A Trojan Affair

by Michael Smorenburg

  Glossary of Terms

  Almagtige Almighty

  Apartheid a policy of forced separation of races

  Astrophysicist the branch of astronomy concerned with the properties of stars

  baasskap boss-ship or domination; where the white man must automatically be in charge

  Baster literally, a bastard—a ‘half-breed’—of mixed race

  bakkie a pickup truck

  bedonered crazed with anger

  belaglik laughable

  bekommer worry or troubles oneself over

  Burgemeester Mayor

  besete infected

  bliksemse (derogatory) bloody

  bobbejaan baboon

  boere farmer—(derogatory) Afrikaner whites

  boesman / bushmen see san and khoisan

  boetie brother or friend

  bokkie a fawn, term of endearment for a female, a plaything

  braai barbeque

  Broederbond brotherhood, an officially abandoned secret society devoted to furthering white Afrikaner influence

  CERN European organization for fundamental nuclear research

  coolie an unskilled native laborer from India’s south

  dagga marijuana

  dankie thank you

  diaken deacon

  dief thief

  Dominee a clergyman, a preacher, in the NGK or Dutch Reformed Church

  donner to beat up / also, 'rascal'

  donnerse ding damned or bloody thing

  Doppers a member of the most conservative Afrikaner Church, which practises a strict version of Calvinism

  dorp small village

  duiwel devil

  duiwelaanbidder devil-worshipper

  eie own (people)

  ek I

  evolutionary anthropology the study of the evolution of human physiology and human behaviour

  fantasties fantastic

  fok / fokken fuck / fucking

  gedoente contraption

  gee give

  gekry acquired

  gemeente parish

  gemeentelede parishoners

  geraas noise

  groot geraas big noise

  haasbek toothless

  Hadron Collider World's largest and most powerful particle accelerator (at CERN)

  hemel heaven

  hominid a primate of a family ( Hominidae ) that includes humans and fossil ancestors.

  Homo Naledi A hominid sub-species found in 2013 in the Rising Star cave system of Maropeng, South Africa.

  Hotnot (derogatory) coloured person, derived from Hottentot; used to refer to Khoi peoples.

  Israel-Visie a collective term for a variety of conservative religious groups who aim to prove that they are direct descendants of Israel's chosen people

  iron maiden medieval torture device—a coffin-like apparatus festooned with inward pointing spears to skewer a victim

  ja yes

  Jislaaik an exclamation similar to "Jeepers"

  jou you or your

  Kaffer (extremely derogatory) a black person

  Kaffir-boetie (derogatory) a white person who speaks on behalf of blacks

  kak shit or nonsense

  kakpraathout a variety of wood used for bonfires but not for cooking meat due to noxious fumes that taint food.

  Kardashev Scale Named after Russian physicist, Nikolai Kardashev, a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement, based on the amount of energy a civilization is able to utilize

  khoisan a collective term for the Khoikhoi (Hottentot) and San (Bushmen) peoples (not black African see nguni) of southern Africa: see also Coloured, boesman/bushman, hotnot

  klap hit or smack

  klein small

  kleinbaas small boss

  klim climb

  klomp lot of

  kom come on

  kont cunt

  landdros magistrate.

  larney posh

  lelike ugly

  lekker great and enjoyable

  luister listen

  ma mother

  mal mad or insane

  manne men

  masjien machine

  meme cultural analogues to genes; infectious ideas that self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective social pressures

  mense people or culture

  meneer or Mnr. mister or Mr.

  moffie (derogatory) queer, homosexual

  momparas idiots or fools

  Mother City Nickname for Cape Town

  Munchausen Syndrome Munchausen syndrome by proxy is a mental illness and a form of child abuse. The caretaker of a child either makes up fake symptoms or causes real symptoms to make it look like the child is sick.

