"Walk with a purpose."
This is what I'm supposed to do if I want to avoid being a "target." A target for what? F or a mugging, perhaps, but also for the unique scorn reserved for clueless tourists in Cape Town and beyond.
I'm supposed to look like I know where I'm going, even if I don't. At first, I was having trouble putting this advice into practice, as it assumes that I have unlimited stores of time and patience with which I can "walk with purpose" into wrong lecture halls, oncoming traffic, oncoming people, and so on. Still, instinct told me that I should avoid being mugged and scorned at all costs. I decided to look to my fellow pedestrians for some guidance.
After careful study and several cups of coffee at outdoor cafes, I have determined that walking bull's-eyes fall into two simple categories: There are the slow ones, and there are the fast ones.
The slow-moving target is under-cautious: She meanders down entire city blocks with her face in a map and her valuables exposed and a-glitter, completely unaware of the dangers lurking around the proverbial corner. In a word, she is clueless.
The "fast" target is overcautious: He has read the books. He has memorized the appalling statistics. He knows the exact probabilities of a mugging in Cape Town, a shark attack at Muizenberg Beach, an elephant stampede at Krueger National Park. He clutches the lump in his sweater where his fanny pack resides, and he walks at breakneck speed to avoid being mugged - following the same train of logic that makes people run around aimlessly in a rainstorm, as if moving quickly will stop the raindrops from falling. He is prepared. He is terrified. I smell his fear.
In the Darwinian struggle of big-city life, these people will be thrown to the proverbial lions - no, not actual lions, to put to rest the image that I am studying among the South African wildlife. (In my travels around the Cape, I have seen zebras, penguins, and - from afar - a baboon. Alas, I have spent most of my time in the company of guinea fowl, cockroaches, and mosquitoes.)
2008 Woodie Awards
