Zebra Horizon

by Gunda Hardegen-Brunner

  *

  “You can’t let Hezekiel travel in the back,” I protested. “He’s got broken ribs. Let him sit in the front.”

  Hezekiel climbed on the back of the bakkie.

  “Don’t worry, Mathilda. He’ll be all right,” Pa Saida said. “The blacks are as tough as old shoes.”

  These people are total monsters.

  “If Hezekiel sits in the back, I’m also going to sit in the back.”

  “Calm down, my girl, and climb in,” Pa Saida opened the passenger door for me. “Maybe one day you’ll understand that oil and water don’t mix. The bakkie is the ideal apartheid waggon. Whites in front, blacks in the back. Everybody has got their place and everybody is happy.”

  “Except white people sit on upholstered benches inside and the blacks on bare metal in the wind, shine or rain or whatever.”

  Ma Saida, behind the steering wheel, turned the key in the ignition.

  “Get in Mathilda,” Pa Saida was getting irritated.

  “But…”

  Ma Saida revved the engine and said completely exasperated: “Mathilda, you are not going to travel in the back. If you want to do Hezekiel a favour you jump in as fast as you can, that we can get to the hospital at last.”

  They will never change their minds, bloody racists. Phhhhh. What can I do? No use to fart against thunder.

  I felt shit all the way into town.

  At the location a roadgang was still busy fixing up the road.

  “Quite a thing, hey?” Ma Saida commented. “I’ve seen this piece of road washed away several times in my life but not as bad as this.”

  I’m not talking to you, racist cow.

  Ma Saida gave me a sideways glance, shrugged her shoulders and shut up. Just after the location it struck me that Hezekiel would have to go to the ‘black’ hospital, of course.

  Bloody hell. This hospital trip is making me feel sicker than that gash in my head.

  Ma Saida was staring straight ahead saying nothing, probably just as pissed off with me as I was with her.

  I decided to do my bit for a better world and opened my mouth. “Where’s the ‘black’ hospital? Let’s go there first. Hezekiel is much worse off than I am.”

  Ma Saida’s chest heaved with the start of a sigh but then she shot an amused look at me. “You don’t give up easily, do you?”

  “Depends on the cause.”

  Ma Saida smacked a stray insect with her hand against the windscreen. “The hospitals are right next to each other. We’ll first come to the ‘white’ entrance so we’ll get you organized, and then I’ll take Hezekiel to the ‘black’ side. Makes sense, no?”

  “Mmh.”

  15 minutes later we pulled up under a seringa tree on the hospital’s ‘white’ parking lot. In the storm battered hospital garden 2 garden boys were leaning on their rakes, talking, and a third one was cleaning up one of the many flower beds.

  The hospital was a smallish single storey brickbuilding with a corrugated iron roof. It looked quite ancient with its brookie lace on top of the gable and its cottage paned sash windows. Inside it had wooden floors and the walls in casualty were painted a sickly green.

  Ma Saida seemed to know everybody and introduced me to nurse Griet, a voluptious blonde who spoke Afrikaansed English and took down my details. She said that Drrr van Tonderrr was busy with an emerrgency rrright now, but he wouldn’t be long. I told Ma Saida that I was quite capable of waiting by myself, but she insisted that I was her responsibility and wouldn’t budge. We sat down on plastic chairs in the Afrikaaners’ favourite colour – orange. I had a doubtful look around the old fashioned interior of the place. Was this joint up to scratch? It resembled what I had seen on photos of a hospital where my grandfather had worked after the Second World War.

  Ma Saida seemed to have read my thoughts. She lowered the Rooi Rose she had chosen from a pile of mags and said with an encouriging smile: “Relax, you are in the country where the first successful human heart transplant took place.”

  I grinned back and stopped myself from replying that that heart transplant hadn’t been done in Kneukelspruit.

  Dr van Tonder was middle-aged and fat with a ring of wild curls around a bald head. He greeted us with a benevolent “middag”, and asked a couple of questions in Afrikaans. Then Ma Saida left – at last. The doctor took me through to the treatment room, and confided in laboured English that some of his ancestors had come from North Germany and that he was baaie trots to have German genes.

  “What does that mean trots?”

  He frowned. “As a Gerrman you should understand Afrrikaans. The languages have got the same orrigins.”

  “Ja well, they aren’t that similar these days.”

  He asked me to sit down on a chair that looked as ancient as the hospital building. “Trots means prroud. I am prroud to have Gerrrman blood in my veins.”

  I plonked down on the chair. After having been told all my life that the Germans are the bloody pits because they had started 2 world wars and killed off 6 million Jews, the doctor’s point of view was not so easy to assimilate.

