Arriving at Dubai airport you are first met by a huge red sign WELCOME TO TOMORROW. If this is the future, maybe I should bow out right now! Everything here is huge - the airport - the duty free shop, the immigration hall - endless free ways, glass skyscrapers reaching to the sky, and more cranes per sq meter than any other city (well it seems that way). I woke up the next day to find I had no voice. Lost and speechless in this material world I was taken to another Dubai phenomena, the Gigantic mall - what else do you do in Dubai? The Ibn Battutu Mall named after the famous explorer. The mall is divided into six sectors, China, India and Egypt, Tunisia, Persia and Turkey. My first thought was what happened to Morocco were Ibn Battutu was born? We entered at the India section, avoiding Starbucks on the way we sat and had very expensive but cosy chocolate cakes and skinny lattes - besides a huge elephant that looks like its made of paper mache and the top of which is encased in a wooden canopy that reaches up to the ceiling.

I am in a huge gated estate where every single house is exactly the same design and colour the only difference is the size. There are artificial lakes with ducks and beautiful flowers on the side, swimming pools for every block and private ones for those who can afford it. Each house has at least one huge silver grey 4X4 parked in the driveway and Hummers are everywhere. My hosts are saying they intend to buy one. I must have looked horrified as they made the excuse that driving was so dangerous only a Hummer would protect them from death and destruction on the road!

My throat got the better of me and I have not been out since but my voice is slowly returning. Enough for me to have a long conversation with Maria (not her real name) the maid who is from the Philippines. Maria has been in Dubai for three months. Before that she spent just over 2 years in Saudi Arabia, one of 25 maids for a high official. The whole time she was there she never went out on her own and whatever she needed to buy was bought by the driver. She worked 7 days a week sometimes up to 16 hours a day. She got the job through an agent in Manila and had to hand her passport over to her employers on arrival. Maria was lucky in that her employers were “good” people and she used to get extra tips from the family relatives but the other maids were beaten. She was spoken to in Arabic from the first day which she did not understand. But her madam would not speak to her in English so she spent the first few weeks in fear, trying to figure out what she was supposed to be doing until she eventually learned the language. There are many cases of employers and family members raping maids and of course there is nothing they can do as they would get beaten and end up being deported. Apparently less and less Filipino women are going to Saudi Arabia to work.
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Sokari arrived home today - God knows where she has been all these months. That’s the thing about humans they just disappear without any explanation or at least one that dogs and cats understand. I mean I thought she had gone forever though sometimes I heard her voice coming out of the computer but since I couldn’t see her I didn’t get that either. Anyway she’s back now and I am mad with happiness - I missed our long walks off the lead and running and splashing in the river so lots of good doggy fun to come I hope! (yea I know I look a bit miserable in the photo but that’s because I had to sit down quietly while she took photos of me with this daft thing round my neck that C made for me)

My last evening spent listening to some cool jazz by Louis Mhlanga at Wits - exquisite. A shame my back let me down and I couldn’t go on to enjoy the rest of the evening with Mbali’s crew.

Listen To Louis Mhlanga - World Traveller

Last Thursday “The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court: Reflections on the Rape Trial of Jacob Zuma” by Mmatshilo Motsei was launched at the Women’s Jail, Constitution Hill (very appropriate). Only managed to get as far as the first few pages but from Mmatshilo’s talk, I know it will be special and look forward to reading it once I home.

So it’s Goodbye time:

Really sad to be leaving but cant wait to get back home. Done so much, met so many people but still wish I had done a whole lot more things, taken more photos, spent more time in Durban and less in Cape Town. Happy to be leaving so I can be free to walk anywhere I want day or night; free of paranoia, vampires and electric fences - just to be able to walk; race race race

A very special goodbye to Lindiwe and Mbali for their friendship, nights out & excellent conversations. Goodbye also to: Kameelah for well just Kameelah; Phumla M and Wendy - the struggle is not over but you will get there; all the people at Abahlali baseMjondolo and Richard for confirming my belief that with commitment and humanity, struggles will be won; Pumla G [look out for her soon to be blog Loudrastress] , one of the “TALL” women of SA and Andile, one of the good guys and for their insight and openness; to Patrick for his hospitality and generosity in Durban; all the people at Clieveden Road for making it such an easy relaxed place to live; to Phiwo and Jan for driving me around town when the vampires were out or I was too lazy to take a komibi taxi. Most of all Busi!

Tags: South Africa; Louis Mhlanga; Jacob Zuma

Winding down my SA journey to just over 3 weeks - still loving and not loving at the same time. On the lighter side of things soon after I arrived I discovered one of the best watering holes in town. At night downtown Joburg turns into the land of vampires and in Newtown - a kind of concrete constructed gentrifried area is a little “safe space” around Market Theatre - is the anything but gentrified island of the Couch and Coffee renamed by me as the Couch & Potato since once you are there you just sit and sit and sit.

