Jaz & Miguel (10 page)

Wow
. Jaz had just learned something.

Sadly, this only had the opposite effect on Thandie's potential
entertainment via the Kindle, because Jaz now found herself looking up a lot
more words than before, thereby slowing Thandie's reading enjoyment down to a
screeching halt.

Jaz also soon learned that Thandie spoke five languages: Xhosa,
Zulu, Sotho, Afrikaans and English. Apparently, this was not even such a
jaw-dropping fact but a pretty average number for many black South Africans.

Jaz really wished she had paid more attention in French (or in
English for that matter).

But Thandie had struck a nerve. Jaz gave her the Kindle and faded
into thought.

Words
. Words could change the world.
Strung together in the right arrangements and hung up for everyone to see they
could bring about entire revolutions. They could incite people to action, lull
them to inaction, or simply infuse them with a hope and sense of dignity that
they had for so long lost.
She thought of MLK, Mandela,
JFK, Lincoln, George Washington's Inaugural Address and Eisenhower's
Chance
for Peace
. She thought of Mark Twain's
Votes for Women
and Eleanor
Roosevelt with the
Adoption of the Declaration of Human Rights
.

She thought of Hitler.

Words
. They were powerful, and
dangerous. Constructive, and capable of an obliteration more deadly than any
atom bomb ever launched. Had it not been words that had started the First World
War—or the Second? Wouldn't an order to attack be required before an attack
could be made?

Jaz looked over at Miguel, still sleeping, a rivulet of drool falling
from his lip and onto his shirt. She got up instinctively and wiped it off with
her shirt. As she did it, she thought of a few words for him:
Kind, gentle, sexy,
mysterious
.

Lonely.

Afraid.

Hurt.

And she thought of one more word, one that described how she was
beginning to feel about him.

Could it really be?

It was that afternoon (after what Miguel termed "the most
roundabout of roundabout trips to Rustenburg ever"), when they finally
arrived at Camp Inkululeko (the Zulu and Xhosa word for
Freedom
) that
Jaz felt she had fully and truly arrived in Africa.

She faced the landscape spreading behind the road. There was nothing
but hills and land, rolling and tumbling and stretching forward into a curved
horizon, not a smoking chimney in sight, not a single sound of the city to be
heard. She noted the red sand on the main road and remembered a movie with
Leonardo DiCaprio (
Blood Diamond
, that's right) where
they'd said something about the sand being red from all the blood that had been
spilled. Until now, she'd always thought that was simply something Hollywood
had said to make the movie sound cooler.

As they stepped off the bus, a horde of children wearing clothing in
various states of disarray swarmed over to them, shouting in jubilation and
tugging at the students' legs. Stefan, the German guy, was damn near knocked
off his feet, keeping his balance just barely while trying to maintain a knapsack
on his right shoulder. Maxine held onto his arm (so Jaz figured they must've
started dating meanwhile).

One child in particular—a tiny girl of maybe six or seven years old,
in a white shirt with holes, but a carrying a smile that would melt lead—clung
to Jaz's leg and stared up at her. Jaz bent down and said hello. The girl
giggled, then looked up, broad-smiled and wide-eyed, at Thandie, then at Jaz
while chewing on her nail, and then she ran off again.

Their professor, Mr. Patel, explained that the children were part of
a local school and many of them lived around the area. The next day, the IHRE
students would be waking up early in the morning to walk to school with them to
get a feel for what it was like to live in this area.

A hand on the small of her back made her heart speed up and her skin
warm. It was Miguel's. He smiled when she looked at him and then turned her
toward the camp. In the center of it was a nondescript building of whitewashed
walls and a thatched roof. On her left, however, something that she would
thereafter never forget, caught her eye.

Two baby cats that looked like leopards sat behind a chain-link
fence looking at her, their eyes never leaving her as she walked with Miguel by
her side toward them. Behind the baby cats, in the distance, and standing with
its side to her but looking at her directly, was an older, sleeker animal, also
of the same family—probably the mother.

"Is that a leopard?" asked Jaz.

