by James Best
The next day we went on a safari. We’d all been looking forward to it. I had planned that Sam and I would go on a safari or two later in the trip, but Heiress Films wanted to get some footage as well so they’d offered to pay for this safari and I’d agreed. Now I wasn’t sure how it’d go, with Sam so tired.
The three-hour drive north took us past vineyards and through rugged mountain terrain as we ascended up and onto the flatter Karoo district. The Karoo veld was carpeted with soft grasses and buttoned with koppies—small hillocks on the flats—where the hinge lines of the folded rock revealed both the age and the tortuous history of the landscape.
The occupants of the land revealed another tortuous history: white-owned grand farm estates contrasted with tin and trash townships. Sam noted the racial divide. ‘Black people are poor in Africa,’ he said.
Max and I tried to explain the history of apartheid and Nelson Mandela. Sam gave one of those thoughtful looks he does, looking to the side, and I wondered how much of what we had said had sunk in. Then he said, ‘There are a lot of Africans in Africa.’
Well, there was no denying that.
Some poor townships were located near wineries, and locals holding what I we presumed to be stolen boxes of grapes would try to flag down cars to sell to them. How they got the grapes I don’t know, because the vineyards in these areas were protected like Fort Knox, with huge electric fences, guards and razor wire everywhere. There were even road signs explicitly forbidding the sale of grapes on the roadside. Every now and then a truck or minivan would pull over and they would score a sale. There was tension in their manner and I wondered where my sympathies should lie: with people driven to desperate acts by poverty or with the farmers trying to protect their crops.
We arrived at the game reserve to witness the other end of the financial spectrum. It was a beautiful stone hotel full of rich and occasionally obnoxious Europeans and Americans. Children bombed into the pool, a fat German complained about his lunch, and Sam was freaked out by the peacock wandering between tables on the verandah. He’d been frightened of peacocks since one fanned his tail at him in an Australian wildlife park when he was little.
The documentary film company had organised a private truck for our safari. As our driver took us around the park we immediately started seeing buffaloes, hippos, rhinos, springboks, elands and, Sam’s favourites, elephants and lions. Private game reserves occupy a grey ethical zone for me. They are by nature artificial, and the animals aren’t really in their natural environment, particularly the more social animals. On the positive side they promote animal welfare and species protection. Kind of like a big zoo, but just for the wealthy.
The animals were amazing, but I was frustrated with Sam, who for the first half of the tour didn’t seem to be paying much attention or even enjoying the experience. His interest in African animals was one of the principal reasons we had selected Africa as our destination. I could tell Max had noticed I was cranky. My fuse was short after the hectic last few days.
‘Sam, pay attention will you!’ I fumed. ‘You’re not even looking!’
Sam flapped his hands and licked his lips. Max watched thoughtfully.
Finally, as the truck entered the heavily fenced-off lion area, Sam, to my great relief, started to focus on the animals.
‘What are the lions doing?’
‘I can see lions!’
He laughed with delight, craning to see as the lions strolled up the road towards our now stationary vehicle. Our truck was soon surrounded by seven lions, some within two metres of us. We were quite elevated and they were probably very used to trucks, and hopefully well fed. Still, where the heck was the gun? Sam remained focused during a close encounter with two elephants soon afterwards. It turned into an amazing experience.
The three-hour drive home got us back to the hostel after dark. Sam was becoming very oppositional. I asked him to get off his Nintendo DS after dinner and he lost it. I threatened him with its confiscation and the situation spiralled. His behaviour worsened and my threatened consequences escalated. I was tired, and handled the situation poorly.
Shouting became screaming, grabbing became pushing, and finally he became violent. After Sam delivered a fairly effective klonk to my head with his DS I just had to get out of there. I went for a walk. We both had to calm down. My t-shirt was a bit torn, as was my soul. Second thoughts and self-doubt crept in, and then guilt. So much had been put on the line with this trip, and all I was doing was stressing my son out.
