by Robyn Scott
Dearest M and D,
I am working hard, Mum, I’m afraid. But I am, at least, using your peppermint oil. You’d be amused: the other day I was sniffing it before a maths test, for which the teacher was late. Getting odd looks (shades of the neurolinguistic programming episode), I ended up explaining to the whole jittery class that I was using it to clear my mind. Then everyone wanted to try it, and the teacher arrived to the sound of deep inhalations and a pungent peppermint classroom. She looked pretty stunned – then less so when I explained it was my doing. Nothing I do surprises them any more. Anyway, the test was terrible. Afterwards, everyone was dejected, and Laura wryly accused me of playing a dirty trick and clearing everyone’s minds altogether!
Must go, but quickly, talking of not surprising the school any more, I did manage it the other day. It was our class’s turn to do an assembly play, and I wrote a rhyming, satirical take on the nuns – about their bad habits, and the skeletons in their closets. We really went to town and hired skeleton and nun costumes, and convinced the biology teacher to let us borrow the human skeleton from the lab for a prop. Then Nicola choreographed a dance to ‘It’s raining men, hallelujah…’ I knew I was pushing it a bit. But in your honour, Dad, I decided to test how far humour could take me. Well, you would have been proud. Everyone was in hysterics, and the nuns laughed harder than anyone. I think being as unholy and unbaptised as I am, they treat me as a bit of a lost cause, which suits me perfectly.
Mum, do send more updates soon. I have given up on Dad writing but longing to hear what you’re both up to. Any news on Moducare? How’s the LAA fund-raising?
LOL,
Robbie.
Dearest R,
I have just been churning out another LAA newsletter, and thought I’d update you on some of our triumphs thus far in 1999. Our membership has almost doubled. As we’d hoped, we’ve now got a much better ratio of black members and we’ve also got a black committee member (a lovely chap from a farm near Sherwood), which I think is a first in the TB. Another first is a visit from the minister of agriculture, who lavished high praise on our efforts to revive the area as an important agricultural engine. He promised support and said that the Tuli Block will no longer be a forgotten corner of Botswana! (Maybe secretary of the LAA will one day mean something after all.) Dad is also pushing his long-nursed idea that Botswana could be a major world producer of organic, free-range beef.
Membership diversity has also been boosted with the joining of good old llona and John Somerset from Phikwe. They’re doing great ‘work plotting the steps of all the old explorers in the area. Apparently they’ve worked out the exact baobab tree beside which Livingstone’s party out-spanned, and exactly where Baines crossed the Limpopo, which is just downstream from us. Ilona is writing a book on the subject, and Dad and I are hoping she’ll give a talk at the next meeting, to enrich the members’ historical understanding of this exquisite part of the world.
Talking about educational lectures, I also gave a talk on nutrition to the LAA meeting entitled ‘Are you digging your grave with your teeth?’ It was so funny; me standing there, earnestly lecturing about fibre, phytochemicals and bad fats, with everyone (except faithful Jean v R, who asked lots of questions and has recently admitted to actually enjoying my vegetable concoctions) looking bored – no doubt wishing I’d hurry up so they could tuck into their boereword and chops. Dad could barely keep a straight face. But one has to start somewhere, and I’m nothing if not determined.
Must go as very busy now, preparing for the Orange Harvest Festival – our first birthday celebration and hopefully a big boost to Dad’s ambitious fund-raising plans. So glad you’ll be here. Don’t forget to find something orange to wear.
Lots of love,
Mum.
If Mum and Dad had buckled to local tastes for the four-by-four competitions, they had their revenge at the Orange Harvest Festival, which, surroundings notwithstanding, was a most thoroughly un-Tuli Block affair.
The festivities took place amid the vast orchards of Seleka Ranch, a prosperous farm that once, in the heyday of the Tuli Block, had been owned by Seretse Khama himself. At the festival’s epicentre was a huge barn, surrounded by thousands of harvested trees – a dark sea of green, sweeping down to the darker still, tall Limpopo tree line. Eerie as ever in the dusk light, the great river made a perfect backdrop for the barn, which was lit with candles and thickly strung with orange branches. The dense leaves, filling the air with a faint sharp scent, cast soft complicated shadows on the walls, which were covered by a huge mural of oranges that Mum and Lulu had spent the whole day painting.
