Amnesia

Getting to the Sandton licensing department in Marlboro was effortless. She has been here
before. Unfortunately, at first, she doesn't know that she has been here before. Two years had
lapsed since that night that she had lost her wallet (and with it, her driver's license card). Had
this knowledge been accessible to her before she hit the highway, she could have saved herself
some time.

Her mind works in strange ways. She is a highly educated woman but her abilities in the arts of
practical living are sometimes found to be lacking. But one can sympathise with her
forgetfulness on this particular matter. She hates losing things. Losing her wallet was an
upsetting experience that, for a while, had been mercifully buried somewhere deep within. She
hates losing in general, and during that harsh winter of 2007, she had stumbled into an
infatuation that would turn out to be totally unrequited. It is even possible, this country being
what it is, that the man in question didn't think of her as a woman. On the night she lost her
wallet, she had gotten rather drunk so he could be forgiven for not thinking of her as a lady. A
few days after that party, she had applied for a new license card, new credit cards, a new medical
aid card. All that hassle, forgotten! This is why she is rarely unhappy. She has these bouts of
profound forgetfulness to thank for her contentment.

The object of her infatuation, a young man desperate to shed his skin, had arranged a dinner in
Melville. He was new to Johannesburg and this mess of a suburb must have seemed to him a
classless haven. She never tells him this, but she has quite a history with Melville. This must be
the beauty of not straying too far from home in adulthood – to be able to walk all over your
foolishness and lust and ambition and heartbreak – to retrace the geography of your heart – and
not fall. To walk past that spot that used to be The Bassline (In Music We Trust), where blk
sonshine performed one night (‘soul smile’) and one man was discarded for another. And then
past Soi, where the chosen man wanted to dump her but lost the nerve – only to find it weeks
later. Past the small Greek restaurant where she tried to steal someone else’s man. To walk
through it all as if nothing ever happened suggested to her that she might have come a long way.

A security man helps her to park her car. She is convinced she has all the necessary documents
for her renewal application. The only outstanding thing, she reckons, is to take some ID-sized
pictures. She even made sure to call the department in advance to check exactly how much she
needs to pay and whether the office accepts card payments. They don't. On her way here, she
had stopped at a garage to withdraw some cash. You see, all is not lost on the practical front. She
has moments of administrative brilliance. She asks the security man where photographs can be
taken. There is always such a place close to a licensing or home affairs department. He directs
her to a field a few meters from the office. She decides to walk there.

It is slightly chilly. She is wearing a bright red scarf over a black V-necked top. Her hair is loose,
but it is not as severely flat-ironed as it was last week, so it doesn't blow too carelessly in the
wind. She clutches her bag. She is usually confident that she can blend in safely anywhere. But
this is Marlboro, a stone's throw from Alexandra. Of late, she has been thinking about
developing what she calls her 'physical courage'. Being so close to Alex, she is engulfed by a thin
layer of apprehension that she can't shake off. As she walks, she tries to imagine what she looks
like to others. She feels good, strong, fit. She has some muscle tone these days. She still hasn't
decided if this development diminishes her in some way. You let your hair grow, lose weight,
what's next - a husband?
In a small open field, perhaps an unoccupied property, she finds a few stalls serving a diversity
of needs. There is a mobile food stall. She is feeling the first pangs of hunger. She doesn't bother
to look at the board above the stall to see what's on the menu. She knows she won't go there.
There is a woman selling airtime. It is not clear to her why there are so many airtime vendors.
Why do people need to be sold airtime at every corner, every outlet, through every channel? Are
people being constantly seized by airtime emergencies? Two men are running the photo
operations. There is a male client standing next to her. He is also laden with traffic department
documents. He chats to the photo guys.
"Where are you from?"
"Ga-Molepo." Or something like that. The men speak Sepedi. They are straight from Limpopo.
Young men are still leaving their villages in Limpopo to settle amongst their Sepedi-speaking
brethren on the margins of affluent suburbs in Johannesburg. This has been going on for too
long now.
A white couple in an old, well-preserved Mercedes approach the photo stall and ask for the
price. The man doesn't like the price. Someone is charging R5 less around the corner, he claims.
The couple leaves. The men mutter - what is wrong with these people? She is also baffled. Where
do people find the time to go comparison-shopping for something so cheap?

Pictures taken, she walks back to the licensing department, into the dark building. Dealing with
citizen-facing government departments puts her on edge. It mostly has to do with her fears and
uncertainties. She never knows what language to speak with officialdom. When she settles on a
language, she is never sure how to speak it (the proper uppity Setswana she grew up with? Jozi
Sesotho/Setswana street medley? Setswana with bits of English thrown in?). She also dreads
being on the receiving end of possibly bad, insulting service meted out by her own people. She
tells the man at reception her business. He informs her of the requirements for a card renewal -
a copy of an ID document, pictures, a copy of the license card. She wants to scream at him.
"The notice letter doesn't say anything about copies..."
"They won't help you without copies." She flashes the letter. It lists the requirements - an ID,
pictures, the expiring card, a fee. They have a brief, pointless argument, one she knows she will
lose. This isn't a bank. There isn't a consultant to slip away to make copies of your documents.
You bring your own copies here. She storms off, back to the field, to make some photocopies. No
time for courageous gestures now, she drives the short distance.

