#RhodesSoWhite: At an untransformed Rhodes University, discomfort is a good thing

A version of this post appeared on the ACTIVATE! Change Drivers blog.

I have been moved to write by this comment, posted on the Rhodes SRC Facebook page, by Alicia De Sousa:

“…It very clear that the name isnt gonna change. students came to rhodes knowing its name so why did people chose to come here if there was such an issue. if students have an issue with the name, move. I think this so called Rhodessowhite is huge generalizations to alot of people on campus and to be open beginning to piss alot of people off…How can one say the benefits go to the whites. We are all at university together, therefore WE HAVE BOTH BEEN GIVEN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY TO SUCCEED.. so why not do what we came to do and focus on our academics.. This has quite frankly been taken too far, creating an uncomfortable 'feel' around campus.”

This post, of course, although expressed with sincerity, is highly ironic. It is precisely because of attitudes such as this that the “uncomfortable” conversation has to be had about the whiteness of institutions. Alicia de Sousa is bothered because people are challenging her comfort at an institution specifically designed to cater to her needs and desires, and this is unpleasant to her. According to her, if you don’t like the institution built with public funds that caters to her and the 9% of the population that is like her, then you can go to any of the other institutions built exclusively to educate the (black) 80% of the population, none of which are ranked in the top 5 institutions in the country. Duh! Of course, the comments below the post (too many to count) shouting down poor Alicia and calling her names is not going to change her opinion on the matter.

I shook my head at her comment, and despaired a little for all the well-intentioned Alicias of the world. Her words, in caps, “We have both been given equal opportunity to succeed,” reminded me of an argument I had with a good friend of mine, back in my first year at Rhodes University in 2005. She was white, and had said something all the lines of, “I don’t see why everyone makes such a big deal of apartheid. Here you are, and here I am, and that fact that we’re both here means we’re equal.” My jaw dropped in disbelief. I couldn’t believe someone could say something like that. Having been raised by struggle activist parents, I took it for granted that every South African was aware of the glaring inequality between white lives and black lives in our country.

I could explain to her and others how my grandparents were forcefully removed to a township under Group Areas, or how, as coloureds, teaching was the only option for my parents to have a professional career, or how the odds were so stacked against the generations before me who lived through apartheid that my attending university at all is a testament to their hard work and determination that the next generation will be better off than the last. But that wouldn’t really be illustrative of my point. Because as hard as it was for my forebears, I am still much more “equal” to Alicia de Sousa and my first-year friend than many, and by “many” I mean upwards of half, of the student population at Rhodes University.

Coming from a middle-class home where I was raised to speak English, despite the fact that my parents’ mother tongue is Afrikaans, meant that the academic lingo required to write my essays was hardly a stretch for me. The fact that I came from a largely Western-cultured home meant that the food on the “Normal” menu option (as opposed to “African”, “Halaal”, “Fast food”, etc) wasn’t that far from what was considered “normal” food at home, nor did I struggle with a knife and fork. In addition, I am coloured, but I look mostly white, so my appearance was never an issue when I asked for customer service from the administrators, librarians, or academic staff. I never had to worry about owing the university money, as I knew my parents had all that sorted. Any money I made in my part-time jobs was for my own consumption, and I never had to send any back to family at home. My parents brought the first computer into our house when I was about 8 years old. I could operate Windows and MS Word, navigate the internet, and touch type by the time I was 15, thus researching and typing my university assignments was never an issue. I was raised to love reading, love libraries and books, and so knew how to use an index, knew the Dewey decimal system of book shelving, knew how to operate the software system that located where books are shelved. In addition, having been at a private girls high school on scholarship, I was used to navigating white spaces, used to changing my accent from the one I used at home in order to be accepted, used to being surrounded by people far more materially advantaged than I was and not feeling intimidated.

Working for Activate! Change Drivers, with participants from all walks of life, my heart often breaks for Lehlohonolo, who dreams of studying at UCT, Wits or Rhodes, but whose spoken English is heavily accented by his native tongue, whose written English is riddled with grammar, spelling and punctuation errors, and who struggles to find his way around a computer. Lehlohonolo is not stupid, indeed, he is innovative in his concepts, original in his contributions, and astute in his observations, and is eager to learn. But he will be graded as a failure by lecturers who won’t even bother to learn to pronounce his name. Without the advantages I had, and without supportive parents who understand the tertiary education system, the odds of him succeeding, regardless of how hard he works, are stacked so heavily against him in this, our free South Africa.

