Sometimes, it is the ordinary that I miss, when searching blogs for South African stories and flavour. So here is the ordinary.
I drove home from the Department of Home Affairs, housed in a mall on Wynberg Main Road.
The Main Road, changing its name as it clocks off suburbs en route, used to be the only way you could travel from Cape Town's city heart, between Table Bay and Table Mountain, to the False Bay coast by way of the eastern route, to Muizenberg, Simonstown.
Now, you take instead the freeway, greening smoothly and fast (not at rush hour) along the edge of the mountain's eastern heights, through the suburbs and and towards the sea.
The Main Road is not smooth. It is matted and clogged with many stop start lights and jay walking pedestrians and working taxis and life on the street.
It is where, in America, the strip mall would reign.
The surviving colonial buildings, turned utilitarian, have lines I could live in: cool walls, high ceilings, removed by three feet from the working street where hungover bergies hunch on the curbs and car guards hawk their services to every pausing vehicle.
You call it the ordinary...to me, it sounds sad.Like some of the older parts of places in (Eastern) Europe that still have not recovered from war. And yet, for all that it is sad and perhaps shabby, it draws me...
ReplyDeleteThank you. I appreciate your looks at South Africa, as it is unlikely I will ever be able to visit. Have enjoyed some of your way-lovely-out-of-the-ordinary shots, like views of Table Bay and Table Mountain, and your parents' gardens -- love the difference between front and back. ;-) And of course many of the other special places you've gone. Now this, what a regular person sees day to day, is part of the picture. Mary
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, the photos remind me of Nogales and Naco, Mexico right over the Arizona border (back 30 some years ago when I lived in Sierra Vista, AZ). Perhaps the light?
ReplyDeleteInteresting post Marie.. And welcome back xx
ReplyDeletethere is comfort in the mundane -- carver's small good things.
ReplyDeletebest,
-Melanie, et al
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