In memory of.

People make people. 

It happens when time, circumstance, age and experience align. It’s usually surprising and sometimes just a brief moment – but when it does it’s powerful and hard to forget. It’s taken me a few years to collect my thoughts on this particular story but like most growing things, it’s also all about timing.

I was in my second year of varsity when I met Geoffrey Mangin. 

He was a 93-year-old man with thick black-rimmed glasses and a red jacket who liked to sit alone during lunch. Being a resident of the Rosedale old age home, Geof said that he preferred his own company to the “squabbling drivel” of the old folk around him.

I had been sent to Rosedale as part of a photojournalism assignment. I was to research, document and write about “abandoned people”. For those of you who’ve ever frequented an old age home the signs are up all over… and haven’t been taken down for months. Moth eaten newspaper articles, tuckshop prices and invites to music recitals long expired hang gingerly off dusted pin up boards. The distant echo of a shuffle down the corridor and that distinct sour smell of lavender hand cream and instant smash wafting through the hallways is enough to tell you that visitors are rare. Well, atleast for Geof they are.

I had found my muse. 

Surprisingly Geof agreed to answer all of my questions. I asked him where he was born, what his vocation was, how he ended up in Cape Town and was he enjoying his lunch.

His answers were surprising. Little did anyone know that tucked away in the corner of the Rosedale dining hall was Africa’s first pioneering cinematographer. Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Geof began his career out as an accountant but had always been drawn to the camera. Having served his time in both World Wars he eventually got his hands on a video camera and disappeared into the wilderness of Zimbabwe to document it’s expanse. The solitary meandering, the openness of nature and the beauty he could capture of it with his camera gave Geof the fulfilment he had always been looking for.

Years down the line and still a bachelor, Geof retired and ended up at Rosedale, Cape Town - where a small margin of his family were living. He got to see his cousin once or twice a month for Sunday lunch. When he wasn’t reading or watching BBC planet he would sit alone most days teaching himself how to use his Dell Desktop from 1997. Geof was happy. Geof was going deaf. Geof was my oldest friend.

 I’d visit once a week. 

I’d make tea and sneak a teaspoon of peanut butter on the off chance that he had some. We’d talk about everything, seriously. We’d talk about detergent, photography, the weather, spirituality, the state of the nation and what we were both most afraid of. Turns out my biggest fear was his greatest solace in life – and that was of being alone.  

He told me once of the only woman he had ever loved. She was from Johannesburg and a flirt. He said he spent years loving her from a distance as she never returned his sentiments. Who knows how much of his love he truly revealed but the real kicker came when I find out she was one of my distant relatives.

Weird.

Anyway, his advice to me was keep your heart more open than your eyes. What Geof learned early on in life was to surrender to what he needed and not what he wanted. Even though Geof seemed lonely he had everything he knew he needed. He was a pioneer, an explorer and above all he was good at saying no. For me that was a lot to understand and still is.

Geof passed away in January 2013... 

... 3 months after I left Cape Town for Johannesburg. We had tried to keep in touch through writing letters in the post – but eventually his letters stopped coming until I received an email from his niece. Geof had had a bad fall in the bathroom and was admitted to hospital. He never recovered. It was a sad day but the feeling of complete gratitude for having experienced a friendship that knew no age, time or distance overwrote my sense of loss with a profound sense of fulfilment and well, growth.  May we all come to find the people that make us people.