Zebra Horizon

by Gunda Hardegen-Brunner

  *

  On Thursday it was Hein and Debbie’s last schoolday. They only had to go in for 2 hours and Ma Saida suggested that she’d show me around town during that time. Sarie came with us to visit her grandparents and to check out the shops. Fortunately Hummel had to stay at home to clean up the major mess in his room, caused by 5 bottles of secretly brewed loquat wine that had exploded on top of his cupboard at 4 o’clock this morning. Ma Saida said: “Praise the Lord that the boy doesn’t suffer from any shrapnel injuries”. Pa Saida said: “It’s about time the boy learned the principles of primary and secondary fermentation”. I thought, good show – one whole morning without Hummel trying to check out my fanny.

  Hein and Debbie jumped into the car clad in their school uniforms, but without any shoes on. “Shoes are only for winter,” Hein said. I thought he was taking the Mickey out of me.

  We went in the old Land Rover. It looked like a box and was about as comfortable, especially on the dirt road. We only got onto tar after about half an hour – God save my bum. But as Pa Saida had said at breakfast, there’s no sacrifice too big to make to enjoy the privilege of riding in the best vehicle mankind ever developed, especially for a Lebanese Freestate farmer; raw power produced by absolute basics, no bullshit like emission control and other frippery, and incased in an aluminium body that would never rust, not even if you spent your holidays in Durban.

  The first sign of Kneukelspruit was the black location, situated on a slope facing away from the ‘white’ town. Rows of identical little boxhouses with corrugated iron roofs lined parallel dirt roads. There was not one tree or any plant higher than veld grass, except some mieliestalks in some of the tiny frontyards. In every backyard stood a small outhouse with a tilted corrugated iron roof, reflecting the morning sun. There were 2 bigger buildings. One had a cross sticking up from the front gable and on the other one it said SKOOL. Kids in uniforms were converting towards the school. Fowls and dogs were running in the streets. Women and children stood in small groups around public taps chatting and waiting for their turn to fill their plastic containers. Others were sweeping with short grass brooms around their houses. The smell of coalfires hung in the air.

  Ma Saida explained that there was a water point to every 20 households or so.

  “And electricity?”

  “They’ve got streetlamps but no electricity in the houses.” She stepped on the accelerator and we overtook a bakkie driven by a young Boer with 5 sheep and 2 blacks crammed into the back. “You can’t expect a couple of whites to pay for everything for millions of blacks,” Ma Saida carried on. “This whole location is run by the Kneukelspruit municipality, you know. The municipality graded the roads and built the houses and connected up the water and organizes the garbage removal…and everything. And who pays tax in this country? Whitey! I guarantee you there is not one black person living here, who pays a cent to the government.

  With the wages they are earning that’s probably a good thing.

  “These little houses in the backyards are their toilets and they crap in buckets,” Hein contributed.

  “And guess who organizes the nightsoil collection?” Ma Saida said getting agitated. “Us whites of course.” She impatiently stuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “Ja, these blacks owe us whites a lot. Without us there wouldn’t be anything in this country. No roads, no cars, no hospitals, no schools, no electricity, nothing Just veld and bush.”

  Would be interesting to get the blacks’ point of view on that one.

  “Have you been in the location?” I asked Ma Saida.

  “Oh no. In the first place I have no reason to go in there and then white people need a special permit. One can apply for it at the office for Bantu Administration,” she pointed to a building at the turn off to the location.

  “And what’s that big building with the chimney over there?”

  “That’s the abbattoir; in South Africa if you look for the abbattoir you always look close to the location.”

  In front of the Bantu Administration the South African flag hung on a pole. At the abbattoir thick smoke crept out of the chimney. They were the only 2 buildings in sight that had electricity and a telephone line.

  The next sign of Kneukelspruit was the name of the town spelled out in white rocks halfway up another mountain. We went round the bend and there it was – a tiny patch of chessboard streets with a mainroad as wide as an Autobahn, lined mainly by one storey buildings; a church with a high spire, houses with corrugated iron roofs surrounded by big gardens, a couple of orange brickbuildings in park like settings. With its bright green kikuyu lawns and hundreds of trees it looked like an oasis in the vastness of the African landscape.

