Three Days in Phoenix

by Vincent Gray

at the Agricultural Summer Grain Centre in Potchefstroom. But I have resigned from that job and I will be taking up a new position as a crop breeder in a commercial seed company.”

  “What kind of crops do you breed?”

  “Mainly maize. I have been involved over the past few years in a maize breeding programme.”

  For the rest of the journey that they remained silent, each preoccupied with their own thoughts as they drove through a bleak wintery khaki coloured landscape. The volume of traffic increased as they approached the gold mining town of Carletonville which happened to be situated at the very edge of the far West Rand. With the sun setting behind them they drove past the gold mining town of Westonaria. Beyond Westonaria lay the vast sprawling township of Soweto under a dirty dense white-greyish blanket of rising smog. Under the rapidly descending gloom of twilight they could make out the lights of Lenasia ahead of them. As they drew closer to Lenasia Brendon broke the silence:

  “See that turn-off on the right coming up ahead that’s the Lenasia turn-off, you can drop me off there.”

  As Trevor slowed down he noticed that the road to Lenasia which was flanked by a marshland with beds of dry reeds was actually a long and lonely stretch of road.

  “It seems like a long walk from the T junction to Lenasia, I don’t mind giving you a lift to the place where you are staying,” he said.

  Given the fading light and the cold gusts of wind which rippled over the marshland Brendon decided to take up Trevor’s offer. In the east a full moon had already risen. Just above the western horizon the orange and red glow of the setting sun was rapidly fading into a luminous pale tint of crimson, purple and pink.

  “OK, I really appreciate that, but then you must come in for some supper.”

  When they walked into the lounge a big commotion was in progress. It seemed that one of the volunteer Kombi drivers was no longer available, so they were short of a driver, and the five hired Kombi’s should have already arrived.

  Trevor’s father Mr Solly Abrahams was trying to pacify everyone.

  “No don’t worry we will make a plan. By the time we have finished eating we will have a plan, just leave it to me,” Solly said.

  After Trevor had been introduced to everyone, Solly said:

  “Sit down Trevor and join us for supper. Get another plate and chair for our friend,” he said.

  “Actually I think I should be on my way,” Trevor said, having second thoughts about dinner.

  “Tell me Trevor where do you have to be tonight that you are in such hurry? The traffic past Uncle Charlies is now grid locked, it has become sheer chaos, there has been a huge accident, everywhere there are police and ambulance lights flashing, they have set up a road block, believe me I have just come from Joburg along that same road, it was miracle we managed to get past that accident. Wherever you want to get to tonight you are definitely not going to get there anytime soon, believe me. If you want to you can use our phone to warn anyone who may be expecting you. You can tell them that you are going to be at least two hours late, so why don’t you just relax and join us for supper? Come on now, sit down and relax, don’t stress, things always have a way of working themselves out. Look they have already brought you a chair, now you can’t go,” Solly said pointing to the kitchen chair being carried to the dining room table.

  Reluctantly, after using the toilet and washing his hands, Trevor ended up sitting down on the extra chair that had been placed at the table. Almost immediately someone placed a large white plate in front of him.

  Solly also sat down taking his usual place at the head of the table.

  “Let us say grace,” announced Solly.

  They all closed their eyes and Solly asked God to bless the food in Jesus’ name. Glancing at Trevor after saying grace, Solly could not help noticing from the expression on Trevor’s face that he was surprised to discover that his Indian hosts were Christians.

  “Yes, as you can see, we are indeed Christians, Pentecostals, we all belong to the Full Gospel Church,” he said proudly, his face beaming. “And you, do you also follow the Lord?”

  “Not really. I am a bit of an agnostic. I don’t observe any religion, I am Catholic by birth if that means anything,” he answered.

  “Nor do we observe any religion. It is not about religion; it is about following Jesus and being filled with the Holy Spirit of God. It is all about experiencing the reality of God in your life and knowing the joy of God’s salvation, and this is not religion, religion involves following man invented rules about all kinds of do’s and don’ts that must be followed in order to please God, this does not make any sense, God wants us to have a living relationship with him as our father, you cannot have a real relationship with God if you are trying to serve God by obeying a whole lot of rules,” Solly explained.

