Portraiture and Photography
Selfies, Portraits and Scams in Photography
Robert Cornelius, the American photography pioneer
According to Widewalls this picture of Mr. Robert Cornelius is the first ever selfie taken in the history of personkind and probably taken outside the family store late in the year of 1839. Though Mr. Cornelius had to endure a longer then circa 2023 shutter speeds and he had to wait a while for the image to be processed, it has the same circa 2023 feel of ‘this is how I want to be seen’ self expression of the modern selfie. His chin is pulled in and he is showing his best side while his eyes hold onto the viewer firmly. Photography was a serious business back in 1839 and the facial expression and the crossed arms across his chest tell of this.
Mr. Cornelius has a firm hold on how he wants to be seen by the viewing world out there. As photographers we call this normative behavior. It is why many people smile for the camera, why others pout or duck lip the camera and yet others pull a V for victory sign and others like Mr. Cornelius assume a serious facade for the intrusion of the camera in their personal space.
Boulevard du Temple, in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris
Louis Daguerre took this picture of Paris in 1838; as there are living people in the photograph it is also an example of environmental portraiture too. (Bottom left corner) the inclusion of a man getting his shoes shined tells the readers of this visual document something of the life lived by people in the city of Paris in that time. This picture has none of the posed qualities of the picture of Mr. Cornelius above but both of these pictures are of the what is in the front of the camera at the time. The man getting his shoes shined on the streets of Paris has no idea of the presence of a camera at the time. Unlike the picture of Mr. Cornelius there is no normative reaction in the second picture. In the second picture there is just the perception of a moment in time by the photographer, being Louis Daguerre at the time.
posed as his own corpse in a staged suicide
“Hippolyte Bayard considered himself as important as Louis Daguerre. In fact, he claimed to have invented a photographic process before there was ever daguerreotype. Only, luck was not on his side, as the presentation of his invention got postponed and Daguerre stole his thunder.” – The First Hoax in Photography, Widewalls.
As a response to that, Hippolyte Bayard created a photo titled Self Portrait as a Drowned Man in 1840, in which he posed as his own corpse in a staged suicide. On the back, he blamed it all on his opponent and the Academy, creating the first known photographic prank. – also, Widewalls.
Do You Want My Peace or Not
A Background to Wonderland
It is around mid September, 2004 and I am in Nyala, Darfur, Sudan taking pictures for the Mennonite Central Committee. The pictures were for a story covering MCC work in Sudan, including the situation of non-Arabs in Darfur fleeing the government backed Janjaweed militia, the pictures are for their magazine A Common Place. This was my first time I was working for this American organization. I had done work for other international organizations before, but this was the first for MCC.
Sudan was not like any place I had encountered before, it is a bit like Wonderland in the story of Alice in Wonderland: what is up could very well be down, what seems to be right could also be left. For the first time I could not read anything around me and could not tell the difference between a letter and or a number. There is nothing definite in the western way of thinking; and everything is insha Allah or God Willing. If one government man says we can take pictures in the internal displacement camps in the town of Nyala in Darfur, there is nothing to say the next one will disallow the same.
The two MCC country representatives, an American writer for their magazine A Common Place and myself have been gathering stories, quotes and pictures from people that have lost everything due to the actions of the Janjaweed militia. We are now at Nyala Airport waiting for our flight back to Khartoum. I have rolls of film with the pictures, detailed notes and quotes of people who told us what the government backed militia did to them. I have these trusting people’s lives in my hands.
What are you doing here
Our Marsland Air flight to Khartoum is called and I get up from sketching the faces of people around me and go to the security checkpoint, the MCC representatives and the writer have already gone through the checkpoint, it is my turn now. The security officer looks through my bag and sees my camera, light meter, notebook and about 40 rolls of film. “What is all this, what are you doing here, where is your permit to take pictures here in Darfur”. I look at my traveling companions and hand my passport and what documents that I have to the officer.
