M. has gone.

The night before we took her to the hospital, three toddlers set a fire. It blazed across a twenty acre field within seconds; neighbors ran to the nearest water pump half a mile away. When we arrived in the morning, the beehive hut stood at the edge of a sea of blackened grass, sky blue as always. One meter and half a second saved her for three more days. At first she'd refused to go to the hospital, afraid to be admitted during pension day, but no one could imagine her waiting in line for the eighty dollar monthly stipend when she couldn't hold herself upright. From the back seat, she stared out over the fields in silence, eyes fluttering, in and out this world. Ntombeleni Mlangeni was forty years old, a mother of seven, and a grandmother. Her eldest daughter will continue to work in the roads to support them. Tall and strong, she still lies on her stomach like a child, and laughs out loud. I wonder if anyone will marry her, already with a young son. Her intended husband was shot in Johannesburg on the day of their wedding, years ago. She was terrified to lose her mother; you are never ready to lose your mother, my mother said. You can blame the system, the transport problem, the one who infected her, the situations that led to his infection, and on and on but you can never name the one thing that was responsible for her end. All of these rondavels dotting the hillsides, shining buzzcut thatched roofs, grandmothers leaning against them in the sun. Almost all of these huts with a small skeleton within, buried deep in blankets that slightly rise and fall, in shortened breaths.

There is such a sharpness, of centuries of separation, just beneath the thin new skin that covers everything here, in the Cape of Good Hope. There are American ghosts, bent at the waist in the fields. The hatred that is still so hard to kill in the most notorious areas, and pessimistically thinking of how many more generations it will take to silence that here, and of those that will be brave enough to cross color lines to hasten it, and ready to be ridiculed by both sides for it. D. explained today that black means darkness and evil, so she will never be beautiful because of it. I thought about what Malcolm X had said about that. And an art teacher in 3rd grade who said that there are so many different colors in skin that nobody can be one color, when a mixed classmate argued that she was tan, not black. Brown celebrities get blonder and are suddenly beloved by twice as many. Millions of subconsciously simple tactics to make you smaller. I know that the topic of race is almost boringly obvious, and no, it shouldn't matter, but I can't seem to stop it from permeating every waking thought;

Best of all, the past few days of heaviness in our hearts has been lifted by the visit of Gerry, Sarah's father, and Konrad, Sarah's boyfriend, which required us to set aside some time to concentrate on the beautiful things around; another horse ride through the game reserve (+ another week of walking like John Wayne after last weekend's horse ride at a local doctor's farm), a rollicking Zulu engagement ceremony, and a few braais. We were in need of some outside perspective on the stories we've become a part of, and of some good ol' daddy hugs.

The much anticipated sex initiation ceremony also happened last weekend. Beautiful girls, faces, breasts and arms smeared with white clay. The both of our faces painted with three white dots. The girls running from the fields to home, and chased back outside by men and boys. A goat wearing sneakers. Meat that could be spread like butter upon bread. We were fed until it was painful, in thanks for photographing the event. All in the most beautiful area, the sky pinkening over the mountains of Lesotho. If you don't see me for the next three months, I'm locked in a room, printing family pictures for every person in uKhahlamba.

My heartfelt apologies for writing so late...our friend with a phone line went out of town, so checking email next should be thrilling; please know that I was deeply concerned about losing such faithful and extremely good-looking readers...

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Highlights of Sodwana Bay, off the Indian Ocean below Mozambique, from this past weekend:

*snorkeling through the dense crowds of angelfish that swarmed around our arms, the needlenosed fish flashed by just below the silvery surface. It's incredible how they never actually touch your skin, despite the constant tossing of the waves. Little silent hurricanes. Life seems safer without gravity,

*the sights en route to the coast: trees that were pale green all over, even the trunks, that oozed thick red sap.