  On the way to the school we came past the practice of ‘van Jaarsveld and Pieterse, Attorneys’, the rooms of a doctor and the Springbok Chemist. Barcley’s Bank was in an ugly concrete block sitting like an alien monstrosity between the old buildings with their roofed verandas that served as sidewalks. At the Methodist church, which looked like a normal house to me, we turned into a dirtroad. The whispy leaves of old jacarandas made it look like a green tunnel. A couple of flower bordered driveways led into big gardens and right at the end of the road was the school. Hein and Debbie joined the uniformed, barefooted crowd – so Hein had not been taking the Mickey out of me. An inscription at the gate said: ‘Noorderlig Skool’, and Sarie explained, that the kids were taught in Afrikaans and in English.

  Hein and Debbie disappeared into one of half a dozen long, low brickbuildings, which were connected by roofed concrete walkways elevated above the lawn, looking like jetties in a harbour.

  “The boys’ hostel is over there behind the hockey field,” Sarie said, “and the girls are on the other side of the swimming pool. Shame, I would have hated to be a border right from Sub A, but this is the only primary scool in the district. If you’re living on a farm far away you haven’t got much of a choice.”

  “And what about highschool?”

  “For highschool everybody around here goes to boarding school.” Sarie pulled an enormous grass seed out of her skirt. “In the beginning it’s hard but it’s all right, I suppose. They say it is good for your character.”

  The turn off to the school was part of the only crossroads of the CBD of the dorp. Coming back I noticed that there weren’t even any traffic lights. The Drostdy Hotel on the corner looked a lot like other hotels in other dorps and even in V.B. Red polished steps leading up to the main entrance, the walls pinkish yellow, the corners set off by chocolate coloured strips, big curved windows, curtains drawn; a separate entrance to the off-sales. Opposite the hotel was the post office, SA flag and all and the Vrystaat Butchery, advertising kudu biltong and Karoo oysters. We drove past the Odeon Cafe, the Standard Bank, ‘Lipschitz and Lipschitz Attorneys’, and an estate agent, who was an agent of the Permanent Building Society at the same time. Another concrete bunker housed the Pep Store where one could buy cheap clothes. The cop shop and the garage lay opposite each other and behind the garage a dirtroad branched off to the left. There wasn’t much movement in the dorp yet. A couple of blacks swept the street in a laid back manner, a maid cleaned the windows at ‘Kerneels van den Heever, General Practitioner’. The steeple of the NK Kerk stuck into the sky like a warning finger of die Heere himself. At the Bokmakerrie Slaghuis 2 blacks in white rubber boots unloaded half carcasses of sheep and tollies.

  The grandparents Saida lived next to the ‘Cheri Unisex Hairdresser’, in one of the few double storey houses in the town. It had a balcony with a wrought iron railing all around the first floor and a little square tower sticking out of the roof. The basement was taken up by ‘Saida, the Shop for Your Clothing Requirements’ with mannequins in big windows, displaying ‘high quality outfits for the elegant lady and the stylish gentleman’.

  We went in through a side entrance and climbed a flight of worn wooden stairs to the Saidas’ living quarters. A faint, spicy, sweetish scent hung in the air and hit us full blast when Grandma Saida ope
ned the door. Her dark eyes sparkled when she wrapped her long, bony arms around her granddaughter. “Sarie my darling, so nice to see you. You’ve grown since the last holidays.” Grandma Saida planted a kiss on my cheek, greeted her daughter-in-law and led us down a light blue passage with paintings of brightly cloured birds. Through a half open door I saw 2 maids working in a big kitchen.

  The spicy, sweetish smell crept up my nostrils. “This smells divine. What is it?”

  Grandma Saida smiled at me. “Lebanese cooking, the best in the Levant.”

  Grandpa Saida was in the lounge smoking a stinky cigarillo. As we waded across several layers of magnificent carpets, he heaved his dumpling-like body out of a heavy leather chair and saluted us. We sat down on divans with sumptious cushions. Stained glass windows filtered the light and coloured sunrays shone on the richly carved wooden furniture. I was absolutely speechless. Aladdin’s cave was about the last thing I had expected in the Freestate.

  Gran Saida rang a silver bell and a maid brought a tea tray with little brightly coloured cakes. Grandpa Saida puffed his cigarillo and enquired about his son, his grandchildren and my stay in South Africa. While Gran Saida poured the tea, he hit me with a question about the German stockmarket, which I couldn’t answer because I didn’t understand the question in the first place.

