(this was re-written from the prose piece I wrote for "Sad... and Beautiful Place" a book I co authored with photographer Gordon Ashbridge... this re-write was so that the Jazz Committee could put some music below it for a gig we did to promote that book... Dada Street is in Khayelitsha)
DADA STREET (Sad ... And Beautiful Place)
Dada Street
Sad... and Beautiful place
In the July winter drizzle
Is a sobering photograph
Rain really adds to the township effect
It darkens all the colours
Of the excess bits of wood and hard board
Hammered together with pragmatism
Into makeshift houses for homes to dwell in
They look bleaker in the wet
Than underneath the traditional African skies
The streets are deserted
Apart from those improvising wet gear
Barefoot and brolley will do
The ground is muckier, flooded
Everything seems more crammed in.
The miles of rooftop tarpaulin
Held in place with whatever can be found
To minimise the leaks
Rain’s impact is more than cosmetic
More than the beauty of pearl like rain drops on washing lines
Shacks look like poverty in the sunshine
But in the rain
They feel like poverty
As the damp brings runny noses and disease
From wet clothes and sodden floors.
But I did say sad...
And beautiful...
On Dada Street after the rain
I bump into a wild array of characters
Full of energy, life and laughter
The Malone Road probably has characters too
But they don’t spill onto the streets
With the same random freedom
And the Malone Road is all the less for that.
Dada Street has a deeper intensity of humanity
The magnetism of their foibles, quirk and charm
The woman with a bundle on her head
Leaving her hands free for other things
African scientific genius
Men standing against shacks staring...
All day long... staring...
Those pushing shopping trolleys
Full of sheep heads and chickens, alive or dead
Firewood, any wood, deposit return bottles
The young dudes with cool dreads and fashionable threads
Emerging out of hovels immaculately clean and pressed
The children with discarded tyres, two wheeled trikes
Nearly always barefoot and definitely always smiling
Following me, clinging to me
Seeking my love
And giving me all of theirs.
Dada Street..
Sad and beautiful
In the intensity of its humanity
And two things...
Two things well up in my soul...
To do everything I can to bring justice, liberation and Jesus salvation
To Dada Street
And To do everything I can to bring justice, liberation and Jesus salvation
To The Malone Road.
I was brought up on the Malone Road and have spent a good deal of my adult life there or there abouts. However, after 5 years in SA I find it very foreign and very sad. There is so much and yet so little that matters. Our towbnshipds need the Good News to bring life - the Malone Road is in just as much need of life, real life, life that cannot be contained in a new conservatory or a garage so full of 'stuff' you can't park your Porsche in it.
Posted by: Alan gaston | 28/06/2010 at 10:35 AM