Motoring with Muhammad

“Have you been following the news?” the text message said.

I had not been following the news.

“Most roads now are blocked by the demonstrations. Be careful on the way to my place.”

I’d heard there’d been a protest the previous day against the Lebanese government’s plan to charge a tax on WhatsApp users, but I assumed that it would be over in an hour or two, like most protests, and that everything would go back to normal. People would grumble about how corrupt and incompetent Lebanese politicians were, but they would get on with their day-to-day lives, interrupted by the occasional gun fight or car bomb—just like always.

Another text message came in from Ziad. “I am not sure there are any taxis at the airport.”

* * *

I have dim memories of watching news reports about the Lebanese civil war in the 1970s and 80s. Up to one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand people, about 5% of the population, were killed. Many more were injured or displaced by the fighting, or left altogether. Even since the end of the war in 1990, Lebanon has been rocked by occasional political violence. In 2005, for example, the country’s first post-war Prime Minister, Rafic Hariri, famed around the world for rebuilding downtown Beirut, was killed by a car bomb.

In 2018, I saw a Lebanese movie called The Insult, about an escalating conflict between two stubborn men in present-day Beirut. The true nature of the conflict caught my attention. It wasn’t personal, it was about what the men represented to each other—rich versus poor, Christian versus Muslim, citizen versus refugee. History. Even with the limited understanding of Lebanon I had at the time, I suspected that many people there would have similar prejudices, and prejudice has always been fascinating to me. Also, I couldn’t help but notice that the bits of sunny, palm-treed Beirut I saw in the background looked very nice.

About a year later, I was chewing on a shawarma wrap while Arabic-language music videos blared on the TV in a restaurant in Toronto when the idea of doing the same in an actual Arab country suddenly seemed romantic to me.

My first thought was that I would go to Jordan. Jordan has specific attractions, like Petra and Wadi Rum, after all. It also has a reputation for peacefulness and stability. But the more I read about mountainous, green, tortured Lebanon, the more I found myself wanting to go there.

I was skittish about it. I mean, the governments of Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia all said the same thing about Lebanon: avoid all but essential travel. But after several months of painstaking research, I was convinced that I could go, enjoy myself and probably even come back alive.

Of course, this was assuming that a new civil war wouldn’t start on the day before my arrival.

Scars from the civil war, Martyrs’ Square, Beirut

When I first started looking at flights between Amman and Beirut, 230km straight as the crow flies, I noticed there was a big difference in flight durations between the two different carriers: Royal Jordanian flights were two hours long; Middle East Airlines flights were one hour long. Since flying is the least enjoyable part of any trip, I planned to go with the quickest option. But there was something about the situation that nagged me. Why would two different non-stop flights between the same two points have such different flying times? And how could a 230km flight possibly take two hours?

I dug a little bit, which is when I learned that Royal Jordanian, like almost every other airline in the world, does not fly over Syria because Syria is at war with itself (with the generous help of the rest of the world). Middle East Airlines, on the other hand, has no qualms about flying over an active warzone. I booked my flight with Royal Jordanian.

While on the plane, I tracked the flight path with the GPS on my phone, which I had only recently learned is always on, even when it is not connected to the internet, and, as it turned out, even when the phone is in airplane mode. I watched in puzzlement as the plane flew south along the border between Jordan and Israel, in the opposite direction of Lebanon, for an hour. Only when Israel was behind us and the plane entered Egyptian airspace did it bank west toward the Mediterranean and thereafter north to Lebanon.

Jordan and Israel are at peace, so I don’t understand why the flight didn’t cross Israeli airspace. My guess is that since Lebanon doesn’t recognize the existence of Israel, perhaps Israel doesn’t recognize the existence of flights to Lebanon. But I’m still not sure.

Anyway, the two-hour flight gave me a lot of time to think about where I was going. I thought about the civil war, when the militias dragged enemy combatants through the streets behind their vehicles. I thought about the jihadist gunman who’d killed two police officers and two soldiers in northern Lebanon just a few weeks before. I thought about Ziad’s text messages. And I worried.

Shortly before we were about to land in Beirut, the young Montrealer in the seat next to me asked me if it was my first time going to Lebanon. I said it was. “Well, be careful,” he warned grimly. “It’s not the top quality vodka they use. Even if the bottle says Absolut or Grey Goose or whatever.”

* * *

After landing, I watched with a deepening sense of dread as the bags circulated on the carousel again and again without mine among them. “We will put a trace on it,” an airport employee told me. “If it arrives, you will have to come in to pick it up.”

Pick it up?!? Pick it up?!? I didn’t forget to put the goddamned thing on the plane! Your guys did! I was outraged, but I kept it to myself. I was relieved to have found someone fluent in English and didn’t want to do anything to alienate them.

“Hey,” I said as nonchalantly as I could, “Do you know if there are any taxis out there? I heard there may not be any taxis.” His mouth said that he wasn’t sure, but his body said that he had very grave doubts indeed.

“Well,” I continued, desperate to cling to any human connection, however tenuous, “What’s a fair price to Mar Mikhael if I do find a taxi? Would twenty or twenty-five dollars be okay?”

Without raising his head from his paperwork, his eyes met mine with a look of pity. “You will not see that price tonight,” he said.

My heart sank further as I stepped through the doors into the arrivals area and found it filled with people standing around, holding onto their luggage and looking bewildered. I knew that if the taxis were running, if the roads were open, these people wouldn’t be there. I knew it, but I didn’t want to admit it, so I walked through the crowd and toward the exit.

“Taxi?” asked a fat man with bristles for hair. “I can take you on a motorcycle.”

Oh… Uh … I wasn’t expecting that. “Yes,” I said cautiously. “How much to Armenia Street in Mar Mikhael?” “One hundred dollars,” he said almost before I’d finished speaking. I shook my head and slipped back into the crowd.

I was ready to admit that we were all stranded there, but I needed to know more–like, how long were we going to be stranded there? And was somebody working on finding a solution to the problem? And who, exactly, was in charge?

