Permanence

By Ntombi Ndhlovu
Cadet News Agency

Sometime in February 2010 I walked into Bargain Books. I was seven months pregnant and dreaded the delivery room. Somehow I had lost the confidence I had began my pregnancy with. I was concerned about not making it through the delivery. When you are frightened it seems you attract stories that amplify your fears. I had read about a woman who died in childbirth and somehow connected her fate to mine. So there I was walking through Bargain Books looking for a book that would prepare my husband for what I felt was a possible eventuality. I found a book by Jonathan Tropper titled ‘How to talk to a widower’. I bought it.

I told my husband about the book but he ignored it. One night I woke up feeling restless and tired of knowing what to expect when I am expecting. I picked up the widower book. I prepared myself for a slightly depressing read but was surprised by how uplifting, humorous and heart wrenching it was.

The protagonist is as disheveled and downtrodden man grappling with his wife’s death, Hailey, who died in a plane crash. He also has a step son, Russ. Russ has a tattoo on his shoulder of Halley’s Comet. Although spelled differently from his mother’s name Russ finds comfort in the fact that Halley’s Comet is visible to the naked eye every 75 to 76 years.

I thought maybe, I too can find a way to be visible to my husband and my unborn child should I die while pushing this incredible life out of me. I thought about leaving notes behind for every stage my daughter would experience. I thought about a letter for my husband encouraging him to move on.

You can’t plan delivery. You can only anticipate it. I didn’t push. After three days of labor my doctor decided to operate. On the 28th of April 2010, Kaiyah Newbern was born and I lived to see it. I don’t have a tattoo to show for it but I have an incision scar that reminds me everyday that I accomplished something bigger than myself.

The Butterfly

By Kevin Lancaster
Cadet News Agency

It sits there, slightly visible, an image of temptation peaking over her slender waistline. A depiction of a butterfly with a tribal design surrounding it, carefully crafted to ensure its artistic intentions shine through. The soft blues and subtle greens of the ink complement her bronzed skin. It has the power to drive sane men wild and inspires brashness in even the most clam natured gentleman.

This is the butterfly.

A small patch of permanent dye that stains the small of her back wields powers unimaginable to those who have not felt the pull of its sordid temptation.

If men are visual beings, then this is the lantern leading us down the dark path into the abyss of immorality.

The exact reason behind its desirability cannot be defined in single terms. Each one inspires an individual craving within its viewer, evoking a dormant sect of his subconscious emotion.

We stare at them, imagining the reasons as to why she would have put herself through the pain. We associate it with her character, the stamp is ubiquitous amongst those who have a point to prove.

Thoughts of reckless abandon cross our minds, and we hope that they are permanently crossing hers. Unfounded it may be, but it is a signal, a raised tail of a fawning doe.
A call is heard, a death knell to our sensibility. The sound of its exoticness summons us closer. All inhibitions are ignored, perhaps even forgotten. A target is in the crosshair of our focus.

We hone our sight, keeping it in view while attempting to not seem affixed by its memorising beauty.

A shadow hides it temporarily, the light absent as she turns her back for a brief instant. And as sudden as it disappeared, it returns. Yet its vacancy, no matter how brief, is too long for those enthralled by it.

It will not be left to chance, the thought of it disappearing again is too painful to bear, a move must be made. The butterfly must be caught, its beauty to fragile to be left out in the cold, open world.

Sylvester’s fading tattoos

By Tshepo Tshabalala
Cadet News Agency

Sylvester’s tattoos would not stop fading, and his pain would not go away.

It began when he was 12 years old, in grade six. A trick he saw from classmates Kopano, Tshepiso and Sugar, characters he did not particularly like.

Sugar and his crew were cool. Sylvester was the complete opposite. He was teased daily.
“This is how they do it in jail,” he overheard Sugar say, a drawing compass in his hand.
Sugar was scraping shapes onto his arm with the instrument’s needle. The girls in class looked on, bedazzled.

Sylvester reached for his mathematics kit and removed the drawing compass. Staring at his thighs, brown and tender, protruding from deficient school shorts, he concealed the instrument in his hand.

Scraping was difficult. Skin tore slowly. He drew a shape on his thigh. Testosterone coursed his veins.

The devil he knew lived inside of him came to mind. The devil that caused him pain for reasons he did not understand. The devil that made others snigger and call him names when he passed by. The devil that left their hearts and, through their utterances, entered his.

Unable to cut any deeper, his masterpiece was complete. He felt powerful.
The devil – the pain – had moved from his heart and was trapped in his thigh. He smiled.
The wound healed within days. Pain returned to his heart. His tattoo had vanished.
So, he scraped again and again. Every week, for six months, he vandalized parts of his body with sharp objects. Places nobody would see. The devil disappeared, and likewise returned. He remembered Sugar saying writing over the tattoos with a pen while they’re fresh made them last longer. Sylvester was reluctant. But he had to. It would make the pain go away.

He tried it. Sugar was right. It lasted for a long time. And during that time, the devil remained in Sylvester’s heart. Not because his tattoo had faded. The one on his arm had not.

Ten years later, he takes off his shirt, looks at his arm and sees it. He still feels the devil’s presence in his heart.

And when the pain gets too much for him to bear, he’ll sometimes find a sharp object and carve on himself a fading tattoo.

Fine lines

By Kieran Legg
Cadet News Agency

I had, with the full extent of my 17-year-old wisdom, to get a tattoo.

