This probably won’t make sense to anyone else reading this. While blogging is all about sharing, if we’re honest, it’s also often a selfish act… recording thoughts to reaffirm our own existence and own memories to ourselves, if not others.
This is probably one of those posts. Like I say, it’s not likely that it will make sense to anyone else. But, to me, I want to put this down in case I ever forget it again. Because this memory, for whatever reason, popped into my head the other day, and it’s making me smile like I haven’t in quite some time.
A good few years back… ooh, I guess we’d be saying at least 6 or so… Rita Marley and the I-Threes came out to tour South Africa. At the time, things in South Africa were changing. If I’m right when I say this was 6 years ago, that would make it 2003, which would have been 9 years after the ANC, and with it, South Africa’s first black president, Nelson Mandela, came into power. While it had nearly been a decade, South Africa was still struggling with integration.
All this is a preamble to saying that when my mother, her partner, my sister, myself and my girlfriend at the time went to the Bat Centre at Durban Harbour to watch Rita and the I-Threes, we were the only white faces there.
Now, to set the scene… the Bat Centre at the harbour was one of my favourite places. You wouldn’t know it, going by the surroundings. The harbour was dirty as hell, rubbish littered the parking lots, used condoms and mountains of cigarette butts were everywhere, there was the pungent stench of urine from pretty much every corner where a human body could sleep the night away… and then there was the Bat Centre. Amidst all the squalor, was this Centre where the arts thrived. There were art workshops every weekend, and throughout the week you could see artists like Syd Kitchen (whom I’ve mentioned here and here before) expanding your mind.
In short, I loved the place. But it wasn’t exactly a place where you could forget the issues in your country’s past.
The Bat Centre in Durban
So, we’ve gone along to watch Rita. She was performing an outside show for National Woman’s Day, and the car parking lot for the Bat Centre was chock-full with patrons coming along to watch.
Now, at that time in my life, I was slightly unsure of myself. Not so my girlfriend at the time. It seems, looking back throughout my life, I’ve always been attracted to strong, confident women. Perhaps that says something, but that’s for another post. Getting back to the point, my girlfriend at the time was a swedish girl called Teddie. The typical Swedish stereotype… aryan looks, long blonde hair, crystal blue eyes and tanned year round, no matter what. And as Rita and the I-Threes kicked into their first tune, Teddie jumped right into it, and dragged me along into the whirling masses of bodies. Within a few seconds, we were jiving around hundreds of rastas to the sounds of some of Bob’s best tunes.
And soon, Teddie and I were separated. And there I was, this slightly uncomfortable white kid, dancing in amongst a sea of black faces. And I don’t say that for any kind of shock value (gasp! mentioning race?!), I mention it to give some context to the time. It might be hard to understand for those of you who weren’t in South Africa at the tail end of Apartheid, but the fact is that even if you yourself weren’t a “racist”, the history of racism had bred an uncomfortable “difference” between South Africans.
But music, man… music was different. Exceptions could be made for music.
At that time, Teddie had been carried away, and I was slightly worried. Would she be ok? And then this rasta came over to me, and said, “You’re doing it wrong man”. To which I shyly asked, “What are you talking about bru?”. The rasta smiled at me and said, “Your dancing. You’re doing it wrong. You’re thinking. Stop it mlungu” (side note: mlungu is the zulu word for “white person”). “Stop thinking. Don’t care. Just move”.
And for the first time in my life, I managed to. I stopped thinking, and just bounced. I was a madman, limbs flying everywhere, grabbing hands with random strangers and we whirled around in ecstasy, losing ourselves in the music. And throughout it all, this random rasta who had come out of nowhere was laughing. And not laughing at me – although there was some teasing at first – rather he was laughing with me.
It was one of the happiest times in my life, and I’m still not sure why… but it was some of the purest, most unfettered joy I’d ever felt.
The next thing I knew, these arms wrapped around me, and I looked back into Teddie’s eyes. “All ok?”, she asked, with that accent of hers.
“Fine,” I replied. “I think I’m going to be just fine.”
This isn’t a story about Teddie. In fact, looking back at it now, I think that day was the last day Teddie and I were truly happy together… or the last happy memory I can remember sharing with her, at any rate. It’s not a story about racism. In fact, I’m not even sure this is a story at all. But it is a memory, of me being happy. And it means a lot to me.
I said it wouldn’t make sense to you.