The C2C4C social census

Posted on 11 May 2010

The West Coast has served up some of the crazy weather it is renowned for, with strong winds and huge swells resulting in the crew battening down the hatches in the luxurious Blue Bay Lodge in Saldanha Bay for an extra day. It is tough but someone has to do it.

Cape Town was probably the highlight of the trip for me so far. Apart from exorcising the penguin attack demons, I was able to meet up with some old varsity mates and check out the vibe around town. For the most part, the people I encountered were awesome. Except for one person, and there is always one! I was at a smallish house warming at my mates flat in Rondebosch on Friday night. It was about 19h30, and there was a loud knock on the door. My mate opened the door to find a youngish chap (probably in his late twenties), who was battling to control his anger. The problem, it emerged, was that his job as a DJ meant that he had to catch up on sleep at strange hours. And the soft murmuring and muffled music originating from our little ‘jol’ was apparently excessive. My friend, who is a self-professed neo-hippie, obviously took the non-confrontational, “We will try and quieten down” approach. Unfortunately for the neo-hippie, a couple more people arrived at the party, and the noise level went up a few notches. DJ Buzzkill (we gave him a new DJ name), soon returned, although his lame demands now fell on deaf ears. After all, we had reasoned with our neo-hippie, this guy plays loud music for inebriated people for a living. His pecuniary stability is dependent on the existence of a culture where people like to get festive and listen to loud music. Fool.

Anyway, our encounter with DJ Buzzkill was more entertaining than irritating. Something which hasn’t made my life any easier is the fact that I have been sharing a room with Barry ‘Monica’ Lewinsky. This guy takes up a lot of space, and his idea of interior decorating seems to be covering as much of the floor as possible with dirty clothes and sodden wetsuits and riding gear. A peculiar fact about this particular Lewinsky, apart from his fascination with Cuban tobacco products and prematurely graying US presidents, is his method of nourishing himself. Most people eat their food. Barry breathes it in.

While Mark Addison has been conducting his marine census (with great difficulty I might add – he has basically lost one plankton sampling net for every three samples collected), I too have been conducting a census of my own. A social census, which requires me to immerse myself in the public milieu of each of the locations of our trip. The social census has taught me more about myself than the actual places we have been, although meeting and interacting with people from multiple coastal settlements along the way has been fun. I might have already been aware of this, but I can now confirm that I should under no circumstances attempt to speak Afrikaans. Unless I’m trying to communicate with a fellow Saffa in front of an English-speaking foreigner. And especially not when talking to a group of mother tongue Afrikaans speakers. Something else I have learnt is that adopting the biting-the-tongue approach is not always the way to go. If you have something to say, speak up. If you sit around and wait for things to happen the way you want them to, you are most likely waiting in vain…






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