  “I respect that,” Trevor said politely with a serious expression on his face. The bowl of rice was passed to him. Using the large spoon in the bowl he dished up a heap of rice into the centre of his plate. A dish filled with curried potatoes and chicken pieces was then passed to him.

  He noticed a knife and fork had been placed next to his plate. Everyone round the table were using their hands to eat their meal, delicately and gracefully picking up the rice, pieces of potato and chicken portions with their fingers. He decided it would be polite and respectful if he also ate with his fingers.

  While they ate the Abraham family probed and interrogated Trevor with all kinds of questions especially the nature of his work as a plant breeder. As best as he could he explained the Mendelian dihybrid cross and the pollination biology or reproductive biology of the maize plant. In layman terms he tried to explain and describe all the agronomic, biochemical and physiological traits which crop breeders had theorized about as being important for increasing crop yield.

  Sherisha Abrahams, Trevor’s sister asked whether maize was an African plant.

  To everyone surprise Trevor told an attentive audience that the Portuguese slave traders had brought maize and cassava to Africa from South America about 400 years ago and maize had spread throughout the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, displacing in the process all the other indigenous grain crops, becoming with time the main staple food crop of all Africans. He then went on to explain that for more than a millennium the African population had been under the pressure of constant attrition because of the slave trade, first by the Arabs, and then by the European trans-Atlantic slave traders. As a biologist Trevor realized that the African natural population reproduction rates had been severely constrained due to the predations of the Arab and European slave traders. The Arabs also prevented the reproduction of African slaves that had already been taken into slavery by castrating all African males who had been captured and sold into a life of slavery. Given the close proximity of Africa it did not seem necessary to breed African slaves because they could readily and conveniently restock their slave holdings from the continuous supply of fresh slaves flowing from Africa across the Sahara and by sea from east Africa into the Caliphate. There should have been more Africans in Africa was the conclusion that he had reached as a scientist.

  “Maybe they used maize as the crop to grow slaves for the slave trade,” Brendon mused, almost reading Trevor’s mind on the topic.

  “There may be a lot of truth to that. Maybe without maize or cassava the slave trade would not have been sustainable,” Trevor said as he began to see the hypothetical links between maize as the staple African food crop and the population dynamics of Africans that would have been necessary to sustain the supply of a constant stream of slaves for both the European and the Arabian slave trade.

  “What is cassava?” Sherisha wanted know.

  “So the domestication of maize by the ‘Indians’ in the Americas ended up making the African slave trade sustainable, isn’t that an irony,” Brendon said, interrupting Sherisha’s question.

  “Well I am glad that rice cannot be blamed for sustaining the African slave trade,” Sherisha said with a chuckle.
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br />   “Actually a lot has been overlooked with regard to the role of agricultural crops in driving the course of history. For example without the domestication of lucerne or alfalfa it would not have been possible to breed the large herds of horses necessary for military conquest and military domination, ancient armies marched on the stomachs of horses, they marched on the supply of fodder for horses,” Trevor explained.

  “The story of actual history is so incomplete and misleading, no one really knows which factors were critical in shaping the actual course of history, it could have been as simple as the maize plant, and everybody has missed this one vital fact which may have played a major role in making the scramble for Africa possible, in order to exploit Africa, Africans needed to have carbohydrates in plentiful supply,” Brendon proposed as he began to grasp the full significance of the role that the humble maize plant had played in the colonization of Africa and in the exploitation of its aboriginal population.

  “Maybe without the help of the maize plant from South America, Africa would not have been successfully colonized,” Sherisha mused.

  “Without maize they would not have been able to mine the gold on the Witwatersrand,” Solly said, adding his own bit of insight into the ambiguous benefits of foreign grain crops like maize which have played such a decisive