28.5.08

simangaliso


...those three kids, running through the bright gold grass, three little dots that grew larger and larger at the first distant rumbling of imoto, our car. It has made its way onto my list of top ten best memories of this lifetime.

Ntombeleni's family is doing wonderfully, I am happy to report, and though there are hints of fresh sadness from the passing of the elderly uncle (the first man seen in the film) just three weeks ago, a new baby girl, Ntombeleni's granddaughter, is a happy new addition. Tshengisile, her mother, and Ntombeleni's eldest daughter, grabbed us both in a rough embrace, and we were led to the main rondavel, the one we had helped to paint, now a bright acqua on the inside. The children are in school, and cared for by the government foster care grant, R800 ($104 USD) each per month, for the time that they are still young.

Both families have let us know that they do not wish to see the film; too intense, too personal, too soon. We understand this; I don't think I could bear to experience my mother's death a second time around. There is also the custom of not really mentioning the departed around the house; it brings up too much sadness. Tomorrow, we see Danisile's family...it is so exciting to reunite, but it will doubtless be heavier...

It was also a great relief to hear that my postcards had been reaching them, and that I can continue my one-way communication through drawings and photos (since my Zulu will never be fit) this way. I'm leaving a pack of stamped, addressed postcards here, to see if we can continue this way. Though Ntombeleni's sister-in-law now has a DVD player thanks to the recent introduction of electricity to KwaMaye...email should only be steps away, especially with this newfangled doohickey that picks up connection via satellite, that I only learned of months ago...

As we left, Phumlani and I drew pictures to one another in the sand. Then he wrote 'simangaliso', over and over. When Phumzile came around, I asked her what it meant. 'Miracle', she said.

26.5.08

special report: back in the drakensberg

We lifted off Friday, letting the city break down into a pixelated array of rectangles, squares, and intersecting highway lines, thinning to a strip of coast, and then dark blue sea for the next ten or fifty hours. The dark blue greyed to black, and it's a shame there's still no camera fit to catch the brightness of those lonely stars that only one shining ship below could appr
eciate. It was startling just to see a light in the middle of so much cold sea, and unthinkable that a friend of mine had crossed that. I thought of the distance growing between myself and the warm little cat that sleeps curled against my body, now half a world away. Those friends, too.
Dawn came pale and orange through the plane window in Dakar, where we stopped to refuel, refood, and get sprayed by a substance that was deemed harmless by the World Health Organization. It smelled like Lysol. We rose again, and I awoke over Namibia, just past the Angola border. straight roads, dirt roads, and not one house. Johannesburg happened unexpectedly after the mountains, tiny windows glinting as we angled down, over fires and exhaust. The air felt warm and smelled grilled.
The transition to Durban was smooth, and the friendly Afrikaner man beside me, and twice the size of me, attempted to discussĀ 
water polo before I confessed I had no idea that the US had a national team(?); I come from a land too plentiful in sports, beliefs, and toothpaste brands than I will ever comprehend.



We spent a perfectly comfortable night at a lovingly designed b+b with good old friends of Sarah's father Gerry, and picked up a glowing Phumzile (literally, in a bright golden scarf) at the airport from where she is currently studying in Cape Town. A three hour drive north took us back past the giraffes, the doctor's clinic, the naartje/ butter-avo vendor, past the adjacent road to the hospital, and to Carol's door, where all of the dogs, the cats, and the Zulu-fluent parrot were there to greet us.
It's two years to the month we arrived for the first time. Each ridge in the horizon line, each curve of the road, and each bite of Carol's pudding was/ has been/ and continues to be real. I can't explain it, but there is great relief in all of this.

7.5.08

screenings coming soon to a festival near you...

International Film Festival of Tribal Art and Culture (India)
Renderyard Film Festival (London): March 22, 3:30pm
London Independent Film Festival: April 14, 2pm
Brooklyn International Film Festival: screening date TBA, May 30-June 8
Boston International Film Festival*: June 10, 5:30pm
Los Angeles Film Festival*: screening date TBA, June 19-29

*filmmakers will be present

we are also thrilled to return to South Africa in late May to visit with our friends...