I wandered around looking for an information booth, or at least someone who looked official, but there was nothing and no one obvious. Eventually, my eyes set upon handsome, young man in a beige, zippered jacket with an official-looking patch on it. “What is going on?” I asked, simply assuming that he would speak English.

“The roads are blocked,” he said. “Tires are burning everywhere. The only way out is on a motorcycle.”

There was a brief pause, then he asked if I needed a ride. “Yes,” I said, my voice cracking like a pubescent boy.

We discussed prices. I started low and stayed there. There were almost certainly several ATMs in the terminal, so I could have withdrawn almost any amount necessary, but I was trying to put him off. The thought of riding into the city on the back of a random stranger’s motorcycle terrified me. I imagined him taking me to a dark corner, telling me to get off and leaving with my carry-on bag and wallet. I would be at the mercy of the locals, who might be thirsty for American blood and not quite fluent enough in English to understand what it means when a man yelps: “I’m from Canada! Canada!”

The whole time, the warnings of the government websites I’d consulted earlier played on a loop in my mind: the road to the airport is safe, but do not under any circumstances leave the road to the airport until you are north of the stadium.

“It isn’t easy for me,” the young man said. “It costs me money to have my guys here. Even I had to park my car far away and come in on a motorcycle.” His intense hazel eyes drilled into mine. “The roads are closed,” he repeated. “Tires are burning everywhere.”

Sensing my distrust, he pulled out a piece of photo ID and waved it in front of me. “See? I am licensed,” he said. “You can even take a photo of my ID.”

 Of course, I wouldn’t have recognized a legitimate Lebanese taxi license if I saw one. For all I knew, it might have been government-issued ID attesting to the fact that he was a sociopath that should be avoided at any price.

But I really, really wanted to get to my apartment and into bed, so I offered him all the money in my wallet, a mix of American and Jordanian bills worth about USD$53. He surprised me by agreeing and led me out through the doors to the taxi stand where he summoned a lean, wiry compatriot in a tight, dark t-shirt and dirty jeans. The two talked briefly then he turned to me and said, “Muhammad will take you to Mar Mikhael,” then walked away.

I felt betrayed. I had believed that I would be travelling with a man who had shown me his ID, a man who actually had ID. But Muhammad? I didn’t know anything about Muhammad…

Fortunately, Muhammad solved that problem immediately. “Don’t fear,” he said. “Muhammad is a good driver.”

He swung my bag onto the scooter floorboard in front of him and I climbed on the back. Still, I was filled with misgivings. I was afraid that I was being led into certain peril, but I was even more afraid that I would hurt Muhammad’s feelings if I questioned his intent. So, I looked for an excuse to back out of the deal. There didn’t seem to be much keeping me on the bike, for example, so what if we hit a bump, and—. We lurched forward and I put my arms around his waist. Loosely.

“That money was for the airport,” he announced as we gained speed. “You must pay Muhammad, too.”

A minute later we arrived at our first intersection. Four-wheeled, steel garbage bins were turned over on their sides blocking most of the road. Car tires burned in the spaces between them, lending an orange glow to the billowing smoke and the night sky above. A few young men, less than a dozen, stood around watching over the scene. They didn’t seem to be angry. For the most part they weren’t even shouting. It was like they were idly tending a campfire and lost in their thoughts.

Swarms of other young men on motor scooters buzzed this way and that, skirting the roadblock by mounting the curb and riding a short distance on the sidewalk before bouncing back down onto the road. Muhammad gestured for me to cover my nose and mouth and we did the same.

For the next five minutes or so, this happened at every major intersection. I wouldn’t say that I began to relax, exactly, but I did get into the rhythm of the thing and was a little more open to experiencing the sultry October night as it was—bitter smell of melting rubber, fear of death and all.

Shouting in his ear to be heard above the noise of the scooter, I asked Muhammad what was going on. “We want them out!” he shouted back.

“Who?” I asked, feigning ignorance.

“The government!” he replied. “We want them out!”

Mindful of the history of politics as blood sport in Lebanon, I listed the key government figures aloud, one by one, so that I could determine Muhammad’s bias and, thus forewarned, take care not to offend him.

“What about Hariri?” I shouted, referring to Saad, son of Rafic, a Sunni Muslim and the Prime Minister.

“Out!” he replied.

“OK. What about Aoun?” (The Maronite Christian President.)

“Out!”

“Berri?” (The Shia Muslim Speaker.)

“He’s the worst one!” Muhammad shouted.

At this point, I noticed that the sign over our lane said Chatila. Chatila is a Palestinian refugee camp where nominally-Christian Lebanese militiamen killed hundreds and possibly thousands of civilians in 1982 while the Israeli Defence Force, lurking nearby, set off flares to light their way. Somehow Muhammad must have read my mind because he told me he wanted the Israelis to come back. “It would be better,” he said.

I was shocked to hear him say this, but didn’t say anything in response. Israel is an extra sensitive subject in Lebanon, which refuses entry to anyone with an Israeli stamp in their passport. I was worried about what might happen to me if anyone noticed that I was able to say the word “Israel” without spitting in disgust.

Shortly thereafter, our surroundings changed from grimy, low-rent highway commercial to something cleaner, more upscale and urban, and the roadblocks started to thin out. Some had even been deserted. At one, the flames on the rightmost tires were only a couple inches high, so Muhammad decided to skirt around it without bothering to mount the sidewalk. I squirmed in my seat. “Don’t fear,” he said and I leaned right, looked away and winced as we rode by.

A few minutes after that, things started to look familiar, like something I might have seen during my research about Lebanon. We actually seemed to be heading in the right direction and getting close to my host’s neighbourhood. I pulled the t-shirt down off my face.

Muhammad announced that we’d arrived at Armenia Street, the main street in Mar Mikhael. There’d clearly been a roadblock there earlier as piles of burnt garbage were scattered by the sides of the road, but there was no one around and the road was open, so we motored onward past an auto repair shop (shuttered), a grocery store (open?!?) and several restaurants and bars (busy!!!). There were people on the sidewalks going about what appeared to be normal nighttime activities, seemingly unruffled by the chaos just a few kilometres away.