I am told that I do not have the required documentation, I am now wondering what the inside of the Nyala prison looks like. The officer looks at me and says I can get on the flight but I am going to be met by a reception committee on my arrival in Khartoum Airport and they are going to see what I have been doing in the country.
We all get onto the Tupolev twin engine jet and I find myself a single seat and I start to think about what I must do in order to get myself out of the situation I find myself in. I look around the plane to see if there is anyone looking at me; my experience so far in this country is that there are government men all around. My plan is to get the exposed film separated and if possible hide it away. At the same time I don’t want to be seen doing this by some unseen government man.
Do you want my peace
As I try to sort myself out my stress levels climb, outside my window I see the harsh dry landscape of Sudan slide past on our way to Khartoum and the expected reception committee waiting there for me. As I hunch over my camera bag between my legs I sense a peace hovering just over my head and a soft voice saying “Do you want my peace?” I find myself replying yes and this sense of peace drops down enveloping me down to my lap in the seat of this aging Russian jetliner. I immediately start to carry on trying to sort out my situation for myself and the sense of peace leaves me and hovers up over my head again. The voice says to me again “ do you want my peace or not?” I reply with a yes, and the sense of peace returns to envelope me as before. I have the nine exposed films separated out from the rest and my plan is to quietly pass them over to the MCC country representative as I pass him as I walk down the walkway to the exit of the plane.
I will make a hole in the net for you
I felt that I must just walk forward and that God or as I now know him as Abba father or Papa will position a hole in the net that I felt surrounding me at the time. As I passed the MCC country representative with the film he refused to take it from me. I looked out of the exit of the plane and there were about eight men waiting at the bottom of the stairway, and I began my descent from the Tupolev. It is not as though I could just blend into the stream of people coming off the flight, I stood out. I also just walked past these men at the bottom of the stairway. The MCC representative and myself got onto the shuttle bus to the airport terminal.
Because I only travel with hand luggage and nothing in the cargo hold, I proceeded straight to the general public area in the airport. As we waited there for the rest of our group two plain clothed men ran into the terminal past us as if looking for someone, they proceeded to the luggage collection area and the two of us went straight out to the taxi rank outside the airport building and waited there for the other country representative and the American writer.
I was still a bit in shock, as we were driven back to our hotel in the city, I was easing a bit, in the hotel I talked to a woman named Beatrice working for the Reuters News Agency out of Nairobi, she agreed to pack away my exposed film from Darfur in the bottom of one of their big TV camera cases when their team returned from Khartoum to Nairobi in a few days time. Before we were to leave Khartoum for Nairobi we still had a story to do in the town of Atbara a few hours north by bus.
Though getting back to our hotel and the fact of Beatrice coming forward with her offer of secreting out the film I am still looking over my shoulder for government men at every turn. The next day three of us left by bus for Atbara on the Osama bin Laden highway to the north of the city of Khartoum. I just want to remain in the shadows, I am nervous, I have lost my appetite and I just want this nightmare to be over.
Atbara is home to a MCC backed special needs school which is now the Sudanese model for special needs education in the country. It is also home to a Roman Catholic Comboni center. We are in the town to do a picture story on the special needs school and the writer has to interview one of the priests at the Comboni center for future use by the magazine.
I am just outside the special needs school, my heart fills again with the anticipation of doing a good news story in the Republic of Sudan. “See, I am doing good news pictures in your country too” I say almost out loud to anyone that is there around to hear me.
These were once the shadow children of The Sudan, the children of no hope. The children that a wife of a local missionary set her hope on, the children that were set on a new path for many others that are the same. The children that are now a part of the model way of special education in this country.
My pictures tell a story of youth that now have the start of a craft, that now can read and count. The same children that once were just hidden away in the dark corners of their family homes, the children that were once those of shame.
My hunger is back, I have a traditional Sudanese lunch with the teachers, children and the others in my group, I feel that there is some light for me too now.
