Smells of a South African Summer

With the heat of the approaching summer comes an array of déja-vu-like experiences that bring me back to my previous summer in South Africa. The heat seems to intensify everything—including the way my life here smells.

The mornings are still fairly cool. Now that I sleep with my windows open, the early air is fresh, as if it, too, spent a night resting. With only leaves shifting in the dark breeze, the air smells like it has been infused with their stability and calm.

An old mini-bus, or kombi, takes me to school along with other teachers. As it pulls up around 7:40, I take a breath heavy with exhaust fumes, mingled with chipped paint and rust. I squeeze between two women in the backseat, where the exhaust filters through small crevices in the floor and windows. Sometimes the exhaust and oil alternate, and sometimes they mix with the churned-up dust, prompting me to cover my nose and mouth with my hand or headscarf.

At school I’ve been working on the library. Today I begin by pulling some books off a pile and giving them a few strong whisks with the feather duster. Even when I do it over the window, I can feel the dust particles rushing into my nostrils, settling between my teeth. This dust is not like the dirt-dust of South African soil; it is the dust of years upon years of inactivity. Small insect tunnel-homes crumble off the books and crack on the floor, and I smell dust, age, and abandonment altogether.

Later, I use the office computer to prepare some guidelines on how to look after books—hopefully such smells will be a thing of the past. While I’m there, the women who volunteer to cook lunch for the learners enter, bringing the deep, rustic odor of burning wood in their dresses. Back in the library, I look out the window and see them laboring over great cauldrons set on smoking branches. A trace of tomato and onion gravy wafts through another window; in the small kitchen next door a teacher prepares his own lunch. When it’s time to eat, huge buckets of bean soup and pap (a kind of porridge made from maize) steam outside each room, ready for the learners to scoop out their portion.

I join a couple teachers for lunch, and as soon as I walk into the classroom, I’m breathing different air—it is sticky with sweat from so many energetic bodies in such a small space. The children outside play jump rope games and tag, kicking up great swirls of dust, which eventually blow into the room. More than anything, the heat intensifies the smell of living.

As the day wears on, the heat thickens. The general worker is polishing the stoup—a scent of wax glossing everything over. At my other two schools, the children polish their classroom floors every week, taking out old tins of homemade polish: paraffin and melted candle wax. They get down on their knees and massage the pale purple polish into the floor with rags until it shines. Not until South Africa did I associate the sharp smell of kerosene with cleanliness. In fact, after my first night with a South African family, I remember worrying because I detected an odor reminiscent of gasoline in my room.

After school, back in my room, I stretch out on my bed, exhausted. My cat jumps up to welcome me with sun-spiked fur and the distinct scent of returning from someplace wild. I decide to clean up my room a little, which includes taking out the trash. I dump it in a large tin tub out back, strike a match, and cup the flame until it catches on a scrap of paper. I wait for a few minutes to make sure the fire is growing, melting the remnants of my last few days. The smell is acrid and so powerful that I have to step away suddenly to catch my breath.

As evening comes, I begin to prepare supper. Removing the lid from my water bucket, a wave of stale warmth hits me. I pour the humid water into a pot and chop potatoes, onions, and garlic—the scent of which dwells on my fingertips all through the next day. When I join my host family for supper, the steamy smell of cooked maize and curry spices greets me at the door. The heat from cooking, though, is soon tempered by dusk, the disappearance of the sun.

The day is fatigued, and like me, ready to be dark and peaceful and scented with rest.