Zebra Horizon

by Gunda Hardegen-Brunner

  *

  Denzil came to fetch me early in the morning. Greta said it wasn’t fair that I could go on a trip during the term. Ludwig consoled her saying that one day, when she was an exchange student, she would also enjoy privileges like that.

  “I’ll still have something like 9 years to wait,” Greta was not impressed.

  I wedged my rucksack between boxes and the spare wheel on the back of the Chev. Nohandbag had prepared an enormous padkos basket for us. I took it to the front and put it next to me on the bench, towards the passenger door – nothing between Denzil and me!

  It was a fresh, sparkly day. The sun was quickly climbing above the silvery ocean. The road followed the coast for a while and then turned into the bush-covered hills. We spotted monkeys and hares and a caracal. Denzil said he’d never seen one in the wild before. We stopped at a small waterfall and had some biltong and sandwiches. Dassies were sitting on rocky ledges and more monkeys appeared out of the bush and raced along the river. Denzil told me that all the black schools in the country were in desperate need of material. “Just imagine, last year the Ministry of Education sent one single syringe as the ‘total material’ for science for 4 black high schools.”

  I thought it was great to be involved in a project to make the world a better place, and I was over the moon to be with Denzil.

  We hit the road again. Mile after mile of bush. The vastness of Africa never ceased to astound me.

  “Did Ludwig provide you with a big box of condoms?” Denzil asked with a wink.

  “Ja,” I laughed. “2 boxes.”

  We turned into a dirt road meandering down to a wide river. In a little dorpie, consisting of a hotel, a bottle store, a general dealer and a couple of houses, Denzil said: “We better buy Vincent a dop.”

  Vincent, Denzil’s friend, had dropped out of university, got married and sired 2 kids in 10 months. He was going to be our host.

  On the parking lot of the hotel 3 labourers were leaning on their brooms while the wind blew heaps of leaves apart. Next to a weed infested flowerbed, 2 gardeners were leaning on their rakes. Inside the off-sales 2 maids leaned on brooms and chatted with loud voices, while the boss, seated in a pink armchair, was reading the newspaper.

  Looks like a laid back place…

  We bought a bottle of cane and a case of beer and left the dorp in a cloud of dust. It felt like going to the end of the world.

  “Have you ever been to Vincent’s place before?”

  Denzil shook his head. “No, but it’s easy to find. When we see 3 giraffes we must turn left.”

  “Come on Denzil, stop taking the Mickey out of me.”

  “I’m not taking the Mickey out of anybody.” Denzil changed gears. “What’s that over there in the thorn trees behind the telephone line?’

  “Heidewitzka, 3 giraffes!”

  We turned to the left into an overgrown dirt road. After about half a kilometre a house built of rocks with a huge thatch roof came into sight. A bunch of dogs tumbled off a big stoep, followed by a maid who had a white baby strapped to her back. She grabbed my rucksack and put it on top of her head, took Denzil’s bag in one hand and the packet from the off-sales in the other and ambled off towards the house. We followed her into a lounge that looked like out of an old movie about Africa, with cane furniture and riempie benches, hunting trophies on the walls, an enormous fireplace and the genuine smell of Africa about it.

  Vincent’s wife Gilly, hardly older than myself, had curly brown hair, blue eyes an athletic built and didn’t look very pregnant yet. She said it was great of us to come and stay with them and took us to a guest cottage that looked like a small version of the main house. The maid, whose name was Lerato, which means ‘love’, put our luggage down on the big double bed and then she and Gilly left.

  Denzil plonked down on the bed and tested the resiliency of the mattress.

  “I reckon this kipbox is at least 100 years old,” he said. “Did you hear the springs creak?”

  I expected to have a bonk right there and then but Denzil suggested a walk. That was also fine with me; we had a whole week to get cracking on the old kipbox. I still put a condom in my pocket. Life is full of surprises and it is always good to be prepared.

  Around the farmhouse a landscape of rolling hills stretched up to the horizon. There were valleys with groves of orange trees, and cattle and sheep were grazing in the veld.

  A bakkie appeared in the distance, came round the bend and stopped next to us. There were 2 blacks and a cow in the back. The driver’s door opened and a guy, not much taller than myself, jumped out. He looked like a red haired troll, beard and all.

  “Vincent,” Denzil shouted.

  The troll greeted us with a big grin and big hugs. I found the revolver hanging from his hip a bit alarming.

  “What do you need that thing for?” I asked once the guys stopped enthusing about how great it was to see each other again.

  “This is Africa, you never know when you need it.” Vincent said it like a Brit would tell you it’s useful to carry an umbrella with you.

  “It’s a .375 Magnum.” He took it out of its holster. “We had some cattle rustlers here last night. They pinched 10 animals, the bastards.” He pointed to the back of the bakkie. “We found that cow there at the bottom of the valley. All the others are long gone across the border into the Transkei. Happens all the time; but as they say: if you can’t take a joke you mustn’t live in Africa”

  In the evening we had a braai sitting around an acacia thorn wood fire.

  “Now tell me broer,” Denzil said, “What’s it like to live out here in the sticks, after the excitement of varsity life?”

  Vincent let off one contented sigh. “It’s total paradise.” He flung his arms open. “Where else can you have this?”

  The first stars twinkled in the night sky; the air still felt warm from the heat of the day and smelled of orange blossoms, sheep, cattle, dip chemicals and the sweat of Africa; owls were hooting from the top of the roof, crickets were chirping… and the closest neighbour lived 5 kilometres away.

