You & Me & Everyone We Should Know

Gaborone's #1 Ladies Opera House has gone through several reincarnations in order to stay relevant and make a meaningful contribution to the Gaborone social scene. The most recent being the introduction of a Farmer’s Market of sorts. The affair is rustic and laidback, it allows for artisan makers of foods to come share their wares in a loosely arranged bunch of tables. The atmosphere is chummy as everyone casts a lazy eye over their neighbour’s wares while chatting to a customer or two.

This is exactly what the night market, called You and Me and Everyone We Know, is like. The difference is that this market is all the way in Cape Town and that it features an arty serving of wares. You might run into social and youth lifestyle journalist Maria McCloy with her collection of vintage clothes mainly for women, and some accessories and African print hats and caps by Babatunde, or Yang Zhao serving Chinese dumplings, with Dj Soulo Starr gracing the decks with an eclectic set of breaks from jazz standards that fuelled a thousand Hip hop songs you probably never heard of. The venue is in the courtyard of an independent cinema called The Labia Theatre on Orange Street in Cape Town’s City Bowl. The whole deal is a real Voltron of art, music, friends, strangers, niche lifestyle choices and recycling of many clothes and accessories that need a new pretty young thing to pimp out.

Malibongwe ‘Mali’ Tyilo, originator of fashion blog site Skattie, What Are You Wearing? is on hand with a cocktail (from Rudie’s bar set up next to the Piiimp Dumplings cooking on hot plates one and two) a camera and a quick smile to snap interesting stuff for his blog or inspiration towards his other job a fashion buyer for Woolworths South Africa. “You know... things happen,” responds Mali to a question about a dinner he was supposed to host that evening. Another fashion stylista is Zolitah Magengelele the former fashion buyer is now making fresh for Danish publications on the regular, ”I’d love to come to Botswana to do story!” she says seriously in response to an idle query about doing just that.

Back at the Piiimp dumpling stand Yang laughs, “Oh I just sold them, for ten rand more!” She had promised me her last dumplings but chose to make a profit instead. Yang then buys a round of tequilas from Rudie to soothe the issue. “Capitalist shit babes!” Yang says again something her piimp in crime Maphuti Morule backs up. Besides hooking up the only hot snacks table at the night market the ladies (along with Anthea Knows Best Poulos – don’t ask) make up Pii-imp Rap Crew, real designation unknown but consider them rappers and they are hot.

“The night market is a space to feature some fashion and art and to get people talking to stimulate some debate... while also making some money,” said market organiser Adel Snyders earlier in the day when the trestle tables and fashion racks were being assembled. The adoring public all find something to get into with one excited trio of young black and fabulous twenty something’s squealing, “This is SO Martha!” when they picked up some vintage shades; just to clarify, they meant Martha their friend not the international queen of middle class American genteel entertaining and dinning accessories, Martha Stewart. That would just be too good, but go on tell You and Me and Everyone we Know all about it.

Opening image from Mali.

Jou mas se Kaapstad

Dropping into Cape Town has always been emotional for me, even the first time I ever went there with a bus load of strangers. We were confronted by a drug sniffing police dog at a rest stop in one of the mountain passes about an hour out of Cape Town. Where we come from we have never used dogs against people (unless the person jumped over your fence when we were sleeping at night) so it was quite a rude awakening to have an animal be a potential accuser. Where we come from, an animal has never accused a human being... it’s always the other way around. Welcome to Cape Town.

Be that as it may that MILF, Cape Town, had taken my nesting virginity soon after I got there, this was the city where I had first decided to break my nomadic tendencies; got my first creative job; worked for the first time in a service industry; experienced institutionalised racism where people where so unaware you’d think they considered it their privilege; fought the system in a long sustained war...and lost; almost met my wife; fell in love again and again... and again.

The good the bad and the fuckin’ ugly all visited me in Cape Town in equal amounts. I lived to tell the tale, not totally unscathed even though I smiled through most of it. Boy did I pay, if trading in all the notebooks documenting your life and next generation ideas count as payment. A huge blue trunk with my sister’s name is lurking around that city somewhere, in it there used to be books from my grandfather’s study, books from different parts of the world that had made the journey with me to the Motherless City, film negatives spanning my life until I was 12 or 13 years old... I could go on, however I’d rather not since I am trying to feel like it wasn’t too big a price to pay.

But you know I got some change back from the Cape Town... so I really shouldn’t feel too badly about the difference. What was the change...? That’s about 60 rolls of undeveloped film documenting my life from when I was barely legal to when I was old enough to know better. Who knows what has survived the decade long storage, it will be interesting to find out. That was the coins, as for the notes... I got to keep friendships that have survived the distance, the different paths our lives have taken... and now, new friendships as well. One in particular stands out, something began in cyber space and finally “consummated” in Cape Town with a physical meeting after a year or so.

One more fantastic bit of priceless is just the old Cape ways, they don’t seem to have left after all despite the flashy new buildings. The community spirit which just wells up and sprouts selflessness, or botho in the Tswana way not the oft dissected but never quite defined ubuntu. I spent time with Maria Podesta just doing “manly things” like setting up her trestle table and randomly filling her vintage clothes on her rack for the You Me & Everyone We Know night market. It turned out to be a good thing too since she hooked me up with a Babatunde trilby, something I had always wanted since I saw it on Tiisetso’s blog yonks ago. There it was that thing that kept me in the Cape for all those years, something I wondered why a gang of people wanted to exploit in the most negative way possible. That feeling that you could actually work for fresh air because it felt good doing it and the fulfilment couldn’t quite be paid for in cash... though a Babatunde did the job quite nicely thank you.