A Thousand Faces

411

This is Khu.  A very good friend of mine set me up on a date with her, and from that date we determined that we would likely be much better friends that romantic partners.  That was about 15 years ago, I think, and Khuthaza and I have remained close friends since, despite the fact that she has gone traipsing all over this half of the planet in that time, and I have planted my roots in the Boston area.  She is Xhosa - she was born and spent the first part of her life in South Africa, and is fluent in the Xhosa “click” language (although you ask her to speak it just so you can hear the clicks at your own peril).  She emigrated to New York City as an adolescent to escape apartheid, where she stayed the next 20-odd years until she moved back to South Africa in what she might describe as a spasm of nationalism.  I use the word spasm because her desire to stay in South Africa lasted about 3 months.  Even she would admit that she is more New York than Johannesburg now.  So, of course, she now lives in Heidelberg, Germany - and loves it…although she really wants to live in Paris for a while.  Khu came to Trinidad Carnival with me once, after which she stated that she finally understood what the feeling of true happiness was.  She experienced this feeling, she says, while dancing to soca on a wall at a breakfast party on Carnival Sunday morning at about 9:12am with 4 or 5 bare-chested men surrounding her.  She’s been angling to get back there since.  We go months without talking to each other, but when we do connect, her stories are the stuff of legends - and could only happen to her, as I am constantly telling her.  Someone should just follow her around with a camera, seriously.