Back to Grahamstown

Travelling overnight on a bus from Joburg to Grahamstown, leaving crowded Gauteng, passing through the Free State breadbasket, and culminating in the breathtaking Eastern Cape, all the while struggling with a wretchedly bad back and a fully booked coach is an adventure I would advise that you all undertake zero times in your life. Of course I cannot sleep sitting up, as I am not able to sleep on my back, and for the bulk of the trip I had a bulky travelling companion who had a tendency to fall asleep and encroach on my side. But at least the bathroom smelled foul -- of sicky sweet chemicals and bodily functions -- and I was seated just next to the door. So I had that going for me, which is nice.

That said, it is wonderful to be back in a familiar setting. My real introduction to South Africa (other than having my passport stolen in Joburg and arriving late in Port Elizabeth, where my ride had been waiting for two hours) in 1997 was Grahamsrtown. I lived here for a year as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar at Rhodes University, the great English university named after the imperialist swine colossus himself.

The eastern cape, and especially the Albany, or Frontier region, is to English South Africans what the Free State is to Afrikaners: It is the nexus of identity, culture and history. The English set up an outpost here, with Graham's Town as its capital, and drew a line at the Great Fish River across which the Xhosa natives were forbidden, which led to a series of bloody Frontier wars. The English settlers won, and the eastern Cape developed the dynamic that would pervade until today: an odd admixture of culture, education, civility, racial oppression, black poverty, and genteel (and not so) racial paternalism. The Eastern Cape is now its own province (it was, prior to the shifts after 1994, a sub-section of the vast Cape Colony) and despite the presence of Grahamstown and Port Alfred, port Elizabeth and east London, it is the poorest province in the country. The eastern Cape subsumed the former homeland/bantustans Transkei and Ciskei, the most geographically and ethically coherent, if any can be called that, of the former quasi-independent states that the apartheid government propped up in the 1970s to try to maintain apartheid but slap a kinder face on it.

We arrived outside of the Frontier Hotel this morning, so that is where I booked. I think I could have done better, but the hotel is right off of the High Street and is inexpensive, a factor that I have to consider as I enter my second month of this trip.

Grahamstown is fundamentally the same as it ever was. In some ways it feels as if I have never left. At the same times, with such familiarity comes a remarkable shock at even small changes. A new post office building (but the same queues)! That coffee shop was not here a few years ago. Hey, they changed the sturcture of the CNA. And so on. It is just like every time I go to my home town and even the slightest thing has changed -- it's the same town, but little differences stand out as a consequence.

My goal here, in addition to enjoying old stomping grounds and seeing old friends, is to get to both the Rhodes main library and more important, to the Cory Library of African Studies. After ten or so days of holiday I am having a tough time mustering up enthusiasm for work, but I am sure it will be nice to be working at Cory again, where I have in the past spent many hours. In the emantime, I have only made it 2/3 of the way up the High Street, so there is much more to see anew, including campus.