a kidnapping and a robbery

Winter is threatening. It's April and it's Saturday and we are hurrying against the weather, the three of us, Laura and Brian and me, and the wind is blowing through our rain jackets and rain is curling into our necks via our faces. Our plan is to go to a farmers' market in Woodstock, a few miles away from where we live. We wait at the street corner near our res for a minibus, the large haphazard van that passes for public transportation in Cape Town. One pulls up to the curb. It contains the shouter, a man who advertises the taxi's destination by shouting to passersby; the driver; and two people we assume are fellow passengers, a man and a woman who sit quietly and separately, looking serenely out the fogged window at the cold rain.

We clamber on, and pay the requisite five rand (fifty cents) for a ride to Woodstock. The air is steamy with our breath since the windows are shut against the winter, and I wipe the window nearest me with the sleeve of my rain jacket so that I can watch the world go by. I can barely see out even once I've squeaked an opening on the glass because the rain has made shivering beads of cold liquid on the window.

More people climb clumsily onto the minibus, and a man with a brown leather jacket and a large backpack sits next to me. His backpack digs into my hip, and I hunch against the ceiling, which collides with my head, feeling trapped and wishing I could disembark.

We pass Woodstock, and turn onto the N5 for center city Cape Town. The minibus stops at a taxi depot, and Laura, Brian and I confer and decide to get off here with the rest of the passengers before moving to some Plan B. Laura moves to disembark, but the shouter blocks her way. "You needed to go to Woodstock? We'll take you to Woodstock." He grins. The four original people, including the woman, remain on the taxi, so we relax.

If there's a woman it's okay.

Right?

The minibus turns around and moves toward the main road, on the way to Woodstock. I move to a seat nearer Laura and Brian; before, too many people had squeezed me into a high back corner. The driver swings the minibus into a petrol station; the shouter hops off and sprints into the store. Shortly he returns clutching loose cigarettes and a package of hot food. We are off.

The other man turns to us, and lights a cigarette. He has a cap and a face that looks like he could be someone's cousin, someone's little brother, thick-lipped and clownish and young, with mischievous eyes. "You smoke?" We shake our heads no.

"Where are we going?" Brian asks. We have passed the sign for Woodstock and turned off the main road onto the highway, the N2.

The shouter laughs. "Just taking you around directly to the market."

The woman stays silent in the front seat. We say nothing. What can we do?

The shouter has a baseball cap and long eyelashes. I remember that, long girlish lashes and a mustache. He lights a cigarette. The two men are relaxed now, sprawled over the seats, eating and smoking and laughing. He asks us where we're from.

"The U.S."

He laughs. "The U.S.! I'm an original American gangster. Look, I'll show you, I have--" and he gestures across his chest and pulls at his shirt to show us a tattoo, then seems to change his mind. He sobers and takes a puff of his cigarette. "I'll never go there, though. Money."

"Maybe someday," Brian reassures him optimistically.

We're passing UCT. Long Lashes asks Brian for his name, and they shake hands. He makes a vague gesture toward Laura and me, and says, "I won't ask, they might be your wives." He throws his hands up and shrugs as though to say, don't want to touch another man's girl(s). Then they laugh, Long Lashes and the other, hard, as though this is the funniest thing they have heard in hours. Brian manages a splutter, and Laura and I smile with tight lips.

Where are we going?

The other, not Long Lashes, suddenly lunges up and squeezes between Laura and me. I can't decide what I'm avoiding more, his intentions or the hot lit end of his cigarette, which almost brushes my arm and then my jaw. He has something metal and round in his hand, and it's not until he pushes to the seat behind us and pulls the blade on Brian that I realize it is half a pair of scissors.

He presses the sharp end into Brian's neck, and pats down his pockets. "Hey, hey!" Brian says, and I process that Brian can't decide between throwing up his hands and pulling out his wallet, and he does both in succession, opening his wallet to show Scissors that he has no cash.

Long Lashes takes my purse from me with resignation, as though this was expected, as though there was no other way for this to turn out. I remove my camera from it, placing the soft white case in my jacket pocket, before giving him my purse. He doesn't see and pads through my purse, finding the wallet with one thousand rand (about a hundred dollars).

Scissors is asking Brian for his PIN number, and Laura's, and I whisper to Laura, "Are you giving him your real one?"

"Yes," she whispers back, "they're stopping at ATMs."

So Long Lashes finds the pen in my purse and passes it to Scissors, who scrawls each of our PIN numbers on his palm.

Then he pushes us down. We lie on the seats awkwardly, and Long Lashes sprawls across my knees, still smoking, and he talks to us. "I was shot when I was nine," he says conversationally. The smoke curls blue and opaque out his face as he talks, and I can't decide which would be more offensive, lit tobacco in this closed vehicle or an open window with cold hard winter rain on my face. "You see why I have to do this." He rolls his head, hard and round, across my left knee to look at Brian. "I have no choice."

"Out of circumstance," Brian agrees.

