Bikes, Coffee, and Fanta Flashbacks

When I arrived in Cape town 4 weeks ago, one of the first things I did was to rent a motorcycle. This trip would not exist if there wasn’t going to be a bike. Simple as that. Why the hell would I get a car here? I have noticed lately that whenever I drive a car in Montreal, or any city, my mood changes for the worst. I get impatient, I get angry, I get upset from minimal irritants that just wouldn’t chip away at me otherwise. Riding is just the best. I’ve described my feelings about riding in another blog entry 5 years ago (Live to ride, ride to live) and I haven’t changed my mind. The experience is just so much more pleasant that the ride becomes just as important as the destination. All your senses are being stimulated: you feel the road, you smell your environment, your view is unhindered from being caged in a metal box, you hear everything from the inner workings of your machine to the conversations of the passersby… and, sometimes, you even taste the dust. You are connected. You are part of something greater. It’s almost a spiritual experience. It certainly is one of the only moments where the thoughts racing in my head suddenly stop and allow me to just be. It’s meditation.

And when you meditate, might as well meditate in style! So I rented a 2003 Honda Africa twin. This means jack shit to most people. But for those who know… It’s a classic. The bike gained notoriety thanks to its domination in the Paris-Dakar rallyes in the late 80’s and because of its striking large bug-eyed double headlights. It’s a good road/off-road machine with trustworthy engineering. As would any 14 year-old bikes however, the one I got had a few wrinkles and battle scars, but was nevertheless a sturdy machine that would see me through my adventures.

With the ability to drive and park anywhere with ease, discovering a city with a bike becomes a lot of fun especially if that city’s public transit is mediocre. Because of its Esmeralda qualities, Cape town has plenty of little gems to discover. Mabu Vinyls is one of them. Like a true cavern of Ali-Baba, it is chock full of little vinyl marvels which I could have easily spent an entire day sifting through only a small fraction of them. I will have to visit again with a better game plan… House of the Machines is a coffee place by day, live music bar by night, and a biker hangout to boot. Always sweet rides to ogle at while sipping on your liquid addiction of choice. Dapper is the car version of House of the Machines although without the bar and live music. It teamed up with Club 9, a detailing service, which thus allows you to sip your coffee in the company of Ferraris, Porsches, or classic Mercedes. The Vic, is a bar that serves mean gourmet pizzas and plays folk and rock vinyls for your enjoyment. And then there are coffee shops.

Cape town has a strong coffee culture. Borderline hipster snobbish. But damn that coffee is good! My personal favorites include Origin, Bean There, Espresso Lab, Haas, Yours Truly, and Truth. Truth is supposedly one of the, or the, best coffee places in the world as determined by some completely non-rational or scientific method. But despite my sarcasm, and the slightly ridiculous steam-punk theme they have going on, their coffee speaks for itself. Do you remember that time when you discovered there was an unexpected world of quality in everyday things you had taken for granted? Seems like people are disconnected with the items or foods they use everyday. That people have no idea how an engine works or how your food got to you plate. Probably an unfortunate side effect of the pervasive consumerism attitude of buying-new rather than trying to fix things; or that technology has advanced so much that one simply can’t be expected to know the inner workings of everything; or that curiosity has suffered from a society of brats who want everything now. Not sure. But it does provide some bumbling idiots like me the pleasure of new discoveries occasionally. It's such a wonderful feeling. It combines intense pleasure and satisfaction while opening the door to a new universe full of those sensations. That first sip of a craft beer when all you knew was Budweiser/Molson/Labatt? French/Swiss/Quebec artisan cheeses when all you knew were Kraft singles? Or even as you become a home owner, when something breaks, and you suddenly realize there is a LOT more that goes into [insert furniture/appliance/decoration/structural element of choice] than you ever thought? (Yes there is satisfaction from knowledge of your house's inner workings). This was the world of coffee for me until just recently. Because of my obsessive curiosity (the same one that makes me spend 3 hours on Wikipedia and wonder how the hell I went from looking up “JFK” to “Papayas”) I just had to get a barista class. Because if get into something new, might as well turn myself in an annoying know-it-all snob that doesn’t actually know much but thinks he does. That’s how it works right? Looking forward to annoy you when I get home!

In the trauma unit, patients come in and out. Shot, stabbed, hammered and hammer-ed. I guess there was a hammer sale somewhere. What was once an obscure science is now becoming second nature. Lately, I have worked with a South African resident called Soha. She did her medical school in Johannesburg and worked in the same hospital I had worked in 5 years ago. We had the same experiences, saw the same tragedies, worked with the same surgeons and their (lets be politically correct here) “character traits”. Soha and I hit it off. As more penetrating trauma patients came in, we developed a second natured synergy and worked to each other’s strength. Being fairly adept with an ultrasound probe, even one as worn down, damaged, and basic as the one available here, people quickly dubbed me the “Canadian ultrasound guy”. With this recognized expertise, I quickly accumulated chest drain procedures which I eventually started punting over to the med students (with significant supervision of course).

