One of the most inspired Chappelle's Show episodes was Racial Draft. The premise was based on the NBA, NFL, Major League and ML Soccer tradition of teams playing on the “open market” every season in a draft pick event.
Different races got to pick the folks they wanted in their midst. This was about 20 years ago and black folks had first pick. They decided to “jack” Tiger Woods from the Asians who had been living in hope of claiming him. Black folks have since gone lukewarm on Tiger after he went all “Tiger Mantashe” on mostly blonde, Caucasian cocktail waitresses. My people and I can be pretty harsh on race traitors. “That’s what you get fooling around with that jungle fever.”
Anyway, there’s an aspect of my existence that makes me wish to be picked by the Caucasian folks as one of theirs. It started when I discovered Bill Burr, a comedian whose routines I find hilarious. He was part of the Racial Draft episode. In his first skit he was talking about the “black don’t crack” stereotype (you have to wonder if it’s still a stereotype if it’s mostly true). That was Burr’s hypothesis; that there’s nothing genetic about black people looking younger. The secret is one word: “moisturising”. I found myself nodding vigorously as I guffawed.
The first time I lived with white friends I discovered that we don’t share the same sensibilities, ablution-wise. They had a more ... flexible and rational approach to baths and showers. We lived in an old house with only one bathroom. I’d step out of the shower to find one of my housemates at the sink, applying lipstick and mascara. Another would step in to brush his teeth, lick his finger to rearrange his eyebrows and then “comb” his Matthew Perry hair using four fingers.
Did someone just say: “Yes, so what?” Well, you need to understand what life is like when you have a black mother and aunts. Black people’s obsession with taking showers and baths is limitless. And, by taking baths, I mean vigorous scrubbing of one’s skin using all manner of materials.
Once a week, MaDlamini Zondi, our neighbour at house A662, Mpumalanga Township, would drag a 40-litre galvanised steel bathtub outside, fill it with water and perform bodily spring cleaning on me using an assortment of brushes, rags, cloths and, the ultimate black people ablution tool, the orange sack. Until the backs of your ears have been violently subjected to a wet orange sack, you don’t qualify as black. Look, black people would happily pick Michael McDonald, Bill Clinton and Eminem in Racial Draft but they’d have to go through the orange sack ritual to qualify. And we’d happily trade Kanye West.
I don't know whether the average white South African knows that their black friends, colleagues, housekeepers, gardeners and Uber drivers skinner about “white ablution tendencies”. We walk among anti-vaxxers, but according to the black rumour mill, we live among anti-bathers as well.
TikTok clips showing dozens of white American teenagers befuddled by the idea of daily baths and washing rags and soap in the shower don't help arrest the stereotype. Apparently, some folks’ idea of a shower is applying shampoo to their hair and letting the foam wash over their bodies using only their hands. No citrus packaging in sight.
On the other hand, black folks go to the extent of using two washing rags, one for the face and the other for the body. The argument is that one can’t use the same cloth for one’s face and arse. And if you’re too poor for two rags our mothers instruct us on the principle; always go from face to arse, never the reverse.
He looked at us, instructed us to sniff each others’ armpits and tell him what we smelt. Brut, Playboy, Shield roll-on deodorant is all I could smell. And then he asked us why we kept washing off deodorant daily, in the middle of sub-zero Vryheid
The first time I was introduced to this radical idea that one could go a day without a bath, I was in Standard 8 at Inkamana High. Until later that year, when solar panels were installed, we didn’t have hot water in the dorms. In Vryheid. In winter. We’d often have to bliksem the pipes to dislodge the ice formed overnight to take 0⁰C showers. Ice-cold showers are not flattering to the male form, so there’d be a bunch of 14-year-olds with French beret strings in their lower abdomen, walking around.
One freezing June morning our boarding master, Bro Bernard (OSB), walked in and we immediately launched into a choreographed complaint fest about the ice water. He looked at us, instructed us to sniff each others’ armpits and tell him what we smelt. Brut, Playboy, Shield roll-on deodorant was all I could smell. And then he asked us why we kept washing off deodorant daily, in the middle of sub-zero Vryheid. He had a point, though he’s from Cologne in Germany. Close to the French border. I think French ablution tendencies are famous the world over.
I've been a work-from-home freelancer since 2008. As I've grown older, my propensity to have full-on verbal conversations with the many voices inside my brain has increased logarithmically. And I've found my inner Jean-Pierre.
One winter day I'd disrobed to take a shower and (I swear) I heard Louis Gossett jnr's voice: “Ndumiso, what are you doing? Real men don't wash off their Old Spice roll-on deodorant.” Given where we are with deodorant technology, it's only a matter of time before taking a shower is obsolete.
After all, why would they market roll-on that lasts 48 hours? Who's willing to bet that there are scientists working on a seven-day roll-on to accommodate the anti-bathers?
This is to say that if any of my friends have a direct line to the French ambassador, I’m ready to relocate to the Riviera and spend my days munching on garlic bread in a generally unbathed state.
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