The hug I never knew I needed
We meet with the interviewed priest and I take a few pictures, I am told that I can have some time to myself this afternoon. I leave the priest’s office and on my left is the wall of the cathedral on the site of the Comboni center. I have always wanted to go into a Roman Catholic cathedral and this is my chance. I don’t feel up to taking a tour of a Sudanese town just yet. Some time in the local cathedral will do just fine for now.
This is what I now call a snow leopard moment, a moment that is only for me. I am in the middle of the simple blue and white internal space, at the front there are icons in remembrance of Mother Mary and one or two saints, to the front left a rack of lit candles burning and giving off a soft yellow light. A small figure comes into the building from the front right, she goes about her business of prayer and lighting of candles and stops.
The walls of this place are beautiful in their simplicity, just whitewashed walls and royal blue tiling, the afternoon sun shines in through the tall arched windows. The figure at the front turns around and faces me. She is small, she is one of the Italian nuns connected to this place. She approaches me and she tells me that she feels that she has to embrace me.
I will probably never know anything about this Roman Catholic Comboni nun, she will most lightly never know anything about my experience coming back to Khartoum from Nyala. But what I do know is that I needed this hug more than anything else at that time. My Abba Father knew that I needed his peace and he knew that I just needed to be held too. I grew up in the Protestant faith and the Roman Catholic faith was always the other. After this embrace there was no longer us and them, from now on there is only all of us in faith.
This moment in the Sudanese cathedral will always be my own ‘snow leopard’ in the tradition of the film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, in this sense the moment will always be a private frame for me alone. The moment when I as the man who grew up in the traditions of the Protestant church grew out of a them and us mentality into a more intimate relationship with Abba Father and a more inclusive mentality with others in the greater church. In many ways my time in Sudan has changed my core being, it is as the one MCC country representative said to me once you have been to Sudan you will never be the same again.
The probabilities of the government men finding me while in the town of Atbara were very slim.
We catch a bus back to Khartoum the next day and I sink back into a dark space again. When others on the bus take a break from their seats and step off the bus on a scheduled stop while I remain in my seat. It is only on the taxi from the bus rank in Khartoum to our hotel in the city that I remember that I have forgotten my camera bag under my seat on the bus! The taxi driver seems un-bothered by this by saying we can return to the rank and just get it back. I think to myself ‘yes right, on which bunch of Tuesdays in Africa?’ At the bus rank we talk to the bus driver and he says yes, my bag is waiting for me at the lost property room at the depot. I race to the lost property room and I see my bag there with all that should be inside it too, on returning gratefully to the taxi, the driver says that in Sudan we have Sharia law and we get our hands cut off for taking what is not our own.
The hole in the net
Back at the hotel I make the exchange of my film with Beatrice, they will secret it away in one of their large TV camera flight cases. In exchange I will agree to express one of their mini video cassettes back to Nairobi with me when I fly out to Nairobi that night.
It is evening in Khartoum and I have an alcohol free beer in the dining room of the hotel, the flight out of Khartoum is delayed by a sand storm. I will take two unexposed rolls of film in my camera bag and a self fogged film in my camera. Our flight is now due (insha Allah) to leave at about 0300 hours in the morning. Our passports are checked about nine times in total by the airport officials, while we are waiting to board the Air Kenya flight to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi when there is a public announcement in Arabic. Anita Miller, one of the MCC country representatives, jokes with me by telling me that they are looking for me. I am not in the mood for jokes at pre-dawn hours in a Sudanese airport at the best of times, and to me these are not the best of times.
The Air Kenya air stewardesses come around for our drink orders as we fly south. I follow my non-alcoholic beer in the hotel with a real lager while looking down at the dark landscape of Sudan flowing away behind us. I now don’t recommend drinking a lager at three in the morning to anyone; but Sudan is Sudan.
We are back at the MCC guest house in the suburbs of Nairobi, we have three days rest before heading back into South Sudan for the second half of our trip. I walk down to the entrance of the MCC complex where I hand over the mini video cassette to the local Reuters representative.
