One of the reasons we came down to South Africa was to see Zane. He is a good friend from our time in Botswana, and currently has advanced lung cancer. He's the second person we’ve known who never smoked but ended up with the disease that has spread throughout his body. When we made arrangements, we were totally unsure whether we would see him at all since he decided back in January to suspend all cancer treatment. For all the chemo and radiation stories I have heard, I don’t blame him.
Zane moved in with his seventy-eight year old mother Lucille, who as a former Miss Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), is an icon of grace and strength. His sister Lorelle has also been visiting from England for the past three weeks. We spent some lovely afternoons with them.
His body is confined to laying on the couch most of the time, but he was thoughtful to buy a six pack of Windhoek Lager, our favorite beer to drink while we had wors and chips for lunch one day. Although diminished in size, his mind is quite clear and he remains the talented storyteller he always was. He retold stories from his childhood in Rhodesia and South Africa, some that we had heard and a few that were new. Two days before we arrived, he received a blood transfusion which he swears has given him new energy. He is remarkably positive and ready to die, but still the adventurer, the wide-eyed optimist, the dreamer.
One morning, he felt so good that we took him over to the gallery where his art will be exhibited in July. He laid on the couch in the middle of the space and planned out where all the paintings should go. The show will focus on his drawings from the desert. Then we drove over to his favorite curry take-away where again they had a couch in the back room, and ordered the infamously hot Durban curry. It is a red curry sauce with substantial heat which he can chow right down and ordered enough for a week. For Russ and I, we needed plenty of rice in the fish curry we ordered. It may have been the spiciest thing I have ever eaten but a rite of passage when coming to this city.
A friend gave him a whole hard drive of movies and documentaries. He introduced us to the PBS mini-series The West which we watched with him on two afternoons. He is fascinated with history as we are, and I suppose watching it hours on end was a slight substitute for his dream of someday traveling through the United States like one of the early explorers in the film.
We have tried to help out where we can, printing his brochure and a paper he’d written. Typing dictated emails. In the end, we feel like he has been more of an example and blessing to us that we have been.
The cool night air by the ocean and gentle rolling of waves makes for good sleeping. Our guesthouse is in a great location – Durban North near La Lucia and Umahlanga Rocks. Every day we have gone walking on the beach which always does me an infinite amount of good.
We are eating fresh fish, fresh paw-paws (papayas), large creamy avocados, and plantains. Russ found some ostrich wors and we braai’ed it last night, which is just something that needed doing while we were here.
The weather has been perfect. We had one afternoon and evening of rain which made for a spectacularly clear morning the next day. We were blown away by the clarity in the air which we have not inhaled for months.
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