Southern Ship

IVS Kwaito, from out south . . . any guesses where? Don’t be misled by the Panamanian flag of convenience.

She entered the Narrows this afternoon bucking bone-chilling wind from the northwest probably to load scrap that we so copiously generate . . . from our scrap mines, scrap farms, maybe spawned in our scrap streams.

 

Both origin and derivation of her name surprise me. But surprises keep us alive.

 

Kwaito is a South African ship, named for a music genre originated in Soweto and other townships. According to wikipedia, the word kwaito “is derived from the Afrikaans word Kwaai, meaning ‘angry’. (To me . . . that sounds like a Dutch adjective, too, for hot-tempered.) This Afrikaans word is derived from the Isicamtho, South African township slang, word amakwaitosi, meaning ‘gangster’. Arthur Mafokate, one of the founding fathers of kwaito describes the relationship between kwaito and ‘gangster’ being because it is ‘all about the ghetto music.'” Hear some here; read about it here.

Oh . . . surprise: happy leap day. Last summer’s northern frog wanted you to know that.

 

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.