Jaz & Miguel

Jaz & Miguel

By R. D. Raven

A dream pulled the Sangoma from her slumber like a hand ripping the
heart of a sacrificial cow. A dream which now had her trembling and quivering
and shiny with sweat like a child who had just seen a
tokoloshe
; trembling
not
from the swirling
winds and raging storm that encircled the kraal, banging their fists against
her hut; but trembling with actual
fear
of what
was to come. She screamed out in dreadful agony, her eyes wide and fixed on the
thrashing rains and glowing lightning outside her door.

A devil was on his way.

A devil more evil than any tokoloshe had ever been, because this
devil would wear a smile. A devil with frizzled red-brown hair that sprung out
like uneven thatch; and big glasses on his eyes.

Worse than a devil.

A liar.

Like
the
Green Lake Itch
, Jaz Curtis had suddenly felt the need to cleanse herself of the
Seattle air she'd been wading in for the last seventeen (soon to be eighteen)
years of her life. It had been only a few months since she'd finished school
and her best friend, Rae, had already signed up for cheerleading tryouts at
UW
(cheerleading never having been Jaz's thing), attended three house parties,
found a boyfriend, and (God forbid) even started hanging out at Starbucks at The
Village.

Jaz, on the other hand, had read three non-fiction books and was now
working at a clothing store on Pine Street to save up for her upcoming trip.

So much had changed.

Cheerleading aside (Jaz really hated the fucking sport, although she
confessed it was probably because she was neither very athletic nor very
blonde—not blonde at all, actually, but auburn—so maybe she'd felt a bit
threatened by the bleached geniuses of the pompom), Jaz and Rae had been BFFs
and done everything together since way back when in Junior High. For the last
two years (since Jaz had gotten her license) they'd almost always hung out at
Bauhaus Books and Coffee after school (also on Pine Street, and where they even
sold Ding Dongs) and sipped on Americanos while sneaking in some homework in
between the much more important tasks of people-watching and commenting on the
barista's ass (which, admittedly, had been more frequent in the beginning when
there'd been this real cute one there—but he'd since moved on).

As Jaz sipped her coffee now, trying to find some joy in the
seriously lacking quality of derrières today, she figured that she and Rae had
probably started drifting apart when Jaz first told her about her desire to
participate in the International Human Rights Exchange Program ("IHRE",
pronounced
ayree,
like a Jamaican) at Wits University in Johannesburg
. Although it was easier to say that they'd drifted apart simply
because they'd finally graduated high school, that had simply been an
acceptable excuse for the inevitable deterioration of their friendship into
what it had become today: nothing.

Well, not really nothing. Jaz had called her a few times—in the
beginning, when Rae still hadn't settled into college life—and Rae acted
surprised and said,
Hey, how are you? Gosh, long time no talk. Yeah, um,
well, things have been SO hectic you know
.

When Jaz first told her of her desire to go to (of all places!)
South Africa, Rae had said,
Are you out of your fucking mind?! Do you know
they rape people there?! Do you actually watch the news?!

She did watch the news. But she was going anyway.

Now, with High School finally gone, so was Rae.

But Rae was still her best friend (even if only nominally for now).
A friendship like that doesn't just
end
. And Jaz knew that as soon as
she also got into college life after returning from South Africa (assuming
she'd have decided on a major by then) that she and Rae would start hanging out
together again and doing all the things they'd always done together while
growing up. This was just a phase. Surely things would eventually work
themselves out.

Convincing Jaz's dad had been hard as well. Her mom had been easier.
She'd been a serious hippie in her day, fighting for human rights and equality
for women and all that stuff. Sure, her mom was slightly concerned about Jaz's safety,
but the program looked safe enough. She'd stay in a dorm on campus and all the
students would get briefed about security before they left. Jaz promised she'd
update them on a blog she created specifically for this.

She told them:
It's going to be a blog because I suck at email
and because I want to look back at this and remember it; and the time
difference is like nine hours so don't expect me to call that often! And I'll
make it private—the blog, I mean—so only you and dad ... and Rae, of course ...
can look at it.

She set it all up (
jazinsa.blogspot.com
) and explained to her
mom what a blog is and how it works and how to post comments. She set it up so
that her mom and dad would get notified by email (the
only
thing she was willing to have to do with email) whenever she posted
something—oh, and Rae as well, of course.

Rae thought the idea was cool and set up her own blog:
raeinseattle.blogspot.com
. Hers turned out to be more of a video blog though, and then a
photo blog. There are videos of High Vs and Low Vs and Touchdowns on there, as
well a few drunken sophomores in mini-skirts with shirtless guys hanging above
them ....