So yes, there is a need for the #RhodesSoWhite campaign. Whether the name is changed or not, to me, is not the point. The point is to make people uncomfortable by starting to question the way the institution operates, the multiple ways it excludes those who do not come from an extremely narrow set of conditions, the way we have normalised whiteness as the standard and hold everyone else to be judged by it.

The greatest form of inequality is to treat unequal things equally, so why do we continue to provide the exact same (lack of) academic support to those from advantages households and disadvantaged households and expect them to perform the same? It has been noted elsewhere that Rhodes offers pitifully few academic support programmes, and that the four-year extended programme hardly makes up for almost two decades of support middle-class students have received at home . It has been noted that seven out of 57 full-time professors are black at Rhodes , and so who is to be the academic role model to Lehlohonolo, to tell him that he, too, can achieve great heights in academia? Who is challenging whiteness at an academic level, objecting when a Politics course on The Politics of Africa is replaced by one on American Imperialism, as happened in my third year?

The conversation around meaningful transformation in our academic institutions is long overdue, and it goes so much further than a statue or a name.

Lesson from a lion

In the back of an open jeep, surrounded by long yellow grass and blue sky, The Doctor and I watched a lion lazily yawn and flick his tail not 20 metres away from us. We were at Dinokeng Game Reserve, on a well-deserved mid-week break 200km from the city of Johannesburg, where we now stay. Just 20 minutes earlier, as we were eating our oats on the front porch of our chalet in the bush, still in our pajamas, the owner of the bush camp asked us if we wanted to go on a little drive into the bush, as a lion had been spotted not too far away. We threw on clothes and jumped on the jeep, and now here we were, face to face with the king of the jungle.

"What if he attacks?" The Doctor asked me in hushed tones. "What do you mean?" I asked, noticing panic in his eyes. "What if the lion decides we look like lunch?" he asked, as the driver of the jeep inched closer to allow us to take better pictures. His fear was palpable, radiating off him like pheromones. "Then you die," I answered with mock cheerfulness, and grinned.

Later on, our game drive continued, with plenty of far less threatening prey for my ever-clicking camera. All the while, I thought about fear. Why was I not scared in that moment, when we faced the lion, a ferocious beast of the wild? Why did I just trust that this was not a dangerous moment, that being eaten by a lion was not how The Doctor and I would meet our end?

I thought back, and realised I've never really been scared of those traditionally scary things - heights, flying, pain, needles, ostrich-riding, relocating to foreign places I know very little about - and instead really strange things fill me with dread, such as having to make a phonecall, for one thing. Having to deal with unpleasant and unavoidable conflict is another. But most frequently I have felt that anxious feeling, a leady heaviness in my tummy as if I'd swallowed a billiard ball, while sitting in front of a laptop, staring at a cursor blinking at me tauntingly. I get paralysed with fear at the thought that what I will write will be...bad. (Gasp and pause for effect.)

I grew up hating to make mistakes. My grandma dedicated the Fairground Attraction song (It's Got to Be) Perfect to me when I was still in the early grades of school. I was a klutz, as my mom called me, and every time I dropped a glass or knocked over a potplant I would quite literally beat myself over the head with my little fists, apologising and close to tears with shame. I was really, really hard on myself.

I read an article once that said that it's quite common in little girls who are smart to want to do things perfectly the first time, and if not, give up. You see, the article explained that when little girls achieve in school, they get told, "You're so smart! You're so clever!" as if intelligence is an innate thing, a natural talent. Little boys, by contrast, develop later cognitively. It's often a difficult task just to get the little hyperactive buggers to sit still and pay attention in the early grades of school. They get told things such as, "If you just made an effort and tried a little harder, I'm sure you can get this right." Little boys are given the message that if you work hard and keep trying, you can achieve success. In other words, little girls grow up believing you either have it or you don't, whereas little boys believe that it's through hard work, repetition and perseverance that you can get good. This accounts for why, in the research described in the article, young girls would give up after failure, whereas young boys would try and try till they got it right.

