Vagabond

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Vagabond Page 25

by Mogoatlhe, Lerato


  I leave Lalibela for Addis, then Harar, a day later.

  25 May 2013

  The African Union is turning fifty years old today. Addis Ababa has been in a party mood all week with clubs throwing parties in the name of African unity with soundtracks that feature Mafikizolo, original and Amharic dubs of ‘Chop My Money’ and ‘Nwa Baby’, Ethiopian stars Jah Lude and Teddy Afro, whose hit ‘Tikur Sew’ is one of my favourite songs, and, of course, Bob Marley. The official celebration is at the Millennium Hall in the airport area. Streets around the hall have been barricaded and the gates into the complex equipped with scanners. I take my place in the line of women waiting our turn for the female security guard to pat us down. On any given day, the capital city is a never-ending parade of African presidents, political VIPs and a small group of political aides. Almost all of them are in Addis this afternoon. It turns the main entrance that has been reserved for VIPs into a parade of expensive cars, and the red carpet they walk on to get to the hall is turned into a fashion spectacular of flowing grand boubous and intricate ankara ensembles that are complete with head wraps rising up to the heavens. The crowd, mostly Ethiopians, is also dressed to represent Africa, in ankara, bazin, kente and other African textiles. I’m in a red kemi.

  I’m too short to see the stage from the front so I spend most of the evening backstage or outside the hall, where an exhausted Somizi Mhlongo, with bloodshot eyes, spends most of his time, relieved that his mission of choreographing the biggest party in Africa is almost complete. His calm demeanour doesn’t inspire one of the women who run the stage to take it easy.

  I find her screaming at the event director for his oversight; never in her diplomatic life has she come across the ignorance that makes a person overlook political protocol 101 – presidents speak in the order of their country’s liberation. It’s sacrilege that President Armando Guebuza speaks before President Idriss Deby. ‘Who doesn’t know that Chad’s independence comes before Mozambique’s?’ she screams, storming off to the VIP waiting room to line up more presidential speakers. It’s only then that the event director stops holding his breath.

  A pair of black moccasins shuffles by. Their owner sits next to me. Looking up, I find Kenneth Kaunda’s face. I kneel and greet him like the elder he is and go back to minding my business. When his speech is over, and the slow shuffle walks past me again, I get to lock my arm into his and walk him down the ramp, and when photographers ask for his picture, I kick the aide to the curb and issue instructions from the side lines. Mzee is eighty-nine years old – there’ll be no flash lights.

  ‘Thank you for my freedom,’ I say, patting his forearm.

  I’m a journalist, so technically I can meet anyone I want to. However, this moment comes into my life because I give it to myself instead of waiting on fate and professional perks. When I go back to my seating area, I find Uhuru Kenyatta holding court with Kgopedi Liloke, whose frequent trips to Addis Ababa are my respite from cheap hotels and a chance to get whatever I may be missing from South Africa.

  Uhuru has swagger. It makes everyone swarm to him for a picture. I do like everyone and wait my turn. Unlike other speakers, he doesn’t keep to himself and he makes small talk. ‘Sasa Uhuru?’ I say, using the Nairobean greeting. I catch my faux pas, and greet him again. ‘Excuse me. Good evening, your excellency,’ I say.

  ‘Good evening, just call me Uhuru,’ he says, reaching out to shake my hand.

  ‘Okay, Uhuru. Is that your speech?’ My hand is pointing at a stack of papers in his hands.

  ‘Yes,’ he says.

  ‘We don’t have the whole night, you know,’ I banter.

  ‘It’s not a long speech. The font size is big so I can see properly,’ he explains. The president of Kenya is the coolest political VIP I’ve ever met.

  I leave African Union’s party to have dinner with Dr Zakes Motene, whose regular trips to Addis are another source of comfort along with Kgopedi’s. The predictable, inevitable turn for the bizarre happens when we try to get back into the hall for Salif Keita’s performance. The security guard has decided that the party is over for the small crowd gathered at the entrance and he refuses to let us back inside. I miss Salif Keita but I also start a party at the gate with Papa Wemba’s dancers. The guard’s weirdness gives me the privilege of dancing with people whose liquid hips have been my entertainment for years; this is why I call being in Ethiopia a weird privilege. This is why I cannot hold on to my bitter experiences here.

