Where have all the men gone?
I recently spent a week on holiday with some friends in a small house across the Umzimvubu River from the little town of Port St Johns. It was an incredible place: the quickest way into town was a walk along the beach to the river's mouth, then a quick ferry ride across the river into town.
The town was a bustling place: there were something like six supermarkets - some bigger, some smaller - and some healthy competition.
One place proudly portrayed itself as "the poor man's friend'; another, on the other side of the taxi rank, insisted that it was ‘the REAL poor man's friend’.
There were some quirks as well: though many people were without electricity (including ourselves in our holiday house), you couldn't buy a drop of gas anywhere in town. And despite a huge billboard advertising full-cream milk in the central market, we only managed to find milk in one of the supermarkets!
We visited the local Anglican Church of the Epiphany on the Sunday, a reasonably high-church affair, with sung Xhosa liturgy. We had an English prayer book and could largely follow along.
There was a noticeable absence of men in the church. Apart from the presiding minister and his two assistants, there were only two other men in the entire congregation.
I've noticed the same thing in many South African churches - the men are nowhere to be found. I often ask where they are, and most people answer simply, "the shebeen (bar)".
We spent one afternoon climbing one of the mountains overshadowing the town.
We'd been told by many reliable sources in the town that there was a track up, but the reality was less convincing.
We lost any vague semblance of a track after about 500 metres, and what followed was a bush-bash through fairly dense subtropical forest. Monkeys lurked in the trees, stinging trees ravaged our skin, and vines tangled us beyond recognition.
But when we broke out of the bush, the view was incredibly rewarding.
Our target had been a massive blank billboard that looked down over the town (South Africa is an advertiser's paradise) and we were not disappointed once we reached the top.