*the families of squirrel monkeys that ran over the roof at night. We slept in a safari tent at a diving lodge in the park, that was blissfully warm,

*resting in the cleavage between sand dunes

*a fist-sized beetle that moved like a wind-up toy

*the baby pineapples carved to eat like ice cream cones by the little girl at the market with the big machete

*the three missed calls from worried friends

*ending each day completely clean and peaceful, and feeling as weightless as those fish...


Sitting on the back porch with my old lady Friedland and a one-eyed tabby in the afternoon sun...only one day has been without sun since we've been here, that being the disastrous day in the taxi full of very sick people. I realized that yesterday, sitting with D., who noted we'd be leaving in a month. There is still so much to cover, to make the whole picture clear enough to anyone who hasn't been reading the blog (naughty naughty). The roads that we travel every day, the in-between scenes footage that fills in so much in a glimpse...what else makes you remember a place? I dream of bike rides home, old sweaters and jeans that I've owned, certain tastes of one time and place.

This morning there was a ceremony of gratitude for M., who has stopped coughing but still finds it hard to wake up. Her mattress was carried into the rondavel hut by members of her congregation, all dressed in royal blue and white. Four pastors directed the service, with friends speaking up on her behalf. She awoke partway through, and was able to eat for a few minutes afterwards, when we all received big plates of chicken, rice, and boiled bread with cups of corn pudding. Sarah and I feel like we're training to do competitive eating; we'll be coming back with a lot more of us to love.

It was a beautiful ceremony, and we mutually thanked one another. One pastor said we must stay, because there is a lot of help needed here. It's really the Home Based Carers who do the hardest work, traveling miles on foot through rivers and up mountains to help the most isolated people. If a fleet of 10 vehicles (and unlimited petrol...) were supplied, I have no doubt that these women could help thousands more. It's hard to convey to M. and her family how equally important the job that she is doing for us (being filmed is a big commitment), and what we hope it will do in the long run...

& photos of our jungle friend, and painting M.'s rondavel with red clay and water...

hhaaayyii!!

If Shakespeare was right that there are only comedies and tragedies, it looks like this movie might be a comedy after all. I'll skip the six hours of confusion at the hospital on Monday that I spent tearing the rainbow wings from the bodies of crushed locusts, right to jubilant Tuesday, when M.'s madness had come and gone from its peaks, and she was laughing at the insults that she'd spat at her daughter the night before ('harlot in trousers!'). Madness is common with one of the ARV pills in particular; nightmares and dizziness come, and had almost prevented M. from continuing to take them. But with the force of the Home Based Carer and her children, she has arrived at a more peaceful state of being.

We spent the morning scurrying through the ravines and tunnels that her children hide in when the police come, looking for fields of dagga, marijuana. It felt like the moon's surface appears from down here, craters in multicolored layers, eroding in knuckle-like rows. We were accompanied this week by Cazie, the film student we met up with upon arriving in Durban. She was the mistress of sound control, and thrilled the kids with her perfect Zulu. We visited M.'s sister-in-law, where a neighboring gogo (granny) was shucking dried corn. Every exclamation she made began with HHAAAYYII!! and Vusi and M.'s daughter laughed so hard they could barely stand. "HHAAAYYII what is this Misses doing??!" when Sarah sat beside her and began to shuck the corn. "HHAAAYYII I like this Misses! She has done this before!" She reminded Sarah of the old Cuban ladies that she knew.

This afternoon we talked about love, with D., in her pink walled bedroom. The fears for her daughter, the little she knows about what goes through her head. Universal teenage stuff. The senseless murder of her daughter's father in the work hostels in Johannesburg, which she had never mentioned before. On the drive home, a perfect snake of fire wound its way through the mountains. It's law to burn two meter fire breaks around the crops by mid July. The stillest nights yield the most beautiful displays.

The pictures here were painted by the first people on earth. Painters take note: egg whites, animal blood and fat. Don't waste your money on Windsor & Newton. Fluid gestural drawings, broken with bullets in areas by British soldiers who were angry with their portrayal. Wars, births, food, and eland-headed spirits standing over it all, larger than all of the rest.