Pondokkie chronicles: Shifting urbanism of migrants on the pavement
by Ansa Liebenberg - 5 January 2013

 I fall asleep long after you have left, in the early hours of the morning. When Cath phones at 8 a.m. she senses that I am groggy. I need a slow start to the day, doing mundane things like putting washing in the machine, your unpaired socks disappearing into the cycle. More coffee and Chris de Burgh in the background:  “Separate Tables” – I think about you in the morning…

Cath fetches me at 11. I fiddle with the slow talking “Telmap Navigator” on my phone. I can never figure out this bit of technology, but it actually gets us through the inner city maze to Main Street in the Maboneng precinct. “Arts-on-Main is closed until next week”, the Zim-looking security guard tells us. He speaks in a measured, quiet voice.  

The Little Ethiopian Café opens while we linger. A few unpretentious tables and chairs are sprawled inside and a spicy aroma wafts through the air. The stocky cinnamon-skinned Ethiopian owner carries a small table and two chairs onto the pavement where another two cinnamon-skinned compatriots are already in deep conversation. The greyness of the day  absorbs the concrete and steel of the rejuvenated building and enfolds space and people in a feeling of vulnerability. A dark woman in canary yellow walks past pulling a suitcase. She is chatting to a man in white walking next to her. They are quick-stepped and purposeful – the only way to survive the shifting urbanism of our adopted Jozi where the migrant hues spill onto pavements, where guttural sounds of African languages barter and bargain in collective encounters, reshaping the meaning of being…  

   

Cath and I also refer to ourselves as migrants in this city of gold. There’s no permanence in being here, hence our reference to our small rented spaces as “pondokkies”. Pondokkies in tree-lined suburbs: Cath’s with a birdlife on her balcony and mine with the huge walnut tree greeting me when I walk up the stairs to the front door that is actually a back door entering into the kitchen. Grandmothers in makeshift homes from home…

Google “free dictionary” explains pondokkie as:

Pondok [ˈpɒndɒk], pondokkie [pɒnˈdɒkɪ] n (Fine Arts & Visual Arts / Architecture) (in Southern Africa) a crudely made house built of tin sheet, reeds, etc. [from Malay pondók leaf house]

Every time I come back from Durban, spoiled by the sprawling garden and expansive views of my Carrington Heights house I feel claustrophobic for a while. Then work kicks in and I need no more than the one bedroom, books and lock-up-and-go. I barely need a kitchen – the stove is ornamental, the kettle virtually the only appliance used continuously and the microwave sporadically there for two-minute noodles or something frozen. Migrant life at pondokkie, chronicled for our grandchildren... as a gift to living the vibrancy of each encounter: unpaired socks do not have to be matched to fit…