Breaking the mould

Arja Salafranca interviews Don Pinnock

Don Pinnock breaks the mould, and yes I do mean mould, of South African journalism. Author of a number of books, most recently Love Letters to Africa, Natural Selections, African Journeys, and now Blue Ice, about his travels in Antarctica, Pinnock is also an associate editor at Getaway magazine, where much of his writing first appears.

Blue ice: Travels in Antarctica Publisher: Double Storey ISBN: 1770130136 Format: Softcover Length: 245 Pages: 224 Price: R175.16

Pinnock's first love seems to be travel writing, but two of the books mentioned above, Natural Selections and Love letters to Africa, explore the world of natural phenomena in exciting new ways.

Pinnock approaches his various topics armed with natural curiosity and real passion for both the writing and the subject matter. This isn't ordinary humdrum journalism; this is dynamite. This is like the best of American essays published in a series bearing that name in which writers make sometimes ordinary, mundane topics sparkle by sheer talent.

Take the essay on clouds, for example. Clouds. We learned about them at school: cirrus, cumulus and stratus. Subject closed to most of us. Right? Wrong. In "A brief history of clouds", Pinnock takes us through an enlightening history of these wispy things and reveals that when Luke Howard first categorised the clouds into four identifiable names, his audience in 1802 were spellbound. The history of clouds doesn't end there, however. Clouds were later studied by that proponent of the chaos theory, Benoit Mandelbrot, at IBM, no less.

Then there are earthworms. Who on earth would be interested in these lowly creatures that inspire disgust, not fascination, in most? Read "In defence of worms", a fascinating article on those who have studied these worms, among them Charles Darwin, who discovered that earthworms literally make the earth move, bringing up an annual average of 30 tonnes of soil to the surface across each hectare, and engaging in behaviour which points to an intelligence we don't usually credit worms with.

African Journeys begins with a series of essays in which Pinnock follows David Livingstone's footsteps through Africa, while also simultaneously writing about the man Livingstone, his adventures, his marriage, and his old age in Africa. It's an excellent collection of essays.

The most poignant pieces in this book, however, come at the end in "A Box of Memories" and the last, "The African Millennium".

In "A Box of Memories" Pinnock recalls the journey his uncle's cousin and wife took around the world in the Depression-mired 1930s. All that was left of this journey was a box of photographs and newspaper cuttings relating to the epic trip. But the box of memories has been burnt as junk, and Pinnock is left to ask, poignantly, "… an uncomfortable question: is a journey forgotten a journey at all?"

"Millennium" is part love letter to Africa, part lament. It's a beautiful piece of writing that tracks Africa's problems: population explosion, dwindling water supplies, rapacious politicians, the ever-urgent need for aid. Yet there's also hope: tourism can rescue Africa, and is doing so. It's a wild place, and as wild places are being gobbled up in the West by development, it offers its wilderness as solace, its silence as balm. This is a positive, effective and affecting piece. There's hope there, and love, and Africa is surely in the right hands.

Geographical distance and the constant travelling Pinnock does, prevented us from chatting face to face, so I sent him a list of emailed questions instead. While it would have been good to meet this writer in person, these emailed answers more than illustrate the sense of fun and wonder Pinnock takes from life.

Looking on your website I see you have held a number of diverse careers. How did you arrive at journalism eventually? Please elaborate on a few of these careers.

Well, I started by studying electronic engineering because a school aptitude test said that would be the right thing, considering I got the highest marks in the Cape in matric for engineering drawing (in the days when we still did metalwork etc). Two years of study and several more courses at Jo'burg Tech saw me as an assistant engineer working for the SABC erecting the overseas aerials and transmitters at Bloemendal near Meyerton.

Working in that wasteland on a travelling crane convinced me I'd made the wrong career choice, so I applied for a reporter job - basically an internal transfer. I'm not too sure why I wanted to be a reporter. I think it was because I was chronically shy and thought that being a journalist would scare it out of me. Eventually it did. But the SABC wanted engineers more than reporters, so they tried to dissuade me, then offered me a cub reporter job with a big salary cut. To their surprise I took it. I worked on Radio RSA, then Radio Highveld and, eventually and briefly, was news editor of Springbok Radio.

