Fofa is a snuff snorting vagrant, patron saint of scavengers
and madmen of Kokosi.
Skin tattooed in prison rites and rash scars that never
heal, his bachelor brain couldn’t comprehend a union with the opposite sex.
Every neighborhood has its population of mad-people, some
said to be bewitched, whose shadows have been stolen by sorcery, others whose
minds have been deranged by chronic sicknesses yet living with infected
positives.
Fofa was one such poisoned glow in virtual darkness of this
group of derelict and excommunicated vagabonds, walking corroded streets in
blazing daylight with high steps of warriors who face unseen assailants.
These people often build communities, slimy shelters erected
in junk yards or shrubby bush patches, well-resourced as per their needs, with
families sprouting among the broken remains of human discards.
Dishwasher boxes and industrial Styrofoam make for materials
of Fofa ramshackle abode, roofed with thick, opaque red and green tinted plastic
sheets.
Furnished scantily with a tattered queen size mattress or
the remains there of, a paraffin stove and box that serves as a table, during
the day the dazzling play of green and red light make his shelter almost comforting.
It is one among at least nine in this stinking heap of
manure, this place is precariously located between the town where white people
reside and the township where the blacks are incarcerated.
Ditoting is a
buffer zone that is more symbolic than colored areas situated to separate the
two spheres of animosity from dangerous proximity and confrontation.
Here we find mainly women toiling from dawn, huddling
throwaway toys and dresses, others keeping their minds away from the flies and
maggots by imagining rewards of recycled products of utility and excess.
Men, the battering force that carries the bundles of
card-boxes and sacks full of broken glass to recycling plants that pay
starvation rations that keep the family at the dump happy for a day, often
return torn and inebriated, facing children too young to dream of fresh loaves
of bread.
Fofa lives among these ruined lives, happy in their merry
gathering around bond fires made of wood gathered from broken wardrobes,
closets full of secrets to success.
Once treasured objects would lie crushed among fodder that
will fan the flames warming these faces, dream objects reminding them also, of
deranged paths they had once glimpsed and lost, but still yearn for in the
deepest of their sickly club.
He made his home among charred bits of stewed rubbish and
rotting entrails of dead pets, discarded ornaments, among lost persons wishing
never to be found, himself a fugitive from himself, after a fifteen year stint
in prison.
But he had returned, living, when many return dead of heart
or of body and soul.
He was also not mad, not the common place madness of dirty
clothes and unkempt persons trailing caked and oily blankets while reciting
monologues to their invisible company of floating ears.
He was mad, yes, but in an enticing frolic of a jester
intoxicated by some inexplicably juicy joke only he heard and understood; for
he wore a smiting smile that often turned to a sour grimace that meant to
remind inmates of their station.
Yes, he often mistreated some scavengers on this field of
forsaken treasures and skeletons because he seems to have been a self-appointed
supervisor by merit of his prison creed.
A sharp tongue characterized this fellow and whomever he
deemed impetuous would be ostracized by this tight commune of fools and misers.
Malice was formulaic of most of their sly dealings and with
Fofa as the oracle tax collector; he had many privileges which go beyond any
dignity preserved for even married men and women.
He never went to his mattress hungry or without a warm
sumptuous body to warm his frozen person enraged during errands in his field or
among ‘normal’ residents of Kokosi.
But he was a formidable storyteller, a jester who could
reclaim mirth onto the face of a sphinx.
This man was also here by choice and will, not as aftermath
of devastating poverty or need for shelter, but a lust for money and a certain
degree of looting the last preserves of those deemed sociable.
He could talk coins out of any pocket, cigarettes out of
fingers’ frozen clutches at winter stakeouts, he could sip any bottle dry and
empty brimming trolleys with a steamy loaf of bread left for his zealous
efforts.
Everyone knows Fofa and his amiable demeanor has conquered
numerous fans into his rostrum of cheering voices, an ardent garden attendant
and car- washer, the buzz of any tavern and early dawn ancestral ceremonies.
He had a conspiratorially valid reason for residing it this
junk yard – early birds do catch fattest worms of course, and in his case,
being first to scale through a garbage truck on its arrival after night shifts
was like being first to find treasure at the end of a rainbow.
And he was correct in his assumptions about voluminous
benefits of his feat, because he also collected an extensively elaborate
library of encyclopedia and erotic novels cast away by teens that outgrew
adolescent crushes and muscle bound caresses.
History books about unknown worlds and vanished ones, maps,
atlases, magazines and other contraptions of nostalgia now lying dead among
slain excesses, would be found scattered on his queen size mattress, bibles in
a variety of languages strewn across a paint streaked canvas covering his dirt
cold floor.
And still on the subject of history, this junk heap is said
to be situated right above the ruins of the ancestral village of this present
sterile Kokosi, and it was cordially named Makweteng.
Orators of old depict a communal place of mud huts and
corrugated steel shacks built by servants and farm workers during heydays of
the infamous gold rush whose fever gripped this area like a pandemic.
With unspoken
brutalities witnessed by residents of these areas since time immemorial, a
weird aura seeps from every rock lingering in our presence at this oppressively
grave garbage field.
But above this village which was uncompromisingly decimated
by powers that be during some expansion of Fochville in some late 1950’s, now
stood a hunting ground for fenders and fidgeting hoarders, and in the midst of
this vortex was Fofa’s life drumming forth after years of reeking cells and
brutal farms.
One would wonder how many graves of bloodlines that make up
this township lie under a heap of garbage and putrid landmass, because even
today, people speak of ghostly sightings near and around this rotting compound,
where Fofa arduously was making a living home.