  “Malik, don’t bother Mathilda with these things, you can ask your financial adviser,” Gran Saida said gently. She swallowed a bite of her pink and green lozenge and turned to Sarie. “Last week we got in some beautiful silk. What about a new dress for you?”

  “That would be great, Gran,” Sarie licked some sticky cake stuff from her fingers. “What colours have you got?”

  Gran Saida listed a vast range, elaborating on which shade would suit Sarie best. Grandpa Saida got a watch on a chain out of the pocket of his waistcoat and excused himself. He had to go to Bloemfontein to the mainbranch of the Saida shops. He heaved his dumpling body out of the chair, kissed us all good bye and departed, leaving the scent of a newly lit cigarillo behind him.

  “So what are your plans for the holidays, girls?” Gran Saida asked, while Sarie passed the cakes around again.

  “Ag Gran, the usual,” Sarie sighed. “Horseriding, swimming in the dam, doing nothing…stuff like that. The most exciting thing before Christmas is the Boeredance in de la Rey’s barn.” Sarie put the tray on the table and flopped down in her grandfather’s leather chair. “You know Gran, some girls of my class are going skiing in Switzerland. That’s what I call a real holiday.”

  “You don’t know how lucky you are,” I said. “You’ve got this huge farm and your own horses and your own river and you aren’t 18 yet and your parents let you drive the car all over the show and…”

  Sarie cast her eyes towards heaven. “I’d much rather live in London and travel in the tube and go to the movies every day.”

  “Here we go,” Ma Saida said. “The grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence.”

  “The de la Reys are renowned for their barndances,” Gran Saida changed the subject. “Boeremusiek, a sheep on the spit. You’ll enjoy that, Mathilda.”

  “Ja, especially with all these fat, boring Boereseuns from the neighbouring farms trying to kiss you all the time.”

  “Don’t be so negative, Sarie,” Ma Saida said. “It’s bad for your skin.”

  “Gran Saida took a bite from an almond cake and started to chew heartily. All of a sudden she stopped, swallowed and put it down. “Mathilda, what about a new dress for the barndance for you? You can choose some material in the shop and we’ve got some pretty patterns for a young girl like you.”

  Heiliger Bimbam.

  “You mean to make a dress myself?”

  “No no, we have a very good seamstress. Tannie Dalene. She can make it. She’ll also make Sarie’s silk dress.” Gran Saida grinned happily. “For a barndance I would suggest cotton, something flowery maybe. Let’s go and have a look in the shop.”

  Half an hour later, I, Mathilda Lindner, was actually studying dress patterns! My former needlework teacher, old witch Semmelweiss, was probably spinning in her grave laughing her head off, that the biggest tomboy in her career finally had to realize that you can’t go through life without the basics of sewing.

  Gran, Ma and Sarie Saida bombarded me with enthusiastic advice as to how to fold, wrap, stitch and pleat the blue cotton I had chosen. I seemed the only one in the room who didn’t subscribe to the theory that every female is born with a gene that turns her into an avid clothes freak. I tried to keep an open mind.

  I looked up from the sea of patterns covered in dotted, solid and broken lines and asked if Tannie Dalene would be able to make a dress from a drawing.

  “She can do anything,” Gran Saida said. “Tannie Dalene spent all her life sewing. She started when she was 5 and she has just turned 77.”

  I made a quick sketch of what I remembered of a dress in a Waterhouse painting and then announced that I was ready to hit the dorp. The Saida women looked at my drawing.

  “This is very simple,” Ma Saida said. “Don’t you want a bit of smocking around the top?”

  “Ja, and maybe a bow in the waist,” Gran Saida suggested.

  “I’d put some frills at the bottom,” Sarie said. “And pleats around the neck.”

  It took me about 15 minutes to persuade them that I didn’t want any smills, frills, smocks, ribbonds, smibbonds… At last Ma Saida said she would never be able to do all her shopping if she didn’t leave this very minute.

  Gran Saida quickly took my measurements and said: “We always give 5cm for movement.”

  That was all right with me because I hated tight clothes. That’s why my favourite gear at home consisted of my father’s shirts and painters’ dungarees from the hardware shop.

  Ma Saida and I made tracks while Sarie stayed on to work on the details of her dress. Our first stop was the post office. Ma Saida asked me to stay in the car, because lately there had been a steep increase in thieving in the dorp. She disappeared, balancing a pile of Christmas parcels in her arms.

