The parallel consciousness of self and surroundings... is the key to transforming mentalities and reshaping societies.” -

Edouard Glisant


Thursday 14 July 2011

Poverty in Bez Valley

On an average Friday, the day that the Pikitup truck collects, the sound of hawkers and vendors pushing their carts or stolen supermarket trolleys full of bits and pieces to the local dump for whatever few cents they can get for waste starts in the early hours of the  morning.
There are different sounds depending on the vehicles used; which supermarket the trolleys originate from perhaps; or the nature of the goods: The clunk-clunk-clunk of metal waste; the high-pitched clinking sound of glass bottles; and the thud of a mixed bag of goods. The visuals of the trolleys, and their owners, demand their own, separate exploration.
I am not attuned to the nuances of these sounds. I am trying to listen to them in a new way. I am inclined to lump them together under the umbrella of poverty and desolation.

The noises made by the trolleys or carts or makeshift conveyors of goods are usually - almost always - accompanied by the sound of coughing and spitting. I don’t actually hear the phlegm splattering onto the pavement but I imagine it. I have become over-sensitive to spitting after I saw some bloodstained phlegm on the pavement.

It lay in a strange shape like the Tarot card for sorrow in some packs, or a child's sticker of a broken heart, or the shattered skull of a misguided bird that has flown into glass thinking it is sky.

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