I was angry at myself. I should have known better than to escalate a situation with threats I knew I couldn’t follow through on. Why was I pushing Sam so hard? What was the bloody point anyway? Was I really up to this? We were in Cape Town, for goodness sake. How was I going to cope when I was in the backblocks of Malawi and one of us got sick, or lost, or we were robbed?
When I got back to the room, Sam was looking sheepish as he sat on the bed. ‘Hmm. I’m sorry, Dad.’
I sat across from him on the other bed and gently squeezed his knee. ‘That’s okay, mate. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.’
He hung his head low. ‘I’m sorry for hitting your head.’
‘That’s okay. You go to sleep,’ I said.
Tomorrow was another day.
The next morning I arranged for Sam to have a conversation with the hostel manager. This was one of the types of interaction we were meant to film for the Griffith University study. Each week I was to make four short films of Sam: one of him checking out of accommodation, ordering a meal at a restaurant, giving a debrief of the trip to me, and having a general chat with a stranger.
His first video for the university study contained a gem. For the first time ever, I think, Sam made small talk. The hostel manager was trying to have a conversation with him about our stay and our plans. When there was a lull, Sam turned to her casually and asked, ‘So, have you ever been to Australia?’ What may have seemed insignificant to others was pure gold to me.
Hey, maybe this stuff was working? It lifted my spirits after the previous night’s dramas.
CHAPTER 3
Training wheels off
The hectic days full of activities had really taken their toll on Sam and me, culminating in the confrontation over the Nintendo DS. Max understood my concern that Sam was becoming overwhelmed, so for a day we just chilled. We went for lunch in a cafe and hung around some public parks in the centre of Cape Town. In one, we came across giant chess set, so I seized the opportunity to teach Sam the rules of the game. His second neuroplasticity activity was underway.
Sam had seen chess played in the Harry Potter movies, so he agreed to learn. In the middle of a crowded park in the dappled sunshine under some sprawling figs, I showed him how the pieces were set up and what each piece could do in the game. With Max filming us, a few locals noticed and started watching,
The game commenced. I helped Sam decide which moves he should make and how the piece could be moved. He was needing a lot of support to stay on task. He was, however, picking up the concepts quickly and remained focused. A couple of scruffy old guys smelling of alcohol offered suggestions to Sam, which just ended up distracting him.
I made sure that Sam won the game so as to not prick his enthusiasm. It was all very tiring, running around the large board, explaining the rules and making the moves for both of us, keeping Sam’s attention on the game and not the unsolicited advice from the sidelines, but we got there. Sam sported a big grin about ‘winning’ the game, and I was relieved we had made progress.
The following day, however, we were back in the thick of it, another jam-packed day. It was Easter Sunday so we were visiting a township church somewhere, I didn’t know where, in Cape Town for mass and to hear the choir, followed up with a visit to a barbecue nearby. Liza had arranged for a second fixer with knowledge of the area we were to visit to drive us around; Donovan was an African with a soft voice and gentle nature.
The church took some finding but eventually Donovan got us ther
e. Inside a nondescript building the congregation, dressed in their Sunday best, sat around a fifty-person choir, mostly female, all wearing purple velvet dresses with white trim and matching rimless hats. Altar boys and acolytes robed in scarlet assisted the minister, who was a large man with a booming deep voice and flowing white robes. He baptised a dozen or so babies, each gorgeous in white lace outfits, before the main service began.
South Africans tend to be strongly religious. Over eighty per cent of the population identifies as Christian, mostly Protestant, a legacy of European missionaries in centuries past. Most churches follow a combination of Christian teachings and African customs and traditions, including, of course, in their choice of music.