I love radio work. But the SABC, hell, that was claustrophobic.

I had some friends working at The World (which after bannings and name changes became The Sowetan) and they organised me an interview. Got the job as a sub. The offices were in Industria near Soweto and some colleagues and I rented a house virtually within Dobsonville. For a country boy from Queenstown, Soweto was a serious eye-opener. It was thrilling.

I spent most of my time in Soweto and virtually lost touch with white Johannesburg - and this was in the 1960s. We did shebeens, boxing matches, soccer, music. I was in on the formation of Kaizer Chiefs and the launch of Rupert Bopape's Gallo music empire. I spent time with people like Philip Tabane, the Mohotella Queens, the guys who became the Soweto String Quartet and the groundswell of township music.

Of course I got into trouble with the police - so much trouble eventually that I left for London. They sent a beautiful Mata Hari spy named Gerda after me but I only found out later she was assigned to me. I thought she loved me.

Journalism history after that involves Fleet Street and freelancing in between crewing on a Malta-based yacht, working as a cable-car operator on the Rock of Gibraltar and selling old handbags out of Morocco (I lived in Tangier).

I returned to Africa eventually - worked on the Rhodesia Herald, then the Cape Argus. Finally got the hell in with daily journalism (so shallow) and was shocked when the 1976 riots broke out and I had no purchase on why. That prompted me to leave and enrol at UCT for a degree in African History with the inimitable Robin Hallett.

There I became as radical as I could, working for the Wages Commission (which assisted with the Fattis & Monis strike that led, eventually, to the formation of Cosatu), Students for Social Democracy, and on migrant labour (wrote a book about it named Telona). For my Masters I was about to continue my labour studies but was living in a squat in Long Street and came into constant contact with street kids. I did some investigation and ended up doing an MA on street gangs while lecturing in the Institute of Criminology (three books resulted - Elsies River, The Brotherhoods and Gangs, Rituals and Rites of Passage).

Then I got a post as lecturer in journalism at Rhodes in 1983 and found myself in a hornets' nest of political activism. I became involved in the formation of the UDF in the Eastern Cape, chaired the Grahamstown Rural Committee fighting removals, and became a member of Ilizwi laseRhini, a radical community newspaper. I knew Matthew Goniwe and was at his funeral in Cradock when Tutu announced that a State of Emergency had been declared. There were police Casspirs everywhere. Needless to say, my tenure was delayed for two years by the Derek Henderson, the vice-chancellor, "for political activities".

I did extensive media research and completed a PhD (on the life of Ruth First - three books, the last, Writing Left, will be out early next year). I returned to the Institute of Criminology in 1993 and also worked as a consultant to the new government (working with Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi and Dullah Omar) on new Juvenile Justice legislation. After that I did post-doctoral research which ended up as a book on gang rituals. The outcome of that work is Usiko, a rites of passage organisation for high-risk youths in Cape Town which I started with Andrew Muir of the Wilderness Foundation.

I joined Getaway in 1996.

What does your current job at Getaway magazine entail? How long have you been there? What attracted you to travel writing initially?

I got the Getaway job, I think, because, while I was at Rhodes, the department had been asked by its editor to do a crit on the mag. Nobody was interested so I did it - and ripped into the writing and layout style. I never thought I'd hear from them again. But when I wanted to leave Grahamstown (one HAS to leave eventually) I asked Getaway for a job and they agreed, but I did two years at UCT before joining.

I didn't know anything about travel writing, but I knew how to write. So I studied travel writing styles and read an awful lot of mags and realised that magazine writing is basically essaying - a very old writing form that had specific rules that needed to be understood before they could be broken. It's a wonderful writing form, actually, if you get it right.

You have a new book just out, on Antarctica. How long were you there?

