Summer is finally coming around down here in the south. The beginning of the month was shockingly damp and brisk, a bracing tease of winter-like weather in what's meant to be a balmy, heady, blossomy time of year. Although its climate is quite different from Cape Town, Johannesburg also experienced a little cold/wet spell this November, leading my brother-in-law, Alex, to quip, "It's an Indian winter." But now, finally, as we move into the last month of frisky, aromatic spring, the warmth and bird-chirp have returned, and everywhere there are sandals and sunglasses and lambs and butterflies and little men with feathers in their caps skipping about strumming lutes. It's all just lovely. Cape Town's a grand place to be and it's a grand time to be here.
That said, there are problems, of course. And yet, because this blog is not meant to be a forum for the discussion of serious matters and certainly does not aim to improve the conditions of anyone's life but my own, I find myself mostly unwilling to enumerate them. I will say, though, that crime is a very serious issue in South Africa and one does need to be aware of it. Theft, in particular, from pickpocketing to car jacking to burglary, is pretty common in Cape Town. Our own belongings (various cell phones, laptops, a camera, a wonderful metal coat hook embossed with Beatles lyrics that was hand-forged as a wedding gift by my dear best friend Willis (no relation to Bruce)) have been "redistributed" in various ways on no less than four occasions since moving here just over two years ago. I cannot think of a single friend here who has not been targeted by thieves at one time or another, in one way or another.
Anyway, to get back to my reason for even bringing all this up, Stumpy and I joined our local Neighborhood Watch last year in an effort to be people who don't just sit around and complain about shit, but people who go out and DO something about shit. (Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy sitting around and complaining - probably around one to five times per week on average - but there are other things I'd rather bitch about: typos in newspapers, ridiculously inappropriate music in the grocery store (Sade's "No Ordinary Love" while I decide between English and Dijon mustard?), the fact that "Crash" won a Best Picture Oscar.) I spent nearly a year as its treasurer, a post for which I am most ill-suited, before being tenderly, diplomatically reassigned to the nascent "Social Portfolio" - a small and highly unsecretive brace of citizens who conceptualize and carry out great fund-raising mixers for the community. We meet at an Italian restaurant and talk boerwors rolls, candy floss, porta-potties, booze.
The last (and first) fete we engendered was a Halloween thing. Although the beloved holiday of spooks, candy, and autumnal revelry is not traditional in SA (it occurs, after all, in spring here. See above.), some South Africans are getting into it a bit. (Other, less-evolved specimens moan bitterly about the "Americanization" of the globe. I say boo to anyone who doesn't, at least once a year, want to dress up like a pestilent ghoul and dish out sweets to the neighbors. It's hard to believe that societies can even function without that sort of thing.) Well, our Neighborhood Watch party in the park worked "a treat" for us, as it were, in that lots of people came and their kids got all sugared up and we raised a heap of those elusive "funds" that groups like ours are always scrambling after. It was a terrific success all around. And, it was fun. A bit raucous, a bit rough. As an American, I was particularly impressed that we completely ignored all rules and regulations governing the sale of food and liquor, and no one complained or even questioned any of it. Viva!