“It shall adorn my entire arm!” I proclaimed to no one in particular.

Enlisting the help of an intrepid, yet slightly unfortunate artist, I began to formulate its design.

“So what do you want?” he asked.

Caught off guard I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.

“I don’t know, I’m not the artist,” I said.

“How about skulls?”

I sat and pondered for a while. Skulls are a classic. You can’t really go wrong with a set of decayed human heads.

“Yes, yes, many skulls. At least twelve.”

He scribbled in his sketchbook.

“Dragons?”

What kind of question is that? A tattoo isn’t a tattoo without one of those scaly fire-breathing beasts. I stared at my artist with a look of contempt.

“So is that a yes to dragons?”

I nodded watching him sweat as he scrawled the outlines of a set of wings.

“Flowers?”

Flowers? I didn’t want my arm to look like the Chelsea Flower Show. I shook my head.

“Girls disintegrating into flowers?” he shrugged.

“That I can do.”

He turned the sketchbook towards me. On the page a pale geisha girl, standing on top of a tree, disappeared into a flurry of cherry blossom leafs. Below her, a dragon had wrapped itself around the tree’s trunk, its nostrils snorted bursts of fire. Every empty space was filled with skulls.

“This will do,” I nodded.

With the design securely folded into my pocket, I made my way back home and presented it eagerly to my slightly disinterested family.

“What is that?” asked my mom after I paraded the design around the house for the third time.

“It’s a tattoo I’m getting,” I replied.

There was a long pause as my mother’s face contorted into a mask of rage.

“Really?” her voice was cold.

“Yes, maybe.”

I felt myself shrinking in front of her.

“If you get that tattoo I promise you that you will be out on the streets living off stale bread and cat food.”

Now I don’t really like “the streets”. Nor do I enjoy stale bread or cat food, although those expensive brands look pretty tasty. With very little hesitation I found something else to obsess about.

Marking the departed

By Sihle Mlambo
Cadet News Agency

The art of tattooing has been around since the late 1800s, but it still divides public opinion.

Tattoos are not only a sign of rebel or an affiliation to a certain group, they can also be a symbol of respect or bring closure to lost loved ones.

Take Philani Simelane, for example. Known to peers and in the local entertainment industry as Benny Maverick, the 23-year-old DJ from Woodlands, shocked his mother, Nomntu Simelane last weekend when he returned home with a dark green patch on his arm.

“I wasn’t expecting him to do that,” said Nomntu.

But what she hadn’t seen is the message that Benny Maverick would now carry on his arm for ever.

“Before she saw what it is she got a bit mad, she asked ‘what is this?’ and said I was clumsy,” revealed Benny Maverick.

But when he walked up to her to show her what the message was, she calmed down.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’re going to do this,” she told him.

Benny Maverick had just tattooed his father’s dates of birth and death on his arm, the tattoo reads: Mduduzi E. Kweyama 02-06-1957 – 15-11-1987. His father who he never knew, his father who was murdered six months before his birth in Umlazi.

“What he did is obviously personal to him. I was three months pregnant when his father passed away. Maybe what he did was some form of closure for him,” she said.

If the tattoo had no sentiment, the reaction would have been different she revealed.

“I would have been angry if he depicted something offensive or vulgar because I did not raise him like that,” she said.

Benny Maverick explained that he didn’t know much about his father. “I had to ask my mother for all the details before I could do the tattoo… At the end of the day he’s my father, it’s because of him that I’m here. If he was abusive or left my mother, I would have never done this, but from the little that I know, he was good to her,” he said.

Newsroom sayings…

Cut it in half and make it bouncy
Shane Doran – Daily Voice editor

The news story must be the only human activity which demands that the orgasm comes at the beginning.
Vincent Mulchrone – a Fleet Street legend in the 1960s

Have you spelt the person’s name correctly? Have you checked? double checked? Triple checked?
Every sub-editor worth his/her salt

My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living. — Anais Nin

Never start an intro with “the”, “a” or “an”.
Michael Morris

Audi alteram partem (Hear the other side)
Michael Morris

Habeas corpus (Let’s see the evidence)
Michael Morris

Intros should be like Baby Jake: short and punchy.
Jonathan Ancer

If it looks like a cliché, if it tastes like a cliché, if smells like a cliché… it’s a bloody cliché and avoid it (like the plague). Jonathan Ancer

Stranger in a strange land

Independent’s nine newbie reporters have survived their first month of Cadet Boot Camp. During this month they swarmed parliament, stalked a 70-year-old tour guide around the streets of Cape Town, gone to auctions to exorcise ghost bidders and consulted with miracle “big penis” pamphlet healers… all in the name of a good story. But it hasn’t all been hard work.

They have also gone deep inside Cape Town’s communication bureaucracy (and survived), untangled a spin doctor’s yarns, searched newspapers for blapses, pitched stories to the editors of a tabloid, learnt to tweet and written a news story about Little Red Riding Hood. There have also been sessions on photojournalism and web media, the art of reporting on emergencies, business journalism, environmental journalism and investigative journalism.

This week, four years after the explosion of xenophobic violence in South Africa, the cadets went in search of foreign nationals to find out how they have coped in their new country.

To read the results of their work go here.

Breaking news: On Monday Independent Newspapers launches its Cadet Agency – and our intrepid reporters will be in the news trenches filing stories.