haze + flames

The smoke from the burning grasses this week gathered into a thick veil over the mountains today, the smell of fire everywhere, stinging eyes inside of the huts, hanging on the air and mixing with the sweet scent of cattle fur. Living in the presence of animals is nice to be reminded of our own animalness, though the strata of suffering that we people love to pin on one another must shame the rest; could be why they won't speak to us.

Wednesday we filmed D., a hilarious spitfire of a woman, as those little ones tend to be, as she walked the steep and crumbling path to the clinic early this morning for an ARV adherence class. The earth is red and dry in the winter, that Mars-like moonscape that makes places like Arizona (Zulu food, architecture, and customs are also strikingly like Navajo). I drew with a piece of it on the curb as we waited in the parking lot for another girl, frail and barely breathing. The nurses at the clinic tried to convince her mother that she should go to the hospital–you know how I feel about this hospital...I agreed with her mother, who wanted to take her home. She died an hour later in her mother's arms, in the back seat of our car as we arrived at her home. It's hard to describe how agonizing it felt, to be present at such a private moment, and to hear that otherworldly wail of a parent who has lost a child. That same sound, when my friend died in high school. But I felt relieved that it hadn't happened in a hospital queue. It's etched in forever...my brain weaves wildly vivid dreams, working overtime to make it all make sense.

How do you convince someone whose life has been so hard that life is still worth living? At that meeting at Housing Works in NY, I met a Chinese businessman, HIV+, who had opened his home to addicts and prostitutes, focusing on fixing their self-esteem problems before ARV treatment. 'People who don't care about themselves won't care about passing it on to others.' He had attempted suicide when he found out that he was positive, because there was no talk, no outreach or support. Such an enormous part of the disease is this. A factory wage is R80 ($12USD) per week. Like the welfare system in the states, there is more incentive to have children to get government grants with the lack of job opportunities, and unprotected sex means more transmission...at the base of so many problems of the world lies unemployment and unfair business practices. Good business could turn so many lives around...people being good to one another on the smallest of levels advances humanity by leaps and bounds. One good parent or teacher does an immeasurable amount of good to a generation, and with so few of both left alive the scores of children we pass on the roads every day have less and less of a chance.

Bestseller doesn't always = best, but Gladwell's 'Blink' can be read as fast, with some juicy ideas on recognizing what is instinct and what has been subconsciously brainwashed into us...according to studies, an inch of height is worth $789 in salary per year. And surgeons who spend three extra minutes per patient are less likely to be sued. There are some creepy tests about race. Some white South Africans have mentioned that we are lucky, that Zulus are relieved to hear that we are not part of the history here; but none of us have an innocent history. There is so much that is never said, that when D. exclaimed 'It's like you're not even white people' it was alarming. I'm considered white here, if only because I am not Zulu. South Africans I'd met in the past said I was 'coloured', but I haven't heard the term yet. I learned the term 'whitewashed' in California; a nonwhite person who hangs out with white people. This from the state where minorities are the majority. Is it ok for me to bring up race, because I belong to two but to neither? There's a lot of history that wants to be forgotten.

Today, Saturday, I rode not through the desert on a horse with no name, but through Spioenkop game reserve on a horse named Muffin, through a herd of giraffe. Sarah followed closely on Daisy, and Sthembiso, our engineer buddy, on Muchacho. We met up with Phumzile by the water and had a braai (bbq) by the lake as the sun set and the full moon rose...