My film arrived safely in Nairobi a few days later when we were back in South Sudan interviewing students who were resuming their war delayed education. The pictures of my visit to the two Sudans were published in an edition of the MCC magazine A Common Place a few months later.
An afterword
At the time of going into Sudan in 2004 though I knew God was personally real for me, I was skeptical of the church that surrounded me and as a member of the media, I was not very public with my belief in him. At the time too I also had been unknowingly depressed for a long time, I was unhealthy, overweight and my marriage and family life was going downhill fast.
I came away from Sudan with beginnings of a personal expression and faith in God.
It was only years later after I had a mild stroke and a divorce that I am getting a handle on what it means to be a ‘new creature’. It is only now in 2022 that I am more public about my relationship and belief in God, Abba Father or Papa as I personally call him now.
God loves us so jealousy, he put the death of his son Jesus out in public view, Jesus did not just die quietly in a private place. It is for us now to step out of our own boats as it were, put our hand in his hand as a child and a daddy and walk as he leads us…
The Story of the Yellow Bag
Miles of tar
On the 22nd of February 2021 a man leaves the city of Jozi to seek a dignified way out. He left most of his things in the place he would have called home. He packs some clothes and a camera. Taking only what he can carry in a bag; and he walks onto the N3 highway towards Harrismith and the Free State. His plan is to get to the mountains and let the mist close in on him and never be a burden to anyone again…
He went to Johannesburg to start again, while he had been living with his brother and sister-in-law in Durban his daughter and her partner in Johannesburg had opened their home to him. While in the city of opportunity no opportunity came his way and he felt that he could no longer live in this way.
He stopped under a bridge over the N3 highway on the outskirts of the Big Smoke and remembers his God, he reads his Bible and prays, ‘Am I doing the right thing here, I can just turn around now and go back to where I have just gone from and no one will know any different’ the soft voice he knew so well says continue. He questions the voice saying you do know what I am planning to do don’t you? The voice repeats the word continue. So, the man does just that…
Walking on tar, miles of it ahead and miles of it behind too. The rush of unstoppable cars to his right and fields of grass, mealies, soybeans and birds to his left; and still more tar under his boots and ahead of him more to come.
Black wattles in Heidelberg
He is hidden from the world all around him, it is just himself here. Where he is sitting there is some loose soil and a few termites around him. The low overhanging branches of a black wattle tree shelter him. He had come this far, this is the first waypoint on the way to the beautiful place, his phone is turned off most of the time to prolong it’s battery life.
Now and again he glances at the on-again-‘phone screen and checked for messages, he is checking for messages and his options according to his ‘plan B’. Plan B is not violent, it is not about killing himself so much as ending dignified some how. It is not about slitting a wrist or putting a non-existent-to-him gun his head. Plan B is about going off into the embracing mist, it is about ending the burden to others.
Plan B is as about living as it is about ending a life. It is age old and widely used around the world. It is practiced in many cultures and by many peoples. Plan B is about dignity for all around and for single person involved. It is a plan for the courageous in heart, it is not for all.
Plan B was for him. It was under the black wattle tree that he took a step again, it was under the black wattle tree that he sealed his fate with his daughter, it is under the black wattle tree that he begins to live again.
That morning he walks into Heidelberg and buys a blanket and a large yellow carry bag, he will no longer be cold at night.
Hot food and glasses on the road
The man is tired and in need of a wash, he started out walking that morning with rain clouds over his shoulder and yet another bridge ahead to pass without a roadside oasis in sight, his plan is to stop at a truck stop and buy some food, get cleaned up and carry on to the beautiful place.
The cars on his right are not stopping for him and he has not slept well in days now. The birds in the fields to his left have nests. The man has just got his will to go on.
Passing another bridge he sees in the space between the sky and the land around him some outpost with a truck turning off the highway towards it. Past experience says to the man that where there are stopping points for truck drivers there is also food and a place to wash. The man has a body and clothes that need washing and a soul that needs proper fueling like the driver ahead.