  A red haired nursing sister with even more make-up on her face than nurse Griet, stalked in on long, thin legs. She walked straight towards a mirror on the wall above a spotless stainless steel table and checked her appearance. She moved her cap 3 mm to one side and, after a minute of hesitation, 4 mm back to the other side and fastened it to her elaborate perm. The doctor said something to her and she came over to undo the bandage. My “middag” didn’t extract any audible reply from her. I could see in the mirror that her face looked about as friendly as the traditional carnival masks they use in the Black Forest to chase evil spirits away. The doc examined my head. I asked him for his diagnosis, but all he said was that I shouldn’t worry my pretty head about it. I drew a deep breath to inform him that it was my body and that I had a right to know, but before I could say a word, another doctor called him to quickly have a look at something. The nurse took a razor out of an enamelled metal cupboard and, without further comment, began to shave my head around the gash.

  Bloody hell.

  I nearly jumped off the chair. If there was anything I hated, it was people fiddling around my person without explaining what they were doing. Back home in Waldsee I changed my dentist twice for that very reason, until I found one who had he brains and sensitivity to tell a patient what to expect.

  The nurse’s bony fingers pinched into my shoulder as she pushed me down on the chair.

  “Don’t pinch me like that.”

  The nurse kept her mouth shut.

  She either only understands Afrikaans or she is one of those Boere who hasn’t forgiven the British for the Anglo Boer War and refuses to speak the taal of the enemy.

  Fortunately she removed her claw before I had to do it. The doctor came back and I got a tetanus shot and an antibiotic shot, a local anesthetic, 3 stitches and a new dressing. They did a good job. I hardly felt any pain – but what a lousy ambiance. I couldn’t get out fast enough.

  I still had to collect my medicine. Nurse Griet told me, between 2 bites of a koeksuster, how to get to the dispensary.

  The dispensary was at the back of the hospital in a separate building, set in a gap in a high wall. There was a small, unlocked gate. I peeped through to the other side. A sandy path led through a patch of veld to another brick building. I saw a black nurse in uniform and a guy with a plaster on his leg coming out of the building.

  That must be the ‘black’ hospital. Now, is it a criminal offense for white people to go in there? Gee, to complicate a person’s life these apartheid boys are really champeen.

  The nurse and her patient were at least 50 metres away, but I could hear them chat.

  I’ll go and have a look at the place…like a field study thing. If it’s a crime I can always say I’m an ignorant stranger with a blow to my head.

  I walked down the path. There weren’t any flowerbeds on this side of the wall and only one lonely tree. 2 black nursing sis
ters came towards me. All of a sudden I wasn’t so sure anymore that being a stranger with a blow to my head would be a good enough excuse to escape criminal charges. The 2 nurses strolled past, interrupting their chat for a polite “meddag” and that was it.

  Seems to be all right…or blacks are not allowed to apprehend a white person.

  The ‘black’ hospital was newer and smaller than the ‘white’ one. I went in a side entrance where a maid was scrubbing an already spotless floor. The passage was painted in the same sickly green as the walls in the ‘white’ hospital. The wooden benches in the waiting room of the OPD were crammed. It looked like most people had put on their best clothes to see the doctor. The old men wore hats and some of them suits. Lots of the women wore dark blue calico dresses with geometrical patterns. The younger women had babies strapped to their backs. Small kids were crawling and running around bumping into knees and backs; nobody seemed to mind. Everybody fit enough to move their lips was talking. The bulky African nurse, who wrote down the patients’ details at her metal desk, chatted incessantly, talking to the person she was dealing with as well as to the waiting crowd in general. The ambiance was certainly more cheerful than on the ‘white’ side.

  I grinned at a little girl nibbling a mielie.

  In any German hospital this crowd would be ordered to keep the noise down.

  Everybody looked at me but nobody seemed to find my presence strange.

  Mebbe I’m treading on legal ground after all.

  A door opened and a young white guy in army garb, a white coat and with a stethoscope around his neck appeared. He talked in Afrikaans to the bulky nurse, then turned to me and asked: “Kan ek U help?”

  “I’m looking for casualty.”

  “Oh…ongeval.” He scratched his ear and produced a laboured: “You walk strraight to wherre the orrange doorrs is, and afterr this doorrs you turrn rright and you go in where the grreen doorrs is.”

  In the passage I came across another doctor. This one was middle-aged and black. He also asked: “Kan ek U help?”

  “I’m on my way to casualty. I believe it’s behind the green doors.”

  “Yes, that’s right. I am the doctor on duty. Are you looking for a patient?”

  I tried hard to look as if I’d never expected anything else than the black doc in the ‘black’ hospital in Kneukelspruit speak the English of the Queen.

  “Eh yes… I’m looking for a man called Hezekiel…with broken ribs.”

  “Hezekiel Matabane. He has been to the X-ray department and I prescribed painkillers and an anti-inflammatory to reduce the swelling. I’m afraid there is not much more one can do in his case.” The doctor seemed a bit intrigued with me as well. “Excuse me for asking, are you from Germany?”

