Cape Town Curios

By Colin Cloud Dance

Take a space bakkie ride to Cape Town to encounter aliens, Africans in space, gender bending shamans, and enchanted waters. Set in post-Apartheid South Africa, no fiction collection is complete without a story or two about Nelson Mandela with an Afrofuturistic twist. Feminist and womanist, Colin Cloud Dance's strong African women characters create a new South African future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MVmedia, LLC
• Release date: Mar 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393887386

Book preview

Cape Town

Curios

Colin Cloud Dance

MVmedia, LLC

Fayetteville, GA

COPYRIGHT © 2020 BY MVmedia, LLC.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

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Fayetteville, GA 30214

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Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

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Capetown Curios/Colin Clouddance.—1st ed.

ISBN 978-1-7923-3119-0

Contents

Peppermint Pelargonium

Destiny

Gnats

Hold My Hands

Khoisan Horizon

Free Me!

UFO Airport in Hout Bay!

Souls Out Of Egypt

Umlindi Wemingizimu

Space Bakkie Ride

December 5

Drought

Cape Town Romance

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The sun never sets without good news.

―Xhosa Proverb

Peppermint Pelargonium

A GROUND SPREADING plant like a bramble or berry bush. The smell captivates me: Tickling my memory. A most delicious assault on my senses.

Ray looked at what he had written in his notebook and tried to focus on the plant again. He glanced quickly behind him to see if his teacher was still there waiting. She was.

Green leaves with fine fur of a lighter green. Flowers are basically pink with darker pink/red parts leading to the center and white highlights.

He studied the sign in front of the plant and wrote down the text:

Peppermint Pelargonium

Pelargonium Tomentosum

Zulu: IGWAGA

Afrikaans: Wildemalva

His teacher hissed at him, Don’t focus on the words, focus on the plant! Forget all that American schooling, use your senses. Open your soul.

He took a deep breath and tried to focus on the plant.

He wondered what they must look like to the tourists of Kirstenbosch Gardens. He was tall, lean, and had light brown skin with golden brown eyes. His hair was trimmed and brushed into the latest American style. His teacher was small with dark brown skin and black eyes. She was all curves and her hair was covered with a jaunty red beret.

He had traveled all the way from the United States to South Africa because of his calling to be a Sangoma. Sangoma was a general term for a South African traditional healer and/or diviner. Ray came from a family of healers where each child heard their calling when they turned eighteen. His brother had gone to Hong Kong to study Chinese traditional medicine, his sister to the United Kingdom to study with the Druids. His youngest sister, Gilda, was not yet eighteen. Trusting the call, he’d journeyed from St Louis, Missouri t0 Johannesburg, only to be told by the Sangoma he found there to go to Cape Town.

Cape Town was one of the most beautiful cities he had ever seen. The legacy of Apartheid was still present, after all most of the tourists and staff of Kirstenbosch were not African. However, there was a smattering of black and brown skin people along with Asian tourists visiting the Garden.

With a sigh, he brought his attention back to the plant. His journey brought him to this plant.

Really?

The plant answered, Yes.

The garden faded as Ray was transported to another time in South Africa to a more arid place, maybe the Karoo Desert. He was with a man who was walking alone with a backpack, a cylinder of arrows, and a hip pouch all made of animal skins. He carried a gourd and an ostrich egg that both sloshed while he walked. The man smelled like peppermint pelargonium.

Into Ray’s consciousness flowed all the ways the man used the pelargonium to heal people and to repel insects. But there was more. Ray was transported to the man’s past to the time that he discovered his connection to the plant, his initiation, and how, step-by-step, the plant taught him its secrets.

The man was from a wetter region with hills. There, peppermint pelargonium grew and thrived. The people in his village used various varieties of pelargoniums as decoration, as flavoring, and in teas. He hadn’t paid much attention to the world of plants, instead he had learned to hunt as did most of the men. Rarely, he was asked to help to gather edible plants. 

Then Ray became the man. The smell of peppermint pelargonium filled his senses. His heart warmed and opened; his body became aroused. It wasn’t a sharp desire, just a buzz in his genitals that caused him to become semi-erect. For the first time he could detect the musky elements of the plant’s smell, the sexy elements.