Laura and I say nothing. Simultaneously we grip one another's hands, hard. I can't see her or Brian.

This is what I can see:

The gray vinyl ceiling, overlaid with black metal bars.

Long Lashes and his offensive smoke.

Foggy windows.

The blue beaded seahorse swinging from the rearview mirror.

They won't rape us, I conjecture. Bizarrely, I feel safer in that respect with Scissors and Long Lashes than I do with some guys in clubs. But what if they do?

I try to calculate how long it would take me to regain a healthy view toward sexuality if these three men gang-raped me. I wonder distantly how it would affect my psyche, if I would become withdrawn or overly gregarious. And then I allow the thought to trail off as this knowledge is so foreign to my experience, and also because something new has occurred to me.

I think about HIV.

I think about how much it would cost to be on ARVs for the rest of my life, and what that would prevent me from doing. I would be poorer and I would take tests and know the inside of a hospital better than I ever ever wanted to. I can see potential jobs and potential lovers and maybe potential friends melting into nonexistence when faced with the stigma.

I haven't even gotten to pregnancy, it hasn't even popped into my dazed and distant mind, when we stop presumably for an ATM trip and Scissors tosses at us, "I have a .45. Don't move."

"Don't shoot them," Long Lashes slurs lazily. "They're human too, white and American and all."

Scissors has half a pair of scissors in lieu of a knife. How can this man have a gun?

Laura squeezes my hand, and I grip hers hard, and feel the first real fear balloon in my gut. He can't have a gun. I haven't seen a gun. If he had a gun he would show us.

Wouldn't he?

I have to get the license plate number, I think.

This is my mantra.

Licenseplatenumberlicenseplatenumberlicenseplatenumber.

I wonder vaguely what Nancy Drew would do. I wonder a lot of things: where we are going, how long we will be in this minibus, how long I can stand being this powerless.

What it'll be like after.

Or if there won't be an after.

I half-heartedly pray to God and the gray vinyl ceiling, but mostly I try to break into my career in telepathy by messaging Quinton, the director of our study abroad program.

Quinton would know what to do.

And then, after thirty minutes or seven hours, Long Lashes leaps off my knees and throws open the door and I don't move because I'm still wary of that fictional gun and scissors, and he thrusts forty rand (four dollars) into Brian's hand--"for the taxi back." And, tossing his head, "Get out." I catapult myself onto the pavement, suddenly aware that my knee is twisted painfully from his weight, and I turn to watch Laura stumble out, the van is speeding up, oh God, will Brian make it? And he breaks free of the minibus with a missed step, and trots to a stop, and Laura hugs me hard, and Brian hugs us both, and I throw my arms around them, and we are here and we are safe and we are alive and here we are we can breathe.

And then we laugh, that is what we do, we laugh, because we forgot to get the license plate number.

Where are we?

A wide deserted road; one side is bush, the other has nice condos. We cross to the condo side and walk, and walk, and come upon a Mr. Video (like a Blockbuster), and go in, blinking.

"We've been robbed!" Brian announces. "Can we use your phone?"

The woman grins at us uncertainly, and shoves a telephone in our direction. A man who had been perusing the movie selection looks up and assures us he will call for us, do we know a number?

No. We don't. Not a single one.

He ushers us into the bar next door, which it turns out he owns, and sits us down. "Something for the nerves? Want a beer?"

"Water," we answer. I gulp mine as though there is no time, and there isn't, but there is all the time.

A woman working there listens and tells the bartender, "I will take them. Where do you live?"

"Mowbray," we answer.

"Want a ride?"

We look at one another, and we laugh, and I laugh hard on the inside, I have been laughing hard since this began because you can laugh or you can cry and laughing's easier, we're finished taking rides from strangers but where are we, by the way?

"Muizenberg."

A town forty-five minutes south of Cape Town. We laugh harder because how can we get back home for forty rand? That wouldn't even take us a quarter of the way.

Yes, we tell the woman/angel. We want a ride.

On the long ride home I stare out the fogged window and wish things I can't put into words, and I am not aware anyone had been talking at all until Laura nudges me and tells the woman, "Geography."

"Geography," I repeat. "Sorry. I'm a geography major."

"I studied advertising myself," she tells us. Where? I ask. Advertising Institute of South Africa, or College of Advertising in the Western Cape, or University of the People Who Are Good. Is that in Cape Town?

Yes.

warning: a real blog post. or, Lions and Tigers and Bears (oh my)

I hate flying.

This is a recent development. When I was younger I loved it, the prospect of going to a new place, the novelty and to-do of packing, floating through security, discovering secret snacks and notes my mother had slipped into my backpack, drinking from my special Little Mermaid sippy cup. Then I got older and the Little Mermaid cup lid was lost, the snacks and notes stopped, the security became more complicated. 9/11 happened, and I steadily declined from loving flying to neutrality to hating it. My parents are no longer involved; instead, I book flights and arrange transportation and print out my boarding pass. It's worse when going overseas--there is the constant panic in my abdomen that I have forgotten my passport, that the airline will have lost my booking, that I'll forget something, that a different country's laws about airport security will affect my carry-on, that the plane's mechanics weren't properly checked or the captain will fall asleep or Something Bad Will Happen.