  I was getting hot and wound my window down. There was quite a crowd around now. Lots of blacks with loads of kids around the cheaper stores; some whites parking their cars right in front of the place they wanted to go into, and, after having got their purchases, driving 100 m down the street to park in front of the next shop on their list. Back home in Waldsee nobody would ever have dreamed of doing that – for 2 reasons. Number one: lack of parking bays; if you were lucky enough to get one in the medieval centre of town you made good use of it until your allocated 60 minutes were up. Number 2: pollution through unnecessary use of petrol; a person had legs to walk. It looked like in Kneukelspruit there was enough parking space to accommodate all the cars of the district even if everybody rocked up at the same time.

  A bakkie parked in front of me. A man in a safari suit climbed out. He wore a big sort of cowboy hat and a comb was sticking out of the top of his left sock. Out of the blue, he stopped a black man who was walking down the pavement. “Hey…,” and he barked on in Afrikaans. It was very basic and I could understand it. “Hey boy, go and buy me 10 stamps. Here is the money.” The black guy said: “Dankie Baas,” and went off to the ‘Non European’ entrance of the post office.

  I don’t believe this. Looks like they don’t even know each other.

  The Baas lit himself a cigarette and plonked back into his bakkie. After a while the black guy came back with the stamps and some change. The Baas gave him a coin and after a”dankie Baas”, the black carried on on his way down the pavement.

  When Ma Saida emerged again I was close to heat exhaustion.

  “My poor girl,” she said. “There was an enormous queue at the teller. Everybody is sending off their last Christmas mail.” She opened the back door. “Now we’ll go and drop off a leg of lamb at the chemist. I hope Poppie didn’t forget to put it in the car. Touki, the chemist, is expecting his cousin’s family for the weekend.” Ma Saida crawled
around the back of the Land Rover. “Ah, thank God, I found it…and here is still half of Debbie’s sandwich. Kids! We better get rid of it before it starts to go off in this heat.” She grabbed the remains of the sandwich and called a black woman with a baby strapped to her back and 3 other children trotting around her. The woman changed tracks and said: “Ee Missis.” Ma Saida spoke to her in Sotho and gave her the sandwich. The woman said: “Dankie Missis.” Neither she nor the kids looked especially undernourished and I half expected her to throw the sandwich into the gutter, but when we drove off all of them, even the baby, were happily munching.

  When we got to the chemist I announced right away that I wouldn’t stay in the car.

  “Of course not,” Ma Saida said. “It’s too hot now. We’ll lock it up; especially with all these piccanins around.” She looked sceptically at a group of black children playing on the pavement.

  “They must be happy to be on holiday at last,” I said.

  “I don’t think they go to school.”

  “But most of them look like they are at least 10 years old.”

  “There is no compulsory school attendance for blacks in South Africa.”

  An easy way of keeping them uneducated!

  Ma Saida checked if all the doors were locked and sighed: “I don’t know what this country is coming to. In the old days you never had to worry about your property, and now at the post office, Mrs Strydom told me, that she doesn’t give her maid the key to the back door anymore, since the de Waal family got hacked to death in their beds.”

  I thought of Ludwig saying that living in South Africa was like living in a pressure cooker and that this could be one of the signs of the big blow-up.

  Touki, the chemist, resembled a big, cuddly teddybear and he was a Greek. He spoke Afrikaans to his employees, 2 highly made-up, permed young women; he spoke Sotho to a black customer and English to us.

  The pharmacy looked like a place out of a historical movie. The floor was Oregon pine, the ceiling of pressed steel with geometric patterns. Behind the dark, wooden counter big jars and pestels and mortars were lined up on wooden shelves. There was an old fashioned scale and a riempie bench. One entire wall was made up of wooden drawers with enamelled plaques on them. Out of one of these drawers, Touki took a perfectly modern plastic container with the latest brand of ß-blockers for Grandpa Saida, who suffered from high blood pressure.

  For his Christmas decoration, Touki was less traditional and clearly influenced by the Americans. On top of one of the free standing shelves, a glitzy Rudolph the Reindeer, galopped towards a flashy Mickey Mouse and next to the drinking fountain, a sexy Cinderella, surrounded by heaps of artificial snow, kept an eye on insect repellants.