Believe this theory or not, it's neither here nor there. The point it, I, like many other smart girls, didn't want to work hard. School was easy, and when it wasn't anymore, I gave up. I quit science in my Matric year, because I was getting Cs. I did not want to fail, under any circumstance. I wanted to be nothing short of excellent, at all times, in all fields, even something I had just learnt. Anything short of brilliance would bring upon (imagined?) disapprobation from my parents, teachers, lecturers, other authority figures I respected, and intense and crippling shame in me. Conversely, nothing gave me a better feeling than getting 90% for a paper I just wrote last night. Emphatic praise from my superiors gave me a high. I lived for external approval. I still live for gold stars. Two or three please, if possible.

So what does this longwinded personal history have to do with fear? Well, dear reader, as any true procrastinator knows, there comes a point where you start to be intimidated by your own success. The fear of not being able to replicate your previous genius, seeing as it was based almost entirely on natural ability and not repetitive effort and determination, is probably the main source of writer's block. You start thinking, "Everyone thinks I'm really good and talented. What happens if what I write next is total and utter crap? What will people think?" The process of putting pen to paper, or rather fingers to keyboard, and simply starting thus becomes an obstacle equivalent to starting a bushfire in Antarctica.

So this was the epiphany I had in the back seat of an open jeep in the middle of the African wilderness: To fear failure is to fear success. You'll never get anywhere if you don't have the courage, the wherewithal to just write, to just try, to just produce, no matter the consequences. This moment of clarity was echoed a few days later at a workshop run by this guy called Simon on our innate potential and areas of natural ability. I asked him about how I could overcome my bizarrely deep resistance to doing something I love. He told me that human beings will rationalise just about anything. "Because you hate failure, you'd rather not write," he told me. "No one can reject you, no one can give you negative feedback if you simply don't produce anything. You're protecting yourself from bad feelings by just not doing anything at all!" The key, he said, was to train my brain to associate writing with creation, rather than with the search for approval. "Don't do it for other people. Other people be damned! Do it because you are creating something that didn't exist before, no matter the quality." You can't succeed if you're not willing to fail.

If you haven't twigged by now, this entire post is a very long apology for being absent since leaving India to return to South Africa over 4 months ago, and a rumination on what has been keeping me away so long. Fear, dear reader, is the short answer. Fear of being good, fear of being bad. Being good comes with a responsibility to keep doing what you're doing, being bad means carrying guilt and shame like a baby elephant sitting on your chest. But I've made the decision to set the baby elephant down, to release myself from the burden of caring what others think. So as much as I love you, dear reader, I'm going to stop listening to the little voice in my head that cares too much about what you think, that craves your gold stars. I write to create. And hopefully I will continue to do so for a very long time. 

The difference between India and South Africa, or, Why autorickshaws would never work in SA

There are many similarities between India and South Africa. Both are economic and cultural hegemons in their respective regions. They share a history of British colonialism, and of struggle against oppression by a minority over the masses. Both suffer from acute and widespread poverty, counterbalanced by the excesses of the ruling and owning classes, creating ridiculous levels of inequality. They both experience unacceptable levels of corruption, unacceptable levels of rape and domestic abuse, and unacceptable levels of child homelessness and poverty. On the plus side, both can boast a level of diversity unseen in many other nations in the world, a resource that should not be ignored. 

There are also many differences between the two countries. Size, for one thing. India isn't known as the subcontinent for nothing. Made up of 1.2 billion people, 3,166,414 km², 29 states, seven Union Territories, and one National Capital Region, India is, in a word, huge. South Africa is tiny by comparison, with 51 million people, 1,220,813 km², and nine provinces. And although Indians will complain about their abysmal education system, once children are in school, there is an expectation that they achieve. I have never heard of the kind of competitive spirit in South Africa as I have heard of in India. The competition to be the class "topper", to get into the best colleges and universities, to get the plum jobs thereafter, is so intense that suicides due to failure to achieve are not a particularly surprising phenomenon in Indian urban society. Over and above all that, in all three urban metropolises I have visited, there have been street vendors selling books on pavements, displaying their wares in Connaught Place or College Street or Colaba Causeway. Clearly, if there is a market, then ordinary Indians are reading for pleasure. Comparatively, South Africa's major distributor of books is a chain of stores in high-end malls called Exclusive Books. I don't think I need to say any more on that. 

