footprints on my heart

[dedicated to the future crazy auntie of my nieces and nephews, nicky tavares]


time flies. it's been nearly three years since i left eritrea. and now i 'm back in another corner of africa.

i'm spending my summer in cape town's winter, working as a research assistant and interning for the ngo positive muslims, which provides support to cape town's HIV-positive muslims.

it has rained every day since i've been here, and i've already wasted a few precious days lying underneath the covers, too depressed by the weather and separation from loved ones to bother coming out. i've softened a bit in my late-twenties; i'm not as defiantly independent as i used to be. i spent the last year in boston with nicky, and the past few months have been a sort of family utopia. it was the first time in over two years that my parents, sister, and myself were together in the same city. and my sister has two children now; they were there too. which brings me to another pang of separation - i think for the first time in my life i know how it feels to love a child. you wonder what they will be like when you finally see them again. if they will even remember you.

my first impressions of cape town: along with the winter-weather, the segregation and blaring racial inequality depressed me. table mountain was gorgeous, seductively covered by clouds, and followed me around wherever i went.

friday night muhammad took david, another research assistant, and i out to long street, where we hopped from bar to club to club to bar. at one bar a band covered ridiculous hair-metal tunes from the 80s, along with some other choice cuts, and the crowd was totally into it. all the various racial categories defined and managed during the apartheid era - blacks, coloreds, indians, and whites - screamed along, "POUR. SOME. SUGAR. ON MEE!" for a moment there on long street, i felt the cosmopolitanism and unique mixing of cultures that residents of cape town are so proud of. hell, i was almost enamored and wrapped up in it myself. i almost even wanted to sing along. and for a moment, seeing pockets like that, it made me a little less depressed about the segregation and racial inequality that still frame the city.

i spend a lot of my time with aunties. fearless and inspiring aunties who wear headscarves and challenge the stigmatization of persons living with HIV/AIDS. the director of positive muslims is one such fearless headscarf-wearing auntie. she lives with HIV and walks around the office beautifully singing the shahada (muslim testament of faith). at the positive muslims workshop today she was speaking, imparting us with some of her wisdom, and she said something that really touched my softie late-twenties heart, "everyone we meet in our lives leaves footprints on our hearts." the workshop was really touching as well. i'm usually very cynical about workshops, having once infamously denied being south asian after participating in a workshop for progressive south asian youth. but this one was different. perhaps i felt that the injustices that the workshop's participants have faced were more palpable, more real, than the issues we've dealt with at the privileged progressive workshops in which i've participated in the states.

the drive back to the city from simon's town was beautiful and hilarious. the director was telling us (her assistant and i) how at a conference she went to in amsterdam when she was 38 she mentioned that she had never been to a club. the other participants at the conference were stunned, asking how old she was in disbelief. they vowed to take her to a club in amsterdam even though she expressed no interest. as part of her "club-education," they took her to the red light district. the director described how in one area of the red light district they had all the "voluptuous women," and how they had different areas for, you know, "all the different types of beauty," and how they had "pornos" and how you could "participate in the pornos" or just watch them, live shows, this and that, and how, as she still wore her headscarf, they could hear "youngsters" around them wondering out loud, "what's SHE doing here?!"

at this point, her 50+ old assistant chimed in: "i don't get what the obsession is. i would rather go out to the beach and watch the whales, while i'm still walking. i know it sounds corny."

director: "as long as it's not horny!" [laughing at the corny joke, all of us].

assistant: "well no, it can be horny, as long as you're in a relationship! which is unfortunate for me...."

and that was my day with fearless, inspiring, headscarf-wearing aunties making jokes about sex and pornos and being horny.

they left some footprints on my heart.