  Nguni the black-African group of closely related Bantu language speakers, including Ndebele, Swazi, Xhosa, and Zulu

  niks nothing

  non sequitur a situation where the conclusion one is drawing does not logically follow from what is at issue

  nooit weer never again

  onbeskof immensely rude

  Oom uncle

  opskud get a move on

  oens guys, fellows, boys or men

  oupa grandfather

  pa father

  pro bono a free service

  putch a secretly plotted and suddenly executed attempt to overthrow a system

  realpolitik a perception of politics or principles based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations

  rooinek a foreigner, particularly an English speaking person

  seun son or boy

  SKA Square Kilometre Array (Radio Telescope)

  skandaal scandal or scandalous

  skelms crooks

  sommer just

  staan stand

  stilte quiet

  swart black

  staan stand up

  synod the governing body of the church

  tannie aunt

  tik methamphetamine

  uitlanders outsiders or newcomers

  vang catch

  vark pig

  veld bush or scrub, uncultivated land

  verraaier turncoat

  verdomde damned

  voetsek get-lost, go, get away

  volk peoples, culture

  voortrekker Dutch-speaking people who migrated away from the Cape Colony from 1836 in order to live beyond British rule.

  weer again

  weg away

  xenophobia fear of foreigners

  Young Earth Creationist (also YEC) Christian sects who believe in a literal interpretation of the bible and a 6,000 year old earth

  SAMPLE... The Praying Nun

  Chapter 1

  Cape Town, South Africa

  April/Autumn, 1986

  The object appears to be part of a large tooth, standing slightly proud out of the surrounding black conglomerate.

  I’m under six metres of water with a scuba tank strapped to my back. That’s just twenty feet of depth in old money.

  Conglomerate rock is the congealed detritus every shipwreck acquires in its grave, a bit of everything cemented together by corals and other sea life, turned to rock from age and chemical reaction with the salty water.

  A dirty and yellowed bump the size of my knuckle, protruding above the coal-like sediment, caught my eye more than fifteen minutes ago. It looks to me like evidence of a large tooth hidden from view. I’ve been attempting to wrestle the whole chunk loose from the granite crevasse ever since.

  Trouble is, I know I’m about to reach the end of my air supply.

  Forty-five minutes is about what you get from a ten-litre aqualung of compressed air at this depth when you’re working hard.

  You can eke out an hour if you don’t exert yourself. But I’ve been straining and heaving to loosen this football-sized chunk of black mass from the grip of the African continent, so the tank is sure to run dry a lot quicker.

  Today’s conditions have pushed my breathing harder as well.

  It’s achingly cold, but at least the fr
igid water has given us perfect viz. I can see through my mask out to maybe half the length of an Olympic swimming pool in distance. Across the sugar-white sand beyond this reef, another dark patch of rocky outcrop looms at the very edge of my visibility.

  I have enough experience to know that I’m reaching the point when the air runs out. When it does, it will do so quickly. I’ll suddenly find that I must suck in the last few breaths to get anything at all.

  “Come on!” I find myself growling into the mouthpiece of the demand valve as I pull on the lump with all my diminishing strength. The accompanying eruption of bubbles from my frustrated bellow boils out in front of my goggles, momentarily obscuring the crisp clean water.

  And, here it comes!

  It moves a finger’s width then locks again Ffffff…!! I fizz with irritation into the mouthpiece again.

  But it’s loose. There’s wiggle room. Progress!

  I test the play. It’s no longer attached, but it’s still wedged with frustrating determination somewhere in the crack between the granite boulders.

  Calm down… I remind myself, emphasizing the admonishment by resting to examine the exposed piece of tooth again.

  Lordy, but this is intriguing, I think as I stare more closely.

  I’m an amateur, not yet twenty-one years old, and certainly no archaeologist, but that really looks to me like a tooth in the conglomerate rock.

  A persistent piece of kelp washes in front of my mask and it makes me look around to see whether the kelp forest has changed its nature in the last half hour. Swell is pushing in fast and that means this site, so close inshore, will not be accessible in the coming days. This thought accelerates my heart rate with an urgency to get this extraction done.

  What started as a curiosity at the beginning of this dive has grown into an obsession. Something about the intrigue of it is driving me beyond any evidence of intrinsic value—it sure isn’t gold.

  No matter. I just have to know what this thing is.

  I peer a little closer and push the kelp aside yet again. It’s definitely something organic… bone or tooth... and there’s another piece of it, I notice. Now that it’s loosened just that fraction from the grip that time has put on it, I can rotate it just enough to see that it appears to be larger than I first thought. About a finger’s length away from the original bump that grabbed my attention, I see more of it protruding, grinning at me through the clinging tar of conglomerate, teasing my appetite for wonder.

  Buy it now:

  https://www.amazon.com/Praying-Slave-Shipwreck-Saga-Book-ebook/dp/B075D84T19/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8