Grahamstown

Frontier Country

A little while ago I wrote a story about Baviaanskloof. It took me months to complete and almost ended my blogging career. At the time I thought it was just the Kloof. But fast forward a few months, and just as before, I felt my writing career hurtling to an abrupt end. 

What was it about South Africa that prompted such bouts of writer’s block? After all, I had antics packed to the rafters of shit we had gotten up to. 

For example, I once helped three other blokes carry a refrigerator through a B.P. garage. By the time we reached the forecourt we were exhausted.  So under the scrutiny of many amused motorists, we set it down in the car park and went inside the shop and ate lamb and mint pies. 

Then there was the time I climbed to the top of a three-story-high fibreglass pineapple. True story. You can Google it.

It’s outside a town called Bathurst, named after Henry Bathurst, 3rd Earl of who-gives-a-damn. I couldn’t imagine he ever thought his name would be associated with anything so tropical. 

Though I suspect he would approve of the fact that Bathurst is home to the longest operating pub in the country. Because what self-respecting aristocrat isn’t a raging alcoholic?

I thought about the time my mate Big-D was getting married. The lads and I dressed him up in a Mankini and pulled him up and down the lagoon in Stillbai on waterskis. It must have caused quite a stir as his in-laws-to-be owned a house on the river in full view of the whole fiasco. 

A year or so later, the favour was returned when I was dressed up in a gorilla outfit and dragged from supermarket to supermarket buying bananas. 

So why was I having such a problem finding something to write about?

I was dangerously close to one of my infamously unproductive pub visits when a thought occurred to me.

I needed to see South Africa through the eyes of a tourist and not just as my backyard. To at least pretend to feel the Dopamine rush of experiencing a new place. 

So I poured myself a glass of Chardonnay and pretended that the sun was out. It was easy to imagine a bougie wine estate or an upper-class safari. But let’s face it. That’s not what I’m about.

So instead I imagined somewhere so far up shit creek that it was inconceivable that anyone would ever visit. Only I was wrong about that too, as visitors flocked there in droves. I myself spent four years living there.

Believe it or not, before there was Larry the travel blogger or even Larry the licensed pharmacist. There was Larry the musician. My hair was for the most part in a poor state and I got around in a hippy beetle. So obviously, I played jazz.  

Serious jazz. 

Which would have been okay, had we been any good. 

This haven of academics, alcoholics and habitual drug users was called Grahamstown. And in a sentence I never thought that I’d say. I had to imagine the city through the eyes of a German Jazz Band.

To the uninitiated, Grahamstown certainly didn’t invite much in the way of excitement. So one had to wonder what the hell they were doing there?

Had I been in their boots, I know I most certainly would not have been impressed. 

We met up with them on the Friday night for a quick run-through before the show the following evening. And immediately, their German precision became apparent. 

“Big-D,” I mumbled under my breath. “I think we’re in trouble,”

As even a tone def vegiterian could see that they weren’t just better than us. They were a lot better than us!

“Don’t worry about it,” he replied without hesitation.

Big-D knew better than most what it took to please an audience, and it seldom had anything to do with one’s competence as a musician. 

The rest of our band seemed equally unfazed, which was a little odd considering none of us qualified as first-rate musicians. But what professional outfits like the Germans didn’t realise was that we also had a few tricks up our sleeves.

For a start, we simply played louder than everyone else. What we lacked in skill we made up for in volume. Not only did this hide most our mistakes, but to the university beer-drinking audience, it made us better in almost every facet. And we knew it.  

After a quick rehearsal, one of the Germans casually asked if there was any entertainment in town that night. You had to feel for them. Was this as good as it was going to get? A Friday night rehearsal with a local band that could best be described as… mediocor? 

“Sure,” Replied one of the lads.

His tone almost bored at the prospect of what lay ahead. 

“There’s a little party, you must come along.”

The Germans must have wondered if they should even have bothered.

But what they didn’t know was that our lead tenor saxophone player intentionally failed to articulate the magnitude of what lay ahead.

That night just so happened to be the University Radio Station’s annual party. It was perhaps the biggest event on the social calendar, and one hell of a party!

If I was a visiting German in a sleepy frontier town that night, I most certainly would have thought.

‘What the F%@$k.’

How was this possible?

The party went all night. Then, just when we noticed the Germans starting to loosen up, we dragged them off to another late-night spot that was only kicking off. 

PopArt may not have had the statue of the RMR party, but the drinks came in actual fishbowls and the unisex bathroom was one of the best hangouts in town. 

By now they must have been wondering how much our parents were spending on our education.

With confusion lingering, we deployed our second ace of the night.

That being the knowledge that nobody outdrunk us. This responsibility fell to a few key instrumentalists who certainly weren’t the best horn players, but their prowess in the pub was second to none. 

Their performance that night ensured that by the following evening the gap between our two bands had narrowed significantly. 

I often imagine our guests telling this story years later. How they went to this shitty little town in Africa and ended up having one of the best nights of their lives. 

Today, Grahamstown goes by the name Makhanda. I believe the town has run out of water and that the municipality has seized maintenance of… well, everything. 

But I choose to believe that should you visit the sleepy hollow, Makhanda would rise to the challenge and you too would end up having the time of your life. 

After all, that’s what Grahamstown has always been known for!