Dadoh – Durban 2024
I Hardly Remember Their Names
From her kitchen in a container near the rank she arrives at night, scolding and so on, in a huff of takeaway styrofoam containers and things exchanged for left over food. Dadoh settles in to the office chair Jimmy spends his days in.
“No ma, she’s working next door right now.”
Unless Nontle is there, then civility abounds.
I enter into these conversations of concern knowing sometimes Jimmy needs a backup to some story, in the hope that Dadoh has food spare or something sell-able or will leave Jimmy money and he will buy me a cap.
Dadoh is not just a person but an accumulation of deals, acquisitions, prospects, potential. There have been times when she has given me money for no reason, there have been times she has lent me money because she sees me going into withdrawal.
Dadoh arrives to find Jimmy gone looking for Nontle and we get into a long conversation, she worries for her son. I defend Nontle because Jimmy would defend Nontle. I try to both defend Nontle and Dadoh’s view of Nontle. Because I am out of caps. Dadoh has no money to lend or give that night. But she lets me use her phone to try reach someone that I can ask for help. The call fails. Dadoh, in an act that makes no sense, walks the twenty meters to the caps dealers and takes credit of two caps for me.
“Yes,” Jimmy says later, “My mother is too good for her own health.”
I am surrounded by water. On the bed in the back room, during the rain, it comes from somewhere, and fills up the room slowly, floating old condoms from under the bed. Hiding from Sam, from who I have been getting crack on credit. I am shit scared and in withdrawal when Dadoh arrives, it is raining, raining and I need caps and there is nowhere in the rain to spin for caps and I tell Dadoh and Dadoh knows Sam and this is serious. I ask to use her phone. She goes to fetch it from the other room, and returns speaking to my benefactor. Yes, he is smoking again, yes. Yes, I will get him food, and get him to a doctor. And my benefactor sends money and Dadoh buys me caps and sets out to buy food for the house. And comes back with very little food that cost very much.
Dadoh will not let me phone my benefactor. Jimmy’s debt to Sam is paid, mine is not. When the withdrawals come crawling at dawn I set out to get my phone back from Sam to call the benefactor. Sam’s people only lets me take my phone for ten minutes and the benefactor is not answering.
Underneath the place where Sam’s people operate from, are a series of old storerooms, where girls work and paras smoke, these are separate from the upstairs room for the well paying clients. I am here trying to keep my phone on, borrowing a charger when Bongi tells me that Dadoh stole the equipment that runs her kitchen from a man she was once living with.
Someone calls gate and the gate opens and I am down the alley with my phone as quick as I can, with a few percent battery. It’s cold in the petrol station forecourt and the convenience store worker only arrives at seven. I huddle across from the exit in the warmth of other withdrawing paras. The convenience store worker is not coming in today. Sam’s people are everywhere and so I walk far, not sure where. Far.
The gift shop at the botanic gardens is opening up. The botanic gardens seemed like the place where they would be least likely to look for me. They agree to charge my phone and I go and sleep on the grass while I am waiting. And it’s noon before I wake sweating in the sun, with a boot gently in my side. “You can’t sleep here.”
My phone is only on 25%, the tin foil holding the charging pin in place has slipped. I cannot reach anyone, I leave a desperate message saying all I want is an empty room and some medication, and some food. I put the phone back on charge and find a bush to hide in. At around four pm they find me in the bush and I am asked to leave the botanic gardens.
Sitting on a hot pavement, the phone comes on at 30%. I manage to have a conversation with the benefactor. She has sent money to Dadoh, who will feed me, and I can stay at Dadoh’s place. And Dadoh will take me to get medication. I beg for money to get transport to go to Dadoh’s and I use that money to go and smoke out the withdrawal.
At the end of the long walk, the dull glow of Dadoh’s container kitchen in the waning of traffic, industrial roads, the edge of the city at 9pm. She greets me with a grunt, “Sam has been calling me all day, wanting his money.” Gives me a styrofoam of meat and pap. I sit outside and eat on the still warm pavement. Foremost on my mind is what will I smoke tonight.
She burdens me with bags and plastics and so on. We climb into a waiting minibus, that has been waiting for her. She seems to know everyone on board and introduces me as the para she is being paid to make clean.