At the mid point of a weekend shift, I got thirsty. Thirsty for a little more than just water. So I headed to the waiting room where several vending machines could be found. Without much thought, I opted for an orange Fanta drink without much thought. I took a sip and was immediately hit by a flashback. I remembered doing night shifts in Johannesburg. The weekends were particularly violent and the trauma bay was always full of patients. You barely had time to finish taking care of one that someone in even worse condition would be brought in. It was exhausting. By 5am however, things would start slowing down enough for you to realize you hadn’t eaten or drank anything since starting. You would sometimes also realize at that point that you were drenched in sweat. So I developed a routine of drinking an orange fanta at 5am in Joburg. Olfactory memory (or in this case, taste) is so powerful. What’s fun about it too is that it can be very unpredictable. It hits you when you least expect it and floods your mind of a million memories before you even know what hit you. All that from an orange fanta. 

Esmeralda

Johannesburg was never really known for a flourishing joie de vivre. It’s a major financial center that grew out of a gold mining blueprint. Needless to say, most of my free time spent in eastern South Africa 5 years ago was spent outside of the city exploring the mountains of the Drakensberg to the south and the rolling fields of the Veld in the East. Johannesburg was a dud.

But Cape Town… you enchanting siren! You tantalizing temptress! If Joburg was Marlin (Finding Nemo... get with the times), Cape Town is Esmeralda. Esmeralda - a gypsy - was smart despite a lack of formal education, she was beautiful despite being homeless, she was fierce and yet delicate. In that sense, Cape town juggles similarly with a series of conflicting attributes and finds a way to entice you. After 2 weeks “in” Joburg, my motorcycle had clocked about 2000km, after close to 2 weeks here, I’m at 500km.

You could still feel the burdening weight of Apartheid’s lingering ghost in Joburg, and while the scars are still barely healing throughout the country, there is a sense of hope in Cape Town. The city and its people have started to develop the humble beginnings of a new harmony. Sure, the first sight you see out of the airport is a massive black ghetto… These will unfortunately exist for decades to come and there is a violence epidemic that is still rampant but you have to start somewhere. In the workplace, there is still a visible discrepancy, but its democratization, including the hospital, is more apparent here. In a more endearing observation, the youth of the city I have encountered so far have embraced the country’s rainbow nation moniker in a metaphorical middle finger to the old laws criminalizing interracial relationships.

[Queue the Beatles music]

All you need is love. All you need is love. All you need is love, love. Teenage hormones are all you need.

There is a lot to do here. Bars, cafés, museums, restaurants, art galleries, markets, hikes, motorcycle rides, flaura and fauna (penguins, sharks, whales, innumerable birds), etc… It’s all been fun to discover. Even if Cape Town is a tourist destination, a lot of the activities I have done so far (oyster and wine festival, cocktail week, art galleries night) included a majority of locals which adds authenticity to the experience.

It's also during those evenings where I wander a little, soak in the atmosphere, and try whatever street food I can get my hands on. The impetus behind this decision is usually multi-factorial but features mainly three prominent attributes: hunger, curiosity, and masochism. Earlier last week, at the art galleries night, I saw a stand from which emanated a pungent yet pleasant smell. The additional smoke, sizzling hisses, and flash of flame were also used to great effect in angling the white tourist ever closer like a predator attracts its prey. I couldn't understand a word the guy was saying, so I pointed to whatever looked interesting and said "yes" whenever prompted by another unintelligible question. I still have no idea what I ordered. It was meat, I'm pretty sure. There were also onions. A flat bread wrapped the entire thing. Oh, and it was seasoned with molten lava. Seconds after the first bite, my heart started racing, sweat started pearling, and my mouth started melting. I opted not to seek out help from local passersby as the sight of a tall, white, scraggly panicked man with his sauce-soaked beard running towards them might have caused more misfortune than salvation. I composed myself, went to my happy place, and let time heal everything. 

The next morning I went to the bathroom.

My stay here in a nutshell

Groote Schuur (old) Hospital at night

The hospital has become routine despite the horrors you can witness there. Bullets through the spine with resulting paraplegia. Stab wounds to the heart, the neck, the face. Pedestrians being the unfortunate pins of drunken automotive bowling. In medicine, and in emergency in particular, developing an emotional shield is quintessential to your survival in the profession. You simply can’t do your job without it. What is just as essential to your longevity however, is to find some form of venting mechanism. No matter how broad and thick your shield may be, the stains of the job will continue to accumulate, waiting for an inopportune moment to spread through unless you find time to drop the shield and process the ghosts of the past. Everyone finds their way. It doesn’t have to be an active therapy session with a psychologist where you acknowledge each specific case one after another. I’m not sure what my way actually is come to think of it. If I had to guess, it would be during activities where my mind gets to focus on a single thing where I am truly absorbed by the task at hand and everything else fades away. A form of meditation. Motorcycling, music, cooking. You sprain an ankle, you need rest. A brain sprain.

… in Spain falls mainly in the plain.