It’s usually remarked how those of a non-appealing visual arrangement must needs be equipped with a remarkable streak of humour to attract and hold the attention of those who normally would not deign to cast eyes upon them past the cursory fleeting glimpse, but for the poor, this need is elevated to the same sense of importance and fundamentalism as the very needs for victuals and water.

This is an age wherein strolls by the countryside in which the strollers bathe their feet in the early morning dew, caressed by the gently blowing and unblemished morning breeze, whilst cavorting to the tune of countryside, birds, the whistling of the grass as the wind blows through it, the chirping of crickets innumerable, the distant hum of the tractor ploughing the far-off fields, the odd human hail to some working partner, amongst a greatly diverse cacophony of other sounds, has since been replaced by movie dates, candlelit dinners at some expensive French diner serving seafood ‘fresh off the plane from the harvest in Scotland’, and various other experiences which all require the expenditure of a not inconsiderable amount of pennies.

A bloke, in spite of his bright promise and almost certain destiny perched in the upper echelons of society finds himself undesirable if he displays even the slightest inability to subject his lady friend (or otherwise, I am not bigoted), to the full rigours of such surfeit and luxurious comfort. A simple offer to walk a couple of blocks to the high-end destination is met with severe suspicion, for what self-respecting man hails not a cab in such advanced times as ours. It is increasingly difficult to find anyone who regards you simply for the jolly good company you are reputed to be if that enjoyable companionship is not shared over a bottle of (I don’t know any really good wines-let me revise that, I don’t know any good wines, so insert precious vintage here) and some snooty food with only a French designation.

I am an engineering student. That statement has many a time seen me imbibing a great many pints of beer at my local pub courtesy of some of the male regular patrons, whilst it has seen many a prospective conquest shirking away in scarce disguised horror and consternation. The male patrons recognise promise and decide to make an investment that has the slightest of chances of maturing after the passage of time in years, whilst the ladies, of whom I’ve learnt to be wary, and to keep my distance, are perturbed by the very thought of a student daring to approach them. The nerve on that boy! What have I done to encourage such low people to approach me? Has my mascara clouded again? No dear lady, as the irrepressible Bob Dylan sang on the song Goin’ to Acapulco “it’s a wicked life, but what the hell, everybody’s got to eat.” It gets to be that occasionally we have to aim higher despite the crippling fear and dread.

I remember well my first girlfriend as quite a special somebody. Our first date was a tennis match at the university courts, and when we decided to break for victuals, we walked the kilometre or so between the courts and the nearby Spar, and there we split the bill and proceeded to buy six hot cross buns and a two litre pet Sprite. We then downed these on the way back to the courts, alternatively taking turns to drink from the bottle. I even mocked her about how she would stop walking every time she took a swig at the bottle, albeit at the least opportune moment, for she was just then holding the bottle at a sixty degree angle, drinking from our shared refreshment and the fit of giggles that ensued almost brought her to choke! Subsequent dates never improved much from this early example, and included long night-time walks, long day time walks, and long eventide walks. I’m yet to get her opinion on such odd date behaviour, but my own experience of the thing was unforgettable. It simply was a better way to spend time with one’s beloved, and had a level of intimacy and privacy simply not offered by the most exclusive of dining establishments.

I have subsequently been on many similar dates, albeit all inside my imagination, and they were simply indescribable in their elemental and simplistic candour. I am an avid walker, known at times to wander off for no apparent reason and to no apparent end to the exhaustion of fifteen miles and more at a time, and the course of my plenitude of impromptu gallivants, I have come to know of a good deal of sublime and unimpeachable treks. Walks through virgin land leading up to a secluded lake; climbs up rocky hills where I found myself leaping from rock to rock akin to the fashion of a rambunctious young mountain goat all the while grinning with stupefying glee; long, arduous wanderings on sultry afternoons without water or any refreshment through a network of intricate and often dead-end dusty paths. I have been lost innumerable times courtesy of the male ego which believes males to be equipped with an infallible internal compass, and the asking for directions to be the very basest of all actions. I have encountered hostility from both humans and rapacious dogs after inadvertently trespassing through some property on untold occasions. I have tired whilst still walking to the point of finding some shady bush or tree to crawl up underneath, covered my face with my hat to prevent flies landing on it, and proceeded to knock out for a goodly two hours from sheer exhaustion. I once had thrones cast at me after cutting through some compound by the frankly unruly inhabitants, and from thence I beat a dignified yet hasty retreat all the while heeding the mutt that was paying undue and rather disconcerting attention to my ankles. I once almost slipped off a rather high rock I had surmounted, the hasty descent from which would have resulted in significant maiming or even death. I have seen nature in all its beauty and splendour, at its most dangerous, and I have had many of the sightings. The overpowering yearning of my very soul through all these adventures has been to find a soul to share them with, and it is this drive that has led me to experience vivid and all too real  daydreams of what could be.

