Twenty Chickens for a Saddle

by Robyn Scott

  Elizabeth said, “This wilful ignorance is terrible. This is why I have taught myself to resist sexual desires. Because men do not want to have sex with condoms…this is why I spend all my time speaking to people about AIDS. So there is hope for our children.”

  Then she took a deep breath and solemnly repeated the phrase that would ring in my head for days. “AIDS is everyone’s problem.”

  On the few occasions Elizabeth paused, we said things like “That’s amazing,” or “You’re so brave.” It was hard to think of anything better than platitudes. And Elizabeth brushed aside compliments.

  Her hut was in the outskirts of Phikwe. None of us had been to this part of town, and Elizabeth – in between her endless AIDS chatter – directed us through streets where mangy dogs and the occasional goat wandered languidly in the path of oncoming cars.

  “I’m so pleased to be home,” she said as we stopped in front of a tiny building that stood on a small patch of swept dust, surrounded by a low wire fence. “But I must get back to my patients in Francistown. They will be missing me.”

  An AIDS refuge was not enough for Elizabeth. Stretching her small resources to the limits, she’d also set up a support group for terminally ill people in her community – the AIDS patients sent home to die by the overflowing hospitals. Elizabeth and her group took turns visiting these patients, feeding and washing them, and giving advice to their family members on how to care for them, and how to avoid contracting HIV.

  Elizabeth shook each of our hands ‘with a warm Botswana clasp.

  Mum said, “It’s been a privilege having you to stay. You are an inspiration to us all.”

  Elizabeth just laughed.

  Mum said, “You must take a break for yourself sometime. You must look after yourself in order to look after others.”

  But Elizabeth shook her head and smiled. “No rest,” she said. “I have too much work to do. And look at me, I am as strong as a lion. Tsamaya sentle.”

  “Sala sentle,” we called back. Stay well.

  ∨ Twenty Chickens for a Saddle ∧

  Twenty-Seven

  Dad

  It was the Christmas holidays of 1998. Grandpa Ivor arrived at the farm, yelling.

  “I’m losing my identity,” he bellowed as he sprang out of the car. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

  He strode towards us, fending off the three dogs that hurled themselves at his legs. The dogs slobbered briefly and then charged off towards Granny Betty, who was still inching her way out onto the dirt. Grandpa flung his arms despairingly skyward, and then held them out to Lulu, who ran towards him. “Well, if it isn’t little Lulu.” He grinned delightedly.

  Lulu, Mum, and I kissed Grandpa hello. Damien and Dad shook his hand.

  Dad said, “Hi, Ivor.”

  Grandpa said, “Hi, Keith.”

  Then a smile twitched on Grandpa’s face. “Ya bloody stole my identity, Keith. My own son! Can’t believe it.”

  Dad raised his eyebrows, fighting a curious smile. He said nothing, but Grandpa needed no encouragement. As we carried their bags inside, he told us, at high volume, how he’d been stopped at a veterinary post on the way to the farm.

  “Told them I was Mr. Scott. Andya know what the little bugger said? He said, “Ee, you are the father of the doctor!” Can ya believe it? And I said, “First of all, I am Ivor Scott, and not just the doctor’s father. Everyone in Botswana bloody knows who I am.” Dunno what’s happening to this country! No respect for their elders any more.”

  Dad grinned. “Sorry, Ivor,” he said. “But you’ve had a pretty long reign.”

  “Whaddaya talking about? I’m just getting started.”

  Behind Grandpa, Granny Betty winked and smiled. “It’s nice to be here,” she said.

  Grandpa stopped abruptly in the lounge. He dropped his bag and stared at the corner of the room. “Now what the bloody hell is that creation?” He turned to Mum. “Betya can’t identify that one, Linda.”

  “It’s our Christmas tree,” said Lulu.

  “Bloody hell,” said Grandpa.

  Lulu giggled. “It was Damien’s idea. Except for the barbed wire. That was mine. Rob helped, but she doesn’t approve.”

