senorjosh.com: creature comforts

i am in south africa. i should have said that a long time ago. i have rented a room in a student house near the University of Cape Town, and have been living very well for the past two weeks. after two months of bouncing from room to room and hostel to dingy hostel, having some space to myself is irrationally refreshing. i have a desk, a bed, a broken fireplace, a dresser, a bathtub, a washer AND a dryer. at first i got a little overzealous with the creature comforts and searched the classifieds for a cheap used car. at one point i found an ad for an ‘84 toyota tercel, US$500, with the disclaimer, "body needs attention." all that mattered to me – i thought – was the engine, so i called the number. the engine, he assured me, was "ship shop. though i must warn you that the body is missing. you will, of course, need a way to transport the engine – that is not included in the price." i didn’t respond to any more classifieds.

i was told last night that "the city in the shade of half a mountain can steal your soul." it sounds like a clue in the mystic novel i’m reading (the eight, by the way – thanks ooh $.35), but i can feel it undermining my desire to be a vagrant traveler. apparently, cape town has become a cliché place to enjoy; i will risk sounding cliché and say that i think it’s a wonderful city. i haven’t taken many pictures yet, but here are a few:

i went with emily martin, another watson fellow, to the southern tip of the western cape peninsula. emily was kind enough to bring a plastic bag full of food for us to share. however, when i opened my car door with the bag in my hand, i immediately felt the bag being tugged away. instinctively, i tugged back, and the bag was released. when i got out of the car, i saw the culprit, though by then he had moved a few feet away to the adjacent parking lot, where he was sitting with his back to us, pouting. that’s when emily took the picture. a minute later, as we walked away, two much larger baboons lumbered up to me and motioned toward the bag of food. just as i told emily to take another picture, the bigger one started climbing up my side toward the bag, which i raised in the air. though you wouldn’t know it by looking at their amazingly human-like hands, baboons have sharp claws. lucky for me, as i was too surprised to move, a parking attendant came and scared off the baboon with his slingshot. he then told my i was an idiot. fair enough. an hour later another baboon snuck up behind emily and i and took a ½ lb block of cheese and two tomatoes.

when not bothering the indigenous animals, i’ve been working with Bridges, a cape town-based NGO. they are more or less the reigning authority in the digital divide field – check out their website for more information. i will be helping them write some case studies of various on-the-ground initiatives to "use ICT to improve peoples' lives", such as the inspiring wizzy internet. that, however, deserves its own post…

Hi Josh-
Since Ed and Belle are arriving back in Berkeley any day now, I thought I'd check in on your progress and I am STOKED (a 60's word) to find that you are in Capetown. I love that city...
Check out the Skeleton Gorge route up Table Mountain, Mama Africa (restaurant when you want to splurge), boat to Robben Island. You've likely discovered some of these things already and tons more. I look forward to reading more about your time in Capetown.
Candy

Posted by: candy at October 29, 2003 05:06 AM

Hi Josh,

Funny thing but we ran into the same baboons in Gibraltar. We thought we would feed one a banana (how naive were we) and he almost took Dad's arm off in his feeding frenzy. Amazing how they get around.

Love, Mom

Posted by: Mom at October 29, 2003 04:54 PM

Josh, EVERYONE knows not to exit a car lunch-first.
You know what? I did not like The Eight. There. I said it. I didn't like it. When I finished it, I called Lily in new york to figure out what I had missed. It turns out I missed nothing, it just wasn't all that great!

Posted by: Dina at November 5, 2003 05:02 PM

josh. candy is right - Mama Africa is worth it. go hungry though and go with people to share with - they give you a ridiculous amount of food. and also if your splurging, Africa Cafe is a bit touristy but really good live music.

Posted by: lily at November 7, 2003 04:26 PM

dina, good. good, good. the eight was lame. i didn't want to burst anyone's bubble, but now that you have, i want to know what it was that made everyone heap such praise on this book. it was clever to throw in all those famous people, and some of the riddles were cute, but what else? all those separately-developed pieces of intrigue, which were supposed to fit together into an ingenious solution to some unseen puzzle, fell apart into a sad collection of non-intrigue, implausibly patched together with scotch-tape explanations. ech. and the chess idea was neat, but she took a good metaphor and beat it to death - why did it matter that each person was a piece etc., if the whole point was alchemy?? lily, sonia...?

Posted by: josh at November 8, 2003 11:17 AM