Trapped between the steam of the huge pot and the smoking
firewood from her makeshift stove, the woman stirring the stew beside the road
is an indistinct blur which but for her praise song of ‘The strengthening
affordable stew’ , my roving eye would not have caught. Around her curtain,
impatient school girls with powdered faces and gleaming lips stand,
surreptitiously eyeing the train of people along the street. Every so often
they would duck beneath the overhanging iron roof housing the woman, when other youths in school
uniform pass by. Moments later, they would emerge squinting, blinking and
theatrically coughing; seemingly overcome by the thick smoke. Reputation is a
big thing for these youths. To be seen at this particular ‘eatery’ it seems
will irreparably damage it and they will suffer to protect it.
Drifting off the brisk and random train of animated chatter
and glee exuded by the pedestrians, a bunch of dust coated men and women join
them. They are excitedly discussing some issue, with one woman in particular
prattling on in Soprano. She waves her hands and sends dust into the rest of the
group, much to their annoyance. The young girls predictably avoid the line of the
dust vapor. The men’s faces like those
of the multiple others in this South African township are dry, parched and neglected.They
speak volumes about their occupation. I have been told that most of them are
in construction and a lucky few with some negligible education do some clerical
work or another in town. The educated mass have moved to town, leaving their
birth place a waste land full of people who most often than not, turn to
comprador business to feed themselves and educate their young. It is a vicious circle of existence.
Finally the woman behind the smoke curtain comes out, bowl
full of stew and plates in tow and I wheeze in shock. A nearby man in a rainbow
Louis Vuitton Belt that seems out of place with the rest of his sullied outfit
looks at me questionably and I hide my shock beneath a smile that fails to reach
my eyes. The eyes are the windows to the
soul and I swiftly look back at the ‘eatery’. The stew seller has a voluptuous
figure and is wearing a sooty apron which by the looks of it, used to be sky blue. Her face has been artfully coloured white, her eyes the only thing
discernible. Her neck and wrists are choked by multi coloured beads; Yellow,
blue red, green, purple, that threaten to get a taste of the stew. Dishing out
to those that extend coins to her, she in sweet melody and bliss praises them
in poetry and song. In peacock style, she shifts her neck beads to and fro and they glimmer as they catch the waning sun. She
seems to know this and basks in that knowledge as she shows off. The woman with the soprano
voice ululates, much to the chagrin of the school girls.
More and more people pour in, buy their stew, listen to song
and go back to the train of the diverse people on the street. Now and then, a
taxi would dangerously screech past the eatery, scattering papers lying on the
thin roadside. Like the papers, the customers would scatter, shouting obscenities
and promises to ‘Mur’ put senses into the driver. Of course by then the taxi is
long gone.