“I told you Muhammad is a good driver,” Muhammad said. “Now you must pay. Muhammad needs a drink.”

Surprised at having made it that far in one piece and feeling a little cocky, I said I’d thought Muslims didn’t drink. “Muhammad is not that kind of Muslim,” he replied.

As we stopped at a bank machine so that I could withdraw money, my anxieties came flooding back. Yes, of course, this was his plan all along… As soon as I got off the bike, he would speed away with my bag. Somehow, Muhammad must have read my mind because as I got off his bike, he handed me his phone. He had something of mine and now I had something of his. It was mutual assured disruption if either of us did anything untoward.

I walked into the bank vestibule and punched-in a request to withdraw 100,000 Lira, then about a hundred dollars Canadian. The machine whirred and beeped and spat out in two 50,000 Lira bills. Shit, I cursed under my breath.

We rolled the last two blocks to my host’s apartment building and I got off. Muhammad slid my bag from the floorboard of his bike and placed it on the narrow sidewalk in front of me. “Do you have change for this?” I asked him while waving a 50,000 Lira bill in his face. He brought his eyebrows together in a frown, looked at me like I was out of my mind, and said that, no, he did not have change. I gave him the money, shook his hand and thanked him, and he ducked into the bar next door.

I used the opportunity to WhatsApp my host, who came down and let me into his building.

* * *

You can read more about my adventures in Lebanon at Someplace Nice.

A Day Trip to Hell

The Hell, officially Gamkaskloof (or “Lion’s Valley” in English), is a long, narrow valley in the Swartberg mountains of South Africa. It was settled by whites in the 1830s, and for 130 years a small community lived there in near total isolation, with the only way in or out being a hellish trek on foot or by donkey. Then, in the 1960s, a road was roughed in and one by one the residents left, drawn by the electric lights of the outside world. By 1992, the valley was abandoned.

For me, the story of The Hell evoked the strains of “Duelling Banjos” and visions of drooling, three-eyed freaks, which was all I needed to convince me to go.

After a pre-dawn breakfast in the pretty, small town of Prince Albert, I packed for the day’s adventure: a camera, a big bottle of water, a hat to keep off the sun. The Swartbergs are in a semi-desert region where it gets cold quickly after sunsets and warms slowly after sunrises, so I put on a jacket. Then I hesitated. My guide would be driving me in his vehicle, so I wouldn’t need the keys to my car, but South Africa has an astronomical crime rate and the B&B didn’t have a safe… I shoved the keys into a jacket pocket and walked out to the front veranda to wait.

A few minutes later, a white pick-up truck pulled to a stop at the curb. The driver stepped out and introduced himself as my guide, Henk. He was short and muscular and had the red-faced complexion of a man who’d spent fifty-plus years in the sun. Tufts of white hair stuck out from under his faded baseball cap.

As we set off, Henk told me a bit about himself. “I am a product of the Venters, the De Beers and the Philips. We’re all mixed here,” he said laughing.

The joke was that Venter and De Beers are common surnames in the white, Afrikaans-speaking community, and Philips is a common surname in the white, English-speaking community. So Henk was “mixed” across the language line, not the race line. And this is “funny” given the history of South Africa, a racially-diverse country where a tangle of laws kept the races apart and the white minority in control until 1994.

I laughed along with Henk’s joke in the spirit of light-heartedness.

A few minutes outside town, he pulled to a stop by a sparkling mountain stream. “The water is so pure here,” he said dipping his bottle in, “It’s like drinking brandy.” Drinking brandy, I would come to learn, was a particular interest of his.

Shortly thereafter, the mountains, like ground beef marbled with fat and dotted with parsley, closed in on us. We were on the Swartberg Pass, a serpentine gravel road built by convicts in the 19th century.

The mountains, like ground beef marbled with fat and dotted with parsley.
Early morning on the Swartberg Pass

Some passes meander through the bottom of valleys with the mountains towering overhead. Swartberg Pass isn’t one of them.

The Swartberg clings to the sides of the mountains, held in place by nothing more than stacked rocks. It is painfully narrow, barely wide enough for one car; and in spots the retaining wall has washed away giving an unobstructed view of the valley far below.

The thing is, I’m afraid of heights, so every muscle in my body began to flex, and every orifice to tighten. Eventually, I stopped looking out the passenger side window altogether and fixed my stare straight ahead, where there was often a small level surface in front of us.

Blissfully unaware of my rising level of tension, Henk had been rhapsodizing the beauty of countryside the whole time. “Michael, you’ve got to see this,” he said, gesturing with both hands while driving straight toward a cliff edge. 

I snapped. “Keep your fucking hands on the fucking wheel!” I snarled, stomping on the non-existent brake on the floorboard in front of me.

“Okay, Michael,” Henk said soothingly while putting his fucking hands back on the fucking wheel. “But this is Teeberg… Everyone wants to see Teeberg.”

* * *

Teeberg is a lookout point from which you can see mountain range after mountain range rolling away toward the horizon, and the clear, blue sky beyond. There are no guardrails, so you can stroll right up to the cliff’s edge and look 300 m straight down. If you are so inclined.

“I didn’t know you were afraid of heights, Michael,” Henk said as we got back in the truck. There was an odd, distant tone to his statement, like he wasn’t fully there, like a big part of him was somewhere else trying to solve a very complex puzzle.

A few minutes later, we arrived at a T junction. A sign for those turning right warned: “Dangerous Road for 48 km! Use at own risk!”

We turned right.

It was another gravel road, but this one was wider and there were no precipitous drop-offs. I started to relax a little and enjoy the view: in the foreground, low, spiky scrub poking through golden dust; in the background, grey-green mountains.  

Henk stopped so that I could get out, crunch through the dirt and take photos of proteas with their pointed, pink-tipped petals. We continued on and he pointed out a boulder that looked vaguely like a human skull, then another that looked like a dinosaur skull, complete with two rows of tiny, jagged teeth. Further on still, he pointed out a klipspringer. It was tawny like the soil, so I might not have noticed it without his help.

This was the rugged, wild Africa I had been hoping for and it brought a smile to my face.