But the most interesting difference to me is displayed by the humble autorickshaw. What is an autorickshaw, exactly? Well, this:

Next left, bhaiya!

It is a three-wheeled vehicle, the illicit lovechild of a scooter and a Smart Car. It is a main mode of public transportation in Indian urban areas, and a main source of traffic-related frustration for urban drivers. However, as a pedestrian, it provides a very convenient and relatively inexpensive way to get from A to B. Autowallahs drive in a style that could be described as "controlled, calculated risk." Yes, they will squeeze through gaps you never imagined possible. Yes, they will run the light just before or even just after it turns red. But I've never felt unsafe in an auto, unlike in a minibus taxi in South Africa, those hell-sent sardine cans of death.

But I digress. What struck me the first time I rode in one, was this: This mode of transportation would never work in South Africa. Firstly, as you may have noticed from the picture, autos have no doors, one consequence of which I have already written about. In a country where South Africans lock their doors immediately and automatically upon entering their cars, a car with no doors is inconceivable. The first few times I sat in the back of an auto I clung to my bag like a crazy person. What was stopping someone from reaching in and grabbing it, besides my arthritic death-grip? Nothing! No doors! Open both sides! And yet it wasn't long before I would just let my backpack sit at my feet, unconcerned. I knew nothing would happen to it, even when the street vendors came up to my side to sell me magazines, oversized balloons, bangles and bindis. 

But my mind still boggled. What stopped someone from getting into an auto, commanding the driver to take them someplace far away, and then once sufficiently close, just jumping out and running away at a red light without paying? Nothing! Clearly the autodriver wouldn't be able to abandon his vehicle at a red light and give chase! And similarly, why doesn't it seem to happen that, once the passenger has stepped out of the auto and hands over a large note to the driver expecting change, the autowallah just drives off, big note in hand? Inexplicable!

These are things a South African thinks about. I like to tell foreigners, and I'm sure many of my fellow South Africans say the same, "The state of crime in South Africa is largely exaggerated. Of course you and your possessions will be safe! You just have to be alert." What lies beneath that statement is that, to the speaker, precautions to avoid crime have become routine, habit, something we don't even think about because it's just part of the way we are, the way we live our lives. Of course you need to lock your doors. Of course you never walk around after dark. Of course you never leave bags in parked cars, or drive with them on the passenger seat. Of course you should never wave your camera or your cellphone around in high density places. Of course you need an alarm system, or at the very least a big dog to guard your property. 

I'm not saying that India does not experience crime. My flatmate Anna had her bag slit and valuables stolen from it while visiting a temple not long ago. I'm sure others can share similar stories. But it's not nearly as pervasive as in South Africa, despite similar levels of poverty and inequality. 

So why is that, I wonder? It's clear to me that Indian society functions on trust. When I select and pay for my heavy bag of vegetables at the market, and the shopkeeper offers to have it delivered to my door, I trust that it will be, and I don't fear that now a random stranger knows where I live, as I would in South Africa. When I don't have sufficient change to pay the security guard and I have to give him 50 rupees extra and he promises to pay me back later, I trust that he will. Trust is taken for granted in India. 

There are of course multiple explanations for this disparity. On a black-and-white level, we can say South Africans don't trust because of crime. End of story. But let's scratch beneath the surface a little. Does South Africa experience such high levels of crime because of our recent brutally violent history? Or perhaps there has always been a lack of trust between the haves (mostly white) and the have-nots (mostly black) and that that distrust is so ingrained it might never change. Is it a kind of feedback loop wherein if you don't trust someone, you give them no reason to honour your trust? 

Or does the answer lie with what India is doing right and not what South Africa is doing wrong? There is a sense of personal honour and familial pride that exists here, the kind of honour that makes students strive for the top positions and commit suicide when they fail. Perhaps the culture of trust relies on this honour. The autowallah has his pride, as do the street vendors, shopkeepers, and security guards. Perhaps the worst crime of the apartheid regime was to twist our pride and our sense of honour to a state in which criminals take pride in getting away with crime, and ordinary citizens feel no shame in suspecting every taxi driver, every passer-by to be a potential criminal.

