Adventures in Gaborone No. 2

I've been quiet lately.

At school, I've been floating in and out of the classrooms not like a butterfly, but like a moth. I don't feel obviously beautiful, but I do, however, feel like a difficult beautiful. Moths are less easy to love than butterflies. As a result, I will likely vanish because I spend so much of my time beating myself against lightbulbs, those flickering astonishments being my dreams and ambitions. Anyhow, I constantly get the feeling that I'll be forgotten by and be forgetting my friends very, very soon. The prospect of flying away to another country does that to you. The present ends up becoming less and less important because it becomes but a mere waiting period for the future. It's been difficult planting my feet to the concrete because I know how wonderful it is be one with the sky. Yeah, I think I know what's that like; I know I know what's that like: the sky is blue. Yeah, my favourite colour is red but god! don't we all need a little splash of blue from time to time?

I'm sorry for the ranting. You see, I've been rather quite lately. Gaborone hasn't said a lot recently either.

Though, if I'm being entirely honest it's not like Gaborone is a particularly loud city. The rampant acacias whisper platitudes and not secrets. The scorching sun sets fire to nothing. The old woman in front of you at the bus station moves slowly and talks loudly but you never hear what she's saying. Really, the most noise you'll ever get out of Gaborone is a screeching mini-bus horn pelting out against... yes, the concrete. Combis drive as such amazing speeds that they seem to want to escape the ground. And I think they do. Many of us want to fly. Many of us know how wonderful it is to be one with the sky. Yeah we think we know what that's  like; we know we know what's that like: the sky is blue. But the world keeps saying out favourite colour should be red, but god! don't I need a little splash of blue from time to time?

Okay, let me stop being so abstract now.

In the last two years of my life here in Gaborone, I spent quite a bit of time combi'ing it out to various places of colour and adventure. I have rather lovely memories of journeying the small grand distance from my school to the University of Botswana in order to have a little bit of intellectual fun with the varsity debaters. There was even a brief hurricane period of being wheeled to the Botswana Accountancy College to meet with their debate society. I was always the slightly awkward high-school debater posing as a seasoned veteran, but my posing wasn't so bad. I'd been invited to share in those ambitious spaces by debater-friends studying at the tertiary level. If they thought I knew what I was doing, then it's worth assuming that must have been the case. Okay, so I didn't always know what I was doing, I never knew what I was doing- but they humoured me anyways and taught me how to fight with ideas with a little bit more vibrancy and spirit, so I was happy nonetheless.

There was also, of course, my life in poetry, which continues to this day. In 'Adventures in Gaborone No. 1' I talked a lot about this being a city of poets. I still believe this is true. Finally breathing in Gaborone's air has allowed me to rapidly evolve into one of those poets, and I've even gained an amateurish level of respect from some of my bigger and better senior writers.When this first started happening,  I loved it. Sometimes after reciting one of my pieces, I'd get asked how old I was and feverishly, but not really feverishly, responded with a nervous, but not really nervous, 'I'm seventeen.' This did wonders for my self-esteem. A year later I'm often asked that same question, but saying 'I'm eighteen' doesn't have that same kind of wunderkind relish and spark.

I mean, we have to grow up at some point right?

Well you see, I would grow up, but the two kids in front of my sister and me are so darn adorable that I can't imagine looking like that horrid afro-dude in the background hiding his horrid afro-dude face. 

Maybe not. As you may have noticed, I spend a lot of time living in my memories. Writing poetry is, of course, an exercise in preservation rather than creation. I suppose this is why writing verse comes relatively easy to me (editing, is of course another matter), because I have a penchant of looking over my shoulder and glancing back towards yesterday, even though my foot is firmly set on tomorrow.

Hey! Do you remember the lovely girl I mentioned who showed me what a wonder Gaborone is?

She's coming to visit.

This makes me astonishingly happy.

Even if I haven't exactly been able to stay who I was while she disappeared.

But that's a different story for another day...

Yes, as usual, I'll get around to writing about it...

Such things are my specialty:

Adventures about yesterday for tomorrow, written today.

Adventures in Gaborone No. 1

 My scholarship dreams finally came true and I'll be leaving Gaborone soon for Watertown, Connecticut. So, as a little prelude to an upcoming blog series, 'Adventures in Watertown,' I present my alpha and omega- Gaborone. We'll start off this journey with an essay from my English class... 

A City of Poets.

