Wandering through life in New York

My mother called me a few days ago to tell me about the “tour” (what her generation calls a “shotleft”) she just returned from with some of her friends, all members of the East London Pensioner’s Association. “Yhuuu, andidinwe kukuzula”, she yawned. By the tone of her voice and how long she wanted to chat, I could tell she was on the right hand side of her enormous bed where she regularly takes calls with the TV and the radio on. She usually has a cup of Milo at night and I was imagining it piping down next to her. 

“What was the trip for?” I inquired, hoping she would say the very specific Xhosa words I wanted her to say to describe the leisurely nature of the trip. “Hayi suka besihamb’iWayi Wayi nje!” Satiated, I burst into the loud, throaty Xhosa laughter I so needed on the other side of the world. There’s no such a thing as iWayi Wayi. It’s a term that captures a particular feeling of wandering, doing nothing in particular, floating. 

It was evening in SA and afternoon in New York, where I live. I was on my way to write at a little cafe inside a plant and hardware store on West 126th Street in Harlem called 9 Tails at Mushtari, where a young Senegalese man named Yousef makes the best matcha latte I've had in this sprawling city. It’s taken me a while to find my spots in a city where one can easily be overwhelmed by the sheer number of options there are for literally everything. Central Harlem, where my husband and I live, is not as gentrified as Brooklyn or as fancy as the rest of Manhattan. It kind of feels as if parts of Rockey Street in Yeoville were dotted along Killarney.

When people back home ask me how living in New York is, I take a deep breath and fix my face because I know the answer they are looking for must be commensurate with how that Alicia Keys and Jay Z song feels. But I usually start out with the truth, which is that life back home is easier in many ways. A cup of coffee doesn’t cost R105. The houses are bigger. We drive. Everything is not so far. The police aren’t scary. People generally look you in the eye. You don’t have to make reservations for everything. Your friends have time to see you and not everyone you know is hustling and about to legitimately blow up and get the biggest career break of their lives. 

I’ve been in New York for 10 months, the longest I have ever been away from SAa, where I would unconsciously travel to the Eastern Cape and my childhood home, to my mother’s bedroom every two to three months for the 16 years I lived in Johannesburg. I didn’t think about the inherent routines, rhythms and standards of my life in SA. Like the omnipresence of the Hadeda’s cackle as part of bedrock of how Joburg sounds. Or the beloved and inexplicable form and shape of Nguni women’s legs and the rhythm with which we walk.

I didn’t account for the undulating tones of isiZulu and the mountainous pitches of Sesotho on my aural sensibilities. I even miss the sound of Afrikaans and the taste of Rajah spices, which I never used when I lived in Joburg. The other day I heard a car on Malcolm X Boulevard hooting rhythmically down the street and I suddenly missed “amaphela”, those car taxis whose presence is known by their annoying beep beep, beep beep, beep beep as they slowly crawl the streets looking for passengers.

I miss the smell of Delta Park in late November.

I’ve never felt more provincial. But New York has that effect on most people who aren’t from here. I see it in the eyes of Peruvian women selling fruit and churros at subway stations. In Mexican men with their families at a soccer themed taqueria we sometimes go to on Sundays. In the West African delivery men sweating for the voracious hunger of consumerism. In young Indian couples running family businesses in Queens. And various Americans trying to look like they don’t come from small towns.

We all have a look in our eyes. It feels like you must always know what you are doing, but we don’t always know what we are doing. And what we are doing here. As if we are all on a kind of wayi wayi journey. 

That said, New York has otherwise made me feel new feelings. Relief from the freedom of not being scared while walking at all times of the day. A new appreciation for men, who don’t glare with a frightening lasciviousness. Delight at my pilates class and swimming sessions with old black women at my local YMCA. True pleasure at eating literally the best pasta you will ever taste because my friends join high-end dining waiting lists for months. And the quotidian access to surprise, where a night out can start with dinner at a Palestinian restaurant and end at the Burlesque show next door.