I am injured.
I don’t tackle anything with a measure of balance. It’s always full-on or fuck-all – I’ve often thought this would be a good epitaph on my tombstone. On 2 January I hiked up Skeleton Gorge above Kirstenbosch, hung around for a bit at the reservoirs at the top, then bounded back down like a nimble mountain goat – only, I’m shaped more like a juvenile rhino. The next morning my right knee started hassling me, so much so that I couldn’t bend it without a shooting pain. Several physiotherapy sessions and Pilates classes followed, as well as acupuncture needles from knee to hip. I even ended up at an orthopaedic surgeon, who took X-rays and diagnosed tendinopathy. That was ten days ago. The orthopaedic surgeon had good news and bad news. The bad news: I will definitely have ongoing knee pain, especially up steps or steep inclines. The good news: I’m not likely to mess it up more than it already is, especially if I start slowly and stretch regularly. He even claimed that my knee could start to heal with all this exercise.
This unsettles me deeply. In September 2006, I left for Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro. I was also pretty unfit, and had the final stages of an upper respiratory tract infection. I boarded the plane with an irritating little cough, which only got worse. I don’t know if the dreaded altitude sickness played a role, but it couldn’t have helped. After four days I was so ill that I had to admit defeat, barely ninety minutes’ walk from base camp, the start of the final climb. Being denied the sunrise from the roof of Africa was a huge disappointment.
4. I have serious sleep apnoea.
In February I went for a sleep study at a clinic in Cape Town. My father had recently been diagnosed with sleep apnoea and now uses a CPAP device at night – an expensive affair at R20 000 with a mask that makes him look and sound a bit like Darth Vader from Star Wars.
My results were not good. Apparently I don’t sleep deeply enough because of obstructive sleep apnoea – my throat muscles and tongue become so slack that I stop breathing, but I don’t wake up. This may explain why I so often wake up dead tired. But sleep apnoea has all kinds of other scary and dangerous consequences: a higher risk of heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, obesity and accidents, because you could fall asleep while driving, for example.
My results showed an apnoea episode up to thirty times an hour; I sometimes did not breathe for as long as half a minute, during which time the organs need to work twice as hard. Sometimes you do wake up, gasping for breath, or choking, or from snoring loudly and irregularly, and with pounding heart palpitations – all symptoms I know well. Especially the snoring.
It’s not really something I’m proud of, but I am a seasoned snorer. At university, a friend and I once went on a road trip from PE to Cape Town. One evening we pulled into a backpacker lodge in Knysna to overnight in its dormitory. Sometime in the middle of the night my own snoring woke me and I looked around. Only backpacks remained – everyone else had sneaked off to escape my thunderous snoring …
Weight also plays a big role in sleep apnoea – extra fatty tissue around your neck can add to the obstruction of the airway. After my tests the specialist immediately wanted to prescribe a CPAP device. But I resisted, especially when I heard about the new Provent plasters, which are practically invisible and much less of a drama than a machine. But the specialist insisted: I needed a CPAP device to help me get a good night’s rest, to boost my metabolism and help me to lose weight, and also to prepare me for the Camino. In fact, in his view I did not stand much of a chance of completing the Camino without a CPAP device. He also recommended a special lightweight CPAP machine to make travelling easier. It all just felt too much like a one-sided push to sell me an expensive machine, so I went for a second opinion and decided to take my chances on the Camino with one packet of nice and expensive Provent plasters (R1 140 for thirty), which would hopefully bring some relief for my fellow hikers in the night if my snoring were to become unbearable.
* * *
The pilot announces that we are flying over Mecca and that those sitting on the right of the plane should be able to see it. I’m on the right. It’s already pitch dark outside. Mecca’s lights glimmer far in the distance, the holy place where millions of Muslims end their pilgrimage. From up here it looks like a massive power plant in the middle of nowhere.
* * *
Midnight at Hamad International Airport in Doha, Qatar. About 24 hours ago I was still at a Boland wedding, twirling a bridesmaid around on the dance floor with clumsy enthusiasm to Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best”.
It’s a song that always brings back memories. At high school I was a sprinter, believe it or not. Our U-19 relay team at Uitenhage’s Hoërskool Brandwag was pretty sharp. Our X factor was the guy who ran the home leg: Wylie Human, who played for almost every Super Rugby team in the country in later years.
Tina Turner’s hit was our theme song. In the heats at the Volkswagen Prestige meeting on the tartan track at the University of Port Elizabeth, we were way ahead of all the other teams timewise. The final was going to be broadcast live on television.
I was to run the third leg of the race. But poor Gideonfell at the starting block and we literally bit the dust. Later that evening, watching the grown-up athletics, half-stunned, we heard “Simply the Best” blaring from the loudspeaker …
* * *
Doha’s new airport is overwhelming. I feel like Dorothy’s little dog Toto, in The Wizard of Oz, when she says, “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more …”
I reckon Qatar looks ready to host the Soccer World Cup in 2020 – but they’re going to have to do something about the weather. It was uncomfortably hot and humid when we got off the plane – this, just before midnight.
I move with the mass of new arrivals in rows through passport control and reach the shiny and hyper-modern arrivals hall with a TV screen as big as a tennis court. Images advertising the Al Khaliji banking group flash across the screen.
But the TV screen is nothing compared to the huge bloody bear in the middle of the arrivals hall. At first I thought the seven-metre-high yellow bear was a Lindt chocolate advert, but apparently it’s a legendary work of art: Untitled (Lamp/Bear). It was created ten years ago by Swedish neo-Dadaist Urs Fischer, and has been on display at Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s famous Seagram building in New York – the building, I might add, on which Go’s home, Cape Town’s Absa building, is modelled.
A member of Qatar’s royal family bought the bear, which weighs about 20 tons, for $6,8 million at a Christie’s auction. Impressive, but also a bit unsettling: a reading lamp sticks out behind the bear, as if someone has forced it into the teddy’s back.
The reading lamp reminds me that Slagtersnek needs finishing. My flight leaves for Paris in under eight hours, just enough time to finish and email the article before Monday kicks off in Cape Town for my editor and colleagues. A sterile hotel room nearby would have been perfect; alas, I bought my ticket on special, so I don’t qualify for accommodation.
* * *
I check in at the Oryx Lounge, a luxurious space that looks more like the domain of business class passengers, to bat out the night at the airport. My friend Le Roux often speaks of “the high premium on self-entertainment”. Forty euros for eight hours in the Oryx Lounge is certainly a high premium, especially since what lies ahead for me can hardly be called entertainment.
But I really don’t want to struggle with Slagtersnek in the arrivals hall, near the yellow bear, with the laptop on my lap.
The Oryx Lounge is clinical yet luxurious: a spacious room with laminate floors, hyper-modern