  “I just preferred the silver thorn trees,” I explained. “But I appreciate Damien’s artistic concept.”

  “Well, I got tired ol thorn trees,” said Damien. “And I miss welding at school.”

  Grandpa walked to the tree and peered closely.

  The trunk was a metre-tall silver metal pipe mounted on a dinner-plate-size steel disc. The branches were sawn-off metal fencing droppers, which Damien had welded onto the trunk at branchlike angles and sprayed with silver paint. Wound around trunk and branches were several metres of shiny barbed wire – the equivalent of tinsel. Spray-painted silver stars cut out from flattened tin cans dangled from the branches, and as a concession to Lulu’s desire for snow, Damien had spray-painted teased out bits of steel wool, which she had dotted along the branches.

  The overall effect was of a stark, hideous beauty.

  Grandpa spun around, grinning. “So what’s its Latin name, little Lulu? Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how to speak Latin.”

  “Metallwn scrapud,” said Lulu, eyeing him gravely as she delivered our carefully planned retort to the inevitable question. “Unique to Molope Farm.”

  We drove Granny and Grandpa around the farm, showing them the new dams, the pod of hippos, and the most beautiful bird-dense river spots, where cormorants and goliath herons perched on grey rocks, intently studying the mirror water. Granny Betty spent most of her time cuddling the dogs. Grandpa alternately marvelled at the scenery and dispensed irrelevant advice.

  Then we had Christmas Eve dinner: leek and potato bake, with, in Granny Betty’s honour, a special fillet steak of which she ate just a few bites, taking minutes over each mouthful and dropping pieces to the dogs, which Dad frowned at but ignored.

  “Who’s going to visit the hospital tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Plenty of other people doing it,” said Grandpa. “Don’t ya worry. And it’s probably lucky we can’t go. Look at your Granny Betty. I think the nurses might put her straight into one of the beds. Might never get you back again, hey, Betty?”

  Granny Betty smiled. She looked not at all upset by the prospect.

  “Business is booming,” said Grandpa. “Can’t keep up. Travelling all the time. So Betty has to hold the fort. Look after the cats and dogs. Fend off the burglars. Did I tell you we were burgled?”

  Grandpa had, but we listened again as he explained, incredulously, how a few months after the old muti-picking witch doctor had died, their house had been broken into when they were shopping in Phikwe. “Nothing for twenty years. Then the old bugger kicks the bucket, and wham. Told ya we were protected by witchcraft.”

  Dad said, “Betty, are you worried when Ivor’s away?”

  “I actually rather enjoy it,” said Granny, “and I have the dogs, and the neighbours across the road. They’re very good to me. And of course,” she smiled mockingly, “I’ve always got my crutches to defend myself – ”

  “Betty’s a tough old gal,” interrupted Grandpa, “And this is Botswana. They dunno what violence is in this place.”

  Dad frowned, and I braced myself for a visit-terminating lecture about Grandpa’s carelessness. Grandpa, amongst other things, often forgot to pay their monthly medical aid subscription, and one of Granny’s hip operations had almost not happened as a result. Grandpa had got away with it only because he was such a long-standing customer.

  But Dad just took another mouthful and chewed impassively.

  And Christmas passed with stories of the old days, discussions about the Tuli Block, and not a harsh word between them.

  ♦

  Dad’s good humour, these days, seemed impervious to assault.

  In crusading-pioneering full throttle, he was inexhaustible and imperturbable, bubbling with an energetic optimism to rival Mum’s.

  On his
free days, he drove around the country giving lectures to private and government hospital doctors about sterols and sterolins. From his long clinic days, he returned still tired, but cheered by his AIDS patients, who continued to respond well to the supplement. He gave the product to his own patients at cost price, but he and Charlie Sheldon had been given agency rights for Moducare, so they received a commission when it was sold in Botswana. To Dad, it offered the perfect opportunity to both help with the epidemic and buy his way out of clinical medicine. And he was convinced it was only a matter of time and persistence before the whole medical establishment caught on.

  Meanwhile, back at the farm, in between churning out articles for The Voice, Dad flung himself into the problems of the Tuli Block farmers.

