An afternoon on the patio of the Swartberg Hotel, Prince Albert. His voice is barely audible over the cacophony of codeswitching emanating from the table with the man and the polka dot socks and the gin and the mobile oxygen machine. "Ken julle van Bukhara in Church Street? In
As I look at the contours of the Swartberg, someone’s business is crumbling beside me. To my right, a woman in the dusk of middle age complains about the size of the Louvre. A photographer (American, perhaps, by the look of his shoes) tries to frame the dense landscape,
For the first time in over two years I am going on leave today. Like real leave. Not opening my computer at 5am-and-tutoring-leave. Not answering-urgent-emails-while-hiking-leave. Not lying-in-bed-thinking-of-new-ideas-leave, or marking-papers-while-my-child-sleeps-leave.
Some words on the years I have spent juggling part-time, quarter-time, slice-of-time jobs — written between bedtimes and borrowed hours, and offered here as both a reckoning and a small manifesto for the work of teaching. A shorter piece, originally written for LinkedIn. Over the past couple
I spent the first few years of my life on Palmerston Road, in a suburb that has changed its name, its face and its price tag more times than I can count. This is a story about Woodstock — and the people who refuse to leave. A longer read, but hopefully
Asser has been involved with the Hobatere Roadside Conservancy for over twenty years. His connection to the land, its wildlife and its people exists outside of time. This is a portrait of a conversation — and of the discomfort of not quite knowing how to sit inside it. A longer read,
A letter begun in Room 112, somewhere in Europe, in the early days of December. About travel insurance, oxygen levels, and the particular fierceness of love when it is briefly, terrifyingly, tested. Dear Squeakicles, The things worth writing down are usually the ones you're not sure you'
A UNESCO World Heritage site, 250 million year old petrified trees, and not a card machine within 100km. A dispatch from Damaraland on running out of cash, living on pasta permutations, and the fine art of acquiring ice in the Namibian wilderness. We have arrived at Aabadi Mountain Camp in
Written somewhere in the Namibian desert, on a morning that felt borrowed from ordinary time. A piece about loneliness, memory, and still looking for the right adjective. "Where are the people?" resumed the little prince at last. "It's a little lonely in the desert…"
Some places hold a country's contradictions more honestly than they intend to. This is an afternoon spent at a cricket club in the affluent suburb of Constantia, Cape Town — where the beer is cold, the past is present, and a joke gets told three times without anyone asking
In the photograph my father lent me, there is no sky. Three men, two decades, one absence that never quite ended. A portrait of South African author, Richard Rive, and of the place that made and unmade him. In the black and white photograph that my father has lent me,
When we talk about transformation in schools in the leafy suburbs of Cape Town or other cities, do we talk about why it is that they remain so racially homogenous? Do we say what needs to be said: That equal access to education in a market economy can never result