The soft soles of his boots ease him onto the off-ramp as the road cuts through the fields of crops and birds. To his left he sees signs for diesel for all, tanks of as yet unsold fuel and rows of trucks and their drivers. The man asks if there are washrooms that are open to a traveler like him. While showering his body under hot water and washing some of his clothes the men in charge of this truck stop let him charge his smartphone too. In the takeaway he orders spinach and pap and sits down on the pavement and eats.
The beautiful place still beckons him and he follows, showered, washed and fed. As he walks out of the truck stop he notices an old resprayed Golf with it’s bonnet up and two people talking around it. Turning onto the highway the resprayed golf stops besides the man. He is used to been asked for money to ride, money that he does not have.
He has local knowledge though, he knows how to bypass all the toll plazas on way forward and that is worth his place in the back of the car. A short way ahead the man in the front passenger seat gets out of the car and the now showered, washed and fed man gets into the front passenger seat besides the driver.
The man leads the driver around the toll plazas on their route towards the mountains. The man held up roadside farm fences so that they can ‘harvest’ roadside mealies to feed themselves without having to spend more hard won money. The two men start to talk about life and the possibility of working together. The man starts to think about the possibility of an alternative to the rendezvous with the beautiful place in the mountains, maybe there was still a future for him after all.
Fed on tender young mealies the man looks out of the window on the right at the beautiful place, the road past the Sterkfontein dam has been finally resurfaced now. Freewheeling down the Sterkfontein pass, they stop for drinking water at the Little Switzerland resort. Petrol was getting low and the man says that he can get some cash that will fuel them on their way. 70 rand is not much for fuel but he says that is what he has. In the town of Bergville the driver of the golf says hundreds as the cash is converted into fuel in the car’s petrol tank. The man leads them out of the town and back on their way.
The man is sick to death with being a burden to others and just wants to pay his way in life again. Maybe Abba Father still has something up his sleeve for this man in this place…
70 rand does not last forever in a car driving on the N3, the two men turned off the highway again to avoid the Mooi River toll plaza, the two new friends had to push the car over a rise in the road and freewheel into the small farming town. At what the man knew as the old roadside cafe they put their last ten rand into the ‘tank. They also have some money for a loaf of bread between them and they bed down in the car for the night.
The man wakes up from his sleep, the driver of the car is driving the car up the hill into the town of Mooi River, it is one thirty in the morning, by the light of the passing street lights the man puts on his glasses and boots, he asks the driver what is going on? The driver replies by going on about Leon Schuster and all that the man has still to learn about, then driver asks the man about who he really is.
The man slowly realizes that things are not all okay here, and that soon something will be needed to be done.
While being driven around the night streets of Mooi River, the man realizes that he knows where he is from his schoolboy memories of the town that he went to prep and college in. The driver tries to get back on the northbound N3 but the woman in the toll booth demands the full amount that the driver does not have in hand.
Reversing back into the town, the driver now tries the same thing at the south bound toll booth and demands of the man his card or cash to get through the toll gate. The man asks the driver what is going on as he knows the way around the toll plazas and he has already told the driver this.
The car splutters, all the petrol is now finished from the driving around the town in the middle of the night. The man is thinking that this situation is beginning to feel like a scene out of a B grade film and it is now the time to get out of this car and back onto the road.
The punch flys into the the man’s chin, in the light of the Mooi Plaza toll gates, the man staggers and collects his things from the car, he gets away from the confrontation and walks through the south bound toll gate. Away from the driver and the midnight nightmare in the making. Stopping under a bridge he realizes that his glasses are no longer on his face and that they are still somewhere on the N3 where he has just been hit.
Going back, the man tells his story to a toll plaza security guard and together they point out the car and approach the south bound lanes in the flood light of the predawn night. He stands on the spot where he took the punch and looks down at his glasses lying there on the road, they have not been driven over by passing cars and all he has to do is bend over and put them back on his face and see clearly again.