I was once sitting on a bench in Deer Park near Hauz Khas in Delhi, when a girl of about eighteen or nineteen came up to me. Shy and nervous, she hesitated as she told me in stilted English she was a tourism student. Drawing nearer, she placed her hand on my bag, and instinctively and automatically my hand shot out to draw it closer to me. She wanted a picture with a foreigner, she said, showing me her camera, and I felt ashamed for ever suspecting that this young girl would ever run away with my backpack. 

South African society is not based on honour or trust, but on suspicion, an ever-present divisive othering and a growing frustration with the way things are, whether you have or you don't. 

My dream for my country is that the humble autorickshaw can one day become a viable option in addressing our public transport problem. I hope that someday South Africans can learn to trust, and give each other no reasons to distrust one another. Crime will never disappear entirely, but clearly there has to be reasons beyond mere poverty and inequality for its extreme levels in SA, and those reasons are more nuanced than mere black-and-white explanations, pun intended. I hope that someday the rage that simmers beneath the surface of South African society will mellow, and that through development and dialogue we can achieve true reconciliation. No, I'm not stupid, I'm just an idealist. 

15 unexpected side-effects to living in the hottest heatwave Delhi's seen in 5 years

In case I haven't complained enough, it is indeed true that Delhi has turned into the 7th ring of hell, and that coincidentally, is also seeing some fairly regular and highly irritating power cuts. Which means that not only are we plunged into darkness with nothing to do in the evenings, but also that the ceiling fans don't turn to at least give a little respite from the sea of sweat that springs up from my body whenever they stop.

1) I've become a night owl. Since night is the coolest time (a cool 32 degrees, thank you very much!) and since I'm pretty much constantly fog-headed and mildly nauseated during the day, I've taken to intermittently reading stuff on the internet and napping while the sun is out and working at night. This means that I regularly go to bed at around 3-4am. For pretty much my entire life, 10:30-11pm has been my bedtime. I like sleep. A lot. I usually need a good 8 hours of it. But these days I'm surviving on 3-4 hours a night, seeing as it's impossible to continue sleeping once the sun is out. Yay.

2) I got sunburnt from spending a grand total of 10 mins in the sun.

3) I got prickly heat. No, it's not a fashionable STD. It's when your sweat glands go all WTF?! and refuse to work and your skin gets all inflamed and itchy. Apparently Indian children get it because their sweat glands are underdeveloped. Indian children, and stupid foreigners. I'm sitting here typing this while wearing a wet t-shirt to trick my skin into thinking it's sweating.

4) I get irrationally annoyed and angry every time I open Facebook, seeing as most of my friends are in South Africa and complain bitterly of the cold. I can guarantee you, your cold weather is better than my hot. You can always put on more layers, but you can only strip so far before you are liable for public indecency. And it doesn't help anyway.

5) Today I found myself sitting in the lounge, wearing the prettiest dress I own, the one I wore to graduation and have not worn once since coming to Delhi. Pants just don't seem like a viable option anymore.

6) There is no cold water. All showers are hot, even if you're only opening the cold tap. And even if you take a bottle of cold water out the freezer, within a few hours it will be lukewarm, like when a cup of boiled water cools. Tasty.

7) I sleep on the floor. Somehow, it seems cooler. Who wants cushy comfort that's just going to cling to your skin and make you hotter? And yes, the floor itself is hot too. And just a note on sleep in general -- it is not easy. I have to sleep with an alternate pillow within reach so that when both sides of the one I'm sleeping on are drenched in sweat, I can grab a dry one and start the whole process again while the wet one dries.

8) Bouts of irrational hatred towards my boyfriend, henceforth known as The Doctor, who is at home in the foothills of the Himalayas and regularly tells me it's so cool he doesn't even need a fan. Motherf*cker.

9) I've stopped exercising. So I'm getting fat. Fatter. Whatever.

10) My Vaseline is pure liquid. My wax strips have melted all over the place. Lipsticks have turned to mush. I'm pretty sure my salmon oil capsules are just going disintegrate and I'll have to use their contents for cooking.

11) I'm sick of the taste of water. Also, I drink gallons of it and my pee is still amber. My kidneys must hate me and my lifestyle decisions right round about now. This may be worse for them than the 3 years I spent at Rhodes.

12) I am homesick for the first time in my life. Since the very first time I left my parents' house for a week-long Scripture Union camp when I was 10, I've never felt homesick. I think it's less homesickness and more longing for more reasonable weather.

