World of Darkness

Eyes are opened to the life the blind experience at the Dialogue in the Dark exhibition, writes Arja Salafranca

My name was reduced to three crystalline syllables. I said it into the dark, introducing myself to our blind guide. I stood there, first in line, holding a mobility cane, projecting my voice into the blackness. Usually the pronunciation of my name elicits comment – its pronunciation bears no relation to the way it’s spelled, and it’s a cause of confusion and puzzlement, especially once someone has read it on paper first.

But we were without sight here, my name reduced and, for the first time in my life, simplified. It was a taste of things to come – although I had no way of knowing that as I stood in the darkness.

I was part of a party of five experiencing the Dialogue in the Dark exhibition.

I was fearful at first. I had read about similar Dialogue in the Dark initiatives online – most specifically the experience of dining in darkness, being served by blind waiters. And I had read that Dialogue in the Dark was coming to South Africa and had been looking forward to it.

It was pitch dark in the exhibition, a darkness that at first assaults and feels terrifying, close and claustrophobic. You want to open your eyes wider, hoping to let some light in. The friend I had come with became claustrophobic and said she had to leave. We waited as she was led away.

Briefly put, Dialogue in the Dark is an exhibition in which you’re led into a midnight black space, with blind guides leading you into various places – from a garden-like atmosphere, to a cityscape and finally into the aptly-named Dialogue Cafe. The purpose is to experience – fractionally, and for 45 minutes – what it is like to live in a world without sight, a world where your other senses come to the fore, forced to the surface as you negotiate your way through a dark world without sight.

As my friend was led away, and we waited for our guide to return, I wondered if I, too, was going to succumb to fear. I wasn’t comfortable, and had difficulty breathing, no matter how I tried. I was taking shallow breaths as though I were at a high on a mountain altitude and struggling to breathe.

As though perhaps sensing my anxiety, our guide Hanif Kruger, having returned, paid special attention to me. Standing close, he offered to take my hand, or to let me hold onto his arm. I clutched at this lifeline.

With tiny steps I shuffled forward, unsure where I was going, which way to turn, or how to negotiate this world. The two men in our group were already rushing forward, eager to explore this strange new experience, less fearful, more adventurous. I wished I could be as daring – but I felt as though, in a sense, I’d been reborn, and my way of negotiating new experiences is a slower, more cautious way.

We were led over a small suspension bridge within a garden-like space. The two men had already dashed across it, and I heard the one commenting they had managed it; it had swayed slightly, but they were already exploring the trees and foliage on the other side. The bridge swayed. My fears were confirmed.

In the distance, there were noises of wind and what could have been waves. I was still too anxious to take in the sounds.

Hanif came close again, a voice in the dark. I hadn’t seen him and had no way of judging his age, or his looks, and thus coming to any sort of rash judgments that we are prone to in the sighted world. I had a voice to follow, a hand, a strong arm. “You can grip both rails of the bridge if you have wide arms,” said Hanif. I found the other rail, I gripped both firmly, somehow managing to retain my mobility stick, and made my way, crouched, and slowly, across the bridge. Again I shuffled, again I felt old, as though I had aged and could do little more than hobble.

Then I heard the high-pitched tone of my friend who had left. She had been persuaded to return, and had been advised to keep her eyes shut. She found it much easier. Leading her back into the exhibition was Danielle Dimitrova, director of global development. I had met her briefly outside the exhibition space as we had prepared to enter. All proprieties cast aside by my fear, I heard her voice next to that of my friend, didn’t recognise it and rudely said, “Who are you?”

She politely explained she had met me outside – a deep, French-accented voice. I clung to her voice, to the nearness of her presence. Again, I couldn’t reconcile her voice to the slight, slim figure I had met outside – and it was too confusing to try. It was as though I were meeting her for the first time – and in a sense I was. Without benefit of sight, I found sight makes you judge a person by appearance – and there’s little judgement when you’re in the dark, clinging like a child.

Danielle took myself and my friend in hand, encouraging us to form a chain. We linked up, more than occasionally bumping into each other, digging a finger into a waist, a breast, proprietaries again cast aside.

“What’s this? asked Danielle, encouraging me to feel my way around the surrounding: from a tree, to its papery leaves, to the plastic moulded lid of a dustbin. Sometimes it was near impossible to say what I was feeling, sometimes the realisation came slowly as my other senses kicked in, memory of touch and feel somehow taking over as I couldn’t rely on my eyesight.

There was a sense of triumph as we figured out what we were touching, calling out the names of the objects excitedly, at one point I giggled to myself – this was like charades in the dark. It was apt – we were reduced to childhood in some ways – to a time when the world was new, experiences were novel, and we needed to be led around, guided, have the world explained as we explored.