The airtime woman is also in charge of photocopying operations. The copier is connected to
power coming from god-knows-where. Ms. Hope Flower is in an angst-ridden trance now. She
cares nothing for her surroundings. She gets copies her copies done, then drives back to the
licensing department. There are small mercies. The parking spot she gave up is still open.

A man knocks on her window.

"Yes?" she snaps back.
"Can you hear me?"
"Yes," she glares at him.
"I need your help."
She gets out of her car.
"Can you help me with these forms?" he asks.
The man is wearing a leather jacket and expensive-looking shoes. He is short. She thinks she
might have seen him at the field. She is confused. Why should she help this well-dressed man
with his forms? She utters some discouraging sounds.
"You seem educated. Please help me." She glances at his documents. He is applying for a
professional, public license so that he can be a minibus taxi driver. She reluctantly agrees to help
him. They walk into the building.
She hates forms. She resents bureaucracy. Now her work has been multiplied. She doesn't think
of herself as the sort of woman strangers approach for help (aren't men supposed to be
intimidated by her?). She puts it down to her eyes. It can't be her smile. She hasn't been smiling
much today. She looks around to figure out which lines she needs to join after helping him. He
has asked for help. She will give it. She stands next to him. The forms are simple enough. He
seems to know what he is doing. She whispers a translation here and there. She can't imagine
why he thought he needed help. Then she looks up from the forms. Is this the guy she walked in
with? No. Her man is standing a few paces away.
"Oops, I was distracted," she moves towards the right man. "Why didn't you say something?"
"I thought you were busy."
Busy with what, she thinks. She is slowly coming to her senses. For him to have to ask for
help...this man is humiliated enough already.

She silently takes over his forms. He gives her a pen (how many times has she been told that a
writer never leaves home without a pen - is she a writer? - then again, she has taken to making
notes on her blackberry). She gets to work. He supplies her with his identity document. He is her
age. He was born just over a month after she was born. And here they are, thirty-one years later:
an aspiring writer playing scribe for an aspiring taxi driver. She asks for his current address.
"Ah, my sister, I'm not too sure." He offers a few suggestions. He knows the stand number, he
seems to struggle with the overall formulation. She writes something plausible. He assures her
the address is not necessary, he will collect the documents from the office when they are ready.
She gets to the dotted line. She has only just learned his name. She doesn't know the nature of
his problem: is it the languages that the form is written in (English and Afrikaans)? Is he
completely illiterate? Is this an elaborate pick-up ploy? She takes a small breath, turns towards
him and thrusts the pen at him. She can barely look. He signs the dotted line - a real signature,
not a cross, his real name. She is relieved. Whatever his issues, he can at least sign his name. Not
so long ago, she was shocked at the prospect that a man so young, so vital, could be illiterate.
Her expectations have plunged within minutes. She is mainly relieved to be done with him.

She joins her queues. A quick eye test. Fingerprints. Then it's time to pay.
"Do I need to apply for a temporary license whilst I'm waiting for my new card?" The woman
behind the bars pauses, examines her.
"If you need to."
"Really? It's up to me?"
The woman rolls her eyes. "When does your card expire?"
"Well, here's the strange thing. It says on the card that it expires in 2012 but I got a notice for
renewal."
"Ignore the letter. If your card says 2012, come here in 2012."
Suddenly, she remembers that due to a silly mistake on her part, she is in trouble with the
taxman. If she can make such mistakes, if she can't trust herself on these types of issues, she
certainly can't trust these people. She is shown to the supervisor's office. It takes a few clicks on
the supervisor's computer and all is recalled.
"Weren't you here in 2007?"
Yes...

She walks out of the neat room. What was the point of this hour? In her world, there has to be a
point to everything. Things start coming to her; they seem to come from deep inside her bones.
This is not the stuff of short term or long term memory. She is entering the ancestral realm.
There are people she has never met, events that preceded her birth, catastrophes that reign over
generations, that are a part of her. This is not about remembering, it is about coming into her
being; a long repressed, almost inaccessible, being. The man who asked for her help was an
angel who had come to remind her of a world that is becoming steadily incomprehensible to her
- that other place where people buy airtime all the time in tiny denominations, run businesses
under the sun and need help with filling out forms. That world, ever so very close, always in her
heart, yet so easy to forget.