"No, this is a cheetah. Look"—he took her closer to the
fencing and they knelt down next to the little ones—"see the black tear
marks running down their eyes and on the sides of their noses? That's what
gives it away. Leopards don't have that. These are cheetahs, the fastest land
animals on earth, running up to 110 kilometers an hour in a chase."

Hadn't she read something about this in one of her many books? Then
again, many times Jaz would read something only to find the entire thing gone from
her memory only a few weeks later (sometimes even
hours
). Most notably
non-fiction books (although Shakespeare had also been a problem—all she could
remember about that was "wherefore art thou").

"And here I thought I knew all there was to know about this
place from all those books I read. How fast is that in miles?" she asked.

Miguel shrugged, and thought for a second. "Fucking fast!"

She laughed.

"It's just a little below the maximum speed allowed on a South
African highway. No idea what it is in miles."

Jaz was fascinated, and moved to put her finger in the fencing so
she could touch the adorable little guys.

"Whoa!" said Miguel, clutching her fingers in his. "Firstly,
that thing will probably bite you if you stick your finger in there. And
secondly, look." He pointed to a sign. ELECTRIC FENCING.

Yikes.

"I'm not sure if the electric fencing is for the animals, or to
prevent dumb Americans from getting their fingers eaten off."

"Hey!" This time, when she hit him, it was not flirting.
She whacked him,
hard
. And she could tell by his
grimace that he'd felt it. But she'd felt it too, her wrist now aching like
mad. "There's more where that came from if you don't watch it!" she
said to him, pointing at him with the index finger of the hand she hadn't hit
him with (the other being too sore to hold up).

Miguel raised his hands in defense, but with a smirk on his face. "Sorry,"
he muttered.

"You'd better be!" And now she
was
flirting ... but
only a little.

The camp host's name was Johan (pronounced
Yohahn
). He was a
tall man with blue eyes and short hair.
From his accent,
she could tell he was Afrikaans (he sounded a bit like Elize). He showed the
students to their rooms: a series of thatched-roof chalets which housed six
each. (Well, they called them chalets although Jaz realized that the South
African idea of a chalet was not the same as the US one—they were basically
large rooms). Each one had a shower, but he warned everyone that the water did
tend to get cold after a certain number of showers.

Maxine asked, "How many?"

Johan laughed and said, "You'll find out in the morning. You
know what they say, the early bird gets the hot shower."

A lame joke, but Maxine's roll of the eyes made Jaz give out a laugh—as
well as Miguel, although he had been a little more diplomatic about it,
sheltering his chuckle by turning around quickly.

They were allowed to pick their own roommates so Jaz picked Thandie,
Candy and Maxine. Another girl, Nita Kapur, was the last to form part of their
group. There being seventeen girls in total, it meant they'd have an extra bed
(and more chances of a hot shower). Nita had the most incredibly straight, black
hair that Jaz had ever seen, reaching down to just below her waist, not a
strand out of place, and glistening in the sun. Her body was small and petite
and she was well-spoken—not arrogant but sounding very intelligent with a calm,
poised air about her; and an inviting smile. Her eyes were deep and dark.
Normally Jaz felt threatened by people that looked like her, and suddenly she
got the idea that maybe she wasn't threatened by a
look
at all, but by
an
attitude
—an attitude which Nita didn't have.

Sandile and Miguel liked Stefan's accent so they picked him. Then
there was a British guy with matted black hair and glasses that nobody had
really spoken to which ended up in their group as well. An African guy who Jaz
didn't know the name of finished up the guys' room because there were only
eleven boys in total, so they also had an extra bed.

They were all given thirty minutes to unpack and then they'd have a
class on
Human Rights and the Media
in that nondescript room in the
middle of the camp.

When Jaz walked into their room, she heaved in a deep whiff of the
thatched-roof scent that permeated it, held it in, and then exhaled. "Wow,"
she said. Maxine had been more interested in the quality of the beds (three
bunks) and Candy had not particularly noticed the earthen aroma in their room
either.

"Nice, isn't it?" said Thandie.