As a young man, he had loved Anodiwa and, after connecting with the plant and all its elements, he sought her out. Anodiwa had ample thighs and behind, with small shoulders and small breasts. Her eyes were brown, her skin more yellow, and her hair dark and frizzy. Her mouth was made for kissing. Their youthful innocence did not last long. It was bliss and joy as they explored each other’s bodies and the new ways of pleasure. He spent his days learning herbs and his night in passion. Not very long into the relationship she got sick and nothing he did could save her. They had not had enough time to approach their families about marriage. The village had expected to celebrate their wedding the next year. He was angry that his plants had failed him, that they had not saved his love.

In his grief, Thando, an older man in the village took care of him and over time became his new lover. It was a different kind of passion that suited his more passive state of mind. He grew his hair long enough to braid as the women of the village did. He reached again for the lessons that the peppermint pelargonium wanted to teach him, as his heart healed. He thought it best to start again from the beginning.

He began to trust the plants again and learned the art of healing, until a beautiful young girl brought him the story of how Thando had poisoned Anodiwa to have him. In shock, he gathered his things and followed the girl to her home. The older man demanded that he return, but the girl and her family protected him. Eventually, his lover gave up after the threat of both a curse and poisoning for his actions. As it was, the elderly man was ostracized and moved to another village. 

With this double blow to his soul, he shaved his head and withdrew deep into himself. He lost himself in his studies of plants only leaving the girl’s compound to gather herbs. He learned directly from the plants, through feelings, whispered words, and experimentation. Over time he emerged as an herbalist, similar to a Sangoma but that was not the word they used, and was accepted by his village as such.

It took him some time to focus on people again. It began when the villagers started asking for his help in administering to the sick. He was able to heal, even though his mind and heart were far away in a place of grief. Through mothering the villagers, he bit-by-bit came back to himself.

As his mind got stronger, he noticed that the girl that so kindly took him in and her sisters were at war over him. They followed him around supposedly to protect him. They gave him delicacies to eat. They smiled and dressed suggestively. As he moved through his village, it was the same with the other girls. He was not ready to give his heart or his body again, so he gathered his things and began his journey.

There was heat, there was loneliness, there were starry skies, and little food to eat. He kept all parts of the peppermint pelargonium with him: dried leaves, powdered roots, blossoms, and stems. Every day he would consult with the plant and eat the part that he was told to eat. He learned about the medicinal effects of the plant when administered on an empty stomach. Finally, there was a river and he made himself a tea of the leaves. Along the river was edible plants and he was able to fill his stomach again. The land spoke to him and guided his steps, but the note of the peppermint pelargonium was strongest and he heard it more clearly.

Time moved to his visiting several villages. At one, he fell in love again with a beautiful woman, Lerato, that wasn’t yet married. However, the chief of the village requested his services. Rather than see his new love killed or destroyed, he went to the chief. After a while, the same pattern emerged and the village was tense and angry over their desire to be his next lover. He left again.

As he journeyed and grew older, he let his hair grow unaided resulting in dread locks that fell like a lion’s mane to just past his shoulders. His body became lean and elegant. He was graceful yet strong. Typically, women gathered plants and roots, so he carried women’s tools. He still hunted, so carried men’s tools, too. This mixture of tools and his body often caused confusion when he met new people.

How many times did he try to stay, how many times was he forced to leave? He was a healer, but everywhere he went, he caused discord. During his lonely walks he talked to the land and to his spirit plant trying to understand why. Subconsciously, he shied away from villages not wanting to bring more trouble and heartache. His spirit plant was silent on the pain of his human interactions.

His journey was longer and lonelier until he reached a region where there had been recent fighting. Homes were destroyed and there were many new graves.

Go to the chief, his spirit plant told him.

So, he traveled asking people about the chief as he went. He learned that the chief was called Rudo and was middle aged but very healthy.

When he arrived at Rudo’s compound he announced, I am here to meet with Chief Rudo. I know the ways of plants.

Chief Rudo had many injured and readily accepted him into his household. It didn’t matter that he had four wives, the chief took him as his lover. As a result, Rudo’s warrior heart was calmed.

After four days as Rudo’s lover, his spirit plant told him, Go to the enemy.

His mind could not make sense of his spirit plant’s request, but he trusted