The importance of ablutions
aising boy children poses unique challenges. One of them is that boys are water conservationists at heart, using water sparingly especially as it relates to personal ablutions. If you’ve ever transported five 10year-olds to a party you’ll know to roll down the windows and let the stink-mobile aerate.
To paraphrase Bro Bernard, our high-school boarding master, walking into our study room: “Jeez boys, open some windows! It smells like a goat’s balls in here!”
I’ve a theory: the human male’s aversion to basic grooming is an evolutionary remnant from our hunter-gatherer days. Women from the Paleolithic period left the house at dawn to forage and rummage through the bushes for fruit and berries. They’d be back in the afternoon to bath in the river.
Meanwhile, back at the Paleolithic ranch, men would go on hunting trips that lasted as long as it took to trap a buffalo — anything between two and five days. By the time Tukilo from the Pupinitso tribe returned to the cave after a successful hunt on the Serengeti plains, dragging the carcass of a wild boar, his wife Nokunuka would have a fire going, with a pot with herbs to
Rdrown out his stench. She’d have known he was coming because the wind would have blown his stink from three kilometres away. Ten years ago, I agreed to a weekend hunting trip with fellow scribe and radio colleague McIntosh Polela. I was all in until he sent me a reminder, “You can’t take a shower, brush your teeth or use perfume until Friday.”
I followed his instructions dutifully until I found myself walking around the Rosebank Mall, unbathed and smelling like the rotten skin in-between the toes of an athlete’s foot sufferer. Naturally, I ran into a varsity friend who came in for a tight hug. During those three seconds I could even smell fermented sweat from my own ankles. The hug ended abruptly when she caught a whiff of the radioactive funk emanating from my pores. I sheepishly explained the situation but she didn’t buy it. Soon after, she unfriended me on Facebook.
The South African landscape is littered with urban legends about men and their legendary aversion to baths. One involves a mythical figure we’ll call Bhele, who was minding his own business when he came upon a competition where the winner would walk away with a whole sheep.
The rules of the competition were simple. Whoever lasted the longest locked in a telephone booth with a skunk would win. When he entered the challenge, the record was 2:06. Unfazed, Bhele nonchalantly entered the booth using his tongue to “brush” his teeth. A minute went by. Two minutes went by. Finally, 2:06 was reached. At 3:08 minutes, the unmistakable creaking of the door was heard.
The skunk, unable to withstand the assault on its olfactory senses, emerged with paws covering its nostrils.
These thoughts coursed through my neurological pathways when I witnessed the missus walk out the door with one of our offspring, en route to the flea market. Within 90 seconds they’d returned. A visibly upset teenager walked into the house and slammed the bathroom door to take a shower. Apparently, his armpits had scorched the nasal hairs in my wife’s nose.
Durban, like many other cities, has a serious drug problem. Methamphetamine-based drugs like Whoonga (Nyaope in Gauteng townships) have spawned an ecosystem of young people whose lives are so dysfunctional that Durbanites have coined the term
The hug ended abruptly when she caught a whiff of the radioactive funk emanating from my pores
amaphara to identify them.
The etymology is fuzzy, but the amaphara moniker is derived from either “paranoia” or “parasite.” It refers to the scruffy young people, clad in the filthiest garb imaginable including reflector vests, who try to make you pay R20 to park at the beach. They say they’ll guard your car from “damage”.
It’s like bank robbers asking a bank manager for a protection fee from themselves. Now and then, members of the South Beach Taxi Association capture one of them, fill a tub with water and Domestos, and use Jeyes Fluid and Jik to give them a good scrubbing. The urban legend goes that they struggle so violently against soap that it’s not uncommon to discover a vest under the scum on their skins.
But back to Bhele. Apparently, the community decided one Christmas Eve that they’d give Bhele new Christmas clothing — but first they had to clean him. During the scrubbing ceremony, he was overhead yelling, “Yoh! Niyandonzakalisa. Ayito ndlela yo’hlamb’ umntu le!” (You’re hurting me! This is no way to clean anyone!’)
This column may or may not be about being stuck in a lift with my fellow Gautengers during this heatwave.