ABSTRACT
Climbing overhead, the aircraft banks left towards Johannesburg, and levels off
as it outruns the roar of its takeoff. Tracking across the sky, it is now nothing
more than a droning whistle. Other sounds drift over rooftops and up through
the cats’ cradle of power lines, carrying a more human tempo. Music and radio
talkshows are intermittently drowned out by the gusting south-easter; down at
street level singsong conversations, schoolkids on mid-morning break and the
rush of water filling bucket after bucket at the public standpipe tell the ordinary
story of another day in Khayelitsha.