We Are Both African: a Vancouver Story

Today I had one of those experiences that to me epitomizes Vancouver, and makes me really appreciate the strange and special magic of living here.

I was waiting for a cab outside Stupid Store and started chatting to an older woman who was also waiting for a cab with her load of shopping (a skill I have inherited from my mother). We were commenting on how slow the cabs were, especially for a random Thursday afternoon and she told me she had been waiting for a while. The cabby arrived and had my name, and she still hadn’t got her cab, so I offered her mine because I hadn’t been waiting as long as her. The cabby asked us where we were going and it ended up that I was on the way to her place. So I agreed to share with her.

The cabby had to get petrol so we ended up chatting while waiting in the car for him to fill up. I asked her where she was from, because I couldn’t exactly place her accent and she told me she was originally from Somalia. I told her I was South African and she did something that touched me deeply. I was sitting in the front seat and she was sitting behind me, and she reached forward and touched my arm and said with such joy, “We’re both African!”. We got a chance to talk about home, about life in Vancouver, about the weather here, about the trouble that Africa is in. all the way home.

I never got to ask her name.

Two Recent Poems

It has been distressing me that I haven’t been doing as much creative writing as I would like (including blogging, actually). and I am debating about the Novel in a Month exercise happening in November – I think it would be a fantastic way to force to get back to writing my book. In the mean time, I have managed to eke out these two poems:

Untitled

Old ideas, like a box of silkworms under the bed.
Sadness and relief when you find them dead.

and

Oh My, Ringmaster

The lions enter the room
You wear your red coat and tall hat
like they will save you
Save you from the teeth and the claws.
You brandish your whip, so puny,
and hope to keep them at bay.

The crowd is enthralled,
They don’t see your distress,
Or know you’ve barely kept Chaos at bay.
Blinded by the cheers, and the lights, and the roars,
You begin to believe you’re in charge.

One little stumble is all that it takes –
The crowd thinks it’s all part of the show.
But how do you tell the strongmen and the clowns,
That the tall hat and coat, the whip and the voice,
Were all just your props in this show?