I lay down on the warm pavement allowing the heat of summer to seep into my skin; my eyelids stammering shut as I press my ear to the bitter tar, breathing in the dust and gravel of my home. If I am dead still and dead quiet, in body, mind and soul, I’ll hear the grumble of the city not far away—hawkers and workers and cars and taxis grinding their way through the streets of Johannesburg. I’ll hear the murmur of trees stretching their age under the ground and if I listened very carefully, I’ll hear whispers—layer upon layer of time’s tales bubbling under the surface. The purposeful steps of our Stone Age ancestors trawling the land as they hunted game and gathered plants to sustain life in the wild, or the rhythmic clicking of the Bushmen tongue as villagers crowded around a crackling fire to listen to stories of elephant and lion; and then the clanging of metal against rock as the Iron Age furnaces of the Tswana people moulded forth a new, easier way, before the scrape-scrape-scrape of clay as the erection of Boer farmhouses drowned out the sounds of the indigenous people—and finally, the violence of the earth being split by man and mechanism as gold and diamonds were prised from her crust in an eager rush for fame and fortune.
As life invades space and time, the voices and the rush of feet bring me back to the now. My life. My place in this place, its voice honed by a smorgasbord of stories oozing life from every pore of the suburb since its inception in 1897. Its essence captured in the trees – great Oaks with strong, angular arms reaching over the streets from opposite sides to clasp hands, and Jacarandas (one right outside our house) spilling purple rain in spring – lauding over the love, laughter, hurt and heedlessness of the century past, and preceding millennia. These magnificent feats of urban Africa cast a shadow over the roads and houses, permeating the place with an air of mystery.
The echo of bygone footsteps always near.
Author & Storyteller: Andrea Zanin
Andrea is a writer, wife, mother and dreamer; also the author of this website. She moved to London in 2006 to earn £s, travel, see bands and buy 24-up Dr Martens—which she did, and then ended up staying. Andrea lives in North London with her husband (also a Saffa) and five children. She loves this grand old city but misses her home and wishes her children could say “lekker” (like a South African) and knew what a “khoki” is.