Though I’ve lived here all my life, I only began to take Gaborone seriously last year. Things like thinking up a venue for a second date can do that to you, especially when you finally score that date two years after the first one. You’re probably wondering why it took two whole years for such a mystery to reoccur, but it took two years because I’m the type of person who would call a date a mystery. In any case, we were supposed to go out for ice-cream again but somehow ended up at Mugg & Bean. Why the absence of ice-cream suddenly prompted me to start loving a city I cannot say for sure. What I like to assume is that love of a city comes easy with love of another person. Which is precisely why I’ve never thought that Spain or Paris are any more special than Gaborone; those cities just happened to have more poets to romanticize them.

I have a lot of friends who think the opposite. That a quaint, anti-picturesque city like Gaborone could provoke any feelings of red, pink and maroon is an absurdity that they would never accept. Gaborone, they claim, is not a city for artists and bohemians. Hemingway and Fitzgerald flocked to Paris. Hughes and Plath had their honeymoon in Spain.  In short, they say, “what excitement could be found in a city that values beer over wine?” But I think such a line of reasoning is narrow-minded madness: what excitement could not be found in a city that values beer over wine?

Gaborone is home to soul-people with hair as frenzied as the words on their lips. Many are of course starved and hungry artists. These are either university students with dreams as plentiful as their cigarettes or non-graduates with raspy voices that loudly whisper anti-government sentiments. I’ve been told multiple times that over half the guys at the University of Botswana are about to drop a mixtape. Half of that half, along with their more sensible female R&B counterparts, are among the greatest spoken word poets on the continent. Every month or so they meet up at the National Museum to show each other bits and pieces of their very being in an event called ‘Poet’s Passport.’ Gaborone is small enough for such intimacy to be long-lasting. I haven’t shared myself for months but I haven’t forgotten and been forgotten by my soul-people.

So why is Gaborone so colourless for me right now?

Let’s end with the beginning: after my second mystery I got a third date. Then a forth. Maybe even a fifth.  It was around this time especially that the marvel of Gaborone started blossoming before me. I started learning the combi routes and my Setswana speaking became earnest, sincere. My reading and writing became reflective of my background- my actual background.  I was happy. Which made sense: in a city of poets, a man with a muse is a king. That I came to lose my crown so soon was nothing dramatic. I simply watched her fly off to another continent from the ground at the airport.

And it’s almost amusing how quickly Gaborone came and went. Just like her.

Biltong.

The last thing the Poet feels of her is the distinctive taste of biltong. It lingers. She had bought two packets at the café.  Their last kiss is made just before the airplane announces itself with a great roar of being. He watches it swallow her and turn her into a memory. And then the plane flies away. He can’t find a silver lining in the plane’s path, so he instead focuses on the gentle return of normality to his skin. Every centimetre that was previously pressed to his Muse is smoothing its goosebumps. The Poet’s heart goes back from verse to prose, just as how it was before she became the subject of his pen. 

He turns to say an awkward “dumela” to the Muse’s grandmother. She responds with the tone of a grandmother greeting a boy who has just been making out with her granddaughter in front her: “dumela.” It probably doesn't help that his hair isn't combed. It probably doesn't help that they have not met before. The Poet then asks the Muse’s brother for a ride to school. Now that the Muse is gone, it is time for him to begin studying for the colourless exams that were the subject of his existence before her. The Muse’s brother nods in agreement, and he walks out of the stale atmosphere of the airport with her family. The summer sunshine somehow manages to feel uninspired. 

The journey from the airport stretches out like a goodbye that ought not to happen. It is slow, painful, and filled with empty promises of hope from her family. Her brother says she will visit during the Christmas season. The Poet knows she won't- she can’t- but he has enough novels to keep him company.  They are riding in the same little red Volkswagen that often picked her up from school. If time is simultaneous, she is sitting next to him. 

The car is full; time has only one direction, and its wheels stops in front of the school gates. 

He says his farewells, closes the car door, and limps to the library to start working on maths equations with his classmates. He barely opens the library doors, barely greets his classmates, and with barely practiced nonchalance, barely explains that his Muse went off to another country. He picks up his scientific calculator and clicks open his pen to attack a math problem. Hours pass in numbers that stubbornly refuse to make sense in place of her. The Poet solves a problem, and then he doesn’t. He asks for help, and then he doesn’t. He laughs with his classmates, and then he doesn't: they have to go home now for lunch.

The Poet cannot go home. He has to wait for his mother to pick him up. He decides to walk out the school gates to eat at the Chinese restaurant. It is placed conveniently outside the school. He orders some dumplings and some noodles, and then tells the waitress that he is going to buy a newspaper at the filling station while he waits for his meal.

At the filling station counter are packets of biltong hooked onto a stand.

Assumedly, this story is largely self-explanatory. 

(The image used  is from the manga Bleach back when it was the most amazing thing on Earth.
Also, this story was originally posted here: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1115725/biltong/)