Living for Disco

Usually winter in Windhoek consists of bright, sharp days that start with nose-numbing coldness, and end early in the afternoon, the subdued red sun falling suddenly behind the hills. The days are cloudless and clear.

Over the last week wisps and folds of high cloud have been intruding on the days. They seem to make the wind that little bit colder, the day feel a little more wintry. On high-cloud days you notice the trees that have shed their leaves, and the yellowing grass on the municipal lawns. On high-cloud days the air smells of distant snow.

They’re also the days when the sunsets outdo themselves in splashes of rose, lilac and orange. I cycled home last night in awe, marvelling that the sky could look so wonderful in colours that if mixed together in a dress would have people reaching for a pair of shades, and whispering “My god, I didn’t know she was losing her sight, the poor afflicted girl.”

I stopped outside my gate to chat to David, the security guard next door, who is spending his days hopping about in the street and rubbing his hands together, wrapped from head to toe, his nose and eyes peeping from within the hood of his windcheater.

“Look at the sky!”, I said, delighted with it. “Isn’t it pretty!”

“No, that sky it is very bad”, he replied, shaking his head in distress. “That sky, it means fevers, and the cattle will die. It is that sky that brings the cough. It is not a good thing, that sky.”

“But it’s only a little bit of cloud. And it looks so beautiful when the sun sets,” I said. “How can it make the cattle die?”

“Everyone here, they know that the clouds are not good for the cattle, or for the people. It is why we all have cough.” He pronounces it “cowf”, and I realise now that that’s what he’s been asking me every day for the last week, concern written all over his face.

“Do you have a cough?” I asked.

“No. Do you?”

“No. So I guess we’ll be ok for now.”

As the gate closes behind me, I take a last look at the flaming horizon.

Another day done.

It’s freezing here today - cold enough that I’m wearing my coat and scarf at my desk, and stomping through the office chuntering about ‘no-one told me living in Africa would be like living in the Arctic wastes, bloody bastards, not even any penguins to entertain me…’ and sentiments of the kind.

The one concession I have to winter is a two bar electric heater in my office, which heats up a little pocket of air about a foot square by my left foot. For some reason, people I work with deem it critically important to put a bowl of water by the heater so that it doesn’t dry the air out with its furnace-like powers. It’s a mystery to me what they think will happen if they forget to do this - maybe their skin will blister and flake off in the intense dryness; maybe their lungs will shrivel up, or the air in the office will become unbreathable. I don’t know. Seeing as I don’t deem it necessary to do this other kind people usually place a bowl of water by my desk at some point in the day, so I keep forgetting it’s there, knocking it over every time I move my wheelie chair, and muttering “For fuck sake” under my breath.

Effectively, every five minutes or so I’m tipping a bucket of water over an electrical applicance - this without counting the number of times I’ve almost set fire to various items of clothing hanging off the back of the chair.

Health and safety? It’s a wonder I’m still alive.

I work for an organisation that works with young people. Occasionally, I have been required to escort groups of these young people on jaunts around the country, where they visit schools and communities, acting as role models for schoolkids and the like. At least that’s the idea. Usually we are accompanied by a truculent bastard called Victor, who drives the bus and grunts bitterly when required to do something useful, e.g. start the bus, drive it to where it’s supposed to be, keep the bus stationary while people get on it etc., etc.

On this occasion, I had had to leave the group in the capable hands of my colleague, who was busy setting up the sound system, in order to go and pick up a group of kids from a nearby school. I was concerned that Victor was going to have an aneurysm he was so furious at being required to do this, so I accompanied him, trusting my colleague to entertain the gaggle of primary school children with music while we were gone. “Entertain them with music” I said, thinking that he would put on one of his Celine Dion CDs and all would be well.

I returned, some twenty minutes later. I could hear the stereo from approximately two miles away. And blasting out of it, into an audience of ten year olds, came the following words:

“THIS IS ANOTHER PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT BROUGHT TO YOU BY SLIM SHADY.”

Oh Christ. I made it out of the bus before it had even stopped moving, and ran towards the stereo, waving my arms around in a panic-driven semaphore.

“SLIM SHADY DOES NOT GIVE A FUCK WHAT YOU THINK.”

“Noooooooooo…. Stop stop stop turn it off turn it OFF Oh my god…” I ran past some teachers who were waiting for the show to begin.

“IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT YOU CAN SUCK HIS FUCKING COCK.”

“Turn it off!” I screamed at my colleage. “OFF! My god, are you mad?”

He just didn’t get it. He looked at me, my hands full of hair, wild-eyed and breathless, and said “What’s the problem?”.

I spent the rest of the day imagining what those kids’ parents would say if they came home reciting Eminem verbatim, courtesy of our organisation, and more of my hair turned white.

Dragging my shopping bags out to the taxi rank, I was steered forcibly into a waiting car, amidst shouts of “Meme, where are you going? Take this cab, this one meme! We leave first!”

We sat for a while, waiting for the car to fill up and I started to eat a strawberry. I bought the strawberries because I was hungover, and needed to make my insides feel pampered after the battering they’d had the night before. Strawberries are scientifically proven to do this. If you can also add champagne and/or melted chocolate then you have an instant cure, but a strawberry on its own will work wonders on a bilious constitution.

Liverwurst, however, will not. I didn’t notice it until after she got in the cab, because I was too busy trying to find space in which my lungs could expand. She was vast. One of her thighs was the size of two of mine. Her flesh moved in a way that reminded me of marine tides and the gravitational pull of the moon. A pair of flimsy shoes attempted bravely to contain the chunks of meat that were her feet. Clutched in her fist, her thick fingers curling posessively around half its girth, was a liverwurst the size of a dachshund.

And, oh my god, the smell. Don’t get me wrong - I love sausage. I don’t even object to liverwurst in moderation, even though it smells of cheap dog-food. But this thing was huge, and she was taking planet sized chunks out of the side of it, they way you would a 99 flake or a cornetto. Also, I was quite hungover and not really too happy to be trapped in a corner while meaty gusts ruined the enjoyment of my strawberry, which in any case now seemed to taste only of liverwurst.

So I spent the journey with my elbows trapped against my sides, trying avoid breathing (not so tough when you’re being crushed), while the sound of open-mouthed mastication went on, and on, and on by my left ear.

The taxi ride was interminable.

“Good afternoon, [my organisation]”

“Hello, may I speak to Julia please?”

“I’m afraid Julia’s… unavailable right now. Can I take a message?”

“Ummmmm. Mmmmmm. Is she far away?”

“No. She’s in the bathroom.”

“Oh, ok. How long will she be in there?”