A bar in the corner served all the favourite beers and brandy, but the drink of the evening was champagne and orange juice served in sugar-frosted glasses. On a hay-bale-surrounded stage, a band played, but none of the favoured local Afrikaans boere music. The official language of the LAA was English – in Botswana, it had to be that or Setswana – and Mum and Dad were determined that Afrikaans would not creep in, which would alienate the Batswana members. To make sure, they’d organised the band – the Sulphur Junkies from Phikwe, led by Jean Kiekopf.
Named after the belching BCL smelter tower, the Junkies members were: Jean, Klaus, Pius (a Sri Lankan), Jerry (a coloured Motswana), and Forti (a Greek). A pre-agreed song list included the Beatles, the Police, and rock-‘n’-roll favourites from the Rolling Stones to the Doobie Brothers.
Prophesying that “the ice will not crack easily,” Mum had devised a variety of orange-themed games, and as people started to arrive and milled around awkwardly in their orange shoes, orange hats, orange scarves, Mum set to work. Smiling brightly, orange silk baubles bouncing in her hair, she rushed around the barn, beseeching wary drinkers to “join the celebratory spirit of the evening and have fun.” But of the Afrikaans members, only Jean van Riet and one other woman took part along with us, various visitors from Phikwe, and the Batswana members.
“Dancing,” Mum said. “We need dancing!”
Under her direction, Lulu and I helped clear away the props for the games. Then, downing the rest of her champagne, Mum went to the band and requested that they turn up the volume. Klaus strummed his guitar. Jean said in her husky voice, “Come on everybody, let’s see you on the dance floor now.”
I watched ‘with interest, remembering the last time Mum and Dad had danced at a similarly Afrikaner-dominated gathering.
It had been at a wedding across the Limpopo. The river was flowing strongly, and as we’d climbed into the canoe on the way there, Dad’s ancient smart shoes had got wet. By the time we left the kerk, they’d dried, but the muddy water had accelerated a long-overdue collapse. Following Dad across the lawn to the reception, we watched, shocked, as first white stuffing poured out, and then one sole detached. Lulu, Damien, and I blushed and hurriedly picked up the bits of hard foam. Dad just laughed. “Well, I never-was the life and sole of the party,” he said, pulling off the wretched shoes. Laughing just as hard, Mum put them in her handbag. Later, when the dancing began, she took off her own shoes so Dad wouldn’t feel left out, and they danced, barefoot, to boere music and ‘Macarena’, which was one of the few concessions to popular music.
The stares of the onlookers then had been horrified. The stares I watched now, appearing on white faces lining the dance floor, were different. Horrified too, but many here also utterly disapproving.
As the music started, the first people up were the Batswana men, gyrating in an enthusiastic group, with their wives looking on and chatting amongst themselves. Dad was deep in conversation, so Mum joined the black men, occasionally breaking away to dance wildly arm in arm with one of them. Lulu and I and two female American teachers from Phikwe joined the merry group.
Some of the whites looked away, as if they were embarrassed. Some stared curiously at Dad, who watched Mum with a look of amusement. I looked at the black women to see if they’d noticed the disgusted stares too. But if they had, they weren’t bothered, and continued to chat unperturbed. Mu
m did notice, and smiled defiantly at her disapproving audience.
She came off the dance floor, flushed with pleasure.
Later, as people drank more and relaxed, others got up to dance.
But the Afrikaans couples stuck resolutely together, insisting on stiff, long-arm-style dancing, unsuited as it was to the music. And even as people stumbled and giggled drunkenly, the stares provoked by bouts of mixed-race dancing were no less unclear: no amount of alcohol and orange enough to blur black and white in the Tuli Block.
