Hang 10 like a Horse

my weekend: where to start?

FRIDAY: there was so much going on in durban this weekend that I decided to spend the whole weekend there. problem is i don't really know anyone in durban. to my great benefit, virgilio gave me the name and number of an old university friend, elisio (also from mozambique), that lives in the town. so i was set. i pulled out the map, found the cross-street and then forgot to bring the map. 10 points.

i then learned an interesting tid-bit about south africa: gas stations ("garages" here) don't sell road maps. but they do sell mutton pies.

on the way in to durban on friday night i decided to meet up with my only pen-pal currently in south africa. a berkely ph.d student doing something-or-other research in johannesburg. she was staying the night with a family in one of durban's outlying towns, hillcrest. the map would've been handy to find my way there and back.

in hillcrest i passed a chinese restaurant. if i hadn't been in a hurry to meet elisio and if jenny hadn't already eaten i thought it would make for good copy to eat chinese food in south africa with a jew from america. or at least it would for a good start to a joke. "so two jews walk into a chinese restaurant in south africa..."

jenny got my name from our mothers being friends. turns out jenny had my dad as a chemistry teacher and we apparently went to preschool together.

when we got to elisio's he was making dinner. i could tell cuz there was a fish head in the frying pan. after dinner we grabbed a drink and dessert at a little outdoor cafe / restaurant that jenny said reminded her a little of berkely. so that was nice. it was nice getting to talk with another american sharing the same or similar experiences. we laughed at how we both are saying things like, "just now", "is it?", and our favorite "shame...". it's now a knee-jerk reaction we realized. if we hear something tragic, really independent of how tragic, one says, "shame".

the remains of three missing children were found buried under their neighbors house: "shame"

i left my gloves at work: "shame"

but depending on how tragic it is, you change how you say it. you use the word itself to express your feelings. slower, louder, more emphasis on the "sh". i'm curious if i could use the word as an exclamation for something good.

jonah, your map of kwazulu-natal is ready to be picked up: pumping fists, "shame!"

SATURDAY:

i managed to get myself a ticket to the july show, south africa's biggest horse race. helicopters were landing in a daisy chain to drop off some of durban's more successful and financially flippant residents.

the show is also a HUGE fashion event. i'm fuzzy on the details but i believe there were fashion shows going on somewhere. what i'm not fuzzy on is that everybody that goes to the july show, dresses to the nines... almost like it's a car show or something. open backs were standard, low cut fronts down to the navel were far from uncommon, and skirts were shorter than the jockeys. as i may have said already, many turf grasses are indigenous here so south africa, if it wants a parking lot, just plants grass and doesn't even need to worry about installing a sprinkler system. in other words, we parked on a golf course. the track that the horses run on is also grass. oh, the point of the story was that all the women were dressed up crazy which invariably means, high heels. on soft grass... it hurt to watch women walk from their cars to the entrances. but on the plus side, they were aerating the soil better than the ibis birds with the long arcing beks.

another thing about the fashion. the theme was "silk safari". india meets africa? so there were some interesting takes on that. silk garters with camouflage skirts (eat your heart out guys). some people treated it almost like halloween, making incredibly eccentric outfits from scratch. something you have to see to truly understand.

another thing that americans might have trouble understanding or believing is the lack of a fear of terrorism or robbing the concessions of revenue from overpriced food and drinks. there were literally NO restrictions on what you're allowed to bring in. ice coolers weren't searched, shrimp platters were brought in en masse and i even saw a few gas camping stoves wheeled in through the main entrance along with the gas tanks.

inside was free booze and food and an armada of cute girls waiting on everyone hand and foot. my ticket entitled me to a v.i.p. tent with our own person to take our bets and some flat screen televisions showing the races and the stats, etc. it also showed the south africa v. australia tri-nations game.

i'm not a betting man but what are the odds of making 10 bets throughout the day on horses to just to place in the top 3 and not winning once? i used homer simpson logic of betting on horses with names i liked: "groove armada", "jay peg", "cozumel", "statue of liberty"... all losers.

so the event went all day and everyone in our tent was making chit-chat all day long. i should point out that the tent was for employees of a big investment firm (so when i talked to people about "horses" and "bets" i referred to them instead as "futures" and "investments"). you could also people-watch and see the interoffice affairs that people were better at hiding around the office but not good at hiding whilst drunk in a circus tent. fun!

there were 13 races over the whole day with number 7 being the most important of all of them. at this point i decided to make my way to the track to watch the ponies tear past me live and in person. what an amazing atmosphere.

now when i say there were 13 races, i should clarify. horses only run in 12 of them. the "13th race", as it's officially called, involves only drunk male patrons of the july show racing the last 100 meters buck naked. i was TOO SHY to consider participating.





get it? that was a joke.