The singing started. The strength of the sound was physical, it lifted me off my seat. Max glanced across at me from behind the camera and tapped a fist to his chest, mouthing ‘Wow’. Every member of the choir knew what was coming next and who was to sing which parts. Then they all dropped their heads and after a pause a tall woman in the third row lifted her chin and launched into a solo. I clutched Sam’s hand as I felt the force of her voice. It was all in Xhosa so we couldn’t understand a word but it didn’t matter. In all my years I had never heard anything remotely close to the quality of her singing.
Unfortunately, Sam didn’t like it. He found the singing too loud and I had to keep him from covering his ears with his hands so as not to cause offence. He was also bothered by the strong smell of incense, as an altar boy and girl continuously swung a censer while walking through the church.
His facial rash was further compounding his distress. Sam licks his lips when he’s anxious, and eventually the continual exposure to saliva causes skin irritation. The rash is almost a barometer of his anxiety, although it can also be triggered by environmental conditions like cold weather or wind. His rash had started soon after we landed in Cape Town and had steadily worsened, despite my diligent application of Vaseline and a steroid cream. Apart from the discomfort, it also made him look weirder. The tall white boy with his hands on his ears, a red rash around his lips and unusual jerky movements was getting a few looks from the congregation, more of confusion than annoyance.
Soon the a capella became more rhythmic and the choir and congregation started to swing. I managed to get Sam to join in the clapping with a bribe: if he clapped one hundred times then we would leave. He did, and so then we did. The singing had been extraordinary but I wasn’t sure if Sam had got much out of it. Once again, I started to wonder what the hell we were doing.
Donovan drove us to the barbecue restaurant. I didn’t know what to expect. Was it going to be the four of us sitting around a table next a backyard Weber? The township seemed too busy and lively for anything that prosaic. I was right.
We parked and ambled up the street. Runty dogs sniffed garbage, plaster peeled off buildings painted with amateur advertising, footpaths were busy. Men wore flashy clothes, jewellery and sunglasses and women wore tight skirts and braided hair and talked loudly in Xhosa with its distinctive clicking sounds on mobile phones. Lots of noise, lots of action. On a corner wine tasting was offered from the top of a tin drum forming a makeshift table, vans and motorbikes honked as they zipped past, music pumped from somewhere and a man urinated on a wall.
It didn’t feel threatening, but I was mindful to keep vigilant. Despite the obvious poverty, the mood was upbeat. It is said that the African concept of ubuntu—a sense of one’s place within the human network, of what you can do to help others and where you belong—is strongly felt in the townships. It seemed that way to me.
We joined a queue that spilled from a shopfront onto the street. As we waited, Donovan filled us in on the South African barbecue tradition, called braaivleis (Afrikaans for ‘roasted meat’) or braai for short. More than a simple barbecue, it is an important social gathering with specific traditions and social norms, such as the cooking of the meat predominately being undertaken by men.
Hawkers worked the line, and I bought a hat that I would lose within a week. Half an hour later we reached the counter, which was piled high with raw meat. There was no other food on offer at all, just meat, meat, meat. I wasn’t entirely sure what meat we were buying or how it had been prepared. Once again, we were both dealing with uncertainty. It was a good opportunity for Sam to practice ordering, so he did the talking and paid. We were directed around a corner and added our meat to a queue at the back of the shop where a large man, the braai master, was directing a staff of ten working on industrial-scale barbecues. Twenty minutes later we finally collected our cooked meat and, for a twenty-rand entry fee, about two Australian dollars, we got a stamp on the wrist and pushed our way into the throng in the large canvas-roofed eating area next door.
The place was pumping. The crowd was mainly African and coloured—the South African term for people of mixed African, European and Asian heritage—with a sprinkling of Europeans. African dance music blasted from the speakers, men playing bongo drums walked through the crowd for tips, and there was dancing, drinking and flirting aplenty. Once again, while a fascinating place, it was all too much for Sam. He complained about the noise and the smoke and the smells. He recoiled from the drummers when they spoke to him and was reluctant to eat anything beyond a simple sausage. He drew his knees up onto his chest as he sat on his plastic chair and covered his ears. We quickly ate our meat with our fingers and left.
