I Like What Africa Has To Say Here On The Eastern Cape

I regularly return to the old fort on Victoria Drive where the continent speaks with clarity.

By Andrew Howarth

I like to drive.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s on a rented scooter in the heat of a New Delhi summer or behind the wheel of a jeep tackling the vast expanse of the Outback.

I like going places.

I like the knowing home like the back of my hand — the veined workings of a city and how it flows. Wired like a homing pigeon, I don’t take too much thought to get where I want to be.

I like the rustic houses, the Old Dutch design threatening contemporary uniformity and the Victorian houses defiantly ornate. I like the jacaranda, its purple petals littering the pavement and the stately oak and maple that have seen a hundred or more years. I like the importance of art.

The old suburbs hold a history, tragic and beautiful. The influences of Europe weigh heavily on Mount Croix and Richmond Hill. Neglect is often a product of ambition, and I like that we have learned the value of history, the era forgotten in time, when things were built to be beautiful. I like that they chose to preserve these districts.

At the terminus, taxis seem to be an extension of each owner’s self, often emblazoned with stickers of inspiration or a mobile billboard or battered and patched with dents and ingenious quick fixes.

My favorite place is the old fort on Victoria drive where the sun gains artistic licence over the earth at the beginning and end of each day. Smearing light and distorting the colours to a hue that does not seem possible, the light in the sky is Africa’s own cheeky version of an Aurora Borealis. Greens become gold or silver or red, and white is free to pick its colour at random. The field is alight with the warmth at dawn or the ending of a day.

After class, I drive home and soak in the sights and scents and sounds of this bustling metropolis.

Workers are eager to be head home: family, lovers and friends are waiting. Some return to houses. Others to tin and zinc staccato structures from a sordid past that Photo by Chris Allen scab the land Original colonial houses still make up the central area of the city. outside the city.

At the robots in between light changes, shiny silver Tires crunch on the gravel, and a flock or a handful of copper can liberate a of guinea fowl pick at grubs along the side dancing man of his paralysis. Legless men of the road. They have a distinctive call miraculously regrow limbs or a bottle of and blue heads that give them a distinctly something, Hawkers will sell anything; prehistoric demeanour – a reminder of the sunglasses, fruit, dustbin bags, or ageless quality of life on the Eastern Cape.. toothbrushes, cell phone chargers— prices Clothes go crisp on the roof racks drop when you speak their language. of the car in the salt air as I wrestle

Barneys is on my left, where the with a wetsuit and the few shameful karaoke is never a solo and everyone moments of apathetic nudity. knows each other. The beer is cheap, I love that first wave, and the next. but a jug is cheaper. Many a day is The water so cold it freezes the euphoria wasted in the folly of this tavern. on your face; a building wave, the initial

The beach front is always busy. Dogs paddle, the fluid mount, the drop, the gallop off their leads, and children frollick ride and the grit of wax on the pads in the waves, their parents minding younger of feet while you control direction. siblings who toddle around wielding A fort marks this hill where invaders once tiny spades and buckets. Sunbathers watched for invasion. Purposeless now, it lie away from the water, absorbing the stands watch over the sea, a guardian of the sun as if they were plants. They are in fynbos and wildflowers that covet its walls. one of two shades; bronze or red. This is my sanctuary, a little piece

Runners of all sizes dodge pram pushers of history at the top of a hill. and cyclists along the promenade, elderly The soft white sand slides a bit with couples hold hands and watch teenagers each step, but not enough to deny my do what they would have never done in walk up the steep incline. A spurfowl their day. Opportunists take full advantage, takes precautionary refuge in a nearby a brutal turf war between seagulls and thicket, alarmed by a rare, lone stranger. pigeons over the bounty of dropped french This is a stretch of coast line with blue fries and ice cream cones is not uncommon. and green as far as the eye can see. This

The university is on my left and, as is Port Elizabeth before the modern world. scenery changes, Bush, dune, thicket, The restios’ silver feathers sway like replace B&B’s and petrol stations. The rolling waves and the bushveld gleams with aroma of fynbos is pungent and little the remains of the day: The dusk alight animals make appearances along the with the iridescent remnants of the sun’s route. A mongoose scampers across the daily comings and goings: Green, red, road, a long body moving in waves, a yellow, orange every night a different sky. dassie scouts a new rock to perch on In the stress and turmoil of and tortoises lumber over the hot tar. my life, I regularly return to this

I arrive at my favourite surf spot, an refuge where the continent speaks isolated lookout point that harbours a so clearly through its sunsets. few carefully parked cars — one billowing And I like what Africa has to say wisps of something likely illegal. here on the Eastern Cape.