  There weren’t many customers around and Touki invited us for a coke. His office was just as old fashioned as his front rooms, except for a very big, very modern painting on which hundreds of planets were spinning through an enigmatic universe. It was signed Larry Scully. Touki asked what I thought of it.

  Oh hell, now I must think up something intelligent quickly…

  But then I just said: “I like it and it looks like it exactly belongs into this room.”

  Touki smiled. “I know what you mean. I think it would be perfect anywhere. It reminds you that there are greater things out there than your own little personal context and that we are all part of that.” He opened a bottle of coke. “Ja, living in Kneukelspruit, you sometimes need something to help you look beyond the horizon.”

  Ma Saida sat down on a riempie chair. “Toukie, you’ve really got a gift for sounding dramatic. It must be your Greek blood. If there is one family in town hopping over the horizon all the time it’s yours.” She turned to me. “They go to Greece just about every year.”

  “Every second year,” Touki said, “to visit the folks in Corfu. Marjorie and the kids left last week. I’ve still got to slave on for a while.”

  “Are you coming to de la Rey’s barndance?” Ma Saida asked.

  “Ja, I’ve got an invitation,” Toukie said. “The de la Reys are quite an exception, don’t you think? Normally the Boere prefer to stick to their own kind.”

  “You can say that again,” Ma Saida agreed. “Not many of them would invite people who are only just considered to be ‘whites’.”

  I didn’t understand what they were talking about, but I didn’t ask because I was fed up with every conversation ending up in racial issues.

  On our way out Touki said: “I see the mozzies have been bothering you, Mathilda. Isn’t it amazing that they nearly always prefer the ladies to the blokes? You must try not to scratch because we’ve got some mighty virulent germs around here.” He gave me a bottle of 10% volume hydrogen peroxide to kill off the germs. “And here is a bottle of Mylol, an excellent mozzie repellant.” He also gave me a tube of sunscreen. “You’re blonde and blue eyed, same as Marjorie my wife. You must look after your skin here under the African sun.”

  He opened the door for us. Before Ma Saida and I could walk out, 2 women clad mainly in blue walked in. I guessed the older one was in her 60s and the younger one in her early 20s. Otherwise they looked absolutely identical. Both of them wore blue hats and had their hair tied up in buns. They didn’t have a trace of make-up on. Their skirts covered their knees, and in spite of the heat they wore stockings.

  They produced an unsmiling, simultanous “môre”, without looking at anybody in particular. Touki greeted them and said goodbye to us, and when we got out into the sun, it was even hotter than before.

  Ma Saida’s shopping list was about a kilometre long. We first went to the Klopkloppie Superette. Klopkloppie was a word I hadn’t learned in Mrs van der Bijl’s Afrikaans class, and Ma Saida informed me that a klopkloppie is a kind of warbler. As life goes, warbler wasn’t part of my vocabulary either, so she explained to me that a warbler is a bird. At the entrance of the shop stood a fat, middle-aged Portuguese with a big beard. Ma Saida introduced him as Manni, the owner of the place. Manni extended a meaty paw and said: “We’ve got nice fresh breadrolls today and the fig jam is on a special.” He was one of these bloody handcrushers and I felt like kicking him in the balls or hitting him with one of the wooden sticks leaning against the wall. There were about half a dozen of them, each one a bit longer than a metre. I was wondering if they were for sale when an old, black man climbed up the steps towards us. Without any apparent reason, Manni shouted at him as if the old man had just committed a major crime. The old man was obviously used to that kind of treatment. He just grinned “Ee Baas” showing the world the 3 teeth he had left in his mouth, and added his stick to the other ones leaning against the wall. Manni grunted some more and the old man grinned “Ee Baas” and put a grubby plastic packet with some stuff in it next to similar plastic packets next to the sticks. Manni lit himself a cigarette and watched the old man disappear into the shop. “These guys, if you don’t watch them they’ll steal your underpants off your bums before you can say Cock Robin, or they start a bloody fight with their kerries.

  Manni’s wife and 2 teenage daughters were sitting at the tills smiling meekly, hammering the oldfashioned keys. Behind the tills, one entered a kind of labyrinth with narrow passages leading past heaps of bags filled with mieliemeal, sugar or flour, packets of bushveld charcoal and rows of coke bottles filled with paraffin. There were piles of washing powder boxes and enamel plates, pyramids of toilet paper and cans of bleaching cream ‘guaranteed lighteners of African skin’. There were also bottles of hair straightener for African hair and columns of galvanized iron buckets and plastic basins. We loaded our goodies into shopping baskets and stepped carefully between boxes of fruit juice and rat poison, tins with floor polish and baked beans and cleansing muti.