Oh, brother.
 

In a way, maybe Jaz's folks had been relieved. Jaz had never wanted
to go to college. She was never sure what she wanted to do. Before telling them
about the IHRE
program, they'd already agreed to let
her have the year off. They'd said that maybe it would be good for her to work
awhile and gain some experience and see what it's like to be an adult. Although
the IHRE program wouldn't necessarily count as a credit to her major (when she
finally decided what to major
in
), they were sure the experience would
be good for her, and that it would look good on a résumé.

When she'd seen the article in the
P-I
that day six months before graduation, it had been like
a godsend, like she'd been meant to find it. That's how she felt about it at
least.

It was an article about another girl from UW who'd done the program.
Jaz tracked her down (the reason Jaz didn't have a Facebook account herself was
for this very reason) and then spoke to her (at Starbucks of all places)
.
But, in all honesty, even if Jaz hadn't met with the girl, she would've gone
anyway.

"Refill?" The barista's comment pulled her out of her
trance. She realized she'd been staring at the page of her book—
South
Africa: A History of the Land and its People
—all the
while daydreaming.

"Sure," she said, holding out her cup.

"Looks like a nice book," he commented.

He had pimples, and scraggly hair, but he was polite enough. "Uh,
yeah," she replied. "I'm going there in a few months. July, actually."

"Ha, cool," he said with a half-giggle-half-choke that
made him look like a cross between Beavis and Apu (she could never remember his
last name) from the Simpsons. After an awkward moment, he moved on.

July. That was five months away. Her plan was to cram in as much
study about South Africa as possible before leaving. She'd read three books
about it already—everything from Sangomas to Ladysmith Black Mambazo (a group
that sang in a genre called
mbube.
Actually, she'd also learned that the
song,
The Lion Sings Tonight
, was also an
mbube
song).  And all that during lunch-breaks, evenings, and
Wednesdays—her only day off.

The IHRE program had one Spring Break in the middle of it (Spring
starting in September down there—weird, she knew) and it was only ten days
long. She was determined to go to Cape Town, Durban, Mpumalanga, The Kruger
National Park,
everywhere
. But ten days would not be enough.
So she figured
maybe she'd stay on a little
longer after the program was over. Her parents would give her some money for
the Spring Break, but not for any other "vacation" plans. This is why
she was working (well, that and the fact she was bored out of her skull half
the time, waiting).

She wanted to be prepared. I mean, she hadn't told them about any of
her vacation plans yet. She just said that she was (almost) eighteen and wanted
to get a job to start saving up some money—be a grown up and stuff.

They lapped it up.

But something about South Africa had called her there, of that she
was sure. She thought maybe it had been the front-page story in the P-I about
those bums they'd bulldozed out of
The Jungle
—enough bad news about poverty and pain to
make anyone want to do some good in the world—but deep down she sensed it
wasn't.

Or perhaps it had just been ….

The truth is, she didn't know herself. Just as she hadn't known what
she was going to study after leaving school, she couldn't explain whatever was
calling her to this foreign land in the middle of nowhere, of which the only
thing she knew was that, at least once upon a time they had been
supremely
racist, and that they'd held a Soccer World Cup there recently. (She knew
nothing about soccer, but she and Rae had agreed that the US team
definitely
won in the number-of-hotties-per-team area. And there was also that
Ronaldo guy from Portugal. Ah, and that Beckham dude—England, was it? Yum. She
amazed herself at remembering all their names, but some things are important to
remember).

There'd been a picture of an elephant as part of that P-I article
(the one about the IHRE program, not the bums). That had perked her interest.
But that wasn't what had called her either. She looked at the book she was
reading, flipping through some of the pages, looking at its cover. There was a
picture of Cape Town's Table Mountain on it, and clouds that rolled over it like
a comforter. In some of the other books she'd read, there were photos of a
place called God's Window—a view from a mountain that stretched on forever. There
was the Kimberley Hole where diamonds were mined; Gold from Johannesburg and a
place called Gold Reef City where you could even go and see them smelt the
stuff right in front of your eyes and walk down in the mine shafts; there were
the Sudwala Caves and Pilgrim's Rest where people had flocked in the 1800s
because of the gold-rush; there were the Drakensberg mountains which sometimes
filled up so thick with fog that about the only thing you could see was your
hand; there were kraals and ancestral spirits; and not to mention the giraffes,
springbucks, kudus, impalas, lions, hyenas, cheetahs, leopards, elephants—

It struck her, as it had struck her several times before (but she
still needed reminding of it every now and then): it was the land that was
calling her.

The land itself.

Africa.