Is it too much to hope then, that amidst the crowds of highly selective Godiva and Roche consuming lasses might be found my companion walker? One who scoffs not at the idea of a walk that could only leave them tired, sweaty, parched and dry; one who does not reproach the awkward commute home in a commuter bus whilst carrying the unmistakable odour hard physical exertion entails; one who would voluntarily give up on a 5-star dining experience whilst donning Dolce and Gabbana and Dior fragrance, for crisps and a 50c bottle of mineral water whilst baptised with a quiet twang of urea and ammonia infused with that morning’s deodorant, and a slight degree of halitosis borne of long periods without water and solid food.

Oh well, till I  find her, I’m off to bed, for tomorrow I go walking once more, the lone participant in what remains my favourite activity. I will enjoy the thrills, the unpredictable joys and spills all on my lonesome, till I won’t have to.

Jo.

“The fool hath said in his heart there is no God.” Well, I guess I probably am a fool.

Now, this is no common admission for a young African male to say, and is even more inconceivable given my background. To fully treatise my religious beliefs (or lack thereof) and the reasons and justifications behind them would require no less than a substantial number of tomes, so  I  will summarize the tenets only.

I was brought up in an ultraconservative household, with an ultraconservative father and a similarly conservative ma. Today ‘ultraconservative’ is a term that is loosely bandied about by left wing publications to describe any stances that are moderate by most definitions, but happen to fall foul of the high libertine standards they espouse. I do not make the same mistake here when I say I was brought up in an ultraconservative setup. Let me take you on a tour of some of the ridiculous standards and rules I was expected to live out my life by.

The church my parents belonged to (deliberate use of that proprietary term), believed in the absolute authority of the Bible, and I grew up sharing their staunch belief in its infallibility. Women were inferior to men. They were encouraged to be stay at home moms, raising rag rats in the fear of the Lord, making sure their husbands came home to a steaming meal, and then they would fulfil their conjugal duties without debasing themselves by actual enjoyment of the deed. Okay, maybe I exaggerate here, but seeing the austere visages that seemed ubiquitous at church brought to my active imagination very dour and mechanical performances of that most desirable of activities, sex.

Worldly music was of the devil. So were worldly movies, television programs, novels and any entertainment that did not lead you closer to the Almighty. As such I grew up eschewing all music and movies. I found myself immersed in literature as a consequence, and I used to precociously devour volumes no child should normally be burdened with. I completely missed out on all the excited morning chatter of prepubescent school goers in which last afternoon’s cartoon or wrestling events were discussed in detail. My head would be buried in Biggles book at such moments, and it’s no wonder I used to regularly baffle my primary school librarian, Mrs Pearson, with my turnover of library books. I would read all three of my allotted books before the week was out, and she actually came to build a rapport with me because of the frequency with which I was in that well stocked library.

I digress. The sisters, as all women are wont to be called, are forbidden from wearing slacks, shorts, trousers, pants, or any clothing that resembles men’s. They are not to cut their hair, or apply makeup, or paint their toenails, nails. Coloured hair is greatly frowned upon. They are forbidden from assuming any leadership role in the church. Hell, they aren’t even supposed to speak in the house of God. Subservient always. They are the lesser creature because it was Eve who sinned, signalling that the woman is the weaker sex. It is a must that that every girl submit to the will of her father until such a time as she gets married, then she is to submit to her husband, for as the Christ is Head of the Church, so is the man the head of the woman. I’m not making anything up. In fact, in my overwhelming desire to be succinct, I am omitting quite a library of details.

All alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, clubbing, dating and fornication are expressly sinful, and each youth  is encouraged and raised up to eschew them. (The excessive restrictions I had are probably partly responsible for my near excessive drinking, my smoking and drug habits). Thou shalt not date unless you’re seeking to marry. That was the general, binding though unwritten rule. Any of the copious ladies who have had unrequited amorous feelings towards me will testify to my disconcerting awkwardness around those of the female sex. I was permanently ruined by the first seventeen years of my life, in which I couldn’t even look at the bright young lasses, lest I lust after them, let alone talk to them. I had my first girlfriend when I was nineteen and my first kiss when I was approaching twenty! God fucking almighty right? Twenty-three years old now and I still struggle to express myself clearly and without the proverbial ‘sticking one’s foot into one’s mouth’ when it comes to talking to the broads, except when I happen to relay my words via the written medium.