Then, suddenly, we were on another cliff edge. I could see the road ahead descending through a series of tight switchbacks into a narrow, green valley far below.

The top of Elands Pass

We had arrived at Elands Pass, which is described at Mountain Passes of South Africa as follows:

The drop-offs are sheer, extreme and unprotected. Take it very, very slowly down this pass. The road bed is barely wide enough for one vehicle… It should be noted that there are absolutely no safety barriers whatsoever.

Unfortunately, I only discovered this description after the fact.

With my breathing shallow and the knuckles on my left hand turning white around the door handle, I considered telling Henk to turn back. But I knew there would be food in the valley and I wanted my guide to be well-fed, well-watered and clear-headed when he drove us back.

I asked Henk what he did before becoming a tour guide. I wanted to keep the conversation flowing and take my mind off the situation.

“I was a commercial farmer,” he said. “I started with five-thousand Rand and built a model farm.” [That’s about $500 at the current exchange rate.]

“So why did you stop?” I asked.

“My wife,” Henk said. He drew a deep breath and continued. “How can I live somewhere, where every time my wife goes into town, I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again?”

I waited for him to explain.

“You’ve heard about the farm murders?” he asked.

I had heard about the farm murders. There had been reports of violent attacks on white farmers in South Africa for many years. The white minority dominates commercial farming in the country, in part because of a law, now repealed, that reserved 87% of the land for them. In the circumstances, it wasn’t surprising that white farmers would be the main victims of farm murders.

“More white farmers are murdered in South Africa every month than soldiers die in Iraq,” Henk said. “But you never hear about it because the farm murders are part of a plot to drive whites from the country.”

“It’s right there in the African National Congress slogan,” he said. “The Land is Ours.”

The image of a night time invasion of a farm is chilling. Large commercial farms tend to be isolated, so even if a farmer is able to call for help, the only thing left to do when help finally arrives is cart away the bodies and clean-up the blood. The problem was, I wasn’t sure it was an accurate image. I listened intently and made sympathetic sounds, but tried not to get too drawn in. 

“You see,” Henk continued, “The black doesn’t want what you’ve got, but he doesn’t want you to have it, either. That’s why nothing changed in Africa for thousands of years before the white man came. The village was fed and that was good enough.”

I wasn’t shocked by what he was saying, since I’d read variations on the theme before. But I was shocked by the fact that he was saying it in the twenty-first century.

I could have argued with him, I suppose, but my life was in his hands and I didn’t want to do anything to distract him from his task, so I let him continue.

Henk told me about the differences he’d perceived between the various black ethnic groups in the country—the proud ones, the peaceful ones, the lazy ones. About the “lazy” group he said: “A man will ask his wife to bring him a chair to sit on while he watches her and his kids do all the work. They are the worst of all; and we’re stuck with them.”

* * *

At the bottom of the pass, a sign welcomed us to The Hell. Henk understood the comedic value of a tourist posing next to the sign and offered to take a photo of me doing so. It was torrid in the valley at noon, so I took off my jacket, threw it behind the sign and posed with sweaty armpits and a wan smile.

That done, we drove along the valley bottom, which was lush with greenery, quite unlike the mountains above it. The small, boxy cabins of the settlers, some of which had been restored for tourist use, were scattered here and there. We stopped for a look inside one. It had a shiny white gas stove circa 1970 and a black, cast iron wood stove circa 1870. Five rusting metal plates painted with simple floral patterns were affixed to the wall as decoration.

Back outside, Henk walked toward a nearby garbage can and resumed the monologue he’d stopped a few minutes earlier. “Blacks just can’t be commercial farmers,” he said calmly. “There has never been a successful black commercial farmer.”

“A baboon cannot open a baboon-proof dustbin,” he continued, standing over the garbage can with a wad of paper cradled between his bicep and ribs. Then, making sure to catch my eye first, he pushed down a lever with one hand, pulled up a bar with the other and let the paper drop into the open can. “A baboon can’t, but a chimpanzee can.”

We got back in the truck and drove on in silence.

Just beyond another clutch of restored cabins, we saw a pick-up truck parked with its gate down. Three men were setting up a barbecue nearby. Henk stopped and we got out to say hello.

The conversation was conducted in Afrikaans, but Henk translated bits and pieces, which is how I learned the men represented three generations of a grape-growing family from the Cape Town area.

At one point, the middle-aged, moustachioed one tilted his head in my direction and said something that sounded like it included the word “cock.” Like any execrable tourist, I’d taken the time to learn the key Afrikaans swearwords in advance, so I knew that the word kak, pronounced “cock,” was a shitty thing to call someone. I asked Henk about it.

“No, Michael,” he said soothingly. “He called you a khaki. That’s what we call the English.”

They all laughed heartily.

In the spirit of merriment, the oldest of the three, about Henk’s age, broke out a bottle of booze and offered us some. I’ve never been a fan, so I declined. As my guide, the person in whose hands I’d placed my life, I assumed that Henk would do likewise, but he enthusiastically accepted the offer.

Here we were, at the bottom of a treacherous, 50 km-long climb on a gravel track with no guard rails, and my guide was fixing to get shit-faced. I could not hide my disgust.

“But this is very special brandy, Michael,” he said.

I assented with my head bowed, my hands outstretched and my lips pursed.

Henk took a sip, let out a satisfied sigh and the conversation continued in Afrikaans without me.

* * *

Not long after, we arrived at a house-slash-restaurant-slash-gift-shop, where we were greeted in Afrikaans by a wiry, twenty-something ginger and his wife, whose ancestors, I was told, were actually born in the valley. The woman ushered me inside and motioned for me to sit at a table. She returned with a plate of bobotie for me. Bobotie is similar to shepherd’s pie, but curry-flavoured and topped with custard instead of mashed potatoes. Like a lot of South African cuisine, it shows the influence of slaves brought to South Africa from Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

I was hungry, but didn’t want to dig in before Henk. Frankly, I felt guilty about my behaviour and was hoping for an opportunity to redeem myself a little with good manners, some small talk and maybe even an apology or two, so I got up and walked out to where he and the ginger were still talking.