  Long-standing dissatisfaction with the chairman of the Tuli Block Farmers’ Association had at last, in 1998, provoked a vote of no confidence. The chairman, however, flatly refused to stand down. After several months of chaos, a breakaway association – the first of its kind in the history of the Tuli Block – was formed.

  Dad was asked to be the chairman of the Limpopo Agricultural Association. But five years after our arrival, he was still not farming anything and he again protested on these grounds. The farmers argued that Dad was the only person who could successfully stand up to the wrath and power of the deserted chairman.

  So Dad agreed, reasoning it was an opportunity to help out the change-seeking farmers and “take the Tuli Block into the twentieth century.”

  Mum said, “I also think your father just can’t resist a good fight.”

  Charlie Sheldon said to Dad, “Don’t do it, Keith.”

  Before moving to Gaborone, Charlie had lived in Ghanzi, an area of freehold land in western Botswana that was also largely dominated by right-wing Afrikaners. “I’ve seen it before,” he said. “Some of these old Boers will make friends with the Englishman. Then one day they’ll unite, enemies and all, and fuck him over.”

  Dad said, “I trust these guys, they’re a good bunch. They want change.”

  The LAA was soon making waves. The old association had done little more than organise a Christmas party and alcohol-fuelled braau after the monthly meetings, which were always held at the chairman’s house. The new one didn’t have enough months in the year for all its fund-raising plans, and each meeting was held at a different farm to try and encourage a sense of community.

  Lulu, Damien, and I had arrived home for the Christmas holidays, just in time for the LAA’s second four-by-four obstacle competition. Held on a gully-riddled stretch of Limpopo river-bank on a nearby farm, the event had even drawn entrants from as far afield as Pretoria in South Africa. Tents and chairs dotted the temporary campsite, and scores of tough, athletic-looking vehicles stood ready for action.

  The day was hot and dry, but deep mud from recent rains made for a perfect course.

  As truck after truck skidded down and ground up the gullies – cheered by a first gently and then severely intoxicated audience – the slopes and bumps became increasingly slippery. Judges carrying clipboards hurried around the straining, mud-spattered vehicles. A tractor hauled out the chronically stuck. Many of the entrants were drinking as liberally as the crowd, and they became more reckless with the worsening terrain. A truck toppled. People tumbled out amid cheers and yells. Young boys held wild informal races on the dirt roads behind the main course.

  Everything felt slightly, exhilaratingly out of control.

  Dad looked on, sweating. After the first event, he’d tried to ban drinking. He was told, unequivocally, that no one would come, and he’d reluctantly given in. As doctor in charge, he now strode between the gullies armed with his medical aid kit, examining cuts and scratches. I trailed after him, wanting to be on the scene of any drama and amused by his determined attempts to curtail the drinking.

  “I think you’ve probably had enough beer for the moment,” he admonished one red-eyed driver after the next. But no one was listening, and yells and cries accompanied various off-piste excursions down gullies.

  When the time came for the blindfolded event, Dad sighed with relief. “At least no one’s drunk enough to hurt themselves on this one.”

  This was a flat course, which the blindfolded driver had to navigate, directed by his co-driver. Everyone seemed to manage easily. Dad leaned against a tree, opened a can of Appletiser, and started chatting to some of the onlookers.

  Then someone yelled.

  A red truck hurtled wildly across the course, ignoring the markers. I recognised it as one that had earlier driven down the wrong gully. The windscreen was spattered with mud. The young man driving – his head wrapped in a black blindfold – leaned out of the side and peered ahead to take a better look. The navigator laughed and yelled helplessly. Then realising that leaning out of the window didn’t help, the driver yelped with excitement and veered back on course.

  The crowd screeched with laughter.

  Dad put his head in his hands.

  But no one was seriously hurt, and the excitement mounted. Between events, some of the serious competitors clambered on fallen tree trunks and up the side of termite mounds, scrutinising the obstacles from every angle, sizing up the opposition. But most just took the opportunity to crack open another can of beer. Some continued to drink in their cars, raising their cans in toasts out of their windows.

