78uuu lumière des étoiles

Dusty:Starlight:Culture



Vic Falls in Scattered Fragments
2004-09-08   9:17 p.m.

Don, my Tai Chi teacher, says that Tai Chi is an iron rod wrapped in cotton. I love, love, love that metaphor, because it’s so perfectly fitting.

Labor day blahs, but a good weekend overall. We watched Dead Man today, which is a bizarre student-film-esque movie starring Johnny Depp.

Tony threw another of his "fun parties for grown-ups" this weekend. This time, it was the "Jersey City Olympics", a party in which all invited had to come dressed as an athlete representing a country. Your chosen sport could be completely made up, so Steve and I decided to go as the South African Pick Pocketing Relay Team. Steve is the real artist in this relationship, so he was the one who made our outfits. He spent so long on them I was happy to hear him complimented well at the party. Someone also commented on our choice, proclaiming that we "should" have more "urban olympics", including drag racing, hot-wiring, and stick-ball competitions.

At first, I was iffy about furthering those negative associations people have with Jo'burg (or any cities in South Africa), but since people here or there while traveling through Jo'burg and Pretoria we'd met had been recently mugged (some brandishing wounds!), and our friend Gavin upon hearing such stories said with a sigh, "It might as well be our national sport, fer crissakes", we figured we'd go ahead with it.

So I've prepared a couple more photos from Zambia and figured I'd include the appropriate journal entry here. The entry is fragmented, wandering, and fluid. But then I can't imagine how else one would write as the falls and river rush nearby.

Day: 11

Time: 4:30

Date: August 6, 2004

Place: Victoria Falls National Park

Journey: Hiking to the falls

I'm watching a baboon pick through garbage and eye my daypack. I'm watching tourists pick through bins of jagged metal sculptures, smooth soapstone carvings, and blindingly bright batiks. So unreal, all of it - an old, bearded man in glasses is wearing a feathered headdress and roughly stitched leather loin-cloths over a pair of dusty jeans. He's playing a set of huge hollowed out wood pipes - striking each with a mallet as though they were a xylophone. People take pictures but I'm hesitant, knowing he might demand money after I snap.

The baboon jumps up on our car, Wayne hisses and pretends he's throwing a rock. "Aw," I say. "No," he says firmly, and that's it. It's all he has to say to me - by now I've gotten used to him and the way he is. I know he means with just that no that I am not to question his actions, that I must understand there's a reason for the things he does, and that they're never driven by non-sense or selfishness. There's a zen quality about Wayne that I'm really starting to like - he's a nice foil to Alfred, the other South African, who is loud, outgoing, unceasingly sweet and at times, blissfully ignorant, emerged in his own version of the world. This time, Wayne's reasoning is clear: do not encourage the baboons. They'll bite you, rip your bag right off your back, steal the food right out of your hands.

In fact, he told me, last month one of them caught him just back from the grocery store, and unloaded one of the bags from his trunk before he could. As Wayne chased him to get his groceries back, the baboon dropped the carton of eggs, the bag of fruit, and some rolls, but held onto the 5 pound bag of sugar and just sat high up in a tree, looking down at a now cursing and screaming Wayne, eating the stolen goods. "Cheeky," I say, after Wayne finishes his story. He kicks dust at me and smiles. I know we're all good after that, despite his little scolding and my urge to tell him I'll do what I damn well please and that I don't like lectures.

But that would be stupid, now wouldn't it?

This mist, this rumble, this rush. The falls stretch enormous expanses, and we watched people in Zimbabwe watching us, from across the gorge. Steve and Joe leaned in close to the shallow and more still off-shooting streams of the Zambizi, and I took pictures. We met a group of South African students here on a class trip, and carefully avoided some shady guy trying to sell us panchos to "protect our clothing" from the "heavy spray" created by the thunderous rush of the falls. I almost laughed out loud at him when he said this - today we're all at our dirtiest; our last site didn't have great facilities and we haven't been in one place long enough to do laundry yet. We met a Brit named Helen here whose khakis are so dirty I think they could walk away on their own. She was quite proud of them, though - she's been studying Marine Biology in Cape Town for her graduate degree, and I think she'd been waiting forever to travel but never could. So dirty or clean, but particularly dirty, Helen is a happy girl. The proof of where she's been, the memories, are all on her pants.

I had to remember how to breathe, how to stand, how to talk when the first glimpse of the falls came in to view. Yes, they're that spectacular. We took so many pictures, but every few minutes just had to stop - had to remember what we were seeing, what we were really here experiencing. After a while Steve and I found ourselves alone - our traveling companions having wandered off. We were riveted, stuck to one place, talking here and there but just staring - at the rainbows, at the power, and the churning energy in front of us. At one of the most glorious natural wonders of the world.

Still can't believe I got here. After the boys had to drive through Zim to get the car here (we soooo owe them drinks for that one), we all met up and have been relaxing in the dusty car park of the national park. It's lush around us - endless vegetation, and you can still see the mist from where we are, can still see the rainbows and the rocks. Someone's listening to the Skylark's "Table Mountain" in their car. God I'm so happy.

Homes on the Way to Vic Falls

Going to Work, Coming from Work

Me, Vic Falls

Steve, Vic Falls Bridge

Rainbows are Everywhere

Miles of Falls, Unbelievably High

Vic Falls Market

Silly Baboon...puddles are for parasites!