TRAVEL HUMOUR

TO CAPE TOWN AND BACK - IN ONE PIECE

September 15, 2001; 18h45; I'm strapped to my light aircraft seat on my way to Cape Town. Contrary to the reasons why the travel agent booked me for a private flight and as opposed to everybody's paranoia, I'm not thinking suicide bombers or for a very strange reason, Osama Bin Laden, because the way I'm stressed out about politics, I think there's a kamikaze rebel pilot without a cause in me just waiting to be given orders. I don't understand why they label Bin Laden The Most Wanted when the person they should be wanting is the one still waiting to explode, me.

19h53; As I approach CPT I am thinking about the last time I went to a beach. It was me and my half-brother (he has since deceased). He was a weakling who had a weaker version of my immune system. Here's some recently declassified information about mine; every minor and major epidemic that once hit the eastern Transvaal from the seventies to today has claimed a victory over it only to be later pushed back by a barrage of anti-biotics. It's a very weak system I was given, but then my half-brother had a weakened version of it. Think about it, mine is half your system, his was half my system, meaning he's getting away with just a quarter of yours. And you still get ill.

When I went to the beach (Durban) with him he ended up knocking loudly on heaven's door. Thanks to the angels who were on strike he came back to mother earth with a bang. He was so sea-sick I dialled EMS (Emergency Medical Services) ninety seven times but they kept assuring me that his was due initiation by the warm Mozambique current.

Many minutes later, which could have made an hour, as my plane came into contact with the ground on a private air strip in CPT I didn't plan on being hit by a bout of sea-sickness or flu or whatever troubles Capetonians and their visitors. I had in my person two kilograms of anti-biotics, a twenty five litre cauldron of mineral water from Friscona Valley and my own oxygen tank just incase the thick humid Benguela current threatens to clog my nasal passage. I was in CPT on a working holiday and I didn't plan on climbing Table Mountain and taking a ride in a cable car. Not only am I claustrophobic but am also scared of heights. I'm afraid of the dark and all I need is light every step of the way.

While in CPT I drew a priority list. First I was not going to visit Robben Island due to my hydrophobia and less patriotic heart. Knowing myself it would have been difficult for me to shed a tear and show remorse at the lime stone hard labour site. I might have shed a tear at seeing American space touris Dennis Tito lift off and thought about my own ambitions to fly, triggered by old recordings of Star Trek. The only remorse comes from noticing that some of us will even die before going where no man has gone before, but less remorse at Heritage sites.
My first priority was to meet Bonnie Mbuli (when she was still with Backstage and before Sisanda Henna made her a wife), coerce her to go with me to the V&A Waterfront, watch some couple of art movies together, discuss her relationship with CPT and if the Lord was my shepherd, end up getting her, regardless of her quasi-feminist stance, to walk me down the aisle (not the other way round) in a couple of weeks' time. Wow, I would then set up camp in the Mother City just overlooking the seat of power with a reasonable range for my infra-red scope fitted sniper rifle just incase one of the people who enter through the front gate pisses me off one of these days on SABC 3's Parliament Live.
Boom!! . We could become two official outlaws on the run from National Intelligence Agency and the Scorpions, Bonnie and who? What's my name?. Call me Clyde. That would have been funny heh? etv would have loved this.
My second priority had a lot to do with what I didn't want to happen. I hope that while I am sitting at this fish cafe by the Waterfront, urban terror (remember PAGAD, remember Qibla?) never catches up with me. I can't imagine a pipe bomb going off at the trash can I have just dumped my empty Oreo cookie pack, killing me and fatally wounding the cute destiny's child chick who chose to be my date after responding to my plea which I cocky-penned on the door and mirror in the lady's. I can forsee her father with his greasy hair and Taliban beard who belongs to the shady organisation with links to shady organisations overseas demand that the police label me the suicide bomber so as to give her daughter an honourable excuse to hate, forgetting that sixteen other innocents in other wards would also want to know why they've been targeted. Including my spirit that will be begging for answers too. I wouldn't rest until they had arrested the person who planted the bomb.

My last priority was for finding CPT to be so extremely majestic and recklessly bohemian, more like in 1652 when Jan Van Riebeek re-discovered it. I wanted to fall head over heels in love with it to the point where when my working holiday expired in two months time I would decide to buy a house by the hill, overlooking the sea and name that piece of land Gustavus, after my grandfather who history refuses to acknowledge as the founder of this piece of real estate I had my eyes on.

November 22: I was flying commercial out of CPT. At 11h23 I was strapped to my business seat, flirting with the South African Airways stewardess who was a far cry from Miss Mbuli who I failed to meet and who I trusted was dying to meet me too. I did go to the set of Backstage (when it was still in CPT) after arranging with the top brass at Kloof Studios but the burly security guard who I thought I might have known as a bouncer in Hillbrow's little Lagos district refused to acknowledge my press credentials. Surprise, surprise, his name on the tag was Feminism Emaviwe.

The plane took off and I looked down at CPT and all I could master was an apologetic, "Good-bye Mama, 'tis been a pleasure knowing you. And by the way, thanks for the memories". Cape Town disappeared under the clouds and suddenly the thought of Bin Laden came to the fore. I suddenly wondered what would happen if he got tired of being a mountaneer and decided to do a Shuttleworth and pay his own $20 million to go to the International Space Station. Would they allow him? What experiments would he like to conduct?

What I know is that even myself can't wait to go where no living has gone before and join my choral group as a permanent tourist in the after-life, and sing Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrica and Die Stem van Suid Afrika with gusto as a member of the Orchestra Beyond, featuring Kurt Cobain and John Lennon. Imagine that, "you may say I'm a dreamer/ but I'm not the only one". I guess they all started this way. And suppose Mr Bin Laden got the go-ahead, surprise, surprise, I wouldn't turn down an offer to be in the same Soyuz with him.

PS. At hindsight I now realise that I had no reason to suspect Bin Laden while I was not flying on Airforce One. And for PAGAD, Qibla and Taliban? see you on Jurassic Park IV, which I'm going to direct, financed by NIA and the Central Intelligence Agency.