Where were you?

 Where were you on April 27th 1994? Take a moment to think back...

Did you stand for hours, first in the pre-dawn chill and then in the sun? Did you brave the rain? There was provision for some to cast their votes the previous day: the elderly, and those with special needs, and those who had to work on Election Day. There was even an allowance for "overflow" voting the next day.

Did you queue with excitement, or with fear? Times had been tense - threats of violence in some places, actual violence in others, with protests and riots and old-style police strong-arm tactics. The assassination of Chris Hani the previous year was fresh in our minds. 

Perhaps we all approached the day with a cocktail of feelings: hope as the base, joined by a sense of justice, with a swirl of trepidation and a dash of cynicism, and maybe a slice of bright excitement to top it off.

I had the privilege of working at a local election station. We were trained beforehand in how make the ink mark on the thumb and how to use the ultraviolet scanners to check for those marks. Only a select group of volunteers were permitted to stand at the actual voting boxes where the folded ballot papers were pushed in with rulers; only some were allowed to check the voters' rolls and people's IDs. But we all had a role to play. 

I remember doing door duty, and handing out ballot forms. It was quiet, just a low murmur of brief exchanges between the waiting citizens, instructions from the officials. It was humbling and rewarding to see every person allowed through the doors, welcomed with a smile, and finally allowed to step up and make their cross, many for the first time in their lives. No matter how different we all looked or the languages we spoke, that day we were simply all South Africans, and proudly so.

Courage

 A woman sits before us, dressed in a white and blue printed shirt-dress and leggings, hair artfully pinned up, colourful glasses framing a wide-eyed, intent, focused gaze. She is next to a portable whiteboard; we are ranged around her in a circle in the room where we have met for the past ten Sunday evenings as we explore "The Artist's Way at Work".

She tells us of her hesitation about joining  us tonight; how she thinks she’s done the assignment/ task all wrong; how, that afternoon, she was facing her blank collage page - thinking of leaving it blank; and then deciding to fill it. Choosing too to fill it with the reality of how things are, with what really is: the way she feels, the labels she puts on herself, the terrible weight of depression that has kept her submerged on so many days… And also to add what she hopes to become: creative, brightly colorful, focused… The muddy river she has painted becomes lighter, wider, reaching up and across the page to the pictures and swatches of fabric that represent those vivid future things.

And because she has come, because she has filled the page with her reality, we in turn can tell her that she is in fact already all those hoped-for things, and so much more.  We can tell her how we see her: bright in every way, creative, strong, daring to stand up and stand out. We weren’t aware of her struggle; but now that we are, she seems to us even more luminous and vital, as she continues her journey.

And now we journey with her.

Hello?

The other day my phone travelled to work with my husband. I was already AT work, had left it at home where he still was, and he was to drop it off on his way to various sites. Distracted by calls as he drove, he forgot to come past and drop it off.

After an initial burst of irritation, I realised it was not really his problem. After all, it was me who'd forgotten my phone in the first place. True, he offered to bring it when asked; but it was still "my problem", not, as my son William taught me a few days ago, "SEP" - someone else's problem. I know you will want to know that the phrase "someone else's problem" comes from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (we aren't sure, William and I, from which of the four books in the trilogy* it came).

I needed my phone to facilitate payments from clients at work - but I could use my employer's phone (and she got to practice leaving it with me like she's supposed to do. My two employers are doctors, and the phone should be with me while they consult. They each manage this in different ways - a story for another day.)

The only message on my absent phone that needed attending to was one about collecting a carpet to be cleaned. Steve organised for the carpet to be got ready, but forgot to reply to the message; the carpet simply waited until the next day to be collected. (I'm remembering E.E. Nesbit's tale of The Phoenix and the Carpet, where an old rolled-up carpet bought on a sale turns out to be magical... The magic in our case will be to have a clean carpet once again!)

I'm sure if I ran a business I'd be writing in a different tone, saying how much I'd missed out on with my phone not to hand. As it is, I have to report that I managed perfectly well without it. All the experts who write about screen time and cell phone use advise "time off" - devices turned off or put away, down-time. Take it from me: this is not nearly as scary or difficult as it sounds.

Step one: leave your phone at home...

* if you think this is a mistake - four books in a trilogy - it means you have not encountered the author Douglas Adams. You have missed out.

Elgin Railway Market

 The buzz and hum of talk is punctuated by by the odd clink of cutlery; a cool breeze comes fitfully through the large sliding window that the man at the next table has just opened. The big wooden refectory tables with their benches can seat 20-plus; the space is filling up as visitors arrive to see the approach of the train. Will today be steam? It’s what they have all come to see… the tame dragon from a past era, that demands coal and water and constant tending as it hauls its passengers up the pass to these upland apple orchards with their surrounding forests and hills. Beyond the old station yard are more sheds, then hills, then higher, pine-forested hills beyond them. Today they are dimmed with a fine mist.

A shrill child's voice breaks into my thoughts, and the musician downstairs is starting up again (not Country and Western this time, please!). We are sitting in the upstairs level which forms a gallery around three sides of this old market building. Two of the three sides are filled with tables; the other side contains boutique shops of different sizes; and along the fourth side, an arched walkway connects it all, inviting exploration. Several staircases, each in  a different style, lead between this and the floor below. The focus of the shops and stalls around ground-floor perimeter is on food - wine, coffee, sweet treats, curries, sushi, pizza, Middle Eastern (Petra is the name)… every taste catered for. The huge tables occupying the central area are almost all occupied. The specialist gift shops offer African and more local Western Cape clothes and jewellery and scarves and kitchen ware and there is a Gentleman’s Emporium… and the guitarist has just started a Christian song. We finish out coffee and go out onto the upper deck into the drizzle, gazing down at the platform where the train is due to arrive. But no train can be heard. Steve goes off to enquire. "The wheels are slipping in this wet weather, unable to get up the pass," is what he hears from the barman, who seems to know. Suddenly I'm five years old again, hearing the steam engine straining to chuff-chuff-chuff its way up Field's Hill, the screech of brakes as it tries to find a foothold on the wet tracks... It seems the problems with steam have not changed since then.

But we came for the outing, not specifically to see the train, so we turn back inside out of the wet and thread our way through the jostling families and out of the rising noise. My eye is caught by a bright orange glow of beads on a wire hoopoe bird. He reminds me of the birds in my childhood garden; we wait while the artist affixes beady black eyes. He explains that some people don't like the birds to have eyes, so he waits until the purchase to add them, if wanted.

Now the bird sits watching me as I write, poised on tip-toes, beak lifted as if ready to take flight, with the look of a toddler about to run off on the next adventure, giggling.