Danielle led us into a city space next, again, we shuffled forward, cane ahead, encountering angles of the exhibition space, waiting patiently like children to be shown this strange new world. “What’s that?” asked Danielle as we listened to the sounds invading our senses – buses, trains, a busy transport concourse? Again we groped through memories, and again we leaned heavily on yet another sense, that of hearing, placing a heavier burden on hearing than we are used to in our sighted world.

Again, we eventually guessed correctly, calling out correctly as we crossed the noisy world of a modern city. My senses were starting to feel assaulted – noise, unfamiliar noises, the movement of bodies around me, and always the lifeline of Danielle’s strong, clear voice leading us forward, clutching it like a rope, a lifeline.

We were in a market next, feeling fruits and vegetables in a bowl. Sense of smell was the next sense to be put to work – I couldn’t distinguish an apple from the other fruits without putting it to my nose and sniffing the aroma.

I marvelled at the strangeness of touching and smelling in order to work out what was in the bowl.

A pineapple was easy to guess at – its prickly-like leaves and outer shell easy enough. There were clothes hanging by a market stall, different fabrics falling between my fingers, a mannequin with a pregnant belly.

All the while there was Danielle’s strong warm presence leading us through, encouraging us to explore, to feel, to guess. I was struck by how this experience had revealed us all in psychological ways: both my friend and I are anxious types and explored through the veil of our fear.

When another friend went days later she found herself confronting and resolving her own demons, while my mother on her visit raced ahead, true to her daredevil sense of spirit.

We were now growing more confident. The fear had left me; my friend was even starting to make her way in this world of the darkness, had acquired a confidence, as though discovering a sense she hadn’t known before.

She moved quicker now, more sure of her steps, I was no longer shuffling as slowly as I had before, but was nowhere near as confident as she.

Our encounter with the dark ended with drinks and chips in the Dialogue Bar. I moved toward the counter and placed my order with two servers there. More voices in the dark. I gave them a R100 note, they knew exactly what I given them, and knew exactly what change to give me and how much. I took the clutch of notes and coins, I had no idea what I had been handed. I was too busy holding onto my mobility cane, my straw, my can of cold drink and packet of chips.

Noises were louder in the silence, crisp packers ripped through the darkness, opening a straw and inserting it into the can took longer than necessary. Tastes were intensified in the dark, senses now concentrated on flavour, seeking it out, making it work harder again than it ever has to.

As we sat Hanif passed us a “pimply” book – a book of Braille. We passed our fingers along the unfamiliar small dots on the surface of the paper.

I couldn’t imagine having to read through my fingers. Hanif spoke as we ate, telling us that he had been blind from birth, his optical nerves hadn’t been attached to his eyes.

He was married, his wife also blind. We tried to make sense of world without colour as he spoke, “To me a tree is a pole with more poles and leaves at the end of it.” I tried to imagine knowing a tree purely through feel and smell, and failed miserably. I imagine a tree and immediately I see the visual image before me.

“There are only a few things I wish I could see,” he shared, “a sunset, or a baby’s smile or the look of happiness on someone’s face.”

We greeted this with a poignant silence, each lost in contemplation.

And then, a chink of light, a faint glimmering of white, and Hanif led the way out. I was sorry to be leaving the darkness, and yet I breathed a sigh of relief as we were led out, the faint white giving way to the lit corridor and into the light.

Back into the world I knew, but why, paradoxically, was there also this sense of loss?

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The Dialogue in the Dark is curated by the South African National Council for the Blind and the Sci-Bono Discovery Centre in Newtown and is now open to the public .Initiated by Andreas Heinecke in 1988, Dialogue in the Dark is a product of Dialogue Social Enterprise (DSE), an organisation whose key mission is to create innovative learning opportunities that improve the quality of human interactions. The underlying principle of the exhibition is drawn from the work of German-Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, “Principles of Dialogue”, which states that “The only way to learn is through encounter”. The Dialogue in the Dark exhibition has travelled worldwide raising awareness about human diversity while empowering people with disabilities. It has been presented in more than 30 countries and over 160 sites throughout Europe, Asia and America. Six and a half million visitors have experienced Dialogue in the Dark worldwide, and over

6 000 blind people have been provided with employment.

For further info: http://dialogueinthedarksa.blogspot.com/ and http://www.dialogue-in-the-dark.com

To follow the exploits of Hanif’s guide dog, Orli, visit Facebook and make friends with Orli Kruger

First published in The Sunday Independent August 21 2011

Do we still need a Women's Day in 2010?

Why do women have a special day? This is the disgruntled question I’ve heard through the years.The usual retort is that men have 364 days – why not have one day for women?

But, I wonder if we still need a Women’s Day in 2010? Do women’s issues then conveniently get set aside because we’ve already celebrated and discussed women’s issues, so let’s now move on?