  The biggest mystery of my life in the country is how lightly someone steals my passport in Shashamane. I only realise days later that it’s lost. The uniforms at the police station refuse to take my statement when I tell them I don’t know who took it, only that I last saw it on the day I went to the bank to withdraw money. I try reporting the loss in Addis Ababa and get the same story: I can’t get an affidavit unless I know exactly what happened. In the meantime, my visa is about to expire. I take my problem to the immigration office, and walk out without a solution. I apply for a temporary passport but without proof of when I came into Ethiopia or an official document from the police, there is nothing I can do except travel around the country and try my luck at all the police stations in the areas I visit. I finally get an affidavit in Addis in June after I barge into the police commissioner’s office, refusing to leave until he helps me. He writes a letter that I take to the police station in Arada. Armed with an affidavit, I make my way back to Immigration, where I’m sent to court for staying in the country with an expired visa even though, as I point out to the uniform, they know my hands have been tied since March.

  All court cases are in Amharic and I need a translator.

  I show up with my friend Galila, who is a tour guide with Balehageru Tours. She warns me to keep my mouth shut and admit guilt without letting my sarcasm get in the way. I retrace my steps to Immigration once again and walk out with a visa; except, when I go to Balehageru’s office to buy my ticket to Johannesburg online, my passport is nowhere to be found.

  I go back to the embassy to apply for another temporary passport. The Ethiopian lady who works there rolls her eyes at me and thinks there’s more to the story than what I’m telling. In the end, it takes a favour that Kgopedi calls in for me to get a replacement.

  This is Ethiopia, where strange things know where to find me. The driver of the taxi from the embassy to Piazza tells me to sit in the front. He makes small talk before opening his cubby hole; he has my passport but he refuses to give it back unless I pay him. ‘But I’m broke,’ I complain.

  ‘It’s not my problem. Do you know how much money I spent trying to find you? I even went to your embassy,’ he lies.

  ‘Will you drop me off at the hotel then? I’m sure my friends will lend me some money,’ I claim, and wait until we’re stuck in traffic before I suddenly find birrs in my bag. He reaches for my passport, my hand sneaks to the door handle, I grab my stolen property and jump out without giving him any money.

  When I get to Balehageru’s office at Taitu hotel to tell them the latest instalment of my crazy life in Ethiopia, the owner and now dear friend Teshome Ayele locks my passport in the safe, and offers to drive me to the airport in the morning. ‘This is the only way I can be sure that there’ll be no more drama,’ he says.

  I never miss South Africa when I travel and always feel sad when I land at OR Tambo International because it means an adventure has come to an end. On this occasion, I join everyone who claps when we hit the tarmac; happy to escape the madness of Ethiopia.

  I don’t want to live on the road any more, not in the foreseeable future anyway. My spirit is weary from the intensity of the highs and crushing lows of living like a vagabond and I miss sleeping in one bed for days on end and the cleanliness of a home toilet that I wash with Domestos after every flush to make sure that it lives up to my obsession with clean sanitation facilities.

  I watch my Kilimanjaro-sized backpack going around the conveyor belt several times, like I do on 24 June 2008 in Dakar, my heart h
urling itself against my chest as it did then. My steps to the exit are heavy and slow: I’m closing the most important chapter of the story of my life, when a three-month break to West Africa turns into five years of living and travelling around the continent.

  XXII

  EGYPT

  June 2017

  I ACHE FOR FARAWAY places when I listen to Khaled sing ‘Aicha’. This Friday morning is no different as he begs Aicha to cast him a glance and accept the pearls and gold he wants to give her. I want to walk the streets of a city that was just a dot on the map until my feet carry me around it with the familiarity of home. I picture myself swaying to a song I don’t know until the moment it plays on the radio; to walk hand-in-hand with strangers in dimly lit streets and haggle with market women. I haven’t lived on the road for four years, and even though I still travel, around Africa, I’m yearning for an experience I have never had before, a place that’s unlike any other I have been to, where people speak a language my ears have never heard.

