ghosts of district six

 There’s this episode of Unsolved Mysteries that is about the ‘tsunami spirits’, about a phenomenon in Japan after the 2011 tsunami and subsequent nuclear power station melt down – that people would come across spirits who didn’t realize they were dead, unaware of the catastrophe. Taxi drivers would pick up clients only to take them nowhere and for the people to disappear suddenly from the backseat. Young men would be seen walking home, with no home to go to. I couldn’t finish the episode, because whether or not you believe in ghosts or spirits or an afterlife, nothing is more relatable than the feeling of trying to get home. Looking at the images and videos of District Six, how many people still know the way back to their houses? To the corner store? To the cinema? 

Two ladies stopped me for directions to Buitengracht Street yesterday, and I said, follow the road till you see a McDonalds and head up towards the mountain. How intimately I know my way, how every curb stone holds a piece of me. I walked down Queen Victoria Street and saw myself, a few years earlier, walking from where I used to work in the library, up the road and to the right on my way to the Vida the next block over. I often wonder if there are ghosts, what will my ghost haunt? Which streets and sidewalks, what rooms, and buildings? What place has left such an impression on me, that I couldn’t dare separate from it. 

Looking at District Six – at the streets full of people and cars, I wonder where the ghosts are. Are they in their homes? On the street? Are they walking home from a friend’s house, the sky the soft indigo pink of sunset or are they walking to work at the crack of dawn, new sunlight warming their faces. What sounds do they remember? What are they humming under their breath? Who are they thinking about when they look out the window? I don’t understand how it simultaneously breaks my heart and comforts it, to know people loved like we do, cried like we do, that every experience has been felt before. I wonder about what happens to a place when you can no longer return to it. Where does it go?