My women’s month started when I read poetry with a group of other women at the Jozi Book Fair on August 9.Women of all persuasions stepped upto the forum to declaim on a range of issues – from being single to hymns to grandmothers. I then found myself as part of the celebrations for the launch of a book by women writers only. Asked why there was a need for women-only publishers, I suggested that if men felt the need, why not put together a book of stories by men on the same topic?

But the point remains that men are perhaps starting to feel excluded.We may argue that women have just one day a year, but men’s issues – and they too deserve serious consideration – aren’t often on the agenda either. At the writers’symposium hosted by the Department of Arts and Culture, I was on a panel with the novelist Adaobi Nwaubani. She brought upthe point that women novelists were experiencing aflowering and being published, but was there not a danger of excluding men, or of men feeling excluded?Such a comment might provoke howls of outrage from women – and some men. But are we shooting ourselves in the foot with Women’s Day? Surely weshould place women’s issues firmly on the agenda,whatever the month, whatever the day?

I write, and live, from a position of relative privilege– although the finances of a single mother precluded me from private school, I still attended a government school that was highly regarded. I’vemoved through my working life without encountering a barage of sexism, although I’ve certainly brushedagainst sexist practices.

I’m lucky in that I entered the workforce in 1994,the year of democracy and change.When I started my first job as a community reporter, the editor was male, smoking was allowed and it was only the women reporters who wrote on the Womens League.When I left a few years later the editor was female, smoking had been relegated to the balconyand we all attended Womens’League meetings.

I have always felt myself to be valued by everyone with whom I have worked. Perhaps the tide has turned and we are now blessed to be working with men who have been enlightened by the fires feminism ignited.And my feeling is that we need to recognise this within men themselves. Although I welcome the attention afforded women during thismonth, I also lament that since we have a month to ourselves, so to speak, we don’t yet have the year.

(Published in The Sunday Independent, August 29)

From recycling to royalty,London has me rather foxed

Last week I was shopping for food at 10 at night. With only one teller available at Tesco, and two self-service machines available, I nervously approached them and did what I had seen others do ahead of me.

Scanning my own groceries – who would have thought! I did have a minor moment of, “Now what?” when I got to the vegetables and fruit – after all they have no barcodes – but there was a friendly, if rather harassed employee, on hand to help me.

I packed my groceries into the hemp-like bag my cousin had provided me with and made my way home in the dark.

Lager louts crowded the narrow streets of Richmond, slouching in low slung jeans, women with bare arms tottered in heels; music blared from a pub and I wrapped my coat firmly around me.

I came home to Johannesburg: rubbish piled high outside my complex, potholes which I instinctively avoided, and the talk on the radio was all about the power outages affecting the city of Johannesburg. This came as winter had arrived with a vengeance, freezing temperatures and unseasonable rain.

I was exhausted and couldn’t understand why.

After all, they do speak English in London, and having watched British TV and movies, read novels set in that country you generally think you’re au fait with the norms and customs in that culture. But as a friend pointed out soon after my arrival, “No wonder you’re tired, London’s another world entirely.”

And it is. This was my third visit – and each time I spend time there I feel as if I am only peering through a tiny window, barely scratching at the surface of this vast city.

Each visit means a reacquaintance with the Underground, of course, it’s all a bit of a maze at first with west-bound and east-bound trains causing a small headache until it’s the last day and suddenly you know what you’re doing and you’re racing along like the Londoners, crystal sure of your direction and in just as much of a hurry to get there as everyone else.

And yet, it’s deceptive, this feeling, as though you know your way around or that you know the city. Take the language. They may speak English, you may speak English, but the way you talk is sometimes cause for amusement.

My Swedish cousin made her home there six years ago and is fully bilingual; bilingual enough to comment that both I, and other South Africans she has met, seem to talk a sort of antique version of the language.

We’re not just talking about stoves versus cookers here either. And although I never quite said the words “blooming marvellous” she almost expected me to come up those quaint words. In any case, when I used the word “foxed” all at the dinner table burst out in embarrassed laughter. Never quite got that.

I was foxed in other ways too. While we South Africans know all about recycling – for most of us it’s a rather academic understanding, sadly – but in the UK they have it down pat.

Getting my head around four places to put the rubbish – from paper to tin to vegetable and other organic-like matter to a plain old dustbin – was another learning curve.

I more or less got it right, but even so a banana peel sometimes landed up being flung in the wrong bin. I assuaged my shame by buying not only free-range eggs but also made sure they were organic. See, some things do rub off.

There were other out-of-this-world experiences, of course. Rowing on the River Thames, enjoying those long golden dusks, and finding the greens and the banks of the river filled to bursting with Brits catching the first rays of the season’s sun. They seemed to exhale happiness as they sat basking there.

And then, queuing, yes, queuing politely at the bar for drinks.