…I know you don’t like hearing this, but I do increasingly despair of this place. As you know, we formed the LA A to try and help the farmers who wanted change – to break from the old ways. I thought we were on the side of the goodies, but I’m not so sure any more. The following was a genuine agenda item: imposing a maximum wage on labourers in the Tuli Block, so that they wouldn’t hop from farm to farm. In the discussion, the motion was met with resounding approval, as was the associated proposal to draw up a blacklist of workers known for drunkenness – I regret not proposing a blacklist of farmers known for drunkenness and labour abuses. Anyway, I listened to the whole thing feeling sick even to be part of such a group. Dad was of course cooler. He said nothing until everyone had spoken. Then he announced, in a completely deadpan voice, that he agreed with the idea, with one addition. This, he explained, would be that the labour in the Tuli Block must be unionised. He proposed inviting a representative from the governing Botswana trade union to the next meeting. As you can imagine, there were angry mutters and furious faces all round. Then one guy stood up and said something to the effect that, “Jlrre, we don’t want any of this union business here in the Tuli Block!” Dad then asked – with only a hint of glee – whether it had occurred to the speaker that this, the LAA, was effectively a union. The chap was of course silenced, and it came to nothing. But it does say everything…
The dancing at the Orange Harvest Festival was the beginning of the end.
About a year after the organisation was formed, Dad stood down as chairman, furious. He refused all requests for him to stay on. Two farmers, sworn enemies when the LAA began, had conspired to sabotage a motion using a loophole in the constitution. Dad phoned Charlie Sheldon. “I eat my words, Charlie.” Dad stayed on as a member, however, and did not declare publicly why he had stood down, still believing in the principles of the association. Then a few months after he resigned as chairman, the LAA invited local policemen to discuss crime in the area – of which there was very little. But many of the ‘white farmers berated the black policemen, accusing them of racism. Dad stood up, explaining how he’d only ever had good experiences – a stolen pump found in a day, a suspected tokolodbe terrorising his staff promptly investigated. Afterwards, ashamed and disgusted by the behaviour, he wrote a letter to the police, distancing himself altogether from the racist accusations.
Much later, it was decided to merge the LAA with the old Tuli Block Farmers’ Association. But the terms of the merger threw the process into chaos; there was a fight over which name would be kept. Meetings ended in fury. One day, Dad was approached by one of the farmers. “Please,” said the young man, in Afrikaans, “won’t you negotiate between the two organisations. You are the only one who can bring us together again.”
But by the middle of 1999, I was so avidly following the increasingly exciting saga of Dad’s involvement with AIDS that I quickly lost interest in the resignation story.
The Botswana government was now providing one-off anti-retroviral treatment to HIV-positive pregnant women to reduce the risk of transmission to the baby. The women, however, were still reluctant to come forward and be tested, with no long-term treatment available to them. Dad wanted the government to offer them the sterols and sterolins mix, but the minister of health would not do so until it was registered as a treatment for HIV disease. To register the supplement, a phase III double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was required.
Dad at once embarked on the task of arranging a several-hundred-patient trial. The participants would be employees of the Selebi-Phikwe mine; a new laboratory in Gaborone would do the tests; Professor Bouic, who’d done the original work, agreed to draw up the new protocol and oversee the trial. The work involved in the planning was immense. But Dad loved every moment: this was a dream – one that could actually make him happy – coming true.
Dearest Robbie,
We’ve just returned from a great trip to Gabs for more meetings re the trial. Exhausted as I am, I wanted to write you a quick note – you must be so stressed with your final exams, and I know you’ll be cheered up by a little vicarious excitement. After all this time, things are really, finally, happening, it seems.
The meetings went well, and arrangements for the trial continue to fall into place – in Botswana time, of course, but definitely moving forwards. Dad is beside himself with excitement, and so am I. If the results from a phase III trial are good, not just Botswana but countries all over Africa – maybe beyond – might start using the stuff. Think what that could do? Sometimes Dad and I want to pinch ourselves just knowing that we’re going to help make something happen that ‘we’ve both believed in so strongly, for so long.
Anyway, having indulged in our big dreams, I must tell you how close it all came to being over altogether, for Dad at least. Setting off for Gabs, just after we’d crossed the Lot-sane, we saw a movement in the grass, and before Dad could brake a huge black mamba shot out in front of us. Unable to see any sign of it behind us, we were obviously worried it had flicked up into the chassis as we drove over it. Dad drove back to the house and gingerly poked around underneath. But he couldn’t see anything and we set off again, stopping after about 100 kilometres so that Dad could have a pee. I stayed in the car, watching a lilac-breasted roller in the bushes.