I went down as writer in residence to the SANAP programme - that's South Africa's official Antarctic Programme. I asked and they said yes. It was one hell of a surprise, because many journos had tried and failed to get approval. I guess it was because by then I was a fairly well-known natural history writer (that became my passion at Getaway - I should have studied biology and zoology, not history and politics!).

Antarctica was an off-planet experience. First the wild, lonely Southern Ocean for 15 days aboard the old research ship, SA Agulhas, then the endless daylight and bitter cold - and the SIZE of Antarctica. It's nearly as big as Africa when it's wearing its winter skirt. It's a place of superlatives - terrifying, dangerous, beautiful, spiritual and perishingly cold.

What's your favourite city or country?

To list a favourite you need to know what scale you're on. I have travelled almost every month for ten years now and have stacked up a lot of places. I like, rather, bits of countries.

Home: Cape Town - it's home and I love it. Port Alfred, Pilgrim's Rest, the Kruger Park (still), the bushveld, Zimbabwe's eastern highlands, South Luangwa in Zambia, the dunes of the Namib (especially the Kuiseb Canyon), Chobe and the Okavango Delta (I travelled the whole delta in a makoro), the Costa del Sol hotel and restaurant near Maputo (LM prawns, yum), Lake Malawi and the Impenetrable Forest at Bwindi (where the mountain gorillas live). Tangier (where I lived), Sienna in Italy, where they run the Palio horse race (and where our kids studied Italian), Prague, Paris (as of late), Greenwich Park in London, Edinburgh, Hay on Wye (the biggest second-hand bookshop in the world) in Wales, Cusco in Peru and anywhere in Antarctica. Well, you asked!

Your worst travel experience?

I have two worsts. One is specific: being arrested in Sudan, a country at war where maybe two million people have been butchered, and being interrogated for hours and having everything in the Land Rover picked over, then spending days writing "confessions" and then trying to get documents to leave (and paying bribes). It all happened in a place called Wadi Halfa. If ever God wanted to stick an enema into earth, that's where he'd be advised to do it. The second is general: waiting endlessly in airports - especially hot, fly-blown ones with smelly toilets in Africa.

I find it hard getting back to earth, so to speak, after being away. Do you? How do you ground yourself, settle down again?

I have a wonderful wife, the novelist Patricia Schonstein, and terrific, intelligent kids who ground me. Coming back into Cape Town is like putting a plug into a socket and feeling the light go on. Also I do practical things: restore furniture, build things (I have a carpenter's qualification which I picked up along the way). I ride a mountain bike and go to sea in a kayak.

Do you keep travel diaries, or simply make notes as you travel? Once you're home, how do you set about writing the stories? Is it a difficult process capturing the trip in words, or is it fairly easy?

I make notes in a little notebook and record complex interviews on a digital recorder. I begin writing on assignment. If I haven't got the core theme of the story by a third of the time into the assignment I get anxious. If I haven't written the intro by the end I'm in trouble. I believe you have to write on the spot or you'll miss the moods and textures. I love describing a scene by sitting and looking at it with a notebook and pen. I get a kick out of writing, I do it fairly easily (some of my colleagues seem to derive so much pain from it).

Your natural science essays in Love Letters to Africa and Natural Selections present the natural world in fascinating ways. Where does this interest come from?

I spent so much of my professional life studying and dealing with people and their histories and politics. One day I just thought: "How limiting. People are just a tiny part of this planet." It had a lot to do with travelling to beautiful places for Getaway. So I buried myself in natural history travel writing right there and then and it was wonderful: David Quamman, EO Wilson, Redmond O'Hanlon, Tim Cahill, Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson and the more serious biologists like Steven Jay Gould, Eugène Marais, Lyall Watson, James Gliek and Jared Diamond. Wonderful writers, all of them. I began writing my column, "Natural Selections", and that pushed me to the mental limits every month. It was exhausting but exhilarating. It ended up as two books, and then Blue Ice. I also did a book called African Journeys.

Who are your favourite writers - both travel writers and others?