I had always thought the British sense of fair play and politeness was somewhat exaggerated, but no, it lives on, although I did feel a little restless and a desire to be pushy as politeness meant a wait of 10 or so minutes just to be served.

And then, on my last day, the sky as blue as a cliche, we went to Windsor Castle. Planes roared over every few minutes – the cloud of ash had at last dissipated and I realised how noisy the skies of London could be. Windsor Castle has been inhabited since the 11th century.We walked among history, marvelled, yes, marvelled at China plates displayed behind glass and Queen Mary’s massive room-sized doll’s house.

And then, leaving, we noticed groups of expectant people, smiles hovering around their faces, massed behind a rope, waiting. Prince Charles was leaving the castle – a small part of it is open to the public, otherwise today’s Royal Family still lives there now and again. I caught a glimpse of a grey head as he ducked into the interior of the car, enough of a glimpse to say that I had hobnobbed with royalty.

Indeed, another world.

(Published in The Sunday Independent, May 2, 2010)

London Book Fair 2010: Day One

Antonia Byatt, director of the UK Arts Council chaired this discussion this morning. She was joined by Isobel Dixon, poet and litearry agent, Kate Mosse, author of the best-selling Labyrinth, who founded the Orange Prize 15 years ago, and Alison Samuel, who joined Chatto and Windus in 1985 and was publishing director at Secko from 1998 until retiring recently.

Book publishing is a gamble, all agreed, but the role of the independent presses is not be discounted, said Mosse. Four out of the six Orange Prize shortlisted authors are from independent publishing houses. "Prizes matter more than ever," she said, citing the recognition that these awards bring.

However all also agreed that although British literature hasn't become risk averse, the book buying public has, retailers have as well as publishers. Said Dixon, "There's a lot more caution now compared to ten years ago. If your books haven't sold, it's two strikes and you're out."

"Let's be pragmatic," said Samuel, "All publishers have to make money, it's a business, an industry." She added, "Publishers are mad, when you consider that four out of five books don't even hot their budget sales, so what would you conclude from that?"

Lamenting the demise of book reviewing pages, it was agreed that from blogging to Twitter to Facebook, the networks still exist to spread the word about books. "I have no idea what is going to happen," said Samuel, "since I was in publishing I've been hearing about the death of the novel, but the words will still always be there."

(First published here)

London Book Fair 2010: Why Buy South African?

What emerged from the Why Buy South African seminar is that South African books have "panache" as Isobel Dixon put, from cover design to content - it seems perhaps better to ask: Why not buy South African work?

Joining Dixon, literary agent and well-known poet were crime writer Deon Meyer "crime writers are here as comic relief", South African novelist and short story writer Henrietta Rose-Innes, and Rebecca Servadio Kenan, scout for South African works for publishers, "the ears and eyes of publishers".

Meyer agreed that South African writing has exploded in the last 5 years, and there is a blossoming in the arts generally, spreading from literature to music. Rose-Innes agreed that since 1994 there has been a "wild proliferation of fiction, and a growing sense of fun and play that was never a characteristic of South African writing before". Further hope: Dixon pointed out that Foyles. the UK bookstore, has 1.6million customers per year while the South African reading public number 800 000 - not bad for a country with a significantly lower reading public!

Talking poetry and short stories - two orphans of the literary world. Rose-Innes mentioned publishers are generally reluctant to publish single author story collections with pressure from publishers to get off the training bike of the story and onto the grownup bike of the novel. True enough. She did mention that Colleen Higgs of Modjaji Books is bringing out several collections of short stories, including Meg Vandermerwe's and my own - and praised Colleen Higgs in this regard. Servadio Kenan said she uses short stories as a scouting tool, "I read a lot of short stories in literary magazines," she said. Dixon pointed to the existence of the Caine Prize for short stories as a welcome platform for writers.

Talking poetry - Dixon said that poetry was part of South African culture and that SA has a great online community and bookshops which regularly hold reader and book-related events, including poetry readings.

And finally, a mention of the Not the SA Book Fair event held at The Book Lounge last night .... pointing to the resilience of South Africans. All the absent, stranded authors are sorely missed here .... but how amazing to make the most of an ashy situation. Looks like you all had a ball.

(First published here)

London Book Fair 2010: Day Three

Day three, and it's all beginning to blur. Information overload has overtaken me. Really enjoyed hearing Ian Rankin chatting to a good-sized audience yesterday. Talking books and reading and how at the age of 17 "the best thing to be was in my room, reading, writing and listening to music." Lovely to hear of Rankin's early days as a struggling writer - well encouraging to hear that we all have to start somewhere. He made us laugh with his descriptions of moving to France with his wife, with no money and trying to make it as a a writer. He's just finished a graphic novel, which he describes as hard work, working with an illustrator and having to explain everything. "I could have written three novels in the time it took me," he said.

