Drinking a Liter of Rocket Fuel on Valentine’s Day
Drinking a Liter of Rocket Fuel on Valentine’s Day
Umqombothi in Gugulethu
Mzoli’s is deafening. Kwaito and African house music are blasting out the door on a Sunday afternoon while I’m waiting for my bottle of Umqombothi. I’ve spoken to a stall holder. He knows a guy who knows a guy who’s gone to find me some of this home-brewed beer. Soon I have a liter and a half in a Stoney’s Ginger Beer bottle.
I’m in a township on the Cape Flats called Gugulethu and I’m armed with my bottle of moonshine. In we go. The smell of meat cooking wafts through the air at Mzoli’s and bodies are wiggling. My crew finds a table and sits down to taste this chalky, mealie drink.
Kwesa!
Mouths pucker into emoticons of distaste; however, on the second gulp I realize I rather like it. Swiping the bottle, I decide to take a look around. Empty green bottles cover every surface. There’s a black girl singing “watch me whip, watch me nae nae” and giving the side eye to a circle of white girls making awkward hip movements. This is one of the few places in Cape Town where people that live in the townships and people that live in the Cape Town suburbs almost mix socially. Gugulethans travel into Cape Town daily, but Cape Townians don’t often travel in the other direction.
I’ve drunk up to where the label starts and realize too late this stuff is rocket fuel. I chat away, smashed, on the dance floor, while lugging round a liter and a half of Umqombothi in a Stoney’s Ginger Beer bottle that’s almost the same size as I am. Figuring out my origins, a local woman tell me she loves Manchester City football club. She says she’d love to play football but her church will call her a lesbian and she’ll be thrown out of her community if she sets up a team. Thump thump thump goes the music.
Gay boys are popping shapes over to the side, loud and proud and entertaining the crowd. I meet a bunch of lady farm laborers from Verbouw who thought it would be fun to come to town for the weekend. Would they like some Umqombothi? “Ahahahahaha, no man,” they say, which makes me realize that if alcohol is a social status, then my offering is at the bottom of the pile.
I sit in a plastic chair watching people watching people. There are a few casual inter-racial chats but everyone goes back to their groups mostly, shoulder to shoulder in their disinterest.
However, to the side there’s a black boy and white girl kissing gently. As I sit drinking my home brew, they are lost in their own time and space, two teenagers trying to find a private corner in which to have their own romantic moment on St. Valentine’s Day.