  As it was, sometimes drunken bravery was exactly what was needed: outsiders shone, favourites fell by the wayside. It was the Sunbeams boat race all over again. With no Sunbeams.

  Mum was part of the catering team. Installed in a little portable hut, she handed out white bread rolls smothered in margarine with a look of stoic sacrifice. “No fibre. Hydrogenated fats. Can’t believe I’m doing this. At least there’s a sense of community. Maybe,” she said uncertainly, “I could even grow to be part of it…”

  The previous winners had come from Pretoria, and the day ended jubilantly when a team from Gaborone, the home capital city, brought the champion’s title back to Botswana. The riverside party continued late into the night. In the end-of-year newsletter, Mum patriotically hailed the return of the title to Botswana. Dad declared, confidently. “We’re going to put the Tuli Block back on the map. And back in Botswana.”

  From afar, with occasional close-ups in the holidays, I followed Mum and Dad’s quests, riveted, hopeful, and full of trepidation.

  AIDS, I cared about for what it was: the magnitude of the problem, the tragedy of how it was being dealt with – or wasn’t being dealt with – and the immense hope that lay in any part of any solution. The Limpopo Agricultural Association, at least what it did, I cared for hardly at all. I loved what it meant, though: that Mum and Dad had another cause, however small, that they thought worth fighting for, together.

  For as long as I could remember, Dad had dreamt out loud of escaping medicine and nurturing a beautiful farm, deep in the bush. Then, he’d always said, he would be content. Mum, beside him, had happily followed every bumpy mile of Dad’s little-trodden road to his dream. A thousand times she’d told me that her only intent, and where her idea of contentment lay, was to have a happy family, nurtured according to her philosophy of humanity.

  By my final years of school, I suspected both were wrong: that Dad had led Mum to something too easy to ever make him happy; that Mum had followed, determined to create something that would not be nearly enough for her; and that all the while, what they’d really loved was the bumpy road itself: changing countries, building houses, living in cowsheds, laughing at convention, and believing passionately in doing what everyone else said couldn’t and shouldn’t be done.

  And so while Grandpa Ivor feared for his identity, I feared for Mum and Dad’s – so long and so inextricably bound to each other’s dreams and our family’s life together, and suddenly up for renegotiation.

  Dearest R,

  I hope this finds you happy and not working too hard. Don’t forget to sniff your peppermint oil while revising and before tests. I am convinced
that this really does help focus the mind and improve your recall. I must warn you, though, do be careful about getting it directly on your nostrils. The other day I discovered how much the neat oil burns, which took my mind off the task at hand altogether. I’d feel terrible if that happened to you during an exam. So just use a few drops on a tissue and inhale deeply.

  Otherwise, all is well back here in the Tub Block. I am being kept busy with my various new book projects. My latest idea is a nutritional cookbook – a series of recipes for different conditions: the heart menu, the diabetes menu, etc. with relevant nutritional info alongside each. I am going to call it Help Yourjelf, and an agent in the UK has put me in touch with two well-known cooks. Dad says that is critical because if I devised the recipes, he reckons the experiential side effects would outweigh the physiological benefits.

  No comment!

  Meanwhile, the LAA is going from strength to strength, and occupying much of the rest of my time. I’m delighted, of course, to be helping such a positive movement, and I don’t resent it at all. But I have to say, Robbie, I occasionally stop and wonder: is this it? As you know, I’ve always liked to keep an open mind about my destiny. But I can’t help questioning whether ‘Secretary of the Limpopo Agricultural Association’ is really what I’m meant to be doing with my life. Just as you were so clear about your future not lying in netball, I feel sure there must be more for me! What do you think? Anyway, you know me. I don’t like to dwell on the negative. And my work does help Dad, who’s firing on all cylinders – giving his talks around the country, and doing, what he does best – what we all love about him so much – churning out new ideas, shaking people up, and making things happen.

  Lots of love,

  Mumsie.