Then listening to Lisa Appignanesi talking about English PEN objectives with Robert Sharp and the changes that PEN has been able to effect and still wants to effect. Today I went to hear the Irish children's writer Eoin Colfer, once a teacher, "It's a young person's game" chatting about conjuring up the 80s by listening to Kate Bush.

This morning I caught up with PEG, the South African Professional Editors Forum, who held a seminar in the South African networking pavilion. Taken by John Linnegar, head of the organisation who outlined its objectives, namely to promote high standards of editing and proofreading and to show that South African editors are a favourable option for UK publishers. We use the same English, more or less, same time zone more or less and offer value for money when you consider the exchange rate. See a list of editors at www.editors.org.za. John also mentioned the first ever editors conference to be held at the Franschoek Festival in May. I'll be there chatting on editing non-fiction narratives.

Quick chat with travel writer and photographer David Fleminger and Chuma Nwokolo,of African Writing Online, nice to meet after all these years .... and then ....

And then a dash off to a talk on the future of e-books. As Beverly Tarquini, publisher and chair mentioned, five years ago the question would have been IF there is a future for e-books, today, of course there are so many, it's not a question of IF. It's a question of which one will win out in the end, which format and how to protect copyright. From Adobe Jonathon Ferman spoke about the latest InDesign improvements and how these will help e-books. Textbook publisher Alison Jones spoke about how there once was a time when people thought e-content should be free, but we've come a long way. Meanwhile publisher Robin Harvie agreed that publishers were making a lot of mistakes, but "we also need to celebrate those mistakes. To see what is possible".

(First published here)

London Book Fair 2010: World Cup discussion at the Southbank Centre

"I may have kissed a few guys I didn't know the day that Seth Blatter that envelope," said writer Zukiswa Wanner at the Southbank on Wednesday night. The discussion on what some South African writers feel about the 2010 World Cup as "referrreed" by Mark Gevisser. It was an interesting and lively discussion, despite Henrietta Rose-Innes and Nadia Davids declaring that they both weren't sport mad. Also joining the panel was Andrew Feinstein, who said that he was a passionate football fan and felt that although the World Cup will provide short-term jobs, the event will either be "disastrous or exceptional".

Rose-Innes confessed she hadn't wanted to be part of the panel, having even left her note-taking for the discussion for the last minute. She mentioned that she had been published in "Elf", a German-language book of short stories on the World Cup by 11 South African writers - and yet no South African publisher was interested in printing it in English and there was no interest from the government. The arts seemed to have been neglected in reference to the World Cup.

Nadia Davids was similarly uninterested in football although she professed an intense patriotism, even when just hearing Nkosi Sikelel' iafrika being sung.

She said she was cautious about the World Cup - that we're spending millions making the country comfortable for foreigners, yet there is still so much inequality in South Africa.

Njabulo Ndebele said he had been a soccer player in "my great days" and said that the country had to put up a great show. "We're the first in Africa, and we've got it now. It's got to work. It's about our self-respect, and making the best of it in a sustainable way." His words kept echoing with their truth: "If we don't win maybe it will make us stronger and more focused on achieving."

Davids added that the mythology of the rainbow nation meant that there were huge expectations on South Africa. She remembered talking to a Zimbabwean man who had told her: "We need you to succeed. All eyes are on you."

The discussion moved on to the fracas that erupted over choosing musicians for the opening concert and how so many local musos were sidelined. Wanner added that artists and small traders had not benefitted from the World Cup with Fifa imposing limitations on who can and cannot sell goods in or near the stadiums. Feinstein added that it's the poor who will have to deal with the economic consequences of the event -for example, Joburg is bankrupt with building the stadium.

But the evening ended on a positive note. Feinstein said it wasn't the best way to spend resources, but to make the best of it, while Rose-Innes said she found happiness was a "valid initiative". Davids cautioned that some of that will is needed elsewhere, as in building houses. Gevisser had the last word: "The must be a balance between dignity and happiness. Hopefully we will see a vision about what itmeans to be South African emerging from this event."

(First published here)

Instamatic school memories come to life in technicoloured reality

It's déjà vu with a twist; it’s like seeing double, vision telescoped into now and then. It’s the high school reunion: an enterprising school mate has organised a reunion off her own bat. Just as well as our high school waved sayonara 20 years ago. Thank goodness for Facebook, and modern technology, which is how this all came together.

Arriving at the venue, there are pictures posted up from our years in high school. There are veld school photos in which one classmate urges another to put a spider on her face to earn extra points, pictures of us in our blue blazers and cheap blue dresses, captured on rinky compact cameras from the 1980s. It’s like looping back through a time warp. Add to that a video of the matric dance that has been unearthed. The colours are blown, the quality from the stretched tape is atrocious, and the dresses and hairstyles are enough to embarrass the hardiest of individuals. There are puffed skirts and equally puffy hairstyles, and who decided that Dynasty-era shoulder pads were flattering?