13) I'm simultaneously intensely bored and unable to do anything about it. Because going outside would be equivalent to self-immolation and should only be attempted in the most dire of circumstances. Like running out of food. Or, if you're my flatmates, going to work.

14) On a plus side, cutting off all my hair before coming here may have been the wisest decision I've ever made. Balanced out by the idiocy of not investing in AC at the first signs of summer, which may very well be the most arrogant and ignorant decision I've ever made.

15) As you've clearly gathered, I've turned into a self-pitying, whiny brat. I was going to use another word that rhymes with brat, but I feel like this post is already sufficiently swearword-heavy. I've probably already offended someone. To you, I say, I'm sorry. Blame it on the heat. 

Love in the time of 44°C heat

Soooo...as of yesterday, I haven't blogged in over a month. My sincere apologies, dear reader. There are, however, two reasons for this:

1) Living in Delhi is like living in Winterfell, except in reverse. Here, for months after I arrived, people kept muttering "Summer is coming" in ominous tones. Well, summer has arrived. All 44°C of it. My flatmates and I have opted not to rent AC units. My motivation for this is mainly because a) I can't afford one and b) I end up constantly sneezing like someone put pepper in my nasal spray. So really, all I have to combat the heat in my room is the ceiling fan, which just kind of shuffles the hot air around a bit. There is no chance of sightseeing, unless it's to nicely air-conditioned malls. Going to a crowded monument like the Jama Masjid in Old Delhi would be temperature-induced suicide. The heat quite literally makes me feel ill. So I'm pretty much stuck indoors. Which is not so bad becaaaaause...

2) I've fallen in love. I'm very much aware that I'm stepping dangerously close to Eat, Pray, Love-esque cliché here. Middle-class twenty-something girl, dissatisfied and bored, goes to "find herself" in an exotic and culturally-rich location and finds love instead. It sounds like the blurb of a particularly trashy summer holiday reading paperback. The twist is - and yes, this is also cliché territory, so not really a twist at all then - that I've never been in love before. Not properly. Anyone who knows me (and if you're reading this, I'm assuming you do) knows that I'm the prototypical perpetually single girl who just can't seem to find someone she likes who likes her back.

I've had more than my share of unrequited crush dramas. Actually, they're dramatic to no one but me due to their total and utter lack of anything deserving of comment. If you've been my shoulder to cry on during one of these crushes, I offer you my deepest thanks. And I now repay you by dropping entirely off the face of the earth. Whereas once you couldn't get rid of me and my whining, you now barely hear from me, because I'm at my boyfriend's (!!!!) place making cutesy baby voices while we feed each other with our hands. Yes. We are that sickening.

And quite frankly, I feel no guilt about it. Because at 27, I'm enjoying my first real relationship. Coincidentally, neither of us has an office-based job at the moment, which means we get to hang out a lot. In a few months we'll both be doing the 9-to-5, and life will get instantly and simultaneously more complicated and boring. We'll look back on these days of Delhi summer wistfully and say, "Remember when our biggest problem was what we're going to eat for lunch?"

I don't really want to say too much about it, because I'm afraid I'll jinx it. (Aaaand now realising the irony of saying that after waxing lyrical on a blog read by most of my friends and family...) Suffice to say, I'm happy. I'm really, really happy. Obviously, it's still early days, as we both keep saying. But I feel really good about this. He's a really great guy and I really enjoy being around him. And he's good for me. He hassles me about my time management issues and encourages me to write. Probably the main reason I'm writing on this blog today is because he reminded me that I hadn't updated it in a month. Not to mention the fact that he knows more about South African political history than I do, Indian citizenship aside, and so I'm learning more about not only India but also my own country through him. (Did you know John Dube, Sol Plaatjie and Pixley ka Isaka Seme founded the ANC? I didn't! I probably should have, what with having a history teacher for a mother, but I didn't!)

Ok, I'll stop gushing now. I'm getting mildly nauseated by my own teenager-iness on your behalf. I tell you all this only as an explanation for my conspicuous absence from the blogosphere (as well as Facebook, email, gchat, whatsapp, and all other means of communication). I'm sure I'll return to normal soon. Bear with me. I'm heading to Mumbai/Bombay next month, and the most wonderful Estelle will be visiting just before I leave in July. More India stories to come, I promise!