“You’re not eating, Henk?” I asked.

“No, Michael,” he said mildly. “Go ahead.”

I returned to the dining room table and ate under the watchful eyes of the family cat, a black-and-white mix. 

While I ate my lunch, I could hear Henk and Piet (the ginger) talking. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I was pretty sure it was something like this:

Henk: He’s afraid of heights.

Piet: This is the wrong place for a person who’s afraid of heights.

Henk: Quite… He’s a nervous wreck.

Piet: What’re you gonna do?

Henk [looks back at me, smiles reassuringly, then turns back toward Piet]: We can say he just wandered off and we couldn’t find him.

Piet: He’s that bad?

Henk nods.

Piet: So why did he want to come here?

Henk: Like the rest of the khaki bastards, he probably just wanted to see the isolated valley where our ancestors fucked each other for generation after generation to create a race of drooling, white monsters. He was probably hoping to find Dresie and Casie here. I don’t think he understood there’d be mountains involved.

Piet [after glancing back at me]: If we slice his throat, the mountain lions will start eating there, where the blood is, so there wouldn’t be any evidence left.

Eyes down, I redoubled my focus on the bobotie, which was quite good, actually.

* * *

The ride out of the valley was mostly a blur, or at least as much of a blur as it could be at 15 km per hour. I kept my eyes forward much of the time, as I had on the way down, but for the most part I wasn’t holding onto the nearest fixed surface with blanched knuckles.

As I relaxed, Henk seemed to relax, too. He conceded that education for blacks under apartheid was poor. Still, he couldn’t warm to Nelson Mandela. “There is something sinister behind his smile,” he said.

Henk told me that he believed Mandela’s party, the African National Congress (ANC), was actually run by Robert Mugabe, the despotic President of the neighbouring country, Zimbabwe. “Africans always listen to the most senior man,” he explained. And Mugabe, who had held onto power for more than three decades, in part by killing his opponents, was definitely senior.

Mugabe had presided over the violent transfer of agricultural land from white Zimbabweans to black Zimbabweans, which doubtless heightened Henk’s apprehension. That Julius Malema was then a rising star in the ANC, was weighing heavily on him, as well. Malema, according to Henk, had recently visited Mugabe to learn how to “Get the whites off the land.” Malema had also taken to chanting something that translates roughly as “Kill Whitey” at public rallies.

*     *     *

Just before leaving Swartberg Pass, Henk asked if I would be willing to stop and share a beer with him in one of his favourite places. I was relieved that the ordeal was almost over and eager to make as much peace as possible, so I enthusiastically agreed.

We stopped on a small quadrangle of flat, dusty land, just off the road. It was clearly the favourite place of other people as there were empty beer cans, cigarette stompies and other detritus everywhere.

Henk let down the gate of his truck, pulled two tall cans of beer out of a cooler and handed me one. He returned to rhapsodizing the countryside as we drank and watched late afternoon shadows crawl across the rocks.

“I said all that stuff back there just to get your mind off the heights, you know,” he said after several minutes.

*     *     *

In the home stretch, just out of sight of town, we caught the second flat of the day. Since he’d already used his spare, Henk called his wife to bring another.

She arrived less than ten minutes later and, at Henk’s suggestion, drove me the rest of way into town while he swapped the tires out.

I was drained and fell immediately onto my bed at the B&B, where I closed my eyes and replayed the events of the day in the dark, sticky-floored theatre of my mind.

After a few minutes I forced my legs over the edge of the bed and sat up to make a plan of action for waning hours of the day.

I decided to take a shower, which meant that I would need to get a change of clothes from my suitcase, which was in the trunk of the car, which meant that I would need the keys, which were…

*     *     *

Two hours of panic and several phone calls later, I learned that Piet, the ginger, had found my jacket on the ground, next to the sign at the entrance to The Hell, right where I’d thrown it before posing for the “funny” photograph several hours earlier. Unfortunately, Piet wasn’t planning to come to Prince Albert in the near future—it is a full day’s trip there and back, after all—but he said he’d send it along with someone else, if they had another visitor who was willing.

* * *

In the years since my trip, I have learned that some of the things Henk said were probably accurate, some were definitely not and others are open to debate.

By some estimates, the murder rate among commercial farmers in South African is three or four times the already prodigious rate among South Africans as a whole. And, given that most South African commercial farmers are still white, it’s probably also true that most of the murdered farmers are white. Henk was probably right about that.

It is less clear whether Henk was right about the murders being racially motivated. A 2003 study found that robbery was the primary motivation for nearly 90% of farm invasions. White farmers are targeted for robbery because of their wealth relative to the less-white people around them and because their isolation means that law enforcement is unlikely to intervene on time. Still, as Jonny Steinberg suggests in Midlands, a book about one specific farm murder, long-simmering resentments may be involved, as well. Land now occupied by whites may be perceived by some as having been stolen decades or even centuries before.

However, Henk was definitely wrong about the slogan, “The Land is Ours.” It is not a slogan of the ruling ANC, which consistently draws more than 50% of the vote in elections, but it was once a slogan of the Pan Africanist Congress, which consistently draws about 0.2% of the vote.

But maybe Henk knew that all along. Maybe he really did say all that stuff just to get my mind off the heights. Then again, maybe he was just saying what he thought the wide-eyed khaki wanted to hear.

People in My Neighbourhood

I’ve been shopping at the same grocery store for eight years now. It’s one of the major chains, nothing fancy, in west-end Toronto.

I shop frequently because it’s only a five-minute walk from my home, and anyway, I like grocery shopping.

The store was recently renovated. A wall of beer coolers was installed and I’ve heard rumours that self-service check-out machines will be installed, too.

The thing is, what I like most about the place are the cashiers. I’ve gotten to know them a little bit over the years. I know that one also works in IT and that another is originally from Chatham. (“Hey, buddy, did I ever tell you that Hawaiian pizza was invented in Chatham?”) I know that one’s sister works at a nearby store and that another briefly had a pet lizard they found lurking in the bananas.

