If last night in Melville represented what seemed to be an American annexation, Saturday night revealed the Africans taking back their rightful territory. Oh, sure, there was still a disproportionate number of tourists, but on a night when Cameroon played (and lost a game it had dominated) the vibe was rather different in those rollicking few square blocks.
I had not even planned on going out, wanting a mellow night. But one of my fellow residents in the B+B suggested that we go for “a drink,” and we both knew that the article “a” did not represent “one.” He embodied a globalized world. A native Sierra Leonean (Mende, for those who keep track of such things) “Moses” had moved to Melbourne at a relatively young age, and then to Shanghai. he has a home in Melbourne that he sees only infrequently as he lives with his wife in Shanghai where he works in business development, a job that seemed to be to be a combination of consultant, middle man, and though was not clear on this last possibility, investor.
We went and barhopped for a bit, had some Mozambican food, and then spent an hour or so in Melville’s used bookstores before heading back to the bars for the Cameroon-Denmark game, which was disappointing and frustrating given that Cameroon had at least four legitimate scoring opportunities to every one of their opponent’s. At some point we gravitated to a couple of other bars but the pull of the place we had watched the game lured us back, and we lucked into a quality booth that became a sort of social epicenter with Cameroonians and Nigerians and Sierra Leoneans and South Africans and a lone American enjoying the fruits of the night.
I ended up going to a late night location that had reggae, but soon after we got there it shut down and we found ourselves stranded in a vaguely menacing part of Newtown with what seemed like few hopes for a taxi. It took quite some time to get back to the B+B, and not without myriad complications. As a result my sleep schedule is pretty much shot and my hope is that leaving Joburg will allow me to force myself to live vaguely like a normal human being again.