  “Yes, I am from Bavaria.”

  “A beautiful part of the country. We went on a holiday in the Alps once while I trained in Oxford to become a doctor. We also went to see the Passion Play in Oberammergau.”

  “I’ve never seen the play because it’ so difficult to get tickets – and they are quite expensive too.”

  “You must definitely go and see it. They only put it on every 10 years, as you know. It’s a very impressive experience.” He smiled and looked at his watch. “Duty is calling, I’m afraid.”

  Hezekiel and another black man were the only people in casualty. They were having an animated conversation in Sotho. Ma Saida arrived half a minute after me. She had been in the Klopkloppie Superette to buy fly ribbons and a tin of shoe polish. She was slightly shocked to find me in the ‘black’ hospital but she only said: “I suppose it’s your job as an exchange student to see as much as you can.”

  She turned to Hezekiel and asked him if he’d been to fetch his muti.

  “No Missis.’

  I got my prescription out of my pocket. “I haven’t got mine either.”

  “Then let’s go to the dispensary.”

  We took the path through the veld towards the wall separating the ‘black’ area from the ‘white’ area. Ma Saida and I walked in front and Hezekiel a couple of metres behind us.

  “Who is paying for Hezekiel’s treatment?”

  “This is a provincial hospital so he gets it for free.”

  “And why don’t they have flowerbeds here like on the other side?”

  “That would be a total waste of money, Mathilda. The blacks don’t appreciate that kind of thing.”

  She wanted to send Hezekiel to the ‘black’ window of the dispensary, but I said that I’d like to have a look. Ma Saida sighed, and then we all went. In the dispensary a white pharmacist was busy writing something into a file. A young white woman was supervising an elderly black man unpacking boxes.

  The pharmacist handed the medicine to Ma Saida. “Make sure that he takes one Ipill 3 times a day and only after he has eaten.”

  Ma Saida put the medication in her handbag.

  “Aren’t you going to give it to Hezekiel?”

  “Mathilda, you’ve still got to learn a lot about the blacks. Even if Hezekiel had collected his pills himself I would have told him to give them to me. If I leave these pills with him, he’ll forget to take them, he’ll crush them and he’ll smear them on his chest. We are dealing with stone-age people here. For them a muti that you swallow can only be good for the stomach. They don’t understand the concept of a chemical being transported in the blood stream to where you want it.”

  Mebbe that is the result of the Bantu Education Act. Keep people uneducated and then tell them they are stupid.

  I didn’t say it aloud because I had found out by now that with a lot of white people one couldn’t really discuss apartheid. They’d always argue that you didn’t know anything about these blacks; that they were a couple of 1000 years behind white civilization and that it is a law of nature that oil and water don’t mix. It was like talking to members of that fanatic religious sect Friederieke’s sister had ended up in. Once they had been brainwashed their brains stopped working and they’d repeat like parrots everything their doctrine dictated.

  Ma Saida sent Hezekiel to wait at the car. She and I went through the little gate in the wall and approached the same dispensary from the ‘white’ side. The same pharmacist gave me the same painkillers as Hezekiel had got plus antibiotics and dressings.

  “I’m glad we’ve done the hospital stuff.” Ma Saida turned the key in the ignition of the apartheid waggon and we turned into the heat drenched mainstreet.

  “I met 2 doctors in the ‘black’ hospital,” I said. “A white one…”

  “That’s Frikki van der Walt, the youngest boy from the Bontebok Farm on the other side of town. He is doing his 2 year military service here.”

  “And then there was a black doctor who spoke the most amazing English.”

  “That must be Doctor Shabalala. He got his degree in Oxford. Took his whole family along. You should hear his girls. They talk with a British accent. I believe one of them is studying in Canterbury now and another one in London.”

  “Who pays for all that?”

  Ma Saida grinned and said with a superior air: “We’ve got some very rich black people in this country. Your European propagandists probably forgot to tell you.”

  One can’t always shut up.

  “They only told us that a man like Dr Shabalala hasn’t got the right to vote and isn’t even allowed to use public toilets because they are reserved for whites.”

  Ma Saida sighed from the bottom of her heart. “You overseas people are all the same. Totally brainwashed. You haven’t got a clue what Africa is all about and you think you know everything better than us, we who have lived with these blacks for centuries.” She spared me the oil and water bit and said she would show me Dr Shabalala’s house. It was on the edge of the location, the furthest possible away from the abattoir. One couldn’t see much, just a red tiled roof sticking out behind a high wall.

  “I believe he employs 3 maids and a garden boy and then of course a nurse or 2 because he’s got his doctor’s ro
oms in there too. So you see, Mathilda, there are black people in South Africa who are better off than some whites.”