Love and more love,

M.xx

How I nearly died on a Himalayan mountain top

At 2700m above sea level, I thought for sure I was going to die. I felt so dizzy and lightheaded that I was absolutely certain I would faint any minute now, bash my head against a rock, and tumble down the mountain into the valley below. Although we had trekked all this way and my body was screaming for me to stop, it wasn't my weary leg muscles that couldn't cope. It was my lungs, which are next-to-useless in normal circumstances, and as thoroughbred Capetonian lungs, are used to the pampered lifestyle of oxygen- and moisture-rich air. What helped immensely was that my trekking companion was a mountain goat born in the hills and with the patience of a saint. On the plus side, stopping every 30 metres or so to catch my breath meant that I could truly enjoy the magnificent view. Far beyond the forest below, McLeod Ganj, Dharamsala, the capital of the Tibetan government-in-exile and our residence for a couple of days, could be seen.

Don't let my smile deceive you. I'm about to freefall into the trees below.

We'd taken an overnight bus from Delhi departing at 6pm, and arrived the next morning at around 5am. We forewent the most luxurious bus, the Volvo, as certain among us *coughmecough* lives in a perpetual state of brokeness. Despite that, the seats were comfortable, the air was breathable, and the stares were minimal. Even the unsubtitled Pujabi movie they screened was so overdramatic as to be understandable. Sleep was difficult to attain, however, owing to the extreme bumpiness of the twisty-windy mountain roads. I'm sure if it had been daylight and I was able to fully experience the speed of the bus and the height of the potential fall, sleep would be the least of my worries.

I struggle to describe my first view of McLeod Ganj. Imagine arriving soon after the sun has risen, when the air is still hazy so as to give all colour a pastel tinge, as if seen through frosted glass. The song of unseen birds greets the dawn. Now imagine a steep mountain slope, full of deep-green cedars, with roads cut into the cliff-face, and houses that seem to cling to the verdant incline as if for dear life. "Impossible!" you might think. "This goes against all laws of gravity!" Yet there it is. Now imagine snow-capped peaks in the distance, framing the picture in front of you, and a valley below as far as the eye can see. This is Dharamsala, a holy place for Hindus and Buddhists alike. And who can blame them? Every viewpoint delivers a postcard-worthy scene.

After a few hours' nap filled with gratitude for an immobile bed, we had breakfast in the sky, that is to say, on the top floor of a restaurant overlooking the valley below. I'm not exaggerating when I say, the breakfast itself, though slow in coming, was the best I've ever had. This is probably due to the fact that I haven't had bacon and sausages in close to 3 months, and certainly not in combination with fried egg, mash potato, toast, jam and coffee. That breakfast may have changed my life.

Breakfast in the sky. 

The breakfast was symptomatic of one of the downsides of McLeod Ganj, though. Everywhere you looked, there were gore, foreigners like me with pale skin, sun hats and cameras. Some were unclean-trippy-hippy-backpacker types, others retired-oldies-out-to-see-the-world types (dressed in khaki-and-white, of course!), and others were the same kind you'd find at Khan Market on any day of the week. In fact, I saw more foreigners in that little town than at Khan Market, Connaught Place or even Humayun's Tomb. Although McLeod Ganj was clearly picturesque and remote, in no way could it be described as an "undiscovered gem". I'm pretty sure the number one contributor to the Tibetan GDP is tourism.

And we, too, were tourists, although my companion had been here before. On our first day, we walked up to Bhagsu waterfall, which, although pretty, was not unlike many other waterfalls I'd seen before. The real fun part came when we decided to follow the stream downhill by climbing the rocks instead of following the man-made steps we had taken to get there. Slipping, sliding and leaping from one rock to the next, my problem-solving mind enjoyed figuring out the safety:efficiency ratio of each potential path, while my limbs just focused on keeping my weight on my feet and my backside pain-free. I would advise, if you are planning on doing the same, not to wear the well-worn leather pumps you got from Woolies five years ago, because those don't really offer the optimum level of grip. I found myself taking the safe route more often than I'd have liked.

A FUCKING WATERFALL!! YAAAAY!!