I am happy to see them every time I’m there. Even if all we ever say to each other is “How do you pay?” or “Nope. No Air Miles,” I feel connected to them and I would miss them if they were gone. And if the rumours are true, they’re going.

Head office would probably say that it’s all for the benefit of the customers, that we’ll be able to check out more quickly and maybe prices will come down once they’re no longer paying the wages of so many cashiers—though they certainly wouldn’t be so direct about that.

The reality is that machines replace people because a machine will work for considerably less than the minimum wage, which means that already-wealthy shareholders can get an even bigger dividend and maybe spend more time in the Bahamas in winter, or buy an even bigger home.

What a machine won’t do, though, is make me smile because it kind of reminds me of Bela Lugosi. I will never feel the urge to tell a machine that it’s looking even prettier than usual. A machine will never say to me, “I like your t-shirt: I Bike TO. Cool.”

Some people believe greed is a good thing because it leads to innovation, which benefits everyone. Maybe, but this particular innovation will leave me poorer in spirit, and that’s worth a lot more to me than the remote prospect of quicker check-outs or lower prices. I hope the rumours aren’t true.

Fear Mongering and Self-Interest on Electoral Reform

Like many Canadians, I was sorely disappointed this week when Justin Trudeau made it clear that he would break his oft-repeated promise that the 2015 election would be the last one held using the First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) voting system.

It has long bothered me that under FPTP a party with as little as 38% of the vote can win more than 50% of the seats in the House of Commons, because when a party has more than 50% of the seats, as Trudeau’s party currently does, it has 100% of the power. That strikes me as undemocratic, but even more it strikes me as unhealthy. By limiting diversity of opinion in debates, and by removing checks and balances on power, I think FPTP gives us ill-conceived and poorly-thought-out policies. And then a different party wins 100% of the power with 38% or 40% or 44% of the vote, and the scythe swings in the other direction for a few years. And that strikes me as the exact opposite of stability.

I was skeptical of Trudeau’s claim this week that electoral reform was being shelved because there is no consensus on the whether to make a change, let alone how. Four of the five parties on the committee studying the issue recommended a version of Proportional Representation (PR), where the percentage of seats a party gets is closely related to the percentage of votes it gets. As Fair Vote Canada, a group that lobbies for PR noted this week, 88% of the witnesses who appeared before the committee, and 87% of the public at its consultations, expressed a preference for PR. Only Trudeau’s party, the Liberal Party, was not swayed by the testimony.

And I was offended by the fear mongering Trudeau engaged in when he suggested that it would be “irresponsible” to proceed with electoral reform because it would harm “Canada’s stability” and might lead to “an augmentation of extremist voices in th(e) House.” Canada is a country of laws. It is as illegal to counsel someone else to break the laws of this country as it is to break the laws yourself. And the laws apply to everyone, including members of political parties and even religious groups. So I wonder just what form of “extremist” political party Trudeau is referring to.

Fear-mongering language about “radical or extreme” parties was also used in the MyDemocracy.ca survey the Trudeau government sprang on Canadians in December, shortly after the committee released its report in favour of PR.

The survey, in case your attention was elsewhere, like Christmas or Hannukah or New Year’s celebrations, was widely criticized and even ridiculed. Responding to the survey was voluntary and there was no obvious way to prevent extremely keen individuals from completing it more than once, so the sample wouldn’t necessarily be representative of society at large.

Then there was the issue of its vague language. The terms First-Past-the-Post and Proportional Representation were never mentioned in the survey; nor was preferential balloting (a.k.a. ranked balloting), Trudeau’s preferred option, an option that would likely make Trudeau’s party the governing party in perpetuity. Instead, there were vague questions about individuals’ values.

Yesterday I had a close look at the survey results to see if they justified Trudeau’s back-pedalling. And indeed, just as his new Minister of Economic Institutions, Karina Gould, said on Radio One yesterday, most Canadians who responded to the survey are satisfied with the way our democracy currently works: 17% said they were very satisfied and 50% said they were somewhat satisfied.

Then things got confusing.

In question after question, a clear majority of survey respondents indicated that they favoured a form of government in which several parties have to work together to make decisions and where no one party can act on its own. When given a choice between “A government where one party governs and can make decisions on its own OR a government where several parties have to collectively agree before a decision is made,” for example, 70% chose the latter. But this exactly not the kind of democracy we currently have.

Yes, there is debate in the House of Commons, but Members of Parliament are usually required to vote how their party leadership tells them if they want their political careers to continue. Yes, there are committees, but their membership usually reflects the distribution of the seats in the House, so again a party with more than 50% of the seats in the House gets more than 50% of the seats around the committee room table, even if they only got 38% of the vote. There is no way to ensure that diverse opinions are actually considered and that the governing party doesn’t blithely ignore opinions it doesn’t share.

I walk away from this experience with the nagging suspicion that a lot of Canadians don’t really understand how their government currently works, and the sense that a lot more work needs to be done to educate them about that and the alternatives to it before there can be a rational debate on this issue.

One thing that hasn’t changed is my belief that the percentage of seats a party gets should be closely related to the percentage of votes it gets and that government by coalitions of parties will increase the diversity of knowledge and experience involved and improve the quality of the decisions made. And for that I will continue to fight.

Residential Parking Permits, a Forgotten Revenue Tool

Several years will pass before the City can collect tolls from users of the Don Valley Parkway and Gardiner Expressway; that’s assuming the province even gives the City permission to do so. Unless the City taps into other revenue sources in interim, that could mean several more years of budget cuts, like the 2.6% across-the-board cuts planned for 2017.

Currently, residents can purchase permits to park on residential streets when they do not have access to on-site parking where they live. While prices vary, more than 90% of the permits are sold for $15 per month. If the City increased the prices to something closer to the value of the goods and services “parking” actually represents, it could be an important source of revenue. And, unlike road tolls, the City could access the revenues quickly because neither new infrastructure nor provincial permission would be needed.

Photo: Martin Reis

In August, condo experts Urbanation reported that the average price of a new condo in the City of Toronto was about $7,100 per square metre. An on-street parking spot is approximately 13.75 square metres, so a person would have to purchase a residential parking permit for more than 500 years at the current price before they’d actually “bought” their spot.

