Africa 2001: Week 4 - Matthew's Smile and the Cintsa Violin

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Biltong is South African jerky. It's available in beef, boar, and many more wild game options. As we drove south in a rental car from Hluhluwe toward Cape Town, Tim and I basically lived on it. Pringles, too.

We stuck mostly to the N2, the major southern highway, mastering the art of the South African highway pass. If you’re being overtaken, you pull halfway on to the shoulder. When the other driver gets by, he flicks on the hazards. You flash the brights. Thank you. You’re welcome. Polite at 90 mph. You gotta love it.

Mile after mile we listened to CDs we’d heard too often or radio stations whose geographical range far exceeded their musical one. You can’t get away from them and they don’t play anything you want to hear.

Once, we hopped on a smaller road to see the countryside. Chickens, goats, cows, impossibly full taxis, and ubiquitous brush fires made the driving high stress. People were everywhere – commuters sitting in the brush waiting for a ride, shoeless children running home from school, fat ladies with babies on their backs and bundles of sticks balanced on their heads walking back to their grass-roofed huts. We were rushing through a land that hurries for no one.

Through the better part of a week our only stop of consequence was in a town called Cintsa. We spent two nights at Buccaneer's Backpackers.

In the morning Tim and I paddled a hostel canoe up the nearby river until it was too shallow to continue, then drifted back at the water’s own pace. Big black and white kingfishers and tiny bright blue and orange ones yelled at us and skimmed along the banks, always staying a few trees ahead. Two birds with bright red heads and green bodies ate invisible fruit deep inside a tree. Cormorants lined the shores of the river mouth.

As soon as we returned from the two hour canoe ride, I left Tim and went with a bunch of other guests to a local school for a concert. In true African style, all eight of us squeezed into one open-top jeep. My head was two feet above the roll bar and my feet were inside the frame of an old seat. I really didn't expect a violin to cut me to the core that day.

After about twenty minutes our driver, a hostel employee named Mike, pulled into the parking lot of a local school. No kickball field, no basketball hoop, no cars, and no sign of a nearby town. There were three teachers, two older women who looked like nuns in civvies and a man named Matthew.

The students, who ranged in age from five to fourteen, flashed excited, shy smiles while we squeezed into their tiny desks, our knees folded high above our hips. They welcomed us with the national anthem: "United we shall stand/Let us live and strive for freedom/In South Africa our land." The song echoed off the damp, posterless walls and empty bookshelves.

All the girls wore dresses. Some had colorful dots on their face that looked tribal but might have been some sort of global teeny-bopper fad. Several boys wore cut-off indigo coveralls, hand-me-downs of the African workingman's uniform. A few were shirtless. Many were bare foot.

With Matthew's guidance, all forty children performed traditional African songs I'd never heard before and Christian classics barely recognizable through the thick accents. Kumbaya sounded like it always does.

They foot-stomped, heal-slapped, and finger-snapped to rival the best of off-Broadway. One brave girl took the stage alone and serenaded a ceramic frog. Her schoolmates came barging back into the room for the frog prince's royal wedding.

A ceremonial stick-fight degenerated into a playful stab-fest.

Older children laughed when the little ones didn't know the words, the rhythms, or the dances. A happy-eyed child of about 5 repeatedly jumped into the fray only to be knocked around like a pinball, disappear amid the sea of legs, and come crawling back out all teeth and joy.

Children who weren't performing sat coyly among the tourists.

Matthew translated lyrics, introduced acts, and shepherded his disorganized flock with amateur magnificence. He was the first to clap and the last to stop. The show was his gift to us because we cared to show up.

At the end, he asked all of us to point out our home country on a map that two of the older boys held above their heads (the walls were too damp and fragile for tape or tacks). USA, Germany, Switzerland, Northern Ireland, France - the names alone made the students' world a little bigger.

An English woman introduced herself and explained that she had been teaching violin to street children in Soweto, near Johannesburg, for the past several weeks. She asked to play and Matthew agreed.

He gasped and choked back tears when she opened the case. "I've never seen one in person before…maybe once or twice on TV."

She raised her bow. The room was still. And then she played. Classical music filled the room. The notes floated from grin to silent grin. Matthew was frozen, his smile so big it seemed like his face got wider to accommodate it.

When she offered him the violin, nobody breathed. He placed the pad on his neck, peeked at his audience and with one self-conscious stroke shattered the air with a cat-skinning screech. The room erupted. African children squealed. American and Europeans clapped, hooted, and howled. The nun-like teachers stamped their feet and jiggled in their seats, laughing without a sound.

Matthew enjoyed the ineptitude more than anyone. After a little guidance he played two of the most beautiful notes I've ever heard. Glowing with pleasure, he handed back the violin. The woman put it in its case.

Before we left, Mike the driver took up a collection to pay for basic school supplies and much-needed building repairs.
I forked over 50 Rand (about $6.50) and headed for the jeep, taking care not to step on the schoolyard chicken. The children were singing inside as we pulled away.

At dinner that night, a little voice in my head kept saying, “$6.50? 6 freakin 50!” I found Mike the driver and gave him the $50 that Hidde had rescued from Tofo. He promised to bring it to Matthew, who's probably smiling still.


After an overnight stop in the sleepy town of Swellendam, Tim and I arrived in Cape Town to do some volunteer work.

(note: The Christian Science Monitor originally published a big chunk of this installment)

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