The driver of the resprayed golf leaves his car and walks off in the direction of the south bound toll gates.
Back at the toll plaza offices the security guard tells the man that he can’t stay here at the toll plaza and that he must move on. The man does not want to go onto the south bound N3 as he does not want to meet up with the driver of the car again.
Instead, the man goes in the direction of a petrol station and decides to wait out the rest of the night there. The man stands on the forecourt of the petrol station with the night guard. Two young men approach wanting to get into the now closed burger joint there. The night guard opens the local Wimpy restaurant, he wants the man to go into the now open restaurant for the rest of the night. The man does not want to be closed in again after his experience with the driver of the golf, instead, he decides to go in the direction of the N3 again.
At an intersection over the N3 highway, the man is now confronted by a SUV truck with four man on the back, the truck stops and the four men come towards the man waving their fighting sticks. The man looks towards the intersection and there is another car coming off the highway towards him, he positions himself so that the car is between the four men and himself and walks away into the darkness. He is beginning to feel that there is a conspiracy against him in this place.
He spends the rest of the night sitting on his bags in the deep shadows outside a truck stop on the old road between Mooi River and Rosetta. He does not announce his presence to anyone, he feels unable to trust anybody in this town after this night in this place.
A place he was not supposed to come back too
He does not wake up in Mooi River in the morning, he has not slept since the driver started driving around the town. At least the sun is up now and he can be on his way again; and there is money for a minibus taxi fare into the city of Pietermaritzburg at least.
The man leaves the side of the road where he sat out the night and crosses the bridge over the Mooi river into the the small town again. He has to get some cash for the ‘taxi fare into PMB. The CAPITEC atm at the local Spar does the trick. Armed with cash he now walks to the taxi rank in the town just below the main rail line from Durban to Johannesburg.
At the taxi rank the rank manager tells him that the Pietermaritzburg taxi now leaves from the Mooi toll plaza because the toll fares were where getting in the way of an affordable passenger fare to the city of Pietermaritzburg.
“All this walking” the man says to himself.
He is now on his way to a new life, he knows a few friends in this city, he is tired and in need of rest. He has hopes of getting to Kranskop and the kwaSizabantu mission there, they must have need of someone who wants to work to get his life right and is willing to work for them towards that end.
Tired, he gets into the taxi to Pietermaritzburg, masked up and dosing he arrives back in PMB. The streets of this city are familiar to him. He has spent so much time in this place. The Dogtown of his past, he would never ever imagine to be back in this parts of the country.
Never in a wild bunch of coincidences, PMB, never…
Trudging, he makes his way to the home of some old trusted friends. Friends he can over night with on his way to the ‘mission in Kranskop. A bed, some food and a hot shower. It is now Friday morning, he left Sunnyrock in Bedfordview on Monday, he has not had a proper sleep since Sunday night.
The man tells the friends his story, the friends just give him his time and the space to be. He has his first real coffee in five days and a shower, washing away the effects of Mooi River and beyond, as day becomes night he just sleeps. All that has been, then and now is his closely guarded secret, it is enough for now to say he is safe and well and that he is with friends.
After home church on Sunday morning his trusted friend drives him towards the green hills of kwaSizabuntu. The mission reaches out to him on the left side of the road, white domes and neat buildings and rows And rows of fruit trees, orderly neatness. But at the gates of the mission the guard tells them that they are in a COVID 19 lockdown and no one can enter the mission at this time.
The man gets back into the car, while going back to the city he is told not to worry, things will be fine. At the home of his friends he sleeps, again he sleeps some more. He has four nights of sleep outstanding.
He looks around the city that he knows so well, this place, he has lived here in his past life, not ever intending to come back to this place of hard times, a failed marriage and a lost family. Thoughts swirl around his mind, living in this place again? This town is a ‘not a place to come back to place’ a place of no returning. Yet here he is, in this place again.
The man meets with another connection in this city and is offered work that he is expert in. A thing that was supposed to happen in Johannesburg but did not. A contract that will fill his mind, that will keep him off the streets, work challenges him. Work that he is unique in skills in.