Only those brave enough to face the dead were welcome into
this reclusive community, and many had come and gone taunted by spirits and
self-inflicted paranoia, but for those who remained a bond of brotherhood
developed and no shame was ever worn on faces of these haunted people.
But it must also be said that his shelter was the biggest in
the junk yard, a bookshelf housing various books, two china plates and a
glassful of spoons.
Some leftover sachets of salt and other spices piled in an
ice cream container, a steel kettle and dish on a three-legged table balanced
with bricks, all these appliances and clutter was arranged in a clinically
precise manner.
When I first encountered Fofa, these were luxuries that he
boasted about among his peers around the township when on hunting prowls for loose
women.
I didn’t completely believe he lived at the junk yard when
we were first introduced at one of those obvious incidents of traditional
gatherings with bottomless fermented ginger barrels.
But today, pigeons tossing carcasses and clawing meals from
bones while cooing incessantly, rats scurrying about in hide and seek jostles;
I realize that his sibilant hymn accompanied by crackling coals of dying fires
is actually music each dawn for Fofa, as he had begun to name his school of
master-less fliers barorisi ba morena.
A chorus of hums and groans croaked through beaks unloosening
strings tangled around claws, heaving chest sacks and gnawing through bone
until blood trickles.
Here, even birds have tasted blood, their own flesh
cannibalized during feats with knotted wool dangling like razor sharp ankle
bracelets.
Some which eventually mutilate their own troubled toes would
be seen limping about wings wrestling rags and garbage while their toil,
similar to that of women and children here, goes unabated even under the
blazing heat of December days.
Three whirlwinds crawled over a garbage heap sending plastic
shreds dancing raucously like unanchored kites above sober heads, and it was at
this hour of rapid toil that a truck full of gardeners and recyclers rode into
the yard to the welcoming whistles of those awaiting its deposits.
And I was among them, among damp putty in black bags, broken
twigs and garbage bags seeping their brew through grimy holes torn by soot and
slime of other nutritional and industrial refuses.
Acrobatics were exhibited by those who found these rides
rejuvenating, children chased after dust plumes discarded by wheels of this
worn truck looking rackety and about to collapse with everyone holding for dear
life and breath.
Then we saw Fofa as the truck reclined approaching the
garbage load, commander of this army of rodents and persons without shame; running,
rummaging and chiding those who dared scale through the rubble before his initiating
turn.
The day goes down eventfully as always, with minor hushes
and boisterous laughter at senile jokes about anything found in the rubble,
soiled panties, torn bra straps, make up accessories and food packets, needles
and condoms.
Here, poverty is a choice for the hygienic, because food
stuffs, sealed cans of preserved assortments of nourishment, bottled water
thought to have rotted perhaps and a load of toys and scrapped coloring books
could be salvaged from this mound of wrecks and discarded fulfillments.
Pule, an all time madman of this soppy township always
visits the junk yard at intervals that are interspersed between his long walks
through townships streets muttering secrets to himself, and now he was huddled
over a browned broken cake mixed with burnt tyre remnants.
After inspecting the cuisine delicately with his black
nailed fingers, we see him munch on through our distracted chatter about where
to unload our toxic cargo.
Another truck unloads hot ashes from a steel container, with
chains rattling and the engine moaning for dear death after a life of carrying
homes, belongings, coffins, foodstuff and broken trees.
Fafo shows one morose elderly driver a spot and directs the
truck’s reversal with seasoned and masterly antics, his zealous moves, waving
arms and dangling hands signaling a halt, that soon the truck tips over its
rear and another heap grows upon a old ghost town underneath – Makweteng.
Earth, who tends to conquer everything with her gravely
grip, makes mud of most things, but others resiliently survive any microbial assault
and in turn launch their own death on the self-same earth.
Junk yards are epitomes of dead earth, scars of breathless
soil, yet they also have their own pulse born of radioactive debris and
bubbling acid foaming in pools among wood carvings and kitsch paintings.
Fafo seems disinterested in this mess of blistering slime
and advices any handler to put their tattered gloves on; but most don’t have
such luxuries of protective garments for fingers which need be nimble around
elusive treasures.
And he stands on a tin drum hailing passing women and
children, quarreling with the driver of the useless mash that kills even dogs
but still jesting about crippled children soon to be born from loins burned by
invisible heats of the Losberg Junk Yard.
***
There is one thing about people who have been incarcerated
that sticks out like a sore thumb; they have an insatiable appetite for
dominance, and this translates into a venomous strictness that borders on
mania.
For a person who chose his place of residence so
accordingly, it could surprise some that he was as clean a house slave,
meticulous about detail and tidiness of his orderly disorder.
He wanted nothing moved without his knowledge; he wanted
things done at only his command.
A bully and a jester who could make you do the most debasing
stunt in front of all your peers, while reciting a narration that calls for the
tragedy to always wear a cloak of humor.
But somehow since our meeting, his mean streak never flounders
my way; yet I can tell that his comrades in these piles of dung are a bit
intimidated by him, and his prison tattoos and exclamatory voice.
A Big 5 stalwart who traversed many a numbers in prison,
scars and death threats, friends maimed in dirty bathrooms and salesmen
blossoming among womanized men.
His story is one among many, but what he recalls of his last
seven days in prison is conversation at campfires and prison raids, when one is
left in solitary confinement, such heroics make silence a friendly listener.
Yet beneath this veil of stoical demeanor was a very
contemplate being, who could wonder the junk yard under a bright moon, star
dust and rigid figures towering in the cover of a stream of light in a shadow.
He could sense tinges of laughter welling from within at
some sinister encounter, a jester who always thought to see the lighter side of
life’s misery.
Nevertheless, the tale of those ‘last days’ is something
that I found to the most profound parable of a man who has just found freedom
for the first time in 15 years.
