SLOW DEATH

I

It is a normal day in the dusty streets of the small rural town of Ingwavuma as eonian litter and eye-poking dust fly in the air behind a speeding bus loaded to the roof with passengers and their baggage. Cattle, goats, sheep, and pye-dogs freely roam the town, and they pounce on every edible they come across. The women who sell at the market stalls must always stay vigilant as their stock is sought after by both starved humans and animals alike – a common struggle of the stomach unifies the two specimens and makes it hard to set them apart.

People thirstily guard with hawk eyes and patiently wait for someone to mistakenly drop the ball so that they can come out to play. On rare occasions such as those, when Christmas comes early, the people have no sense in waiting for the food to be served; they eat straight from the pots. In Ingwavuma, the intricacies of the place contribute to the resident’s mentalities as much as the people’s personalities complicate the town’s situation – theirs is like a doomed marriage of kerosene and fire.

The town only has one supermarket outlet. Inside the unaired grocery store, the shoppers ignore the brilliantly packaged luxury products with a pick-me-up appeal. These items are neatly packed on shelves that are strategically positioned along the main aisles. Instead, the miserable shoppers painfully head for the dusty shelves at the fringes of the shop where their essentials are carelessly sat. Just like at the beach when you bring a fat girlfriend only to find that the place is crawling with slim ladies in their sexy bikinis, and now you must fix your eyes mainly on your date to avoid trouble, while the fat girlfriend who’s clad in her undesirable swim costume is all over your skin like body lotion.

Grocery shopping is always a stressful exercise for these people; the strain of having to squeeze all their needs within a tight budget of battered bank notes that are either soiled or blood-stained, and rusty coins that either leave holes in their pockets or no longer make the clinking sound has dehumanized them. There was once a happier time around these parts though, way before the locals consented to puppetry, but now they rely on prescriptions on how to live their lives and die their deaths; they’ve accepted an enforced downgrade to lead degrading lifestyles.

It wasn’t always like this. Once this was a promising town bursting with opportunities for growth and buzzing with possibilities for sustainability. Nowadays, one often sees shoppers at the till points doing rapid and desperate mental calculations, struggling to decide on which grocery item to abandon and which one deserves to be paid for, all the while hoping for some change after paying with change.

“Our situations will only change if we’re willing to change ourselves first!” Mama Dorothy, a staunch Catholic who’s given twenty-eight of her best years to the church, recalls her Reverend’s words as he was urging the congregation to be honest and consistent with their tithes.

The Reverend’s searing sermon was kindled by the Adventist church’s recently refurbished mission house and their Pastor’s brand-new Mercedes Benz. Between the Catholics and the Adventists has always existed a spirited rivalry – this acrimonious antagonism is older than the sixty-four-year-old Mama Dorothy, and she has devotedly played her part in ensuring that her church does not become the joke of the other church, and she will not stop for as long as she lives.

She’s inside the supermarket, sprucely attired in her crisply starched church uniform, and her poise commands respect from onlookers. She still owes the local tailor for this new uniform. The church had agreed that they needed a change from the old traditional uniform. Her shopping basket is occupied by lousy items. She sighs with a heavy heart as she heads for the till. Thanks to the tithe contribution and the Reverend’s wife’s birthday celebration, she’ll leave the shop with groceries that won’t even last her a mere two weeks.

II

There’s a liquor shop adjacent to the supermarket. Its atmosphere is not as depressing although if one cared to examine the root causes of such an alarmingly prevalent rate of alcoholism that’s plagued this small town, one would shed tears equivalent to the amount of alcohol consumed by this folk.

The liquor shop is usually lively with interesting characters. They’re mostly a shabbily dressed bunch compared to those shopping at the supermarket, but their light-hearted swashbuckling makes up for the apparent unhygienic appeal they tend to display. Also, the dipsomaniacs share hearty jokes among themselves while they wait in the long queue at the tills. They never complain about these long queues or any of the glitches pertaining to service delivery. So long as their drink is secured – they’ll endure the troubles, so long as the rainbow that they faithfully seek delight from is assured after the dreadful storms have subsided – they’ll weather the storm.

How these fellow brothers and sisters pursue what seems like – from a distance – an unprovoked inebriation that’s made them oblivious to mediocrity and contented with the bare minimum, is a story for another lifetime. When they finally reach the till, these jolly folks will joke with the cashiers, addressing one another by names.

“Ah, Mdu or die!” lauds the till attendant.

The visibly chronic imbiber grins – his tobacco-stained teeth revealing.

“You know the story, Sam. I’m Mdu one time. Twice in the pic.”

“Sure case my bro,” Sam agrees. He rings up Mdu’s bottle of vodka.

“Where were you yesterday? I wanted to buy you lunch.”

“It was my day off, but I’m here now.”

“Ha ha ha, the offer expired yesterday my guy.”

Sam wraps Mdu’s bottle in a brown paper bag.

“You’re hot these days Mdu. No more nips for you.”