And then a flashback to the controversy of that matric dance. It was held at the Carlton Centre – back when the Carlton Centre signalled a certain larniness and our little old matric dance event made the Sunday newspapers. There was outrage that a school was spending so much on a venue. What was wrong with the school hall? Well, for starters, it was a school hall. Another sign of the times. Today matric dances are regularly held in fancy places and the dresses can be even more outrageously priced.

And so, one by one, the greetings, the whoops of recognition, and it’s like watching a split screen. In the same instant that you’re talking to an old classmate, you’re flashing back to the way you remember them in a not so innocent teen era. Girls with jerseys wrapped around their waists, boys who once sported blazers now slouching in T-shirts. This weird kind of here and there feeling carries on all night. You’ve stepped back in time, and yet, you also haven’t.

That is, of course, when you’re talking to those you remember. It’s even more disconcerting when you’re confronted with a familiar face and you know that you knew their name at some point, and here they are saying “Hello” and your mind’s a complete blank.

The questions are inevitable, predictable. After you’ve got what do you do out of the way, it’s time for “Are you married, do you have children?”

I’m surprised at how many singles there are, and also how many are divorced. I shouldn’t be, divorce is a ubiquitous part of modern life, but there you are. You know these people as teenagers – how could they have done such an adult thing as divorce?

Sadly, and also inevitably, the class has been thinned out by emigration. Two thirds have left the country for one or another reason, and two have already passed on. It’s an evening of fun and jocularity but we remember them.

Time warp continues: looking at the sea of faces we’re lily white. We’re talking of a government school in the 1980s, the only difference between us lay in religion; you were either Jewish or Christian. Other races didn’t, seemingly, exist.

You reconnect with a friend and spend hours reminiscing about the conversations you used to have at break on philosophy and psychology and wonder why you ever lost contact. You reconnect with others, and find yourself reaching across time to engage in conversation with those you never spoke to while at school.

“Don’t let’s leave it another 20 years!” says a class mate with an infectious laugh that you’ve never forgotten. The next day the photos are already up on Facebook, there’s talk of converting the old matric dance video to a DVD, and as you click through the old photos posted online, you feel, once again, as though you’re peering through a time vortex.

First published January 31 2010 The Sunday Independent

Search for alarm clock shows I may be out of time

According to a report in last week’s Daily Telegraph, the alarm clock may well be going the way of the dodo. Apparently more and more people are using their cellphones as alarm clocks – that’s in addition to their multi-use as cameras, access to e-mail and the internet and so on.

But I didn’t need to read that article to know that alarm clocks are hitting the skids.

I searched for one for months, yes months, a seemingly ordinary thing that has become harder to find than, well, VHS video tapes. Because yes, I do still buy those. I’m one of the few people left who doesn’t have a PVR, doesn’t see the point of one when my ancient dual view machine is still functioning, and yet has to record just about everything to accommodate a crazy schedule.

So yes, I can still find VHS tapes – although that does take perseverance – but alarm clocks are becoming just about impossible to buy. My search for an alarm clock wasn’t prompted by a reluctance to use my cellphone as an alarm clock. I recently acquired a new touchscreen cellphone with a 5MB camera – and my big bulky digital Nikon has barely seen the light of day since.

I’m all for small is big and I am just about umbillically attached to my technology. In fact, I love the alarm tone on my cellphone – it’s a cheery happy party-like ring and you wake up not groaning but smiling It’s a real “come on, let’s get up and party” type of ring tone. I wish more cellphones or, ahem, alarm clocks, would incorporate this fun tone in their repertoires. Instead, my search has been prompted by the plethora of SMSes that come to me throughout the night and pop up alarmingly early in the morning, disturbing my precious beauty sleep.

There are the usual suspects: my service provider sending me a note to tell me I have used more than half my free minutes and it’s only the 5th of the month, or again, my service provider sending me a little recording with dancing characters, letting me know about the latest, greatest specials on offer. Never mind the offers I receive to purchase discount furniture, discounted theatre tickets and to view property – all of which come cheerily bleeping through at odd hours of the morning.

Add to that the messages I receive from my friends, to whom, dear as they are, SMS etiquette does not seem to exist. I have had SMSes at two in the morning – from a friend who couldn’t sleep and was contemplating a job change in the dark and needed to tell me about it. Or another who knows that I don’t exactly keep normal hours and made a cartoon of a photo she had taken of me and sent it at midnight. Or the SMS I received, complete with picture, from another at 1am telling me she was just catching the midnight sun in some Arctic place. Then there are the 7am SMSes on a Saturday or Sunday asking if I would like to see a movie that night. 7am on a Saturday? Who could possibly be up at that time, never mind planning their evening?

