Masande Ntshanga - The Reactive

It takes the taxi less than an hour to reach Du Noon. Even with three children, Bhut’ Vuyo and his wife spend most of their lives making a home inside a shipping container. This isn’t an unusual way to live in Du Noon. The containers here have multiplied since my last stay, in ‘95, and I can see them from the taxi as we drive in: hair salons, eateries and phone shops, all of them packaged inside steel boxes like time capsules. Ta T-Man sticks in a CD full of house MP3s, and, as we push deeper into the township, I can’t help but peer into the dim insides of the crates. It feels the same as seeing regular poverty, but cut into sections and prepared for export. In front of the containers, lined up like mechanical sentries, portable toilets stoop under the slanting sunlight, four for every dozen containers. It’s supposedly a temporary measure, meant to tide the people over until after the upcoming local election.

The container I’m traveling to is red, corrugated and a source of concern for its owner. Even at a glance, you can tell it’s old and falling apart. Bhut’ Vuyo spends a few days each month extending it with sheets of discarded zinc, sometimes driving his lorry to Blouberg, where he scours the shore for bits of wood, planks, or anything he can find that isn’t too rotted from the ocean. He’s learned to make his way with what he finds, discarded by the hands of others. My uncle is a large and laughing man, but if you get close enough to him, it isn’t hard to tell that he’s walked into places that surprised him with bloodshed.

I arrive at the corner of Ingwe and Bhengu Streets just after three o’clock. It’s a weekday and quieter than usual. I spot a makeshift pit latrine, its walls made from corrugated iron and wood, leaning precariously at the side of Bhut’ Vuyo’s home. The clouds have allowed the sun free rein, and its light slams brilliantly into the ribbed metal, the earth still muddy at the base, with spikes of chopped plank exposed. Flies hover in a cloud around the structure. I find my uncle sitting on a crate in front of his container, observing his work with a quart between his ankles. His beer belly flows over his thighs, the sweat on his head sparkling as it catches the light. You can tell by the way he looks at the tin that it’s a fresh triumph. He’s sweaty and lively when he sees me. When he extends his hand, it isn’t to shake my own, but to draw me into an embrace. Welcome home, he says with warmth, and I smile, not knowing what else to do.

The first day at my uncle’s place comes and goes without consequence. He doesn’t mention his message to me. I help him with the pit latrine, which caves in shortly after my arrival, and for supper he fries us beef livers and onions, dished generously with pap and bread crusts. I wash the dishes in a yellow bucket, and afterwards I unroll umkhukhu on the vinyl tiles. We share a Courtleigh and he tells me how his wife has taken the children to visit her parents in Langa. Outside, the township comes to life with the sun having set. I watch the smoke hovering around the mountain of my uncle on his bed. There are indications that parts of him still belong out there. His forearms bear scars from stripping cars with their engines still hot, back when he worked as mechanic in a chop shop in Khwezi Park. His movements are quick, an instinct he’s retained from his days in the syndicate.

We’ll talk after her return, he says, and I nod.

I open the door to flick out the cigarette stub and stare with surprise at how close the moon looks. Inside, Bhut’ Vuyo blows out the candle and I coil myself inside a blanket and a towel. Soon, the container fills up with the sound of his labored breathing; I trip into unsettled dreams after he goes down.

The next two days pass just as quietly. Bhut’ Vuyo leaves for Blouberg while I sleep on his floor. I don’t see him until the early evening, when we cook and sit for our supper and a beer. He prepares dumplings and then samp. He promises to keep us chin-deep in meat this entire week, and, during meals, he keeps me abreast on who comes and goes in the community. I recognize Ta T-Man, the taxi driver, from one of his faster stories. He shows me a scar on his forearm. Ta T-Man and his men were trying to introduce a nyaope cartel in the neighborhood, he says, but the Cape took little interest in the drug. I get close to telling him about my ARVs, but I decide against it. I have an idea he still thinks I’m a student.

During the day, when Bhut’ Vuyo disappears, I take Industrial and lie on the floor to read. He buys the Daily Voice, which he uses to wallpaper the container, and on the walls I read about gangs spraying bullets across the streets of Lavender Hill, or I read about Delft, where the women have started to mark tik houses with large X’s on the garages. The rest of Cape Town starts to feel distant beyond these pages, surrounded by uncertainty and receding into memory. There are other times when I don’t read. I lie on the floor with my eyes closed, listening to the sounds of the neighborhood. When I run out of airtime, I decide to go without it. Then I spend more time listening to what Du Noon might have to say to me.

On Saturday, Bhut’ Vuyo and I finish up with the latrine. He fetches a box of tools from Milnerton and this makes our job go faster. We work hastily, barely a word passing between us, and get done in just under three hours. Every time I lay a plank down, I feel myself filling up with relief and gratitude, thankful that I missed the spade work before I arrived. Digging the hole must’ve taken a fortnight, at the very least, and I’m careful not to bring this up with him, in case he finds more work for me to take up.

His latrine is more of a gesture than a necessity. It’s a political project, I realize, and in reality a lot less functional than the toilets that insult him. The residents on his block have developed an efficient ecosystem with the Portaloos, and, when Bhut’ Vuyo leaves for Blouberg, I try one out for myself. The formaldehyde has turned a brownish green, meaning it’s stopped neutralizing the odor, and it smells like the combined waste of eight households. I hold my breath as much as I can before I give up. It’s a public toilet, after all, I tell myself. I rub one of Bhut’ Vuyo’s papers soft between my knuckles and wipe myself. I’ve been told by the neighbors that my uncle’s family makes use of the toilets, too, and that he’s a fool for putting up that zinc wreck in his yard. I listen to this with a mixture of pride and embarrassment. Here, no one else seems to bother with gestures any more. Perhaps this counts for something, I think.

Later, we share a quart outside the container. They should be burned, Bhut’ Vuyo says.

Standing and facing Bhengu Street, the two of us wait for our turn with the water. I follow his gaze, tracing it to the blue and gray plastic toilets that line the narrow street. They’re built wide and tall, and from where I’m standing I can see the marks defacing one of them. Like Bhut’ Vuyo wants, someone has held a fire to it. This must’ve been a weak flame, however.

We aren’t wealthy people, Nathi, he says, you know that.

I nod that I do.

We cross the road to the communal tap, which stands on a concrete square in a barren field. Goalposts made from carved branches have been erected at each end, but no one has any interest in playing games in Du Noon any more. Bhut’ Vuyo lets the water run into a bucket and we go back to the house and pour Omo washing powder over our palms. When we sit back down and face the street again, another woman has taken her place at the tap. She fills a yellow enamel basin without handles. Two small children hang on her legs and she keeps kicking them away. They laugh at her scolding and run towards the goalposts. The water feels cool in the heat. Bhut’ Vuyo says the Sunlight soap is only used for washing our bodies. We scoop up more washing powder for our palms.