“This is the last kick of a dying horse my guy, then it’s back to living on my knees again.”

“As long as you’re still breathing champ,” Sam offers comfort. “It’ll be two hundred and thirty-five.”

Mdu already has the money in his hand. He happily hands Sam two hundred and fifty rands in bank notes. He shoves the change into his back pocket without counting it; he tucks his dear bottle under his armpit and bids Sam goodbye.

“See you on the weekend, Sammy.”

“See you tomorrow Mdu; same place.” Sam knowingly jokes.

To this, Mdu chuckles guiltily as he saunters out of the liquor shop. In the parking lot, a red and white bumper sticker pasted on one of the cars catches his eye. It reads: ‘Beauty lies in the eyes of the beer holder.’  Mdu smiles in inducement – he already anticipates a beautiful day ahead. He’s now accustomed to the misconstrued stares that he gets from the people. His felicitously positive demeanor is like a foreign language in this town; the residents don’t understand it – like he’s dancing at a funeral.

Ever since the doctors told him that it was no longer possible for him to quit alcohol because certain vital organs of his now rely on vodka for proper functioning, Mduduzi Dlamini made a conscious decision to trundle with the tides to wherever they throw him. Like most people, he also wants to live; in his mind, drinking keeps him alive.

III

Inside the recently-opened voguish clothing outlet, hip music rounds the store and the colorful clothing items illuminate it – a sense of hope consumes the young people aimlessly waltzing about the shop. They compulsively fantasize in their immature minds – the young blood – of themselves in much bigger and more agreeable towns worthy of their illusionist cutting-edge assuredness. Once they’ve covered their blatancy and scars with these overpriced garments, they miraculously morph into more confident and happier forms of themselves. Their altered egos break free from the shackles of limitation, and they soar toward unfathomably dizzying heights no naked eye can ever perceive, and nor can their parents scale.

These clothes provide them a rare opportunity to be whoever and whatever they deem suitable for themselves on that season, or worse – moment. Dreaming isn’t free after all; it is a luxury they can afford if they’re prepared to pay with their sanity – usually not a difficult choice for those unaware of their value, and they end up paying heftily for nonentities.  No refunds. No returns. They flood the fitting rooms and hastily remove their own old clothes to put on the new ones the very same way they discard their heritage for modernity, unaware that this undressing and redressing cycle prevails for as long as they’re boxed in this town – breaking out of its matrix is a mammoth.

Jejuneness has the kids posing in front of large mirrors, wearing clothes they do not own, and with their cameras rolling, to capture glimpses of what might be. Their juice is stored on their phone memory while their heads stay vacuous; if they lose or break their phones then their world crashes. Gloomily, they return the clothing items to their respective places before they hastily exit the store carrying only hopes of returning soon; significant parts of them remain behind. Their thirst for validation and craze for material inflicts a restlessness that hastens the slow deaths they’re already dying.

IV

The youth are frustrated because there’s no money to steal from their mother’s purses. The parents can’t even afford their school uniforms. Styling them is totally out of the equation. There’s also no money to pinch from their uncles whenever they send them to the tavern. The town is dying a slow death, and nobody seems to notice, or they just don’t care. They’re too busy running around in circles like lab rats. Or maybe they’re foolish enough to believe that they’ll outlive the town and get to live in the one that’ll be born after. Oh, but they’re wrong! The town dies with everything within it. Even the most devastating fires eventually die; they don’t blaze forever.

Four scruffy-looking adolescent boys stand under the market shelter; they should be at school. Their darting eyes scan the sorry town in search of their next victim. They’ve got silver tongues – the key is to deny them an ear. These sons of the land endeavor to feed their addictions, and their mothers to feed them. The town’s too small for them to hide from the accusatory eyes of their donors when they spend the day’s earnings. The boys are sharing a cigarette. Each must appropriate exactly three unselfish puffs if they’re to fairly distribute the nicotine intake among themselves. As expected, there’s bound to be noise because of a greedy puffer.

Just the previous week, Bingo lost some teeth after an artfully flung brick neatly landed on his mouth while attempting his fourth puff. Providentially, the cigarette was rescued unscathed. Today he’s happily sharing a smoke with Simo – the very same guy who disposed him of his two teeth. Life must go on. No use holding grudges here, otherwise who’ll bury you? The people are obsessed with the idea of staging extravagant funerals. They’ll ensure to bury a pauper in an expensive coffin just to give him ‘the dignity he deserves’.  This after he’d lived in need all his life. Families contribute insane amounts towards burial societies instead of developing one another and investing in the future. Clearly, they foresee no future but death. The youngsters, therefore, cannot be blamed for playing their parts in this scripted story that is the town’s way of life.

The dilapidating town is a self-saboteur; it dismantles its functional systems to revive its dysfunctional ones. In this so-called town of small minds, daily compromises and sacrifices must be made to survive; man must live before man dies. But what will happen when the people’s options run out, or the town’s walls tumble down? Dogs will eat dogs, and dust will return to dust. At least, for now, the food chain implausibly persists.