I couldn’t even masturbate without feeling an overburden of guilt that would compel me to fast for several hours and offer a most contrite prayer. I remember praying for wet dreams to go away at one time. Such was my zeal to escape the sinful ways all around me and the hellfire reserved for those who sinned without compunction. I was a stand-up guy as anyone who knows me from those days could testify. I abhorred drink, girls, coarse language; I avoided the lewd anthems that so often where prone to be sung on our way to the various sporting events I always used to attend.

I believed the earth to be how old the bible said it to be, circa 10 thousand years (according to the church’s own set of interpretations). Any source which suggested otherwise was of the devil. Evolution was a laughable and easily dismissed contrivance, a pseudoscientific hypothesis akin to alchemy’s transmutation. I genuinely believed true science could never contradict the Word. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. God was infallible, so was His Word. The creation account in Genesis was the truth. Even then, in my ardent zeal, there were one or two areas I wasn’t sure about, but that was because I didn’t have sufficient Revelation, not because the word was wanting.

Imagine just how topsy-turvy my world was turned in my Advanced Level years when I began to be a true student of science. I no longer believed things were to be taken at face value, but all things were to be tried and tested before being accepted. I started checking up on long held beliefs against accepted scientific knowledge. The age of the earth, evolution, the exodus, the identity of the authors of the Old Testament, were areas in which doubt was firmly planted. As soon as I established that the bible was not the infallible authority I had grown up believing it to be, my faith crumbled into nothingness. I stopped reading the bible, I stopped praying, I stopped going to church. I still recall the phone call in which I informed my late father of my decision to stop attending church. The poor man called me to ask why wasn’t in town yet to meet up with them before heading to church together (I was at home). I had been dragging myself to church for the previous month without conviction, but that day, towards evening, I had suddenly decided to break ranks with the faith of my fathers. I told him that I no longer wished to attend church. He wasn’t too surprised with this, for my growing indifference had been telling, but he still asked me why I had arrived at that decision. He wanted to know whether it was because I had been disenchanted by seeing sinful church members whose identity was unknown to him, or whether I had seen something. Painfully, and awkwardly, I had to tell him that I simply was in doubt of the biblical accounts and needed time to set my house in order.

Cue hedonism. Cue satyriasis. Cue intoxication. A bird raised in captivity will soon die from an excess of freedom once it’s let loose. I had to catch up, on music, on movies, on porn, on boffs, on swearing, on life. I became a grotesque caricature of evil, the kind of man mothers point out to their infant boys to never become. I have become a wild thing since I broke free. My fourteen year old self would sooner have committed suicide than witness the sin machine I’ve become. I hold nothing sacred. I hold nothing reverent. The only time I ever felt lost in this new world of mine was when my father died. I hoped then, more than believed, for a heaven and a god so that that most worthy of men could find justification for his beliefs, for he was the last person I loved unconditionally.

I am reminded of John Lennon’s song God in which he essentially states how he doesn’t believe in anything. I believe nothing, and yet am so strongly a believer in everything. I believe so strongly in women’s rights a lot of women would find me off-putting. I’m not going to go around being the patronizing gentleman who opens the ladies’ doors and other such antiquated practices whose provenance is a patriarchal and misguided ancient world. I will not spoil girls because I’m expected to, and not at all when I cannot afford to. I am so firmly married to the idea of equality of the sexes that I will not participate in any practice I deem originated from the days when men were expected to be sole breadwinners who would deign to occasionally treat their wives to something extra.

I would love to see people breaking from the yoke of religion just as I have, just as they wish me to repent of all my sins while I still can, for be not mocked, every man shall reap what he sows. I have seen a light so bright I could never settle back into the same repressive, misogynist lifestyle of yore. How could I ever live without the music of Bob Dylan, or the acting of Humphrey Bogart or Cary Grant? How could I live without the bittersweet taste of beer? All that porn I’ve so painstakingly collected. How could I abandon the prurient pleasures of copulation with a callipygian nubile? No sir, I couldn’t do. If I’m a sinner, and a fool, then sinner and fool I am.

I am very much against religion because of the hold I’ve seen it exert on people, and my own sour experience with it in my formative years, yet I’m not totally against the idea that there might be a god out there. If there is, she/he’s no doubt extremely different in nature to the picture I’ve had from infancy.