Then out of the corner of my eye I suddenly see this long black thing emerging from the shadow of the car. It’s the mamba, would you believe it? Bigger than I thought (well over 2 metres) and now very agitated, understandably, I suppose, after 100 kilometres beneath a hot engine. Anyway, at the same time I see the snake, Dad turns around, zipping up the fly on his shorts. I start waving frantically to him, undulating my arms and trying to mime ‘snake’. He thinks I’m joking, or just being mad old Mum.
He smiles, waves, and starts walking towards the car, laughing. At this point the mamba is still slithering away from him. But with breathtaking timing, a truck roars into view. The snake changes direction, accelerates, and heads straight for Dad. Dad now sees it, and stops smiling. He also freezes, as the snake bears down on him. A second later, the huge black creature slithers straight past his still, sandaled foot, a couple of centimetres away at most. I felt sick, I must say. I really don’t know how he did it – remember how scared you were all those years ago with the snake on the loo, and that was only semipoisonous!
Anyway, Dad comes back to the car, white but cheerful. “Wow, Keith!” I say, full of awe, and overwhelmed with relief for him, and relief that it dismounted here, in the bush, and not somewhere in a busy town. Dad just shrugs coolly. “What were you thinking as it came towards you?” I ask, imagining his life flashing before him as he bravely stands his ground in the face of one of Africa’s most terrifying snakes. Dad says, “I was thinking about my nuts. How long have I been telling you that snakes love warm, dark places? My shorts would have been a perfect bolthole.” Then he continues, in his classic deadpan Dad way, “Reckon life’s too good to kick the bucket just yet, Lin. Certainly not with a mamba in my broeks!”
So there you go, Robbie.
Lots of love,
Mum
P.S. I can’t wait to hear how the talent show goes. Dad and I are both so proud of you for taking on such a big project. What a wonderful, useful thing to be remembered for.
∨ Twenty Chickens for a Saddle ∧
Twenty-Eight
Leaving Limpopo
I knelt down in the deserted school hall, shaking. It was after midnight, and the main lights had b
een turned off. All but the centre of the cavernous space, where I knelt, was in gloom. The stage at one end and the lofty gallery at the other were eerie black holes. Through the dim light, a sorrowful Jesus watched me from a cross high up on the wall. I looked away guiltily, and stared instead at the gallery.
I was kneeling because I couldn’t sit any other way in my long evening dress, and I looked up because I couldn’t bear to see the chaos around me. My chaos.
I sniffed. It was still just there; the unmistakeable smell of marijuana.
Exhaustion and disgrace suddenly overwhelmed me. I started to cry, tears splattering uncontrollably onto the dusty floor. A choked sob echoed around the vast, quiet space, spreading out into the corridors, which the ghosts of nuns were said to haunt. It occurred to me now that if ever they’d had a victim deserving of a good fright, I was she, at this moment, and had I not been so profoundly embarrassed, I might have been scared.
It was my last year of school, a few months before the new millennium, and more than four years since I’d first entered the building to write my entrance exam.
“Money is the root of all evil.”
I looked at the floor around the folds of my dress. It was too ironic not to appreciate; I giggled hysterically through my tears.
All around me were dollar notes – overflowing from bright tin cashboxes, stuffed in bulging plastic bags, bundled with rubber bands, or just lying loose on the worn wood. I didn’t have the energy to start counting, but there were tens of thousands of Zimbabwean dollars, certainly. Which, then, in 1999 – when things in Zimbabwe had only just really begun to fall apart – were still actually worth something.
In the last few months, discontent among Robert Mugabe’s ‘war vets’ had provoked riots and marches on the streets of Bulawayo; stones had been thrown – at people, cars, and buildings. The Convent, in the seedier centre of town, was close to the action. One test had thrillingly been cancelled, as we’d crouched beneath our desks. Once, during an exam in the big basement, we had been locked inside, for fear the protestors would invade the school grounds.