So, my next solution was to turn the phone on to silent, but what do you know, the thing vibrates everytime a message comes through, and wakes me, and no amount of fiddling with buttons and controls seems to turn off that vibrate function and, believe me, I have gone through every menu and submenu on that phone.

Hence the search for a cheap, ordinary alarm clock. Finally, after weeks of searching I found a big ugly thing, rather primitive looking and without even a light you can touch should you be up at 3am turning on your cellphone just in case a really, really important message has come winging through the ether…

(Published in First Words, Sunday Independent, September 20 2009)

Time travel to days before WYSIWYG

"I’d sell my computer before I’d sell my children. But the kids had better watch their step. When have the children helped me meet a deadline? When has the computer dragged in a dead cat it found in the backyard?”

James Fallows is writing in the Atlantic Monthly – in 1982. From the day that the processor technology SOL-20 entered his life in 1979, he’s been a fan of the PC. Gone for Fallows were the days of laboriously typing and retyping on a typewriter, or calling in a dreaded secretary to do the work before dispatching said copy to hungry editors.

And so begins a delightful essay in which Fallows explores what a computer means to him in those long ago days before mouse pointers were developed, WYSIWYG was still a term to be invented, and an eye-friendly screen had flashing green letters instead of white ones, against a black background. Fallows also recounts his difficulties in getting software for his machine, although he didn’t call it software then, and of the difficulties of saving his work. After all, his machine only had a 48K memory. So there’s some complicated stuff with tape before he discovers floppy discs.

But this is an ode to the ease that computers introduced into our lives, especially writers who had been reduced to numerous retypes or using wadges of thick Tippex everywhere. You’d then Photostat the pages so that you couldn’t see the tippex, but sometimes you didn’t quite get the lines matched up, but this was acceptable, sort of. Nobody really expected that copy could come out of a laser machine in crisp, evenly matched lines.

Reading Fallows’s article, which is archived online, is like stepping back in time. I wasn’t battling with a new PC in 1982; I was nine and writing imitation Enid Blyton stories. I had an old, rusty, manual typewriter which my grandmother had no more use for. You bashed the keys with all the strength of a nine-year old’s fingers, and you created an exclamation mark with a full stop and an apostrophe, but never mind. This was real writing – real writers used typewriters, not blue Bic pens. Word processors were out there – and local women’s mags of the time had short-story writing competitions in which the prize was often one of these beauties.

You saw the text appearing on a little grey wedge of screen, and you could edit as you went along or something like that. I don’t know – I only graduated to an electric typewriter. PCs were a long way off. My mother and I did try to buy one when I entered university but we ran out of the Dion store. What programs did we want to run? the salesman asked. Programs? What on earth were programs? The man looked bemused.

I carried on with my Tippex and photostatting techniques. They worked. Sort of. When a publisher of short stories needed an electronic copy of a story I had to go to a special shop that retyped my story and put it on a floppy – well before the days of email.

I did finally get introduced to computers at a community newspaper, in my first job. We used computers that had been born in the late 1970s, had flashing white letters on black and required complicated manoeuvres. No hitting a button on your tool bar to indicate italics, it was alt-spacedelete or something that made you work the grey matter in your head. Sometime later there was internal mail, precursor to email, and of course we journalists all laid out the paper with cutting-edge technology, using PageMaker. Here, finally, was WYSIWYG. Hell, I even learnt to pronounce the thing.

But you never forget your first PC – I had a grand sum of 8MBs of speed and 1 gig of memory. Friends marvelled. A gig! A gig indeed, with a clunky drive to store info on floppies, and a CD drive to use with the new CD-Roms. Okay, I couldn’t write and play music at the same time – on the PC – but this was a small matter.

My photographer uncle remembers his first, also a clunky machine, used to track his burgeoning freelance business. But you couldn’t actually see images on it. Quite how that worked is beyond me now. And then there was email, and life changed unrecognisably for all of us. In my first job I’d receive freelance submissions by fax and have to type them in (and I have never discovered all 10 of my fingers on the keyboard). Photos were taken, printed, delivered. To get them in the paper the scanner took them to a big black room with a big black camera-type thing that “photographed” them for print.

And that was only last decade. I give eternal thanks for computers, email, digital photos and whatever else they’re going to invent to make our lives easier. Can’t wait for the next 10 years...

See James Fallows’article at www.theatlantic.com/doc/198207/fallowscomputer

(Published in Sunday Independent, July 2008)

You're married. It happens

Strange things happen when you go on leave. You come back married, with a brand new name and absolutely no idea who your new husband might be. Going online, your bank cheerfully welcomes you with a “Welcome Arja!”, but your name is now Mrs A Coetzee.