In the warmth of bodies in the chuckling of the end of the day they question me. They give me advice. It is good natured and oppressive. The minibus stops frequently. Dadoh is telling them that the white lady has sent money for medication but she has a better remedy and is taking me to someone tomorrow. The minibus drives past the abandoned methadone clinic where the dealers live in rusting taxis. An organism in the night we hurtle towards twenty six. The relief of the momentum placates me.
Until we pass twenty six. No, you are not going to smoke tonight. The well meaning voices become threats and I fling myself out of the taxi as soon as it hits a light. Jimmy does not welcome me. I cannot go to Sam, I find myself in another smoking room and sell my fucked phone for a few caps. Walking to the park, the heat of the day breaks and the warm soaking long night rain of the fucking tropics sets in.
There is only one place to go, I walk towards Dadoh’s place. For three long hours I try to find Dadoh’s place, with only the scant direction of Jimmy, follow this road, it’s something gardens, past the traffic school, just before the road ends. There is no traffic school on this road. This road does not end. The opiates take me and I sleep in the crook of tar, a pavement upended by a giant root.
In the first light of drizzle, Jimmy says, “No, not this road, the one below.” Dadoh’s buzzer doesn’t work and after some time, how much time, some time, a security guard or is he a gardener or a tenant, goes to fetch Dadoh. I am now exhaustion. Dadoh’s apartment is a stack of boxes, of plastics, of bags, of containers, of black plastics full of clothes, of furniture piled on top of furniture, the bath is an overflow of various boxes of fong kong toiletries and loofahs and cartons of latex gloves and giant bottles of mercurochrome and gentian violet and milk of magnesia and friars balsam and the kitchen is expired two minute noodles and instant coffee gone black hard in tins and dishes and dishes, never been washed dishes and roaches, and the lounge is a pile up of faux leather and broken flatscreens and the fridge is in the lounge and the windows are blocked by stacked foam mattresses and there is a small balcony with a single bed hidden among boxes and this is my room, she says. But first I must shower. I do not want to shower, I want to smoke. She will not give me money to smoke, I must shower and we must get me right.
I will not shower. She phones the benefactor. The benefactor says that I must shower, and go get right. I make a bargain, I will shower, and smoke and go get right. Dadoh watches me shower. She does not let me close the curtain. She instructs me on how to shower.
Dadoh stands there while I am cleaning the withdrawal shit out of my ass, and the knots out of my hair and the crust out of my eyes and ears and she tells me that I am dirty. I ask her for privacy and she says no, she has been told to make sure I am clean.
There is a relentlessness to Dadoh. She has made a promise. For two days she tries to fulfil that promise. She takes me to a traditional healer. I am given a purging tonic. I purge in the shower surrounded by shower caps and vacuum packed soaps and stacks of toothpaste tubes. And the withdrawal continues. Dadoh insists this is the way. I find a way out of the apartment and go and smoke. I hide from Sam. I sleep in the park. I borrow a phone, I complain to the benefactor. The only way is to return to Dadoh. I return to Dadoh, shit running down my legs. Dadoh takes me to smoke.
I wake up, it must be mid morning, on the single bed, I try make noodles but there are only paper plates and a mountain of crust and roaches and the kettle does not work. Dadoh emerges from her room, her bed is a pile of lipsticks and lotions and creams and unguents, she rolls off of this, and tells me that we can eat breakfast on the way to the doctor. Finally, my doctor. No, she has a cheaper one, a closer one. Walking up the hill Dadoh asks me if I can find her a white man who will love her. She thinks with a white man she might be successful.
The doctor will not prescribe suboxone, he says addiction is all in the mind. He prescribes some minor opiate. Back at Dadoh’s the opiate will not take hold. I pack my meagre things, the few things I have, and Dadoh will not let me leave. I say I just want to sit in the sun. The benefactor is called, I am told to leave my things and come back for them. I come back two days later and Dadoh says I have betrayed her. She will not give me my things until I get the benefactor to pay her for helping me.
I crawl back to Sam. To sleep in Bongi’s room. To cadge dots of other paras. Sam comes to the house in the afternoon. I tell him I have been hiding from him and I have lost the phone and I will pay him. Sam shrugs, “I was not looking for you, you come back always.”
Three weeks later I am passing Dadoh’s kitchen, it has closed down.
· →James