Justin Chapman - Saturnalia: Traveling from Cape Town to Kampala in Search of an African Utopia

THIS IS A GENUINE BARNACLE BOOK

A Barnacle Book | Rare Bird Books
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Copyright 2015 by Justin Chapman

FIRST TRADE PAPERBACK ORIGINAL EDITION

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions
thereof in any form whatsoever. For more information, address:
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453 South Spring Street, Suite 531, Los Angeles, CA 90013.

Set in Goudy Old Style
Distributed in the US by Publishers Group West

Thanks to Mary, Adam, Roslyn, and Aaron for these chapter photographs: Banana Fiber Futbol by Mary, Unnecessary Strife by Adam, The Only American and Escape from Guguletu by Roslyn, In Zanzibar Rainbows
by Aaron. A special thanks to Adam for the cover portrait.

Africa map designed by Mercedes Blackehart

ePub ISBN: 978-1940207865

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Chapman, Justin.
Saturnalia : traveling from Cape Town to Kampala in search of an African utopia / Justin Chapman.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1940207384

1. Chapman, JustinTravelAfrica. 2. Africa, CentralDescription and travel. 3. Africa, SouthernDescription and travel. 4. Heroin abuse. I. Title.

DT12.2 .C53
916/.04/3092dc23

Dedicated to Galvin and Kelsey.
And to Mercedes for giving me a second chance at life.

The person who doesnt scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

Irish proverb

Live as much as you canits a mistake not to.

Lambert Strether, The Ambassadors

I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who cant readily accept the God formula, the big answers dont remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

Charles Bukowski, LIFE ,
The Meaning of Life: The Big Picture

Contents

(ALMOST) LOCKED UP ABROAD

When a man gives up drugs he wants big fires in his life.

Hunter S. Thompson

D uring my first couple days in Africa, I was nearly imprisoned in a maximum security mental institution. The kind that a short, twenty-six-year-old white boy like me wouldnt survive in for more than a couple minutes, let alone long enough for some stiff from the American embassy to come save me.

I was already late to have breakfast with two friends I met at Riverlodge Backpackers, the hostel I was staying at in Cape Town, South Africa, which happened to be located on part of a compound that used to be an extension of Valkenburg, a notorious prison and nuthouse. In the nineties, the psychiatric hospital had been consolidated and reduced to nearly half its original size, but it still remained in operation. Riverlodge and a handful of other small businesses occupied the remaining decrepit buildings. It wasnt entirely clear where the institution ended and the tourist mecca began.

Cameron and Synnve, a strikingly gorgeous blonde couple about my age from Australia and Germany, respectively, had just moved into their new apartment near Observatory Road, on the other side of the compound. It was a long walk around, and though I had been warned many times not to enter what was left of the Valkenburg grounds, I hated being late.

Before the consolidation, the building that Riverlodge occupied and the rooms rented out to travelers like me were used to house the black inmates. Apartheid-era doctors experimented with electroshock therapy on them before performing it on the whites in the other buildings on the compound. If these walls could talk, they would choke on their screams.

Behind Riverlodge and the mental institution sat Ward 20, a still functioning maximum security prison complex full of rapists and murderers. The entire compound was called Oude Molen Eco Village, a square neighborhood block of abandoned structures with broken windows and run-down apartheid-era buildings that had been inhabited for years by a variety of businesses, such as Riverlodge, a community pool, a caf, a small convenience shop, a barber, a prop art shop, and its fair share of squatters. Roosters, chickens, horses, dogs, cats, and other animals roamed the walled-up neighborhood freely. Some windows here and there were smashed out, some had bars on them. One building still read Ward 22 on the side, rows of dark windows lining each floor. Barbed wire remained on some walls and fences. A haunting place that was trying to remain invisible while still catering to its various clientele, mostly tourists, and inhabitants.

I knew I was supposed to sign in at the front gate of the Valkenburg compound, where the businesses gave way to the hospital and prison grounds, but I decided to avoid that time-sucking mess and sneak around the back of Ward 20 and walk along the river full of stolen wall safes to a small opening in the wire fence that led to a narrow bridge. I crossed it and walked through the rest of the compound to the Station Road gate, just a couple blocks from where I was to meet Cameron and Synnve. I asked the three guards there how to get to Observatory Road, and they immediately became alarmed and demanded to know who I was and what I was doing there. Did I check in at the front gate?

yyyes I lied.

They radioed the front gate and asked, Did a young man with big black glasses and a light complexion wearing a black shirt and gray pants check in with you?

Negative, negative, came the reply.

Shit.

One of the guards said he had to walk me all the way back to the front gate and figure out the story.

I dont know if youre a patient who has escaped or what, he said.

Fuck, I wish I brought my passport.

Look, man, friends are waiting for me, I told him. Is there anywhere I could buy airtime for my phone and let them know Ill be late?

We stopped in a small shop in the middle of the grounds, but they only had Vodacom airtime, not MTN, which was the service I was using. As I was asking for airtime, however, I pulled everything out of my pockets: camera, phone, wallet, lighter, and cigarettes, making sure the guard could see. What escaped mental patient would have such items in his pockets?

It must have convinced him, because as we walked to the gate he basically gave me a free, guided tour of the compound, a service they would never have provided on request. We passed a ward with a yard that was surrounded by an electrical fence. About thirty patients roamed the open-air yard, one white patient sitting silent and still in the corner, not making eye contact with anyone.

In this ward the inmates and patients fight each other every single day, the guard told me. If I get a job inside the ward I couldnt wear a tie like this. He nervously stroked his striped, black and red state-issued silk fastened snugly around his neck. A patient would grab it and choke me. If a patient attacks a guard, the guard cant fight back or hell get arrested.