Of course, condos and parking spots are not perfect equivalents, but it’s important to remember that a parking spot is not just a rectangle of asphalt. It is also the street lights overhead and the storm sewers underneath. It is snow plowing in winter, street sweeping in summer and parking enforcement year-round. It is a bundle of goods and services that costs the City a lot of money to provide.

In fact, according to the Victoria Transportation Policy Institute, the annualized costs of constructing and maintaining an on-street parking spot are about $1,341. Even then, that is in an area where land costs $1,200,000 per acre, whereas land costs several times more than that on a typical residential street in the west end, so the annualized costs of providing an on-street parking spot there are likely much more than $1,341. Yet the overwhelming majority of residential parking permit holders in Toronto currently pay less than $200 per year.

All residents benefit from street lighting, storm sewers, snow plowing and street sweeping, of course. That is why all residents pay property taxes to support these things, and why it would be unfair to expect residential parking permit fees to cover all of the related costs. But it is primarily motor vehicle owners that benefit from the parking spot itself because you can’t purchase a permit to store any other kind of private property on it.

If the City increased the price for permits to park on residential streets, it could have an impact on how people get around. If the price was increased to $141.50 per month, say, which is the current price of a Metropass, the appeal of transit, cycling, walking and ride-sharing would increase. Some residents might jettison their cars altogether and rely on taxis, Uber, AutoShare, Car to Go, Zip Car and rental agencies for the occasional trip the other modes can’t serve well. Society would benefit from reduced traffic congestion, reduced emissions and noise, and increased physical activity…

Those residents who really need to have a personal automobile, but are unwilling to pay a higher price for an on-street parking permit, could move to a part of the city where driveways are common and garages are big. As they move outward, they might be replaced by people who don’t own cars, perhaps even by people with low incomes who would benefit from living downtown where distances are shorter and transit, cycling and walking are more viable options.

Current permit holders would not be able to avoid increased fees by parking in their garages or parking pads instead of on the streets. “There are people who use their garages for storage,” admits Vince Loffredi, Supervisor of the City’s Residential Parking Permit Program, “But there aren’t that many because most people prefer to park on their own property rather than on the street.” They would park on-site if they could, which is why most would continue to pay the fees even if they were increased.

Fees from residential parking permits would be no substitute for road tolls, but they could be an important part of a holistic solution to the City’s financial challenges. If the City increased the prices, the program would bring in many times more than the $13.5 million it does at present, money that could be used to expand transit, improve social housing and address other pressing needs instead of cutting back.

All the City has to do is raise the prices.


Written in December 2016.

The Captain and Me

I will always remember the day I was introduced to the Captain. It was the summer of 1987 and I was a young man wasting time in San Angelo, Texas.

The Captain’s effect on me was instantaneous and profound.

*****

Imagine this… It is the psychedelic sixties. Several furry freaks have gathered together in a recording studio. There are two electric guitarists, an electric bass player, an electric drummer and an electric singer. Each is assigned to a separate isolation booth and told to warm up. While they tune and noodle and warble each can only hear himself.

After a few minutes, the engineer’s voice booms over the PA, “Okay, that’s a take.” The tape has been rolling the entire time.

That’s what “Frownland,” the first track on Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band’s 1970 masterpiece, Trout Mask Replica, sounded like to me in 1987. And it was followed by twenty-seven other twisted takes on the blues, jazz, rock and poetry that frequently sounded the same: like four retarded children playing four different songs simultaneously while a werewolf howls extemporaneously—incoherently—on top of it all.

Later the same day, under the cover of Econoline engine noise and with a blanket pulled up over my head, I tried to mimic my new hero, an’ make up lyrics on the fly, which is a very difficult thing to do well, particularly when stone cold sober.

I was encouraged to stop.

And stop I did, but I was a changed man. (I) Started seein’ things so differently. Hardcore wasn’t doin’ it for me no more. (I) Started drinkin’ pop. (I) Thought things sounded better slow, etc.

*****

Late one night, nigh on ten years later, I invited an acquaintance home to drink some pop and listen to music. Must’ve been 2:30 or 3 a.m. when I put on the first CD, The Grifters’ So Happy Together. So, between the late start and the narcotizing effects of the pop, it isn’t all that long until I was feeling very, very weary.

I had a sudden, aggressive need to be alone and drifting merrily, untethered to human niceties such as conversation… Except there was a presence in my apartment to deal with, a presence that seemed to be in love with the world at that very moment.

“Uh, what do you think of that? Parts of it were recorded on a ghetto blaster.”

“I love it!”

Normally, this is an easy problem to solve. You simply say, “Oh my, look at the time. I really must be getting to sleep. We should do this again sometime … if maybe a little earlier in the day, ha-ha.” And maybe I said something like this, but whatever I said, and no matter how loudly I yawned, it did not have the desired effect on my guest.

Finally, in a fit of desperation, I put Trout Mask Replica on, thinking that it would clear the room.

“Hair Pie: Bake One” came on, two bass clarinets locked in a duel of atonal squealing for a minute-and-a-half, then joined by and eventually drowned out by a rock group clanking its way through a mind-melting psychedelic jam.

After four minutes, the song ends and we can hear the Captain outside at night, a jet flying overhead. He is talking to two kids.

Captain Beefheart: What do you think?

Kids [In tandem]: Sounds good.

Captain Beefheart [Chortling]: It’s a bush recording. We’re out recording the bush… [Pause] Name of the composition is Ne … Neon Meate Dream of an Octafish. [Chortling followed by a long pause, then] No, it’s Hair Pie.

“What do you think?” I asked my guest.

“Sounds good” he replied.

*****

Captain Beefheart died in December, twenty-eight years after releasing his final album, Ice Cream for Crow, which, despite being performed by a different cast of characters, sounds an awful lot like Trout Mask Replica. In the intervening years, his creative urges were channelled into painting, apparently to good ends, but I don’t know about that.

This article is a tribute to Captain Beefheart, the songwriter, lyricist and singer whose songs changed the way I think about music, but, more importantly, made me laugh so very hard for so many years.


