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The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgementTown of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Cape Published by the University ofof Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University This Mountain of Clouds Town Jenny Leonard LNRJEN002 Cape of A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Master of Arts in Creative Writing UniversityFaculty of the Humanities University of Cape Town 2012 COMPULSORY DECLARATION This work has not been previously submitted in whole, or in part, for the award of any degree. It is my own work. Each significant contribution to, and quotation in, this dissertation from the work, or works, of other people has been attributed, and has been cited and referenced. Signature: Date: 1 Town Cape of University 2 for the professors and the field assist Town Cape of University 3 Town Cape of University 4 Alone I wake up to a cold tongue licking my face. In the slow transition from sleep to awareness, I believe a dog is licking me. I struggle to get away, but I seem to be tied up. Everywhere I turn there are more tongues, each as cold and wet as the first. I open my eyes. Grey, wet canvas billows around me, continually sticking to my face and peeling away. My sleeping bag fastens my arms to my side. I realize two things right away. The first thing is, I’m the world’s worst tent builder. I haven’t been camping since I was a kid, and I guess that wasn’t enough to teach me how to put up a tent the right way, even a silly, tiny, one-man tent like this. It must have collapsed sometimeTown during the night. I struggle to unzip my sleeping bag and wiggle out of the tent. The second thing I realize is that it has rained. This is the southern hemisphere. Mid-June is early winter, not early summer. It obviously rains at this timeCape of year because although the pre-dawn sky is clear, my tent is soaked. It turns out it’s not as waterproof as it promised, though to be fair, it’s entirely possibly I missed some important assembly tip thatof would have covered it better. Everything I own is damp. I pull my backpack and my sleeping bag out of the soggy tent to assess the damage. The ground is wet, and I have to unzip my sleeping bag all the way and lay it out like a blanket to give myself a dry space to unpack my bag. I strap my headlamp to my forehead because it’s not light enough to see much yet. I unbuckle the straps of my backpack and carefully take out the contents. My clothes are moist at the edges, but this backpack has a rubber coating on the bottom and the top flap, so damages are Universityminimal. My toiletries are still sealed in their gigantic plastic bag. 'You don’t know what they’ll have there, I hear Africa is quite poverty-stricken,' my mother had said. If the airport was anything to judge by, I’d say they’d be able to replace everything in this bag and give me some things I’ve never heard of. I feel a bit foolish with the giant bottles of insect repellent, anti-malaria pills, anti- just-about-anything-a-mother-could-imagine pills, and a bottle of pepper spray. Even a million miles from home, I still feel like a prisoner of her worry. The plastic bag has protected the toiletries. But I’m not worried about the toiletries. I’m worried about my notebook. Some people bring novels or games or puzzles on trips. I bring my notebook. I love to draw. My parents bought me a new set of pencils when I left. It was a 'congrats on finishing high 5 school' present and a 'we’re so glad you chose higher education as your next step, even though it is only community college' present. It wasn’t a surprise. I had to tell them the brand and the softness and the thickness. They just got me the whole set. The pencils are beautiful, sharp, and untouched. And tucked next to my notebook at the bottom of the bag. They are safe. I sigh in relief, thankful that I wrapped them up in a black garbage bag. 'Just bring it, you never know when you’ll need one,' my mom had said. She was right. The pencil case is dry, as is the notebook. I open the notebook to the first page. It is blank, just like all the other pages. I think about drawing, but I’m not really in the mood. I’ve slept on the ground after a 30 hour flight, a confusing six hour bus ride and another hour of walking. There’s no coffee and it’s too dark to see anything by natural light, and everything I own is at least slightly damp. A more realistic task to consider is to pack up and get moving to my ultimate destination. I pack up by the light of my headlamp and consider my currentTown location. I am alone. Alone with a one-man tent in a field across a ditch from a poorly paved road. If you follow that road, it lands on the N2, a major highway that heads east away from Cape Town along the coast. At the intersection of this nameless road and the N2 is a decked out gas station, complete with nice bathrooms, several fast food joints, a small grocery store, and playground overrun byCape chickens. Buses come several times a day and deposit road-weary travelers there, the only buildingof for several miles in either direction. I waited there last night for about an hour. No one ever came. So I walked, which was a stupid thing to do. Somewhere in the kilometers to miles conversion I messed up and I found myself here as the dusk was gathering, not a house in sight. So I pitched my tent, which I now squeamishly squeeze the liquid out of before shoving it roughly into its bag. I hop the ditch and start walking toward the distant mountains. The stars slowly wink off as the sky brightens with the dawn.University The faint glow of the sky casts the land in relief, as if the earth is made of shadow and the sky of substance. I would like to believe that it is beautiful, but I can’t stop thinking about the cold, wet bag I’m carrying and the long walk ahead of me. 6 The Job Interview Professor Lindsay does not look happy when I introduce myself. In fact, he looks distinctly unhappy. “I beg your pardon?” he says. “I’m here for the job,” I say, again. “The job as field assistant.” “The job as what?” He is clearly enraged, though I have no idea why. He wiggles his eyebrows and frowns. His entire appearance - puffed up, white-streaked hair, big pointy nose, and eyebrow hair so long that they come to peaks over his eyes - reminds me of an owl. A big, angry owl. “Mariette,” he says. He turns on the secretary lady who welcomedTown me in. “Can I see you in my office, please?” He storms into his office. Mariette excuses herself with a worried smile. I kick my bag when the door closes behind them and sit down in the nearest chair to fume. I’m really starting to hate this trip. A night in a soggy tent followed by a morning of hidingCape from vehicles. My mother warned me about hitchhiking, so I carefully ran from the road wheneverof I heard or saw a car. And I’m glad I did. Just about every vehicle that passed was a pickup truck carrying blue-suited convicts in the back. And now, safely at my destination, the man who is supposed to be employing me completely denies that the job I have been offered even exists. Mariette is the only good thing about my morning. She was warm and welcoming when I showed up at the Info Centre. She apologized for failing to organize some kind of transportation, claiming to have mixed up the dates. She madeUniversity me tea and gave me a few stale biscuits before the angry owl man showed up. I hear him shouting. “But I didn’t ask for a field assistant!” I can’t hear what Mariette is saying, but I can hear her lilting voice take a tone of reprimand. I glance around the Info Centre, trying to find some distraction from this irritating reality. There isn’t much to look at. The walls are covered with an odd assortment of animal posters and faded maps of Africa, South Africa and the Western Cape region. “But I don’t want a field assistant!” I stand up to inspect the Western Cape map, trying to pinpoint where I am. I find the gas station 7 and follow the road north toward the mountains. “But I don’t need a field assistant!” I find approximately where I slept – nothing for miles – and the small dot of Germane. Above the dot is a long line of mountains stretching east from Germane. A name I can’t quite get my mouth around arcs across the range – Wolkeberg.

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