Richard Stupart

Camera in hand, I follow Hailey through the roads of Glenmore as the Sunday afternoon beats down on us. She, in turn, is following Ben Mafane, the township patriarch whose athletic frame understates his age. It’s easy to understand why he is dubbed the ‘Mandela of Glenmore’, having been a former boxer who now teaches the sport to many of the local youths. Some of them are with us, forming his entourage as we go from house to house. Hailey interviews a teacher here, the owner of the community creche there. For my part, I chase laughing children down a side street as they pose with daft expressions in the hot dust. Then laugh madly at their faces on the back screen afterwards. Read the rest of this entry »

As I go, I go. Landscape to greyscape to the inky-black unknown clacks past. Like the disjointed, rumbling machinery of some large clock in whose bowels I sleep out my delicious dreams and find these words anew. Tomorrow not only born another day, but a destination,a leg complete. Bringing with it the reward of a closer Cairo. Even now, it draws near, clack by clackity clack, the wheels of dharma turning as they must on rails that can lead to nowhere else. Propelled through the dark night of the world-is-not-a-world beyond the cold cabin glass.
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Packed, boarded the plane and now in Cape Town. Catching the overnight train back to Johannesburg tomorrow morning, to make one large and redundant loop – but if you are going to travel from Cape to Cairo, then one should really start in the Cape, no?

So just a short note to say that things are now in  motion. Thank you so much to absolutely everyone who emailed, phoned, commented or otherwise tracked me down and wished me well. I love that I can take your wishes with me in the days ahead.

Love and excitement. So very much of both.

- Rich

It’s a warm Sunday, dry from the suggestion of highveld dust on the sleeping air. Mixed in with the breeze, sweetening it, the sound of praises being sung in a nearby suburban park. An innocuous place on any other day, Sunday has transformed it, becoming a church to the jubilant celebration of Christ. Worshippers in robes of lush blue and impossibly brilliant white shuffle, sway and weave between the ululating and singing of the possessed. No walking dog or pedestrian picnic will intrude on this space today. As if fuelled by the afternoon, drifting lazily past, their worship blooms, wanes, flickers and explodes with the birth and death of each Sunday moment. Thousands burned in a day. Read the rest of this entry »

This last weekend, John and I road tripped the almost two thousand odd kilometers to Cape Town, hitching a lift with Claire – who is unfortunately blogless.  I have been to Cape Town before, but for John, it was his first time there since he was knee-high to a garden gnome.  Exploring the city again over the four or so days we had there, I was reminded of a protracted argument on the roof of Fatima’s backpackers (the nice one) about which was the better city. I think there was some more subtlety to the actual  dialogue than simply betterness, but many of the themes in that discussion seemed to surface and circulate this past trip, occasionally rather uncomfortably.

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Some weeks ago, I was at the Mampoerfees (Mampoer Festival) in Cullinan, just east of Pretoria. I wrote about the bizarre sense of alienation I felt as an English South African here, but realise in retrospect that I completely forgot to actually talk a little more about some of what I actually saw at the event. Which makes for a fascinating probe into at least one part of traditional Afrikaner culture. Trying to get a grip on the weirdness in order to write about it was also one of the initial reasons for going in the first place. So that story will be told now

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With this Tuesday being a holiday, any South African who has been paying even mild attention has realised that the country had more or less shut down on the Monday to make an extra long weekend out of the time available. A friend (who will go unnamed for her and her employer’s sake) managed to stitch together enough Mondays and Fridays with the public holidays in April/May to get off ten days of work in total and spend the time hard at work resting. The fact that South Africa is a country adept at padding holidays with leave, resulting in a work calendar with gaping holes is nothing new though. What is more educational today is what I managed to get up to with my allotted four days. Which is to say getting to burn stuff. A whole mountain in fact.

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The thing about living in a country is that you all too often fail to appreciate (or frequently even see) much of what makes it so interesting to the rest of the world. I think sometimes you just get stuck in the anecdotal rut and forget that there are people who travel halfway across the planet to see the sights that you are missing. Occasionally, when I remember this, it makes for a nice change to step out for a weekend and go and see the things that the travelers to my corner of the world get to see. I can report that it is a wholly satisfying experience.

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One of the blogs I follow like a labrador chasing a gross, partly chewed stick waiting for it to be thrown is Bearshapedsphere, written by an expat/traveler living in Santiago (go look and count how frequently you catch yourself giggling while reading many of the posts).  One of her recent pieces, about misadventures at airport security reminded me of my own drama some while ago in the Durban airport, South Africa, when catching a flight back to Johannesburg – which seems a tale worth adding to the collection which has sprung up around Eileen’s original story. For those who have not yet heard it, let me preface it by blaming my brother for at least half of what happened. It is important, if for no other reason than sibling score-tallying, that his role in my misadventure be properly represented.

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Churches, rubber ducks and the wide open skies of the Karoo. It’s been a fun few days and felt like it has been a lot longer than it really has. On a journey through the Kaga mountains through to the Owl House of Nieu Bethesda and many destinations besides, I am more convinced than ever of at least one thing. It really isn’t where we travel that counts. It’s the stories we fashion as we go that truly make a journey.

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