  It’s Ramadan. My destination has to be a Muslim country.

  By the time Khaled stops singing, I’ve booked my ticket to Cairo. I have never been to North Africa.

  The action starts as soon as the plane lands at Cairo International Airport. Families push trolleys with high stacks of suitcases. I do like the men I find huddled around the ATMs at the banking centre and shove my way to the front. Queues mean nothing in Cairo. Neither does order; I force my way through the exit where scores of people surround it so loved ones walk into their arms. My Arabic goes as far as Salam Alaikum and my Uber driver’s English ends at good morning. I give my phone to a lone old man to tell the driver where to find me in Arabic.

  Billboards on the highway wish us Ramadan Mubarak. A goofy smile plasters my face as the small waves of euphoria grow: I’m in Egypt, as I keep telling Mohammed whenever we drive past signboards and mosques.

  ‘You grew up in a city the world is obsessed with. How does it feel, knowing that your ancestors are the most fascinating the world has ever known? People pay thousands of dollars in the best universities of the world to unravel your mysterious heritage,’ I add.

  He smiles and plays Arabic love songs. He gets off the road and walks to my door to open it. ‘Come out,’ he says, using his hands instead of words. ‘Kneel,’ he tells me. I’m lost until he points behind me. ‘Kneel.’ He smiles. We’re at the Nile River. It’s pronounced like kneel. He grabs my phone as my cue to pose for a picture. ‘Welcome,’ he smiles.

  My jaw hits the floor when we drive into Giza and I see a pyramid. The shops on my right sell Samsung and Apple gadgets; I’m on my way to the side where Giza existed long before it was a sprawling modern city.

  I’m at the Guardian Guest House that I choose for its rooftop views of the Sphinx and two pyramids. I have a few minutes to go before my tour guide picks me up at 8.30am. I shower and adorn my body with a purple and white kanga I turn into a shift dress. It’s from Stone Town. I stack my neck with three Maasai necklaces from Nairobi and drape my chest with a purple and yellow kanga from Dar es Salaam. Giza is going to know that Madam Afrika has arrived.

  I’m around eight or nine years old when our Saturday school teacher shows up with an armful of posters for a lesson that plants a seed that has grown into my life as a vagabond. I still remember it more than twenty years later, as flashes of a picture of King Tutankhamun’s gold death mask, lesson sheets with hieroglyphics on them and a poster of the Great Pyramid. One memory is very vivid: I stay behind over lunch break and stare at a poster of the Sphinx, transfixed by the face of a human on the body of a lion. This is the first time I discover that the world is bigger than what’s around my corner, and it’s older than I can fully understand. I vow to know this world.

  The site of my first travel dream is a sixteen-hectare complex on the edge of the Sahara Desert. The crowd is sparse. I stand at the entrance for a long time looking at people climbing the base of the Great Pyramid. Others are on the backs of camels decked out with rugs, and plastic flowers on the heads.

  ‘Please don’t say anything,’ I ask my guide Osama. I want to be in tune with my emotions and the realisation that my adult life is the perfect manifestation of my childhood fantasy. I’m also getting over the shock of people showing up at the Great Pyramids dressed in chinos and tie-dye harem pants. An old man walks over to sell postcards of the only one of the seven ancient wonders of the world remaining.

  What I think of as my guided tour is actually Osama’s one-man show. He rattles off facts and anecdotes with pride, like he’s telling me news I have not known for years. ‘Many people think the pyramids are buildings but they are, in fact, tombs,’ he says. ‘I bet you also thought there was only one pyramid, huh? That’s because people only know the big one,’ he continues, pointing at King Khufu’s tomb. ‘It was the tallest building in the world until the Eiffel Tower went up in 1889 CE. It’s made with two point three million limestones that workers carved into bricks. Can you believe it, huh?’

  His sons, kings Khafre and Menkaure, commission the other two large pyramids, and the three small ones belong to his queen and daughters.

