wanting to get addicted, I gave them to a passing mother. She gasped and her face lit up. I got the feeling that if she didn’t already have a child, she’d be happy for me to give her one right there and then. She handed my Stikeez to her brat in the trolley and I thought he was going to have a stroke. The mother followed me into the parking lot thanking me over and over again and even touching me. I began to get an idea of how Jesus must have felt.

  What I might do is collect these little voodoo dolls and hang around outside shopping centres, offering them to unmarried mothers in return for … well, in return for their groceries. I never want to set foot in one of those hideous monuments to greed and waste ever again.

  A LETTER TO DR WALTER PALMER – LION HUNTER

  Dear Walter,

  On behalf of animal-haters everywhere, I would like to congratulate you for taking down Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe the other day. What kind of name is Cecil, anyway? For that alone he deserved to die. Besides, he was getting way too big for his paws. Apparently he strutted about as if he owned the bush, posing for tourists and even letting children ride on his back. Thank god we have men like you to remind lions of their place – on your study wall.

  Elephant-huggers keep referring to Cecil as a “much-loved lion”. This is ridiculous. You can’t love a lion. It says so in the Bible. Next thing you know, people will want to marry lions and have their babies and the world will be overrun with lion-people clawing at each other and fornicating out in the open.

  I understand you were hunting with a bow and arrow. Well done. It’s my favourite weapon, too. Do you also live in a cave and wear skins? Do you club your wife over the head and drag her to your bed at night? Of course you do. You are, after all, a fine exa
mple of early Paleolithic man.

  I see you chose a profession that involves hurting people. Of course you’d be a hunter in your spare time. You spend your days up to your elbows in blood and spittle, patients fighting you off, grabbing you by the throat, kicking you in the nuts. I would also want to kill things if I was a dentist. Things that don’t fight back, obviously.

  Reports say you and your guides lured Cecil out of the Hwange National Park by strapping a dead animal to your vehicle. You should have just opened the back door. Cecil would have jumped right in and gone along for the ride. You could have turned around and shot him in the face, saving everyone a lot of time and effort.

  Instead, you fired an arrow into Cecil and then spent the next two days looking for him. I’m surprised you didn’t find him sooner. He was, after all, wearing a GPS collar. Perhaps you thought all teenage African lions were wearing funky collars this year.

  I hope you offered Cecil a blindfold before executing him. That would have been the Christian thing to do. You couldn’t offer him a final meal because he would have chosen you. But you would, I’m sure, at least have waited until he was dead before skinning him and chopping his head off.

  You should mount his head on the wall of your dental practice in Minnesota. That would impress your lady patients and send a message to the guys that you are not a man to be trifled with. If anyone complains, lure them into the parking lot and shoot them full of Novocaine. What you do with them after that is your business.

  You have quite a record, my man. Apart from all the beasts you have slaughtered, you also landed a hefty fine in 2008 for lying to a federal agent about where you shot a black bear in Wisconsin. I bet you found him passed out drunk behind a Walmart and couldn’t resist shooting him in the back just for fun.