so there i was asking complete strangers "how do i sign up for the 13th race?". most people said "you don't sign up" but it wasn't until a woman explained to me that it's really something you have to jump over the railing to participate in, that i realized it wasn't restricted to size... ahem... numbers of participants and you just crash the course with your naked ass at the 100m marker.

the woman turned out to be a real sweetheart and offered to hold my clothes (and underpants) for me. so as the horses bolted by during the 12th race, i stood surrounded by indian south africans, all with cell phone cameras at ready, my shoes untied, tie off, shirt off and pants unbottoned. "go, now!" she kept saying. i insisted that i wasn't budging until i saw the guy on the other side of the track, who was wearing only boxers, make his move. it's a good thing too because a lagging horse would've run me over. moments later they opened up the gates to allow people to cross (see my picasaweb album) and that's when the place erupted.

the next day i would realize that i gashed my left leg in two places jumping the concrete gate.

i ran out there with my underpants on but they were pulled down by a stranger within two seconds of my arrival. the pre-race involved a lot of nude guys running around high-fiving and saluting the crowd. after a few moments of calisthenics i was limbered up and ready to make my country proud (next year i'm going to have a number painted on). we lined up and one guy stood in front with an air horn but before i knew it, people were running this way and that. i'll say this, the grass was really nice to run on but all my jogging to work in the morning wasn't enough to let me sprint 100 meters at full-throttle. i was so impressed that i passed most of the other drunk-asses (started in about 20th but got up to 5th) until i realized my legs were already giving up on me. i guess that's why horses have a backup pair. i tried whipping myself to get a a good last 20 meters but it only made me feel dirty.

not to pun, but it was a photo finish as flash bulbs were going like crazy.

and for some reason the first race wasn't considered official enough so i had to trot back to the start line and line up for a second race. this time i was in the back and... uh... it's a different race from the back side. people were getting bumped by their friends and crashing and taking down clusters of runners around them. i even had to jump over one 'oke who had his feet slapped out from under him by his friend behind him. i got a second boost of adrenaline trying not to end up naked and on a stretcher in front of thousands of south africans.

SUNDAY:

sunday was the last day of the durban beach festival. a week of sporting events and other crazy stuff taking place all along the south beach of durban. events include lives shows, a surf contest, the african fifa world cup qualifier (brazil 2007), a volleyball tournament, etc.

so elisio drove down there early and grabbed some breakfast on the top floor of a place on the beach where we watched kids doing their best to shred on durban's over head-high break. then we started walking towards the beach that had the beach soccer tournament. when we got there, a huge queue had already formed and it wasn't moving. through a series of impatient follies we were always too far back in the wrong line to get in...

a white security guard that had kinda misdirected earlier nonchalantly waved me over to let us cut to the front of the queue but his coworker wasn't interested in giving a line of 300 africans reason to riot. but to be fair there were riot police there on horses that ended up doing nothing.

while the lines to get in were huge, i brilliantly noticed there was no line to get out. slipping the security guard at the exit a c-note (too much? we'll never know) got elisio and i in (and some third guy oddly enough). it was hilarious because the woman who was in charge was super-scared of getting caught. i was pretty sure that if anyone in the queue outside who saw us outside then saw us inside, it would translate to a beat-down for me. luckily i blended in real nice into the crowd (see picture below). we found space in the front row somehow. primo seats.

the final match was nigeria versus senegal. three 20 minute periods. the fact that you can throw it in to the goalie is just one of the subtle variations on the theme. also, the sport is a riot to watch because there's so much juggling and flicking the ball involved. my eyes are getting sand in them just thinking about it. in case you're wondering, nigeria came back from a 0-3 deficit to win 6-5. the tying goal at 5-5 was a diving header into the far side of the goal. the picture above is nigerian fans celebrating. see my picasaweb page to see pictures of the game and, more importantly, the cheerleaders.

a little sociological information if you want. one quarter of the stadium was dedicated to v.i.p.s and media. in the v.i.p. area there were quite a few whites and even a few indian south africans. out of the plus or minus one hundred guests it was predominantly white in that quarter. the other three quarters, which held what i estimate to be around 3000 people, had one white guy.

after the game ended, elisio and i walked to the surf contest in just enough time to catch the awards ceremony so we kept walking and watched the amateur kids riding the waves just 100 meters from where the contest had been. nearby, sabc1 (the s.a. public television channel) was doing a live bit on stuff still happening at the beach fest and i saw about 10 blokes holding a blanket with something or someone in it. i told elisio to stop and watch. a few moments later the contents of the blanket were revealed as a 50-pound african child was launched into the air (not to mention out of frame of the camera). my female intuition told me that the child had never met his launching compatriots before. this is what a candy bar and "hey kid, you wanna be on tv?" can buy you in south africa. he seriously ran away from them afterwards and grabbed onto a handrail to keep from doing it again.

so cute!