Mike Mate

The doctor slipped her finger into the man’s cheek, she was wearing surgical gloves and checking for a foreign object left inside. Then she handed him over to me. He smelled of alcohol and urine. I slipped the tip of a long needle in and out along the length of the knife wound, administering a local anesthetic, he jerked – my hand trembled. I started sewing; the nylon was thin – I could hardly see it in the dim light of Victoria Hospital emergency ward – it kept breaking. Eight stitches later the man walked out and I graduated from pork and leather. Next was a hypertension (just the vitals), then a broken femur (traction). And so my practical night went by. It wasn’t a busy night – despite being Friday, end of the month, pay-day. Outside the swinging emergency doors rain came down in buckets. Cape Times headline: the worst storm in fifteen years to hit the Cape of Storms.

It is cold, wet and windy in Cape Town. The week is full of refresher courses; fire fighting, safety at sea, ship captain medical. After training I retreat to my cold dark self-catering cottage, make a cup of rooibos tea and then follow emails related to coal burning and climate change. I read that the Arctic Ice is melting fast and that polar bears are swimming longer and longer distances between flows. Their coats get saturated and they tire from swimming, then sink. I passed by the mall on my way back today and looked through the shop windows at stuff that has taken a lot of energy to produce… all seemed meaningless – and then I saw my reflection in the glass wondering. It looked drawn and grey; there were no warrior feathers in its hair. I turned away from it, put on my coat and walked out into the rain.

I noticed it first when the plane landed in Johannesburg; something in the white light. But when I stepped out the sliding door to Durban Airport, I could smell it. I could smell the very white in the light – it sparkled of home. I am in the land of sunny skies and Tri-nations rugby. It is winter, the mornings are cool and I wear Merino from New Zealand – but by midday the temperature has risen to 30 C and I take it off again. Out of my black suitcase I have drawn silks and cottons, a Buddha made of stone and a wooden elephant. From these treasures I have made gifts to my most beloved.

The sacred ibis calls out ‘ha-ha-hardida’ as it wings over the top of Villa Valencia, the security complex in which mom and dad live amongst their collectable antiques. I sip tea from a fine bone-china cup and monkeys scamper across red-tiled roofs of the yellow-bricked apartments, and then continue in single file along the tops of the walls. They stop to look in through windows – hoping for an open opportunity – for fruit. The smell of jasmine is rich in the garden.

In the international news today; the government of Indonesia has declared a moratorium on the conversion of forest to Palm Plantations in Sumatra. On my lap-top I process photos of Rainbow Warrior in Indonesia – blocking a Palm Oil Tanker – in November, last year. I feel we may have accomplished something of enormous magnitude – a miracle.

I trundle my suitcase across the tram track to Central Station.  In my right hand I hold a ticket to Schippol.  It’s been a year since I left South Africa. I flew to Greece in August 2007.  Sailed to India, Indonesia, New Zealand, Philippines, Thailand (and a couple in between).  In Thailand I had my first Iris scan – they’re new in the airports; on every counter a one eyed long-necked monster checks you out.  I check out of Europe.  ‘See you next time’.  I’m going… home?

In Amsterdam there are white and yellow lines painted on black-top. Trams glide across this surface ringing bells, bicycles do to. Pedestrians walk into its midst, guided by green and red lights. No men from the side champion Tuk-tuk or Motorbike and no Women with woven baskets at their feet offering fried crickets or nice crunchy spiders to nibble on the way. High-heels clip-clop past on the pavement, designer labels swing with the stride of tall blonde shoulders. Inside the window of a coin-op laundry a man with the eyes of a maniac and hair that stands up like wire mumbles to himself and twitches. He has scavenged any loose soap, bought more, put it all in the machine – but he seems obsessed to find more soap and mumbles and twitches. I bite into a kaas-broodjie and, keeping an eye on the lunatic, watch the traffic pass by – waiting for my cycle to end. My heart has not left Cambodia – a million miles away.