While Donovan, Sam and I sat in the car waiting for Max, who had gone back to do some more filming by himself, a man approached. Donovan’s African accent thickened to match our guest’s as he leant through the passenger window. He wore a tight white t-shirt, a gold necklace and sunglasses and seemed to quickly clock something was going on with Sam as he chatted with Donovan, talking vaguely about needing ‘some help’. I wondered why Donovan was putting up with him.
In an oily voice, he asked me, ‘Where are you from, man?’
Donovan answered for us. ‘They are from Australia.’
He looked at Sam, who was frowning as he stared out the window. ‘Why are you so angry? You should smile and relax.’
Sam continued to ignore him.
‘What is your name?’ he asked.
I poked Sam gently and he turned and answered in a whisper.
The man continued to push, laughing and leaning further through the window, as Sam stared down the street. Eventually the talk of ‘a need’ crystallised into an amount: thirty rand. Donovan said he only had twenty for him and the cash passed hands. As he sauntered off, I asked Donovan why he had paid.
‘I saw him coming. I was watching his body language and motion. He is used to hustling. I hand him twenty and I avoid a problem. Twenty is a small price to pay for safety. We look a bit unusual sitting in a car like this.’ He paused for a while and then added, ‘Anyway, he might need the money. It didn’t cost me anything.’
‘It cost you twenty,’ I replied.
Donovan tilted his head. ‘That is not much.’
‘Isn’t it encouraging him?’
‘I suppose so, a bit.’ Then he added, ‘But he still might need it.’
Our last day in Cape Town was to be a more reflective and educational one, touring Robben Island. It was here that Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for eighteen years, along with an estimated twelve thousand political prisoners during the decades of the apartheid era.
I was pleasantly surprised to find how well Sam understood what had gone on. He has always been interested in crime and punishment, ever since these concepts were first seeded in his brain when he read about Toad being sent to prison for stealing a car in The Wind in the Willows. More recently, his very dominant obsession with Harry Potter meant he often referred to Azkaban prison and Sirius Black’s escape from it. So the idea of being in custody was understood, but the example today was, of course, all too real.
During our discussion on the ferry to the island, I was able to get across to him that governments can behave unethically, that it can be okay to protest against the system,
and people can go to gaol for the wrong reasons. He was able to understand what had happened during the apartheid era and the importance of Mandela and the truth and reconciliation process subsequent to his release.
As he looked into Mandela’s cell, he said, ‘The government was mean to him. They were a mean government.’
‘Yes, they were Sam,’ I replied.
‘But he became president.’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘Did he punish them?’
‘No, he wanted the country to be at peace, so he encouraged everyone to try to get along.’
He smiled and nodded, and thoughtfully stared at the small cell.
The island has been listed as a World Heritage site and it’s not hard to see why. The guides are all ex-prisoners of the island and this brings a personal touch to what they’re saying, which is incredibly moving. Our guide had been snatched, aged twenty, out of a meeting with forty-three like-minded friends and gaoled for five years. His description of the systems that operated inside the gaol and their effect on its intelligent and passionate young inmates was shocking and heartbreaking. Sam got it, and so did I.
As our group emerged from the dark prison corridors into the glare of the limestone courtyard, our guide took more questions.
‘Did you know Mandela?’ asked an American woman.
He nodded. ‘Yes. I spoke with Madiba many times.’
‘What was he like?’
He paused and smiled. ‘He treated us like children at times. You need to understand we were political activists, and political activists have opinions on everything. Some of us didn’t like being corrected by him.’ He paused again. ‘The other thing with Madiba was if you disagreed with him, he would not let you go until he could understand why you thought differently to him. He would be at you for days and days until either you convinced him you were right, or he convinced you. With me, I usually gave in and agreed with him.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘Maybe that is why he was such an effective leader. He hated not understanding another person’s position.’