Originally published in January 2011 on Deaf-Vacation.com (RIP).

Licensing Bikes: A Solution in Search of a Problem

A motion requesting a staff report on licensing bicycles is on the agenda of the September 27 meeting of the City’s Public Works and Infrastructure Committee (PWIC). The motion was referred to the PWIC after being introduced at a Council meeting by Councillor Stephen Holyday (Ward 3 Etobicoke Centre) in July.

The City has considered and rejected the idea of licensing cyclists several times. There is even a page on the City’s website recounting this history, including the reasons why previous proposals were rejected. However, this initiative, unlike previous ones, is about licensing bicycles, not bicyclists.

In conversation, Councillor Holyday explained that his motion was motivated primarily by a desire to gather better data for planning purposes. The Councillor expressed concern that projections in the City’s cycling plan were based on Census data. He wants to know where people are actually riding and seems skeptical of the short-term counts of cyclists currently used in planning.

The Councillor envisions a licensing program in which Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tags would be affixed to licensed bicycles. He believes this would result in the collection of higher-quality data, which would result in better planning.

RFID tags would be seen as an invasion of privacy by some. Currently, when cars, trucks and bicycles are counted, they are counted anonymously. Councillor Holyday sees each RFID tag being associated with a specific bicycle, however, which would mean that bicycles would thereafter be identified as well as counted. Unless motor vehicles, pedestrians and other road users were also required to carry RFID tags, one would be able to make the case that bicycles were being singled-out.

And RFID may not even be an effective way to gather useful data. GPS-based smartphone apps, like the Toronto Cycling App, can track a user’s route turn-for-turn; however an RFID reader can only count and identify tagged items when they are nearby. The Councillor opposes tagging children’s bicycles, so trips on children’s bikes wouldn’t be counted, nor would trips made on untagged bicycles from other cities. On the other hand, the pneumatic tubes currently being used to count vehicles are able to count all of these trips.

Concerns about RFID aside, Councillor Holyday’s proposal may be based on a false premise: that short-term count data is inaccurate. Data from short-term counts are usually extrapolated based on 24/7 counts done in comparable locations elsewhere. In this way, projections are made to reflect the fact that the number of cyclists will be lower in cold months than in warm ones, for example. Experts insist the errors are small if the count is done right.

Regardless, counts of where people currently cycle aren’t enough when planning where to make improvements in the future. Planners also use neighbourhood-level data about population density from the Census, and trip length data from other sources, to estimate potential interest in cycling. Where data indicates an area with a large population taking a lot of short trips, infrastructure improvements may increase the number of those trips made by bicycle.

In addition to improving data collection, Councillor Holyday’s proposed bicycle licensing program is intended to generate revenue for infrastructure maintenance and expansion.

“Even though we all pay taxes, and we all contribute,” the Councillor argued, a bike lane is “exclusively enjoyed by cyclists,” so it is not unreasonable to expect cyclists to pay some of the costs of providing it. When asked if he’d support charging tolls on motorists using the Gardiner and DVP, which are for the exclusive use of motor vehicles, however, the Councillor said he would not. He does not support any new revenue tools, bicycle licensing fees being the one apparent exception.

Finally, while the Councillor said his proposal is not about changing behaviour, he expressed hope that licensing bicycles would result in improved compliance with traffic laws. He suggested that if cyclists purchased their licenses through partner organizations, such as cycling clubs, members would have a chance to talk to them about safe cycling and press literature into their palms. Comprehensive, Ontario-centric resources are already available free-of-charge online.

On Tuesday the PWIC can approve the motion and direct staff to prepare a report on the potential of a bicycle licensing system, it can refer the motion back to the full Council for further debate, or it can defer it altogether.


Written in September 2016.

Skirting Side Guards

The gap between the front and rear axles of large trucks, such as tractor-trailers, poses a safety risk for other road users, especially cyclists. For cyclists the danger is greatest when biking on the right side of a truck making a right turn – even if the turn is made at low speed. Over the years, several cyclists in Toronto have been caught in the gap between a truck’s axles and crushed under its rear wheels.

That gap also poses a threat at high speeds because cyclists can be sucked under the vehicles by the draft they generate as they pass by.

To prevent these “underride” collisions, a 1998 Toronto regional coroner report recommended that Transport Canada consider making side underride guards a requirement for trucks operating in urban areas. To date, no such requirement has been enforced.

Side guards fill the gap between a truck’s axles, deflecting other road users away from trucks in collisions rather than dragging them under.

In appearance, side guards can vary considerably. Some are little more than a series of steel bars, similar to the rear underride guards already on all Canadian tractor-trailers. Others are solid and look more like an extension of a vehicle’s side panel.

Several European countries, including Sweden and the UK, have required side guards on trucks since the 1980s.

In 2006, Olivia Chow (MP Trinity-Spadina) called for changes to the regulations associated with the Motor Vehicle Safety Act so that side guards would be mandatory on large trucks. Since then successive federal ministers of transport –who have the sole authority to initiate these changes – have failed to do so. In a 2006 letter to Chow, then minister Lawrence Cannon wrote that his department did not support a requirement for side guards because they “would increase the mass of the vehicle resulting in increased fuel consumption … and decreased competitiveness of Canadian trucking operations in comparison to US. Companies, which will not operate vehicles equipped with side guards.”

This, according to American auto safety expert Byron Bloch, is patently false: full-panel side guards actually reduce fuel consumption by reducing a truck’s aerodynamic drag. As a result, they pay for themselves in fuel savings over time.

Improved fuel efficiency is why the Canadian Trucking Alliance, representing 4,500 firms, advocates the use of “trailer side skirts,” which are extensions of the vehicles’ side panels. At press time. it was unclear what level of protection these skirts offer to cyclists.

Regardless, Chow plans to continue lobbying for protection this fall. In the interim, she urges cyclists to be cautious about riding next to trucks. “If they make a right turn, you can be dragged under their wheels. Don’t go into that gap.”


Originally published in the Summer 2009 issue of Dandyhorse.