  Every now and then I stopped to admire Klopkloppie Superette’s unique Christmas decoration. Suspended from the ceiling hung a forest of old flystrips covered in insect corpses. In between, shiny garlands, looking like tape worms from outer space, wound their ways in intricate patterns.

&
nbsp; When we finally made it to the tills, Manni’s wife was just ringing up a black man’s purchases: half a loaf of bread and a single cigarette. All of a sudden she let off a howl, lept up from her chair and pulled out a 200g chocolate bar from under the guy’s armpit. She exploded and slapped his face with the chocolate bar. Manni took over by kicking the guy out of the shop. Some white customers yelled for the polisie and a sjambok, because a good whipping is the only thing a Kaffir understands. The black customers fell around laughing.

  Try and understand different cultures.

  Ma Saida studied her list. “Next stop the hairdresser, to get my favourite shampoo.” She smiled and sighed at the same time. “My only real luxury in life.”

  “Bertha, why did the blacks laugh their heads off when one of them got kicked out of the shop?” I was intrigued.

  “That’s just the way they are. In their culture you take anything you like; if you don’t get caught it’s not called stealing, but if you do get caught you’re stupid and that’s funny.”

  Marietta’s Unisex Haarsalon was run by an energetic Italian lady, who tried to talk Ma Saida into buying a new sensational hair conditioner, imported from Italia, much better than the local rubbish, of course. She expertly put some rollers into a client’s mop and told her black assistant to sweep the floor and then go and make some coffee, presto. Ma Saida decided to take the conditioner, it was Christmas after all, and once a year she deserved a little bit of spoiling.

  “Your husband will just love it,” Marietta assured her. “In the end it always pays for a woman to look after herself.”

  When we walked back to the car, I saw some more women wearing blue clothes and hats, with their hair tied back in buns.

  “Is that a kind of uniform?” I asked. “Crazy wearing stockings in this heat.”

  “Those are Blourokkies,” Ma Saida said. “They belong to a very conservative splintergroup of the reformed churches.” She looked at her watch. It was time to fetch Debbie and Hein.

  At the school everybody was in high spirits, especially Hein, who had come second in his class. He didn’t stop waving a book which he had received for his achievements under everybody’s nose, and kept on saying, that a guy of his calibre couldn’t possibly carry on in life without knowing how to drive a car, and that his pa now really had to make a plan to teach him.

  “Mebbe he’ll even teach you, Ryno,” he said generously to a freckled red haired boy.

  “We’ll see about that when we get home,” Ma Saida said. “Now let’s get cracking.”

  Ryno and his sister Alicia, a chubby blonde, climbed into the car with us.

  “Ryno is 7 and in my class and Alicia is 11 and year ahead of Debbie,” Hein told me. “And they are going to stay with us, and us boys are going to learn how to drive, and…”

  “My parents are on holiday in Germany,” Alicia interrupted him. “They had stacks of snow and my ma got a new fur coat.”

  We popped in at the grandparents Saida to fetch Sarie. Gran Saida gave Hein 5 Rand for being a clever boy and Ryno a yoyo for being a holiday boy, and she took Debbie’s and Alicia’s measurements to have some ‘nice dresses’ for the barndance made. Sarie emerged from the Saida shop and showed us, very pleased with herself, the final pattern of her dress, smocks, plaits, bows and all.

  Back at the ranch Ma Saida alotted the sleeping quarters for the newcomers. Ryno moved in with Hein and Alicia got her own room.

  The sounds of an animated chat came out of the kitchen where the maids Lena, Poppie and Lorah were cooking. In the back garden Christo and his Sotho pals were mixing a concoction out of water, ash and fowl shit. Hummel had cleaned up his loquat wine explosion and ridden to the river.

  Pa Saida was outside fixing up the bakkie. “So how did you like our dorpie?” he asked me from underneath the car.

  “It’s small, it’s got some pretty, old houses and it’s got a mighty wide mainroad.”

  “Ja, lots of dorps have. In the old days there used to be a law that an ox waggon with 16 oxen had to be able to make a turn. Fuck!!! This bloody nut nearly fell into my eye. Petrus, give me the number 11 spanner.”