And it was; it was indeed "nice." It was more than nice.
It was .... She took another deep whiff of it.

Wow!

The floor was tiled with an interesting slate-looking substance
which she couldn't name. Maxine said the beds were too hard but when Jaz felt one
she figured it was fine. It was no luxury bed, but she didn't think she'd get
back pain from it. Candy was afraid of heights so she chose one of the bottom
bunks. Maxine was afraid of bugs so she took the top. Thandie didn't
particularly mind, and neither did Nita, so Jaz took the top bunk, thinking
about how she would be looking up at that tapering roof that evening before
going to bed and wondering if she would ever fall asleep, wanting to soak in
every minute detail of every perception of the upcoming ten days.

Maxine ran to the bathroom and complained about the lack of cupboard
space, then quickly took up most of it with her make-up and accessories. The
bathroom was actually quite elegant, having a brass faucet and beige vessel
sink made of stone that looked like it belonged in a five-star hotel.

It crossed Jaz's mind that five girls in one room might mean she'd
have to get up two hours earlier to be ready on time. But Jaz didn't care about
any of that. For her, there was only that aroma—that sweet, dusty aroma of
thatch. She couldn't get enough of it.

Later they went to their first class in the meeting hall at the
center of the camp. The interior was equally as nondescript as the exterior
with nothing but a few plastic chairs to sit on (which hurt Jaz's ass), some
desks, and a whiteboard upfront.

The class had been pretty boring for the most part and Jaz's mind
had drifted toward the world outside when what seemed like an altercation perked
up her interest. When she looked up, she saw it was the African guy who'd taken
the fifth bed at Miguel's room, arguing with Stefan. It seemed that Stefan was
being singled out as a Nazi because he was German.

Jaz wriggled uncomfortably in her seat.

It only took a few seconds for a bunch of other guys to gang up on
Stefan, the latter participants seeming even less informed than the first, but
no less willing to froth at the mouth with insults. Mr. Patel tried to calm
everyone down but it all got quickly out of hand. One of the guys stood up and threatened
Stefan physically. Finally, Stefan also stood (after Maxine so eloquently
shouted out, "You guys are so fucking
stoopid!
") He was not particularly upset, but said that putting all
Germans in a category because of one lunatic (who was actually Austrian, he also
pointed out) was no different than what that same lunatic had done to the Jews before
and during the Second World War.

Some things were said in a language Jaz didn't understand and she
began to wonder why exactly some of these people had chosen to do this course
if they didn't seem too interested in the human rights of others, but only of
their own. And that's exactly what it felt like. It's as if some of them had
missed the boat on the "human" part of "human rights." It's
not "German Rights" or "African Rights" or anything like
that—but the rights of
all
.

She made a note (she'd started carrying a notebook) to mention that
to someone, somewhere, at some stage.

Stefan was surprisingly composed in his speech, fielding the insults
and attacks like he'd heard them all his life, although Maxine (who was sitting
at a desk next to him) had started to pout and folded her arms and was now
looking out into the grass outside.

Miguel and Sandile, on the other hand, sat casually (if not boredly)
observing the fray as if they were looking at a bunch of animals in a zoo,
Sandile chewing on a pencil and Miguel leaning back in his chair. When Miguel
saw her, he lifted his eyebrows and raised his palms up in the air as if to
say,
What the fuck?

Things lightened up when an African girl (who'd clearly had enough
of the babbling from her local compatriots) stood up and angrily shouted something
to the guy who'd started all the taunting. When the guy had the audacity to question
her, five other African girls stood up like some gang and suppressed his voice
like howling hyenas. Thandie also joined in.

Jaz snickered. She liked the idea of strong women putting an idiotic
man in his place.

The perpetrator quickly sat down, murmuring what were probably
sulking insults from underneath his breath.

Stefan (along with everyone else who didn't speak the language) looked
confused, until one of the African girls said, "Stefan, we love you baby.
Ignore this stupid racist!"

"Yes, we love you Stefan!" said another African girl.

Stefan blushed.