To get back to where we began, the only reason I found myself close to death (I believed) on a mountain face, was because this was the primary reason for the trip. My friend had been to McLeod Ganj several times before, but had never trekked to Triund. I, in my ignorance, when invited to come along, said, "Yeah! Sure!" knowing full well that my lungs are worse than a chain-smoker's and always have been, and hoping that this time would be different. And it was, for the most part. I complained minimally, mostly because I believed "It has to end soon, right?"

Wrong. It doesn't end. It doesn't end till you find yourself struggling not to slip on the ice on the steepest part of the mountain, or on the mud that inevitably forms around it. It doesn't end till you realise your totally inappropriate footwear (running shoes, this time) have given you a blister in the flatness of your arch that is threatening to pop and unleash its world of pain. It doesn't end till the quite literal hand-holding of your friend is the only thing that keeps you moving. It doesn't end till you think you cannot possibly go any further, and yet you can. It doesn't end till the words to the song you've made up and sing to yourself in your head are "Just one foot in front of the other" over and over again.

And then it ends. Shaking the temptation to collapse to the ground, you are drawn to the opposite edge of the plateau, where you are rewarded with a panorama like no other. Snow-capped Himalayan peaks lie beneath heavy clouds of matching white and grey, and you find yourself wondering about the centuries-old depth of collective human experience. Who was the first person to climb these mountains? How many have attempted it, how many succeeded? Did anyone ever climb these mountains for any other reason than to test the limits of personal achievement? I imagine fur-clad cavemen stalking saber-toothed tigers. These mountains are ancient, and inspire thoughts of how life was in ages gone by.

Made it!

The next day, your body will stubbornly refuse to move. The electrical signals passing from grey matter through nerves over synapses will be ineffectual. When you do move, you will groan like a slave beneath a yolk every time you get to your feet. But unlike a slave, you have already received your reward. You did something you never would have believed you could, and saw a sight few have ever seen. You have deepened the trust in a friendship you never knew you needed. And you have faced your fears, the distrust of your body that you've carried since childhood, and to your surprise and delight your body has delivered.

Your only disappointment will be, that after all that physical exertion, you didn't lose more weight.

My crappy little companion

I loved my camera when I first got it in August 2012. My dad had given me a much bulkier one and I begged my mom to swap for the one she got, which had cool filter features and other tricks that I knew my mom would never use. And use them I did. Throughout my year in Brighton, my camera went everywhere. At every beach party, every pub crawl, every impromptu pancake making plan, I was clicking away. I must have taken over a thousand pictures in that year. So clearly, it's been through a lot. It's been dropped on hard surfaces, dropped in sand, gotten wet in rain, and, most recently, braved the coloured powders of Holi.

It comes as no surprise then that it's dying a slow death. It switches off at random times. It never selects the right function when I turn its little function dial. (No, I do NOT want to take a panorama shot!) Everything, everything, is delayed. It never focuses when I need it to. Half the time I want to throw it against the wall in frustration. It's particularly embarrassing in moments when I've asked someone else to take a picture so I can be in the shot. My camera has let me down, let the photographic moment of opportunity pass, many, many times in its old age.

But. It can still deliver the goods better than most, for a shitty little point-and-click. Sometimes I view a photo on my laptop, and a little spark of pride flickers for what me and my camera made. Which is why I won't replace her till the day she dies. And then I'm getting an SLR and photography lessons, because hopefully by then I'll be less poor. Hold out just a little longer, my crappy little companion!

The sweeper at Humayan's Tomb explaining where the other tombs are.

Taking a break at Humayun's Tomb

Humayun's Tomb

I'm still trying to figure out what happened in February 1945, other than just general Second World War-iness.

Entrance to the Arab Sarai, Humayun's Tomb

On a cycle rickshaw, Old Delhi

India is nothing without colour.

At the spice market, Khari Boali.

My camera, like me, has trouble focusing. 

Dog in a spice market. Maybe he likes the paprika?

Tomb at Lodhi Gardens.

Famous coffee house in Calcutta where all the intellectuals used to gather and have intense debates. Now mostly frequented by students.

Women do much of the construction and restoration work in India, thanks to government quotas.

Holi daze.

No such thing as too much colour. 

Accidentally discovering a tomb at Deer Park, Hauz Khas.

Blessed by a 30 metre tall Hanuman at Chattarpur temple complex.

Sneaky lion tamer, Chattarpur temple complex.