Work that lands in his plate over a lunch in a Café.
He gets back to the home of his trusted friends, the friend that overnighted him, offers him data capturing work too…
The man’s days are full now, it is not the bright lights of this city that has brought him to this place. He left Johannesburg to find a dignified way out.
This way out has become a new beginning, a dignified way forward. As he tells his story to the trusted ones, his mind swirls in the grace of his Abba Father above and all around him. This can only be a God funky he tells himself and all others around him that can listen.
This can only be a Papa move, if it was of himself, he would be lucky to end up on the banks of a dam in the mountains behind him on a road traveled. Not here with work, friendship and income.
It is taking time, but he is growing, it is taking time but he is also growing others too. He is building into the lives of those around him. He is also letting others build into his life in ways that have not happened in the decades past, he now sees value in the people around him…
Walking on water, walking away from everything I knew
Water was what Jesus had on hand, it was what he had to work with. It is what I have on hand that has to be let go of, it is a shifting of focus that needs to be under gone. From what I have always focused on and had in hand to what Jesus has in his hand, that he wants to place in my hands replaceing what was…
When water is poured over a flower, the water revives the plant and life comes back into it’s stem and leaves, life returns to the plant and stops the wilting effects of the sun and the day’s heat. It is a beautiful thing to watch, to watch life return to something that was on a downward spiral path.
Don’t be surprised when Abba Father whispers in your ear. Don’t be surprised when he tells you the way he wants you to go. It is not rocket science, it is what it is. His name is I AM, ‘I am what I am and you are mine’. ‘I jealousy love you, I sent my Son to the cross for you’. ‘I would have done it you were the only one, this is how much I love you, you are mine’. You don’t belong to what you have had in your hands.
‘When the water was before and you took that step with your hand in mine. At that time you took the first steps in faith to the beautiful place that I have in place for you…’
Looking back, and looking forward
I John Robinson was walking on the N3 highway away from what I had believed to be my shining future back in Johannesburg. I was on the outskirts of the greater Jo’burg, I was walking to a dignified end in the mountains, things had not worked out as I thought they would. Things had come to a head where I was staying and I had to get away.
It was a wet Monday morning on the side of the road, I had left everything behind, I was going to let the mist close in around me and end my burden-on-others once and for all now. Two days before an old friend in Durban texted me saying that God wanted to prosper me.
…And there I was on the road intending to end it once and for all.
John Robinson is now living in Pietermaritzburg, he has finally placed his hands in the hands of his Abba Father, also known to him as Papa or God. He is not perfect, he has strongholds in his life but as he lets Abba Father take the lead, the walk on his winding mountain path can be quite amazing.This can only be a Papa move, if it was of himself, he would be lucky to end up on the banks of a dam in the mountains behind him on a road traveled. Not here with work, friendship and income.
It is taking time, but he is growing, it is taking time but he is also growing others too. He is building into the lives of those around him. He is also letting others build into his life in ways that have not happened in the decades past, he now sees value in the people around him…
A Flat Tire, Muggers and Angels
I am 36 Kilometres into a 40 plus Bicycle Ride Through the Durban Docklands to the Beachfront and Back. The mid-winter sun had just ducked it’s round behind the Berea ridge, and I first feel the squiggly grind of a flat front tyre on tar as I stop at the Bayhead and South Coast roads intersection.
As I am walking my bike south across the intersection down South Coast Road and home in Woodlands, I am looking for a secluded, lighted space to repair my front tube. I have all the tools for the job. I have a puncture kit, inspection dish (used ice cream container) in my pannier at the back and water in my caged drinking bottle on my Giant Talon frame.
As I walk my bicycle down off the rail overpass at Bayhead and South Coast Road, the road curves to the right and the high arc lights over an entrance to a container depot are a beacon to me. I have repaired many tubes as a cyclist, and here I have light, a workspace and if this tube can be fixed and I will be able to ride away into the night.