I'm on a plane now, scrawling this on the barf bag. It's the end of spring break and we're en route back to Cape Town from Johannesburg. My head is full of words and words, and if I never hear anyone speak again I could die a happy woman. Animals, on the other hand (I am delighted to relate to you), don't actually talk.

Let me tell you this about African animals and me:

upon watching a nature documentary in my parents' sunny living room in Lubbock, my impression of Africa involves a vague open savanna and perpetual dry season. I was always impressed by the tenacity of the filmmakers, thinking they must have hiked through land sharp with lions and splashed through water oily with crocodiles to arrive at a water hole maybe three people were aware of in order to sit in what I imagined was a ThighMaster position for 12 hours behind some marula tree, waiting for something interesting to happen, like death or sex.

Then I went on safari.

Waking up before sunrise was in line with my idea of African game drives. But we neglected any (imaginary) remote parts of the country; instead, we traveled to Kruger National Park in South Africa and game reserves in Swaziland, where we bounced over paved and well-graded dirt roads in pickup trucks to view game on the side of the road in a place where animals were official. While there was something eerie and magical and, to use the word of my friend Allison, humbling, to watch a family of elephants lumber with their slow easy grace across a savanna sunrise, or the sudden butterfly discovery of male lions arrogantly lying in the tall grass, or waiting as four cheetah with flicking tails crossed the road un-self-consciously, or stumbling, heart pounding, six inches away from the fenced-in face of a roaring behemoth lioness--despite all this, I felt disconnected. All of this together was an experience that reminded me of driving through Yellowstone to see bison or the elusive grizzly; I felt segregated from the land, as though there was a denial that we were a part of one another. There seemed to be an attitude that land should be kept at arm's length, viewed but not touched, like television or Victorian children who may not speak. Unsupervised hikes in the national park were not allowed. I wondered what to do to prevent meeting a lion in the bush, but anyone I asked seemed not to know, and upon reflection I don't blame them: in their eyes, it's irrelevant. How would you risk meeting a lion in the bush if you never go walking in the bush?

I wondered where the Africa everyone dreams about had gone, and found that it has disappeared, along with the frontier in America and wilderness around the world. The truth about Africa has less to do with lions and cheetah and wildebeests, and more with the hard glittering buildings of Johannesburg and the polyester uniforms of schoolkids. Rural KwaZulu-Natal prvince has round Zulu huts, but roofs are tiled now instead of thatched, and jeans have replaced whatever loincloth existed in the imaginations of Western people. Breasts are sexualized, and covered. The jarring juxtaposition of old Africa and new is fascinating and incessantly fresh and raw and surprising. It applies too to the African take on animals and conservation. At Moholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Sanctuary in Limpopo province, the white Afrikaner presenter derided "natives" for killing leopards for traditional uses. This is what I, as an environmentalist and an anthropologist, learned: in order for conservation to be sustainable, its ideals must be reconciled with those of locals, be they Montana ranchers or Limpopo Tswana. Otherwise, conservation is a synonym for imperialism.

In other news, my passport is accumulating exotic stamps. Swaziland is a tiny country squeezed between South Africa and Mozambique. It's an absolute monarchy, one of three left in the world, and the king has I think about 16 or 17 wives. Things I know about Swaziland: it's a leader in Southern Africa in virginity testing of young unmarried women, a movement led by older women who claim the practice reduces HIV/AIDS. Its currency is pegged to match South African rand. The South African border control was a boxy, industrial brick building, and I got a quick exit stamp under a glass window. I walked twenty feet to the Swaziland border control, made of wood and falling apart; the officer received my passport with curiosity. He noted the nationality. "Obama country," he murmured. He stamped it and handed it back to me, grinning. He was missing a canine. "Welcome to Swaziland!"

Durban has Victoria Street Market (Indian wedding garlands and red spices piled in bowls and women with babies tied in towels around their bodies and big containers on their heads and meat markets and people, this is where people go to Live) and the largest mosque in the Southern Hemisphere. Johannesburg is like Fort Worth or Philadelphia, tall gleaming buildings and smokestacks and highways. Rural South Africa is indescribable, almost laughably photogenic. The mountains are tall and green, the fields are terraced like Peru except not as cold and wet and high, the tree farms line the roads with tall straight vegetation that has white peeling bark and sunlight seeping through to the leafy ground. The light is perfect somehow no matter what time of day it is, but sunrise and sunset are intoxicating, and require dreamy concentration.

And now we're landing, and my hatred of flying, of being so far away from earth, is becoming immaterial as we get closer and closer to the ground. Nothing was forgotten and the plane stayed whole and apparently the pilots are all awake, or at least the important ones are.

When I sleep, I'll dream of lions and South African sunsets.