South Africa ... into the future?

20 Sep. 08

Jacob Zuma scares the hell out of me. Although Mbeki had a bit of a bad start with some of his public statements, the place has been moving on; it’s been way too slow for the people in the townships – who have shown the patience of stones – but progress nonetheless. Mbeki had a tough act to follow.

South Africa had bright prospects yesterday. They will be hosting the World Cup in 2010, there has been more investment and the knowledge base – key to success and still largely white – has mostly stayed in place. Apparently this bully boy, and that is the way they paint him, doesn’t just have a closet of skeletons, the rumours suggest he needs a shipping container to hold them.

I worry that Zuma could be another evil-minded populist like Mr. Mugabe in Zimbabwe. What I hold on to is that the hope of progress in the townships, the patience of its people and the roots of democracy and justice are deep enough in the fertile soil of that beautiful land that it can survive what looks like just another demagogue.

International sport is politics. Maybe the 2010 World Cup will help to preserve the best chance for the conversion of that continent, the victim of a millennium of exploitation, into all that it should be.

Madrid, 13 September 2008

Maria ...

Her name is Maria. She’s about 200 years old with a gold rimmed tooth, leathery skin, a serious limp, horny old hands, dressed in a representative sample of rag-picker’s discards. Some tell me she’s ‘Romana’ but she’s ‘gitana’ – maybe the same thing but she is, to my mind, Romany.

She stands outside the Majorca, Madrid’s most upmarket delicatessen, at the corner of Don Ramon de la Cruz and Velazquez. As you leave that old hand is stretched up as high as she can reach, right into you face and the cadence is high and plaintive – ‘una moneda, por favor, una moneda’.

Sometimes I meet Maria and that intrusive hand on my street, a couple of blocks from her normal stand in front of the Majorca, sometimes on Ortega y Gasset, lined with tony shops like Chanel, Hermes, Tods and Lora Piano, that hand still up and in my face.

A few weeks ago Maria and I reached an accord, for 2 euros a week she would be happy and I would be free of that hand. If she could convince a hundred of us to do that, she’d be okay.

This arrangement worked well, for the first several weeks we ran into each other and I gave her my protection money. One week she wasn’t at her usual spot for a day or two and I felt a bit guilty until I saw her one day across the street. For some reason I had to walk her down and give her my 2 euros. I felt better. Damn, Maria is good at this.

One morning, walking the dog, I saw a 10 euro bill on the street outside Chanel. I picked it up and looked around, maybe the owner had just dropped it. There was no one on my side of the street and across the road there was only another dog walker, this one being pulled determinedly up the sidewalk by an 80 pound German Shepherd. I stuck the bill into my pocket and went back home.

On Friday I was peckish around 2 PM. Too lazy to fix myself something, I strolled over the Majorca, greeting Maria on my way in, picking up a couple of their exquisite ‘ingleses’ – Jamon iberico, queso de Burgos, a slice of tomato all stuffed into a soft, golden-brown roll.

I passed Maria again on my way out. She smiled through a mass of brown wrinkles. Something tweaked and I stopped and asked her if she had a relative in the area? Yes, her sister Anna worked in front of Corte Ingles (the department store) on Serrano. Since I’d put a name to that hand and her creased old face, I had finally noted the similarity.

We spoke for a minute or two and I recall asking her how she was feeling. In answer she pulled open her bag and pulled out a handful of prescriptions from the government clinic, explaining they were for her leg, pulling up her long skirt to the knee and showing me an ugly, swollen joint.

I gave Maria that 10 euro note which wasn’t mine. Before I could protest, she had grabbed my hand and ...she kissed it.

I’m embarrassed and moved and saddened. We were players in a Dickensian drama but it’s the third millennium!

Next time I think I’ll find out more about that leg and see if I can give some of my money rather than just return a 10 euro note I found on the street, which is hers.

CERN?

Madrid, 10 September 2008

This ought to be an interesting day. The stock market on Tuesday took back all that it had given on Monday. I have a blinking screen which shows how things are going in my portfolio -- an emaciated thing in the best of times -- and yesterday it was a grim red (ie, down) for most the day. Last night we had a terrific storm here in Madrid. I was awakened to the booming echoes of thunder and the rat-a-tat of a hard rain. I dragged myself down the hall to Alex's room. She normally sleeps with the door to her bedroom open so I wanted to make sure that she'd closed it. With the amazing capacity of teenagers to sleep through alarms, wars and, this time, acts of nature, she was happily unconscious of the rain and, I discovered, the hail which was bouncing off the balcony, through the door and around her room. I closed the doors, turned off the lights that she'd left on and made my way back to bed where I read myself to sleep, ignoring the second augury of the day.

So, with these indications that both nature and the human world are in some state of turmoil, I look to today with some trepidation and we try to mix the natural and the human at CERN. We are going to turn that thing on today for the first time. If all goes well, a huge step forward, human knowledge and ingenuity working with nature to discover the secrets of the univers. If it doesn't go so well, I guess Alex will not have to worry about her homework today and I actually wont have to pay taxes ...

There is always a bright side.