An end-of-year walk through Quigney reveals a typical apocalyptic day in the life of people in this stunning, ocean-facing suburb of Buffalo City Metro.
Amid the visual chaos, I see quite a bit of public rebellion against municipal laws.
And yet, people are also trying to clean up the muck. The heroines and heroes of this story.
The sea breeze is cool, though that, too, is subject to pollution and climate change.
In Moore Street, nine children are playing. I see one mask, and it is not on a face; it is held in a little hand.
The street is dirty. Clumps of long-bladed grass crowd the pavements.
There are heaps of rubble piled up on the grass.
Two street sweepers are at work, trying to remove the trash, shrubs and grass from the gutters. They are masked.
A man sashays up and tips his wheelbarrow, emptying his waste at the corner of Moore and Signal streets.
He trundles off, free as a bird, just another community polluter.
A woman sits on the street corner applying makeup to her face.
Two more women appear and stand a short distance from one another, puffing at cigarettes.
If this is social distancing, it looks more like a territory issue than obeying any regulations.
Wheelbarrow dumper is back in the picture. He is removing refuse from the yard of an entire block of flats.
Tennyson Street looks like it has been hit by a meteorite shower, so numerous are the potholes.
I spot a pile of open, flapping rubbish bags on the corner. They are spilling their junk into the stormwater drain. Hence blocked drains, hence flooded neighbourhoods, my dear Watson.
A man is in the gutter. He is clearing rubbish and overgrowth in front of a residence. My hero.
A panelbeating business, illegal in the zoning laws, hogs the parking on both sides of the street. A mechanic is doing something to the engine under the hood of a green Fiat Palio.
The corner of Rhodes and Longfellow streets is an illegal dumping ground. Grape boxes, building rubble. An assortment of putrid household refuse. The pile rises high. Rats must be having the best festive season.
There are scrape marks that suggest just such a horrible heap has been cleared by a TLB before now. Buffalo City Metro is not messing around.
Two more women street cleaners are at work, perhaps wishing residents would show some decency and dispose of their refuse in the right way — one clear bag for recyclables, including rinsed plastic, and another, often called “the dirty dirt bin”, which will go and live in the Berlin landfill site for 1,000 years.
Currie Street’s rubbish has the added horrid element of road construction rubble.
It is all so very ugly.
Derelict flats, burnt and blackened in a fire at some point, are untouched, adding to the apocalyptic feel.
Two people peek out at me from behind a tatty curtain. What motivates these twitchers? Clothes stained with ash, grubby chairs and stained bits of cardboard are dotted about on the first floor.
People drift by, not a mask in sight. There is an air of indifference. Until they are in hospital, in the queue, gasping for real air.
I must have arrived on trash collection day in Quigney.
A garbage collection crew rocks up, but seems to be picky. They take some bags of rubbish and nonchalantly leave other bags in the gutter. It looks like they don’t like bags that are open or torn.
Law enforcement — my first sighting of the day — is on the scene at Longfellow Street, giving an informal mechanic a stern warning about the broken-down vehicles piled in his front yard, on the pavement and taking up his neighbours’ space.
Two officers point at the cars and deliver tough talk. One officer takes a photograph of the mechanical mayhem. Kudos! Next time I drive through here I'm sure I'll see the crumbling hulks gone.
Sea View Terrace, surely one of the most beautiful sea view streets in the world.
Down below I see three figures strolling on Eastern beach. After walking along the shore for a short while, they venture into the sea between the rocks.
I get distracted from this epic view by someone illegally dumping household refuse just metres from me on the street.
I head down to Heroes Park and the German Settler monument.
Bedraggled people are coughing and drinking from little bottles. Is this the infamous “Lean” or “Purple Drank”, a recreational drug concocted from codeine, cough syrup, soda and candy?
I see three bottles. There is a man from the municipality trying to clean up the mess. I wonder how many of these empty bottles he has removed from sight.
Six portable toilets line the street. They look a bit forlorn because they were put there to cater for the festive season beach rush, now suddenly prohibited by Covid-19 regulations.
Come rain, shine or Covid-19, the car washers are still at it. About 20 of the busy entrepreneurs are on the Esplanade and business is looking good. Four of the bucket-carrying, cloth-waving guys are working the Orient Theatre parking lot.
In all this jolly, sub-suburban melee, amid all the muck and mire, I wonder what happened to communal pride.
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