South Africa - 6

I got into Johannesburg in the afternoon, a Sunday. I called the hostel and they told me a driver was waiting there at the airport, about to leave. They said his name was Jamma. He was wearing a blue shirt. To hurry up.

I found him. We walked back and he called to a skinny blond girl sitting on a bench. She picked up her hiking bag and Jamma took us to his Explorer and we got in and he drove into the city.

The girl was Polish. Her hair was greasy and pulled back into a ponytail. Her eyes were blue. Her face was sunburned. She smiled when I asked her questions. She’d been living in Scotland for four years, living on an island and taking care of horses and working at a restaurant. She took a couple months off for the winter and was going on an overland tour in a converted truck from South Africa up to Kenya. They’d stop at the big nature reserves and camp-out at night along the highway. There were a dozen other people going. The truck was leaving from the hostel we were headed to, from the Backpackers’ Ritz.

There was some traffic.

We got to the Ritz. It was at the end of a lane of big mansions and offices-inside-mansions. There were black metal fences and electric wire around each place. You could see off into the hills between each place. The hills were all trees.

There were two gates to enter the Ritz. Two fences. In between the fences were thick coils of razor wire, wrapped through bushes and tree branches.

The Ritz was in an old mansion.

A tall fat white-haired guy was working the desk. He had a scratchy low voice. When the girl and I gave him our passports he laughed at our pictures and asked what we’d been on. He explained where everything was in the hostel, how to get stuff, what was nearby. He said it like he was reading a list he’d had to read too many times.

There was a kitchen but the guy said there wouldn’t be any dinner, that he’s the cook but hasn’t felt like cooking for a while.

There was a pool in the backyard of the place, down by a guest house. The water was green. There were a few kids sitting around on the grass drinking beer. Some of them were on the same overland tour as the Polish girl. I walked down there and sat on the grass and didn’t know what to do. There was a girl lying off by herself on a higher part of the lawn. She had dark hair and dark eyes. I thought maybe she was from South America.

I walked up and checked my mail to see if my friend C. had made any more plans to come visit. She hadn’t written.

I walked out to the front porch. That same girl was sitting there smoking a cigarette. I went back in and bought a pack at the front desk.

She was French, it turned out. She was doing an internship in Jo-burg and was waiting to get picked up by a brother in this host family she’d stayed with for a couple weeks. A tall skinny Scandinavian guy came up and said something to her. He had short gelled hair and was wearing tight white jeans and an undershirt.

I left and walked back down the lane to a busy street. The bakery and the fruit stand and everything else was shut in the shopping center to the right.

There was a lot of traffic. A lot of nice cars. Only a couple people on foot. It was warm, balmy. They said it was safe around there.

I walked to a BP station. I bought some biltong – cured spicy meat – and a Mail and Guardian, which comes out on weekends, a couple potpies and a Coke.

I walked back.

The potpies had been sitting out at the BP and were cold. I heated them in the microwave. They got hot and soft.

The Ritz is at the top of the hill and you can see almost to downtown Jo-burg. I went to a picnic table in a garden and ate my pies and watched the sun go down and listened to an episode of Entitled Opinions.

My mom gave me a call from the U.S. I told her Frithjof was supposed to be getting into South Africa today and that I hoped we’d meet up the next day. I called the two numbers he gave me to call: the taxi driver Mike and the innkeeper Richard. Mike referred to Frithjof as the professor. He said he’d tell him to call me.

I was sleeping in a big circular room at the top of a tower of the mansion. There were a dozen bunk beds along the wall but only a couple people staying the night. The windows were dusty and some of the latches were broken. Only a couple opened. The ceiling was curved and the floors were wood. You could hear echoes of your voice when you stood at the right spot. The air was thick and hot when I first walked in there and put my stuff down.

I hung around the lounge after it got dark and kept reading The Wretched of the Earth. A girl came up to me and pointed at the book and said it was great. She walked out to the front porch to smoke.

I walked out there.

Her name was Lia. She was from Italy. She said she’d read Wretched of the Earth in French for a class in Paris. She’s doing a Masters on transgenderism in Africa. She took mini-bus taxis everyday from the Ritz to Wits University downtown to research in their library. She’d spent a while in Nairobi working on the same thing at a university there. She had brown hair and skin whose best description was…stereotypically…olive oil.

She told me to check out Andre Brink. That she’d read A Dry White Season and liked it. I told her about Waiting for the Barbarians.

I went up to the dorm to go to bed. I got under the covers and lied there. It wasn’t so hot anymore. Then a mosquito hummed by my ear.

I didn’t sleep much. The mosquitoes started biting. Then a couple people checked in late and unpacked their bags and got into their beds. Then a couple people checked out early and packed up their bags and left their beds.

In the morning there was a lady working in the kitchen. I ordered toast and beans and orange juice. The toast was white bread with some butter. The beans were heated up from a can. The orange juice was a concentrate powder mix.

I took my plate back to the picnic table and ate outside again. It was sunny and humid but not too hot yet.

I went back inside to read. The fat man from the day before was lying down on the sofa in the lounge. He was watching a history show on Scotland. He said he should get some work done and got up and sauntered out to the patio and smoked a cigarette. He had a dry hard cough while he smoked.

There was a chalkboard on the wall. It was supposed to list dinner on it. It said instead Thought of Day: The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like Prostitutes…

A couple backpackers came to check-in. The fat man made fun of their passports.

I was going to go the mall and the bakery and wait for a call from Frithjof.