The customer care woman at the other end of the line is not only mystified, but also doesn’t seem to care. You tell her there’s no Coetzee in your family, never has been and you’ve never been a Coetzee – how could this happen? She doesn’t know, suggests you get in your car and drive to your nearest branch to sort it out.

The cheery poppie at the counter assures you it’s nothing to worry about, it happens all the time when a bank updates its software and records and, not to worry, her colleague is going to sort it out. You still have the same amount of money in your account, don’t you?

Yes, alack and alas, you do. The new name didn’t bring a rosy glow to your bank balance, and the last thing you want to do while you’re supposed to be away from the hurly burly of life is to encounter it at your nearest bank.

Back at work, a colleague asks if you’ve checked your status at home affairs. What if you have been married off secretly somewhere offshore?

You turn ice cold for a minute. It’s nightmare territory – proving you’re not married is like proving sky is blue. Holding your breath, you check – no, home affairs hasn’t married you off; it’s only the bank that is determined to see you with the knot tied.

Friends don’t understand why you are not livid with rage, why you haven’t demanded to see the bank manager... Truth is, you’re tired. When you’re not fighting name changes, you’re fighting a cellphone company over their 3G service that doesn’t work, or holding on to the phone while a bored oke at DStv is telling you to pull out the red plug and replace it with a yellow.

No, it’s your Jewish mother who comes to the rescue when she tries to deposit a cheque for you and the bank won’t accept it because it isn’t in the name of Coetzee, she goes into action. Thank God for Jewish mothers who don’t take no for an answer.

Days later the poppie from the bank phones to say that your name has been changed but now they can no longer investigate the matter because it would be too difficult because you are no longer Mrs Coetzee.

You stare down the phone. You can just imagine the face on the other end and barely manage to splutter out that you don’t care how difficult it is, you still want the matter investigated. As you put down the phone, a messenger brings you a little black box. Inside, with a press release inviting you to a bridal expo, a fake diamond ring in a black velvet box winks up at you, and nestled further down is a little plastic statue of a man and woman in wedding regalia, the kind that you plop on to a cake.

Finally, you howl.

(Published in The Sunday Independent, October 2008)

Logging on and out of touch

I banged my hand against the desk. “Somebody fix this!” I said to no one in particular, feeling as though I was howling into a dark void.

For the umpteenth time that evening my internet connection had cut. I could predict that it would cut after 10 minutes, and then I would spend another 10 minutes rebooting the modem and waiting for it to pick up a rather elusive connection. And this had been going on for 10 long days. I knew I had a mere 10 minutes to check a fact on the internet or race through the email on some of my online accounts.

I was at the end of my tether – I had phoned my service provider numerous times and my problem had now been “escalated” after we had disabled and enabled a host of modems and other items on my laptop. I was close to booking myself into a facility as were, I think, a host of friends who asked how I was and got a tirade on how I couldn’t stay online for longer than 10 minutes at a time.

And it wasn’t just the sheer frustration of not being able to surf or check facts; it was the sense of desolation I felt. I was in some wilderness in which communication was sporadic and missives slow. I felt as though a limb had been torn off. I had regressed to a time before we had email, but unlike the dark days before email I was out of the habit of just picking up the phone and having a good old-fashioned long conversation. Plans these days are made by SMS and email – weeks go by and you haven’t spoken to a particular friend but you have had numerous and sometimes long, heartfelt conversations by email. You know who has broken up with whom and who is seeing someone new, you know about a friend’s job interview, but you haven’t heard his/her voice in ages, not until you meet up for coffee or supper, of course, and, yes, you have made those plans by email.

This same lack of contact occurs in the business world too – deals are made and deadlines adhered to, and yet you haven’t exchanged one physical word with the person you’re dealing with. An occasional voice on the other end of the phone comes as a shock. This same lack of contact extends its dangerous tentacles to other areas of our lives. Email, messaging and SMSing have been a tremendous boon to our lives – but it’s no coincidence that along with the rise of these technologies has been the addition of a new word in our addiction vocabulary: email addiction.

There are some people – I won’t name names – who have up to eight internet accounts (it’s a long story, okay, I’m dealing with it, give me time) to those who take their laptops away with them so they can check their email while on holiday in between sighting cheetahs and elephants (look, I said I was dealing with it...) to BlackBerry addicts who make addicts out of others. I’ve become so used to being able to get hold of some writers on a BlackBerry that I am surprised when a writer professes they don’t have one.

My internet provider sorted out my problem. I logged on, cancelled an unconfirmed dinner that night and surfed blissfully for hours. But, I had picked up the phone a day before and called a friend who had moved cities months ago. Not only was she pleasantly surprised to hear my voice, but we connected and shared news as we hadn’t done in months.

Point taken.

(The Sunday Independent, December 2008)