"...the Mountaintop of our desires..."

When Carlos from 190 had his Pikitup bin stolen, I painted mine orange and stuck multi-coloured stars and feathers and horseshoes and bells and moons and smiley faces around a large, glitzy sticker of the madonna and child. The madonna had sparks exploding into a night sky from her halo and she looked quite scary.

I hoped to ward off superstitious thieves or at least give the police something to go on. I could call the flying squad and tell them an orange bin, liberally adorned with children’s stickers and religious paraphernalia, was being wheeled somewhere in the vicinity.

It worked for a while but perhaps because of the buildup of tensions – and trash - in the weeks of the strike, on the first day Pikitup workers were back on the streets, somebody ripped the madonna from the front of the bin, apparently with some force, because the paint went too, leaving a black hole.

Contemplating the hole made me think of life lived in the Valley.  Valleys are generally considered to be places from which one looks up at the mountain in the hope of arriving there some day.  Biblical imagery is vivid. Nelson Mandela used it: “There is no easy walk to freedom… many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires….”

 So here I am in Bez Valley, still aspiring.

Eighth Avenue stretches from Queens High in Kensington to the Ellis Park Stadium, which was apparently once a vast lake. Lakes and places of worship are part of the terrain. I am surrounded by the AFM Impact Church, the New Apostolic Church, the Reformed Seventh Day Adventist Church and the towering Kensington Fellowship Church. From time to time a duck taking time out from Rhodes Park or Bruma lake, settles on its steeple.

On the Bertrams side of Eighth Avenue is the imposing Masjid-E-Muqeemus Salaat and close by, the ‘Brotherhood of the Cross and Star’ and a deconsecrated synagogue, now the home of Jungian psychologist, Marianne Nielsen.

Religion ushers in each new day when my neighbour, Ahmed, leaves for the mosque before sunrise. In all seasons, I am awoken by the revving of his car engine between 5.30 and 6.00 a.m., followed by the call to prayer. Religious sounds, symbols and celebrations are integral to my life in Bez Valley.  The Adhaan, choirs rehearsing at the crack of dawn on a Sunday, children chanting verses from the Qur’an on weekday afternoons, church bells, Christmas, Easter, Ramadan, Eid.