  Nothing I have done and will do can compare to climbing the base of the Great Pyramid. The guards at its entrance repeat the only instruction Osama gives me. ‘No picture,’ he says, before telling me how sad he is that South Africa’s national soccer team exists as a memory of its long-gone days of glory.

  ‘You used to be the best in Africa,’ he sighs.

  A few steps into the tomb and I’m already breathless from the steep walk. A man I meet along the dark, narrow passage smiles awkwardly when I pass him. ‘I’m generally fit,’ he heaves. My calves sting and the beads of sweat on my face are turning into a stream.

  The king’s burial room is built with granite. His body is no longer in its chamber. The room is quiet apart from the excited teenagers taking selfies. Two women kneel in front of the chamber, moving their lips silently while the rest of us lean or sit against the wall. More people go into the chamber. I wrap my kanga over my head and shoulders when I take my spot next to it, and lead the adults into breaking the rule against taking pictures. ‘Please forgive me,’ I whisper to King Khufu’s spirit and head back outside to join Osama.

  I’ve experienced Africa on boats, bikes, trucks, trains, donkeys and just about everything except a camel. They terrify me. At five feet tall, even sitting on a bar stool makes me feel out of balance. Nevertheless, I march ahead of Osama to a group of four camels lying next to their minders. The first one I go to refuses to stand up. At the second camel, I swing my right leg over the camel while Osama and two minders push and pull my body until its lodged on the saddle. The camel jerks its head to make its unsteady rise. I sway to the right and freak out. My minutes-old fantasy of exploring the compound on a camel comes to an end, and Osama takes me back to the air-conditioned car. We drive around the complex in a rush. The country is in a Ramadan-inspired standstill and all attractions will close around 3pm. Also, Osama has fasting fatigue and is still recovering from a fainting spell. I become one of millions of tourists I’ve always wanted to be, posing for photos that make it seem as if I have a pyramid in my hand.

  Our next stop is the Sphinx. ‘Please don’t say anything,’ I tell Osama again. I close my eyes and travel back to Saturday school, where I stand next to the door to stare at the poster of the Sphinx. When I open my eyes, I go wild with pictures, making it look like I’m kissing Khafre’s image, putting sunglasses on him and holding my phone against his ear; my happiness is childlike.

  From Giza, we drive twenty-four kilometres to Sakkara. Buildings and street lamps are decorated with neon plastic triangles for the holy month. Street corners have fruit vendors whose wares include cherries, my favourite thing to eat after watermelon, and even though this is a part of Africa I have never experienced, it triggers memories of my time in other countries with butcheries that hang animal carcasses out in the open, and overcrowded, beat-up taxis. I roll down my window
and offer my Salam Alaikum and Ramadan Mubarak to people we drive past.

  Ancient Egypt has ninety pyramids. The first one, in Sakkara, was designed by Imhotep, the commoner and architect-turned-chancellor to Pharaoh Djoser and the high priest of the Sun God Ra, who I first meet in my mom’s much-loved crossword puzzles. The stone and clay structure was built around the twenty-seventh century BC as Pharaoh Djoser’s tomb. It’s also the resting place of his eleven daughters. It’s being renovated and has been closed off with scaffolding. We walk around the complex to explore the temple ruins; where I run my hands on smooth limestones and pillars that are shaped like lotus flowers. I’m on holy ground; where the great Imhotep, the African who gave the world the practice of medicine, once stood. Tears of gratitude mingle with the sweat streaming down my face.

  From here, we speed off to what used to be the city of Memphis, and the seat of power in ancient Egypt. It still stands, as a museum set in a yard with artefacts that include an alabaster Sphinx, and kiosks that sell alabaster curios. The granite statue of Ramesses II, who is considered the most powerful in the exhaustive list of rulers from the Egyptian Empire, is the centrepiece of the collection. It lies on the ground floor at the museum. His ankles are broken and crown chipped, but he is carved to withstand time and all his features are still visible, even the fingers curled around a rod and the bracelets on his wrists.

  I’m in awe of the foresight that makes ancient Egyptians preserve their world so we never forget that Africa is the cradle of civilisation. They are the reason I walk with my head held high and proudly challenge anyone who says Africa would be nothing without colonisation.

 

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