  “Ee Baas, number 11.” Petrus got up from his haunches, selected a spanner from the toolbox, passed it to Pa Saida and squatted down again, leaning his back against the blue gum tree. Pa Saida did something accompanied by a couple of groans and bloody hells, bawled “that’s it” and emerged with oil stained hands.

  The branches of the blue gum hung motionless, and even the birds seemed smothered by the heat. The sweltering air rose in waves from the dusty ground. I looked around for a mirage but there was none in sight. Pa Saida wiped his hands on a rag and I passed him a bottle of coke.

  “There were some strange people in town,” I said. “Rokkiebokkies or something. Bertha said they are an extreme sect of the Christians. The women wear stockings even in the heat and blue clothes and hats…”

  “Oh, you mean the Blourokkies,” Pa Saida grinned. “Ja, for them it’s heavy work to be Christians. To lead a God fearing life means to suffer and to put on a stern face all day long.” He took a big schluck of coke. For them everything that is pleasant is a sin. When you are thirsty you drink water or milk. Coke comes straight from the devil.” He took another schluck. “And why do the ladies wear stockings? Because the men must not see bare female skin.” He put the coke bottle down and said in a conspiratorial voice: “Don’t tell Bertha I told you this joke. You see, these Blourokkies are not allowed to fuck standing up because that might lead to dancing.” He slapped his hands on his thighs and roared with laughter.

  Phhhhh. Am I missing something? What’s so funny? Try to understand a different culture!

  When he was finally over his laughing fit, Pa Saida told Petrus to pack the tools away and suggested a little test ride. Petrus climbed into the back; I jumped onto the front bench. We drove round the hill and dropped Petrus off at the black village of the farm. Nothing much was going on there except for some kids playing a game with pebbles and a woman doing her laundry in a stone trough. Pa Saida was very pleased with the job he had done on the bakkie. He took me to the highest point of the farmroad, from where one could see the green expanses of sheep and cattle camps and a few rust red fields, where rows of mielies stood in impeccable lines. There were islands of dense blackwattle forests and groves of blue gums, and from one of the dams several storks took off into the sky.

  “We need a lot more rain,” Pa Saida lit a cheeroot. “The mielies are still small and the dams are half empty. Mind you, it’s not as dry as 5 years ago. Back then we had a real drought. The mielies didn’t grow and lots of animals died. “He took a pensive puff. “And then the winter came, and in winter it never rains anyway, not a drop for 3, sometimes 4 months…that’s when you lie in your bed at night and listen to every little noise, because it could be a fire destroying the few mielies you managed to grow and burn the veld that you need as grazing.” He inhaled deeply and pointed towards a hill across the valley. “See that koppie over there? In that year we had a fire that burnt across that whole koppie and everything to where we are standing now – about 3 square miles. It happened during the night. There was a strong wind and there was nothing one could do to stop it. Sparks jumped clean over the firebreaks. I’ve never seen such flames in my life, although we have fires every year. Ja, that one was really bad. We lost acres of mielies and some cattle and some sheep were burnt to death.”

  “It must be scary. The only big fires I’vet ever seen were on TV and that was already quite spectacular…but there is one thing I don’t understand. How does a fire start here in the middle of nowhere?”

  Pa Said took a final puff of his cheeroot and stomped it carefully into the ground. “Ag, it’s always the same. Some bloody muntu throws a match into the veld.”

  “Oh come on Sidney, if anything bad happens in this country it’s always the fault of some ‘bloody muntu’.

  Pa Saida sighed and said in a benevolent voice: “You Europeans are an arr
ogant lot. Think you know everything and that people everywhere think exactly like you. My girl, you don’t know Africa at all. Have you ever considered that there might be people on this planet whose values are so different to yours and mine that there aren’t even any words in any of our respective languages to describe what the other guys’ principles are all about?”

  “But…”

  “And Mathilda, you’re also right. There are fires that start naturally, by a strike of lightning for example, and fires are part of the natural cycle in Africa; you even get certain seeds that will only sprout if they’ve been in a fire. And there are also white people who chuck cigarette butts out of their car windows and who don’t extinguish their braaivleis fires and cause millions of Rands of damage, but I’m telling you, I’ve seen Kaffirs throw matches into the veld ever since I was a little boy.”