I lower the tube valve first, into the water in my ice cream container, the telltale bubbles spew from where the valve and tube intersect. S***, this tube cannot be fixed.
The headlights of trucks bear down on me as I walk on with my ‘cycle at my side, at times I just stop and lean away as trucks rumble past, there is no space for me and oncoming night traffic, across the road there is a pavement. A gap in the traffic allows me to change sides.
Here it is just the bright lights of trucks in route to the harbour and the night glow of the changing shifts of workers in safety gear walking past.
South Coast Road proper is just ahead with its ladies of the night and the Woonga addicts looking for the cash for their next hit. The ladies and I have a mutual respect going from my many night ‘cycle trips through in these parts of the city, the woonga addicts are another thing entirely.
I pass a parked truck on its traffic side, the pavement side is a bit long and dark, as a nightwalker/cyclist I try to make myself a hard target for anyone who has unsociable outcomes in mind. I am now walking on the road as the two young men come out of the shadows I have just detoured from while walking on the traffic side of the truck just now.
“You have nothing to fear here, you cycle past here during the day, you are one of the community” I carry on my way as they keep up with me on the pavement in the bright beam of my bicycle headlight and the soft glow of my iPhone in its pouch fixed to the bike.
“What is that there?” The tall one of my two new friends asks as he notices the glow off my mobile phone, I reply that he actually doesn’t see anything there. I press my hip up against the ‘phone pouch as I get in the way of Number Two as he tries to wrest my phone away from me. Number One threatens to poke me with a knife that I have yet to see in his hands. “I am going to poke you, I am going to poke you with a knife”
I do not care what Number One says about giving me a poke with a knife, my eyes are glued to the hand in his pocket where the said knife is supposed to be. Number Two is having trouble trying to get hold of my phone that is still firmly in its pouch, my hip is still blocking his way. I keep my firm grip on the bike, My headlight comes out of its holder in our joint scuffle and hangs by the cord that is for this very purpose.
The momentary sense of ‘being mugged’ is quickly replaced by a deep awareness of the situation around Number One’s hand in his pocket, of my close surrounds and a sense of my own physical strength and resistance to the endeavours of Number One and Number Two on this dark Durban road.
A voice calls out to the two paras, (Short for parasites, South African slang for street criminals) “Get away from him.” My guardian looks at me through rimless glasses, he speaks English with a heavy Afrikaans undertone. “Come in here, they won’t follow you in.” Number One and Number Two spring away from me and tumble over themselves into the night. I follow my guardian into the truck washing depot where he works and away from the spot where Number One and Number Two went empty-handed.
In the seclusion of the washing depot, I turn off my ‘phone and headlight, I want to proceed on my way home without calling any more attention to myself. My guardian and a woman who also works at the depot agree to walk with me as far as a tuck shop at the next intersection. Walking as three is better than walking alone. Patience signs to me that this is where she and my guardian stop.
South Coast Road is a dual carriageway here and walking along the centre island makes me a harder target for any others that want to take their chances with the man walking with a flat wheeled bicycle in the night. As I walk I keep a lookout over both shoulders to keep aware of what is around me. There is only one more contender on the pavement to my left but he does not come across the road to the centre island where I am walking. “…I want your bike” he says to me, I just wave back to him and carry on my way.
It is a six-kilometre walk from where I felt something wrong with my front wheel to my room in Woodlands. Apart from a few curious dogs, my walk is just a slog up the hills of this part of Durban. I have plenty of time to think about what has just happened to me.
- Never ride without a spare tube, tools for simple bicycle repairs, a puncture kit and fruit and water for energy and hydration.
- Always wear shoes that you can also walk in.
- Muggers don’t have a plan b, do the unexpected. Give muggers a way out and they will take it.
- Be calm and stay calm and focused, I don’t know when my angels will come.
- Dogs on the roads are usually are only curious about what is coming past their territories, don’t take their barking personally.
- It is always easier to ride up a hill then walk up the same.
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