My wife Patricia is pretty near the top of my list - she writes lyrically and her writing often makes me cry, which is good. Apart from the writers I've mentioned, well, there's Peter Matthissen (Snow Leopard, The Birds of Heaven), Barry Lopez (Arctic Dreams - spectacular!), Charles Darwin (yes, really), Sarah Wheeler (Terra Incognita), Bruce Chatwin (especially The Songlines), Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness) - oh, I could go on. My current knockout favourite is O'Hanlon's Trawler. It is beyond words - I don't know how he does that stuff!

What do you think of the standard of South African journalism, and travel writing, which appears to be taking off in a big way here?

Pretty poor. They don't read enough and so they have no depth. I am generalising, of course: there are some really good writers too - Melanie Gosling, James Clark, John Yield, Darrel Bristow Bovey, Barry Ronge etc. And some great young writers in SL and Men's Health.

You not only write but also take magnificent photos. Did the two interests develop simultaneously? Which do you prefer, or are they such different mediums that both provide pleasure?

Since I went digital, photography is stealing a lead over writing. As I said, I love writing - it's more of a hobby than a mission - but capturing an image is so compelling. They often clash on assignment - too much picture time to do research, or the other way round. These days, though, assignments tend to be picture-driven.

Who are your favourite photographers and/or influences?

Patrick Wagner, who died in a plane crash in the Ngong Hills in Kenya, taught me photography and his pictures still inspire me. He was a great loss to photography in this country. Obie Oberholzer is a friend and has always been an inspiration - a master of colour and the bizarre. Franz Lanting is absolutely the best when it comes to nature and I live Peter Magubane's social vision.

In Blue Ice you mention using a Nikon D70 as a digital; is that your preferred camera? What do you use generally, in terms of gear? What are your thoughts on digital versus film?

I got a Nikon digital at about the same time I received a Nikon F100 slide camera. The F100 is, for me, the ultimate camera. With slow, 50asa Velvia film there's nothing to touch it. In my hands it always seemed to get the pic I had in mind.

I picked up the D70 digital as a backup in Antarctica, but the light conditions there were so extreme and there were no processing shops so I had to see what I was doing. The digital sneaked in as a necessity and made itself at home. It's now my main camera and I've ordered the D200, which is going to make me very happy with its high resolution. I mourn my F100 - I fell in love and abandoned it almost immediately. Digital is the future.

How do your family feel about your being away so often? You mention your wife and children and thank them for their support often; perhaps time away is good for a relationship? Perhaps more people should do it?

My family are supportive, but make no mistake, my travelling is hard on them. We are very close and mutually supportive and long absences are hard on all of us. But sometimes they come with me and the travel bug has nipped them too. As I write, my daughter is working in Dublin during her summer varsity vacs (she worked in an ice cream shop in Sienna during her winter vacs) and our son is ice-climbing with the UCT Mountain Club in Patagonia.

What was your childhood like?

Small-town, rough because of my authoritarian father, protected, racist (we didn't play with Afrikaners, let alone blacks). There were some great family holidays at the coast - Cintsa, Port St Johns, Port Edward. I had a few good friends at school (all of whom I have lost contact with - some have died) and spent a lot of time climbing around the mountains at the edge of town (Queenstown).

I saw the army shoot and kill a member of Poqo - the PAC's military wing - on the road as I was cycling to school one day. Looking back, I think that radicalised my thinking about politics and racism. I was horrified and started asking questions. The only real answers I got, eventually, were from black people.

Are you religious or spiritual? What are some of your beliefs?

I dislike organised religion - in my view it's mostly a con. But I am spiritual in the sense that I believe we live on a planet which is sentient and that we are connected to one another - and to plants and animals - in ways we are only dimly aware of. I was, for a while, a Sufi and presently practice Buddhist meditation every day.

I am doubtful about an afterlife. If it happens, cool, but we have no real proof. This is heaven, this planet, this existence, and we need to treat it as such and not trash it the way we do. One of my great problems with organised religion is that, by claiming the existence of an afterlife, it encourages people to undervalue and debase the treasure of our beautiful blue planet.



LitNet: 24 January 2006

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