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On this rainy Cape day, The Spaza shop, Love Africa Carnival note of affection#6 comes with sunlit kisses from writer, poet, reviewer, Michelle McGrane who was born in Zimbabwe and grew up in Malawi. Michelle has lived in South Africa since 1988 and has published two collections of poetry, Fireflies & Blazing Stars (2002) and Hybrid (2003).
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The Spaza shop
Michelle McGraneToday, before a blistered billboard
advertising safe sex,
the Spaza shop
hums under the shifting sky;
sunlight slants through a crack
in the buckled blue roof.
Mabrrr belts out Vulindlela
on the portable radio
near carefully arranged
boxes of cigarettes,
Lion matches, Surf powder,
warm Coca-Cola cans
and a half-dozen speckled eggs.Outside, a smiling barefoot girl
sweeps patterns in the dry earth
and chatters away
to a woman in a red beret
selling bright piles of sweets
from an upturned beer crate.
An old man sits on a bucket
in the green shade of a banana tree,
tapping his feet,
sipping hot sweet tea,
gazing into the distance,
opaque eyes lost in memories.Walking along the dusty path,
hips swaying, plastic shoes scuffing,
a young woman holds her baby,
stroking his head as she sings
a childhood lullaby,
pausing halfway to greet her brother,
the whistling vegetable man.
Running with wire toy cars,
two small shirtless boys follow,
happy to play
on this noisy summer afternoon
till mothers call them home at twilight.
Spaza shop: a small informal business, often operating from a home or shack in a township, which sells a limited supply of everyday household items.
Mabrrr: Brenda Fassie, a deceased South African singer, also known as ‘The Madonna of the Townships’.
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Algeria's Way
Drinking from the Dragon's Well
September 17th, 2008 @08:20 #
Lion Matches & Madonna of the Townships ... the Lion Match box is such a classic design and one I grew up with, there is always and always has been a box of Lion Matches near to light summer braais, winter fires, cigarettes, candles (excuse my ignorance, I don't know the history of the company, is it only a South African brand?)
Reading up on the Madonna of the Townships, I found this in a 2005 IOL news article :
"A year after Cape Town's controversial pop diva Brenda Fassie died amid a national outpouring of grief, her grave lies forgotten.
The plot in Langa cemetery where she was buried after her death on May 9 is covered in grass and small weeds. The "Madonna of the Townships" and her parents were all buried there.
Even on Mothers Day last Sunday, which brought many families to the Langa cemetery, no one came to tidy up Fassie's overgrown last resting place.
The grave, a few kilometres from her former home in Makana Square, is unmarked and there is no headstone. The wooden crosses that were put up to mark the grave, with dates of births and deaths of the Fassie family, have decayed and broken into pieces. "
I wonder if it has changed since then?