*
Mr Martin’s office walls were decorated with prints of flat topped mountains with various African animals in the foreground. The South African flag hung between 2 dark, wooden book cases filled with official looking volumes. Besides his writing equipment and a calendar showing Cape Town under a pristine blue sky, Mr Martin kept a soapstone rhino and a fibreglass fish on a metal rod on his desk. I was waiting for a comment about some illegal behaviour of my part. After a while of small talk about how I was enjoying my stay, he came to the point.
“What I wanted to discuss with you is your speech, Mathilda. I thought you could give it after assembly on the 28th. That should give you enough time to prepare it. About half an hour would be fine.
Oy oy oy…du lieber Himmel.
The mere thought of speaking in front of 500 people gave me sweaty hands.
“My English isn’t that good yet, maybe…”
What the hell. The sooner it’s over the better.
”…all right. What should I talk about?”
“Life in Germany, your school…maybe you have some slides to show…”
During the big break I could hardly concentrate on Kim’s latest news about her boyfriend but she was in such high spirits that she didn’t notice.
A speech…half an hour…30 minutes…and in English! Heiliger Strohsack. That’s the downside of being an exchange student.
I already started to suffer from indigestion.
“Do you think I should wear split panties?” Kim asked me.
“Huh?” Split panties hadn’t been part of my vocabulary so far but sometimes it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to work out a word in a foreign language.
“What do you want to wear split panties for?”
“For my date, man. Don’t you listen? I’m going to the drive-in with Brendan next weekend.”
“Oh. What’s his girlfriend got to say about that?”
Kim shot a disdainful look at me. “You really didn’t listen, hey. The girlfriend is a gonner.”
“Aha. What movie are you going to see?”
“Who worries about the movie. I reckon split panties are dead right. What d’you say?”
“Germany is situated in the middle of Western Europe. It is landlocked in the W, S and E and in the N it borders on the North Sea, Denmark and the Baltic Sea. Since the end of World War II the country has been divided into West Germany and East Germany. I am going to talk about West Germany, that’s where I come from. West Germany has got about 40 million inhabitants. The capital is Bonn…”
Phhh, this speech is developing into a major bore of a geography lesson.
I drew an elephant on the left bottom corner of the page…and a palm tree…and put them on an island surrounded by waves, fish and octopi. Inspiration didn’t strike. I went to the kitchen and had a cheese and tomato sandwich. That didn’t help much either.
I took out my boxes with slides. The first shot showed my swimming club group. My friend Friederieke was lying flat on the ground and grinning into the camera like everybody else excepting Xaver Müller, who has been a miserable shit ever since he was born, but that didn’t stop him from being the best swimmer in our age group. I looked a bit closer. Nobody had shaved their legs or under their arms and some of the guys had moustaches and beards and hair hanging down to their shoulders.
Enough to kick them out of any SA school.
The next slide showed just about my entire clan standing in the snow at one of my grandfather’s birthday parties. I remembered the tobogganing down the hill, the Glühwein in the Gasthaus and everybody telling stories. I was on the verge of a violent attack of homesickness when a brilliant idea shot through my brains. I went and asked Julie if I could phone the German Consulate.
“Of course,” she looked a bit worried. “Anything wrong?”
“No no, everything’s fine.”
I dialled and got through to a lady who answered with a crisp: “Guten Tag”. I told her what I was after and she said: “No problem, we’ll mail it tomorrow.” I put the receiver down in great relief. Problem solved!
Zebra Horizon Page 21