Safe, my mate

“Safe, my mate,” the Rainbow chicken billboard bellowed as we tripped over the Overberg en route from a Karoo campsite in surreal Simonskloof back to cosmopolitan Obs in Cape Town, complete with mod cons. Somehow, though, the fact that a friend and his girlfriend had just been mugged and stabbed in broad daylight because they dared to sample of nature’s delights at Melville Koppies 1000km away, I had a feeling that if a homely cocoon means being doomed to blind batteryhood, I’d choose the Simonskloof grass with solar-powered showers and long drops any day.
Or India, where I can walk unaccompanied to the corner shop at any hour of the dark and unlit night and be sure to get home in minutes without so much as a flinch of a fearful nerve. Hello Bangalore, I’m back after three months, I’ve missed your easy energy, even if it comes with frequent and frustrating power cuts. I know you didn’t notice, nor should you as you struggle to fit thousands more unemployed into your bursting womb, but the overwhelming welcome of the ‘ironing man’ on the corner speaks volumes.
Back home, they’re staging high-wire trapeze acts to stimulate the caring few to reach out into the xenophobic void which keeps the ‘amakwerekwere’ at a distance. And again, I long for the dissolution of labels, nationalism and ego boundaries which keep us quietly insane.