The great thing about the C&C is unlike most bars you always end up talking to people - maybe because it attracks a lot of Joburgs Black arty crowd which is why people are cool about talking to strangers without any stress and the staff are great also. A couple of weeks ago V and I bought some crazy jewellery from Prince.

Whilst I was in Durban I was moaning about the watery beer on offer and since then I have been drinking Windhoek (Namibia) recommended by Richard (thanks) and if you like watery cider then there is Savannah - not recommended!

On to the more serious. I missed the festival of the Time of the Writer in Durban with Ngugi, Tsitsi Dangarembga and Aminata Sow Fall. Luckily I caught the latter at Wits last Monday. Am ashamed to say that although I had heard of her work, I had never read any of her books. She spoke about one of her best known novels, The Beggars Strike, Francophone literature and literature and language.

The idea behind the Beggars Strike [A Denunciation of Tyranny] was the question “what would happen if a beggar refused the food offered in Zakat” (one of the 5 pillars of Islam requiring the giving of alms). You give not because of your humanity because it is required. It then becomes a subversive act of the poor “I refuse your offering” thereby deny you the reward you seek from Allah by the giving of Zakat. On writing in French as opposed to her own language, Wolof” she says “Writers create their own language through language” - writing in French does not in any way marginalise Wolof or any other African language - it is a reality and when she feels that she can only express certain feelings or actions in Wolof, then she uses Wolof.

Most moving to me personally was her response to her feelings about her home, Saint-Louis (an island at the mouth of the River Senegal, Senegal which she described with a broad and proud smile as “the sight of my happiness”. What a privilege to be able to have a place in one’s life that is the sight of your happiness and to travel in a world of imagination.

On Thursday, the Special Rapporteur on the situation for human rights in the Palestine Occupied Territory, John Dugard spoke at Wits University, invited by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. Dugard painted a wholly depressing picture of the situation in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Humanitarian and human rights violations by Israel ranging from the imprisonment of Gaza where 90% of the population live on food aid and 80% live below poverty level; the displacement of some 50,000 people who can no longer access their land in the West Bank due to the apartheid wall; the presence of 1/2 million illegal settlers in the West Bank; the illegal transferring of East Jerusalem residents to the West Bank depriving them of their Jerusalem rights; prevention of freedom of movement - there are no less than 500 check points in the West Bank leading to restriction of travel, access to work and health facilities; targeted assassinations which apart from killing of civilians in the process is judicial murder without trial; separate roads for Palestinians and Israeli’s; separate number plates for Palestinians and Israeli’s (the only visible sign of the apartheid - Israel is clever not to have visible signs of it’s apartheid policies).

Tags:
Johannesburg + South Africa;
Aminata Sow Fall; Senegal; Palestine; Israel; John Dugard;

Another week in Joburg - I am growing to love this place - the buzz, people I meet, things happening, the edge, living and working with dedicated front-line activists and friends I have made. Yet at the same time there are aspects of the city and South African that irritate and thoroughly piss me off - my curtailed freedom to move about particularly after dark, the high risk activity of being outside your house - security security security, parks that you cannot use for fear of being mugged, the xenophobia, the marginalisation of the majority of the population, a government that has betrayed what it stood for and the people’s hopes, dreams and struggle, the unhealed wounds that stare you in the face.

Last night was the opening night of the Out in African Gay and Lesbian film festival which was in cinema in Hyde Park mall - all these London names - last week I stayed in Fulham Rd in Brixton near Mayfair. Back to the film - Beautiful Boxer [Thailand] and what a beautiful film based on a true story of champion Thai Kick boxer, Parinya Charoenphol.

The film chronicles his life as a young boy through his transgender process to becoming a woman, all the while studying and becoming a champion in the art in order to save up for his operation. In the IMDB the reviewer refers to the “collision of testosterone and oestrogen”. The overlaying of genders and inner struggle with something that initially as a child and teenager he does not understand but eventually reaches the point of realisation and chooses to be what his inner self tells me which is to be woman. The change is slow and one day he decides to wear make up in the ring and as time passes wears more and more till his body and mind is both female and male then transitions to fully fledged female as she bids goodbye to her male self and becomes the beautiful woman she had always dreamt of.

The festival was opened by Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke. An African man of a certain age who stood up and celebrated difference, diversity and social justice in a country of rampant homophobia - There IS SOMEBODY afterall [his speech will be published during the week] We need him in Nigeria, in Uganda, in Kenya - throughout the continent - a man of vision and humanity in amongst bigots and unholy men of God.

At the Old Fort prison complex in Constitution Hill, Rita Marley opened the Bob Marley photographic exhibition amongst the tiny isolation cells and small exercise, shower and meal area of the prison where Mandela was imprisoned in the 1960s. The cells are tiny, just arms length, hardly enough space to lie down for a grown man. A powerful exhibition of Marley’s life in a place that was at the heart of his protest music.

A special feast of Naija food serving up egusi with assorted meats, eba and yam

What I missed, a play, poetry jam and night at Horror Cafe.

Finally I lost all my words - gone forever into cyberspace - damn computers.