Cousin Tuk in
Durban 8
by Albert Russo
“God Almighty,
Zapinette,” he managed to udder,
“I’m so grateful to that nice man who
saved you from the sharks. Never again shall I
let you swim on your own.”
“Yeah, right,” I
retorted, once I got over the shock, “From
now on, we’ll walk chained to each other,
after having thrown the handcuff keys into the
loo.” I was only half joking, coz Bonka was
starting to perform again, and when he does that,
whining like them dying broads in those mooing
operas such as La Traviata or Madame
Butterfly, I get the jitters and want to
send him flying through the window. I can’t
stand men bawling like them bobby-soxers who have
just finished reading a tear-jerking romance
novel, even if it’s my uncle; by the way,
Unky Berky was born both homey and hyper
sensitive - apparently they go together -, both
upstairs and downstairs, coz he pees like nobody’s
business everytime his brain turns into mush.
He wasn’t the only one
who looked worried. You should have seen the
beaten expreshuns of the two lover boys.
Panty said in a quivering voice - he too was on
the verge of tears, as if he had almost lost a
dear soul (yeah, that’s me all right!):
“We really want you to
be careful next time, Zapy darling (whoa, le
loves me yeah yeah yeah), because there have been
terrible accidents here these last years.
That is how I learnt about
the awful things that happened to some swimmers.
Apparently the sharks don’t discriminate -
they’ve never practiced apartheid sfar
as human flesh is concerned - between tender lil
girls like me, tough mammas or dried-up grandpas;
nor do they mind if they’re white, black,
blue or yellow. The blood is all the same and it
tastes good. Yuk yuk yuk! You know what I call
them: SS, like the nazis, Sis, “scram
you shark!”
Now that we all had
digested our hard lesson, we could breathe again
like normal people, whew! Having freshened up and
put on clean clothes, my uncle and I were
gratified with another surprise. Panty and Tuk
invited us to a café on Marine Parade where we
were served a wonderful cocktail of fresh
tropical fruits. I couldn’t get over that
taste, it smelled like the garden of Eden, I
swear.
But the highpoint of that
evening follows. Back on Marine Parde, Tuk
beckoned a Rikshaw boy in Zulu. When I
first saw the guy, I thought he wasn’t real,
that he had just materialized, emerging out of a
fairy tale. I had never seen anything like that.
He wore a mega headdress measuring at least two
meters in circumference, or thereabout, and washmore,
it was adorned with dozens of peacock and ostrich
feathers and pennants of all colors. He also
sported two huge horns covered with beads. He
looked as fierce as the Lion King. But he was
REAL, not Hollywood tuff.
Excerpted
from Zulu Zapy wins the Rainbow Nation, by Albert
Russo.
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