  Vincent let off another contented sigh. “You know, I only started that architecture course because my father insisted on me doing a ‘decent’ university degree. So I did architecture for 10 weeks and I realized, I couldn’t go on for 7 years studying something I don’t really enjoy.”

  “For me architecture is the best,” Denzil interrupted him.

  “Good for you broer, keep it up,” Vincent said. “Everybody must do their own thing. Me, I was born a farmer. I knew that since I was 5 years old.”

  “But you grew up in a town,” Denzil said.

  “Ja, but that couldn’t get the farming out of my genes.”

  The phone rang. Gilly counted. “4 rings, that’s us.” She plonked the baby on my lap and went to answer.

  “This farm is a magnificent place,” Denzil said to Vincent. “I imagine it’s worth a fortune. Do you rent it or what?”

  “I bought it,” Vincent said matter of factly.

  “Huh?”

  “Ja broer, I wrote a porn book, got it published in the UK and made millions.” Vincent kept a straight face for 5 seconds before he burst out laughing.

  “Those were the Howeys, my neighbours from Umtata,” Gilly said when she came back. “They sold their hardware shop and moved out of the Transkei last week… to East London.”

  “There aren’t many white people left in the Transkei,” Vincent said. “Only a couple of months to go before it becomes an independent homeland.”

  “I’ve heard about that,” I said. “But what exactly does it mean?”

  “It means that the Transkei will be a separate state with real borders and its own president and the whole tootie, but out of all the countries in the world only South Africa will recognize it,” Gilly explained.

  “Why? Isn’t it good for the blacks to have their own place where they can do their own thing?”

  “Ja it would be, but they won’t do their own thing beca
use they are totally dependent on South Africa. And the Transkei is only the start. The Nats are also setting up the ‘independence’ of Bophutatswana and Venda and…”

  “Listen up guys,” Vincent said with a grin on his face, “this is one of Gilly’s favourite subjects. She’ll tell you stuff that you’ll never find in the official government version.”

  Gilly spat an olive pip onto the lawn and carried on. “There are 10 tribally based homelands in South Africa and they make up only 14% of the country. Every black person is considered to be a citizen of one of the homelands, even if he’s never been there. When a homeland accepts independence like the Transkei now, all its citizens loose their South African citizenship. It’s a way the Nats have thought up to get rid of a mighty lot of urban blacks. The plan is that the blacks concentrate on their own politics in their homelands and don’t claim any rights in South Africa – but I tell you right now that it won’t work because most of the homelands won’t accept independence, and also because the homelands are not able to provide a decent living for the people there. Thousands and thousands of blacks are being forcibly removed to places where there is nothing…no food, not enough water, no sanitation, no hospitals, no schools, no transport, no work.”

  The baby began to cry and Vincent called the maid to put him to bed.

  “And why are the whites moving out of the Transkei?” I asked. “Is there a law that they can’t stay?”

  “No,” Gilly said, “but whites can’t own businesses there anymore. My parents had 2 pharmacies in Umtata. They had to sell them – either to a black person or to the Transkei Development Corporation. The TDC is a South African organization buying up white owned businesses and reselling them to the blacks. My parents could have stayed on and worked under a black boss, but they moved to St. Lucia and opened their own pharmacy there.”

  “St. Lucia is a lekker place,” Denzil observed.

  We listened to some jackals howling in the distance.

  “My parents like it in St. Lucia,” Gilly said after a while, “but they also liked it in Umtata. My family’s been living in the Transkei for 4 generations. My grandparents owned a hotel in Mazeppa Bay, my cousins had stores in Lusikisiki and Mount Ailiff, my great uncles started a holiday resort near Coffee Bay and their grand kids ran it until last year. And now all that is gone and everybody is living in South Africa or overseas, and why? Because these damn Nats rig up some stupid excuse to be able to carry on with their apartheid. And all that’s going to happen is that a small ruling black elite in the Transkei will get rich; the people will stay poor, South Africa will be even more isolated from the rest of the world and the political tension within the country is going to increase.”

  The next morning a clapped out Ford Escort rattled down the drive and stopped in front of the shed. The car doors opened and out scrambled 2 black teenagers and a middle-aged black man dressed in a threadbare but perfectly pressed suit.

  “This is Solomon, the headmaster of our farm school,” Gilly introduced the man. “And here are Vusi and Thandi, 2 of the pupils.” She unlocked the shed and the 2 kids started to carry boxes out, loading them into the car. Solomon handed Gilly a big envelope. She said she would look at it and that we would come to the school later this morning.

  “That is what Solomon does just about every school day of the year,” Gilly said over breakfast. “He drives 20 km from the township and picks up Vusi and Thandi because our neighbours to the north don’t allow black kids to walk through their farms. They say the kids steal and start fires and they don’t want any trouble because of some little black shits. So Vusi and Thandi are our only pupils from the farms in the north. Solomon can’t transport more because he’s also got to fetch all the boxes here.

  “Ja, I was wondering,” I said. “What’s in those boxes?”

  “Textbooks and exercise books.”

  “Don’t the kids take them home?”

  “Oh no, “ Gilly shook her head. “You’d never see those books again.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t ask me. They’d use them to make fire or to roll cigarettes or forget them in the rain.”

  I didn’t believe her.

  “So Solomon comes every morning to collect the boxes and every afternoon he brings them back,” Gilly carried on.

  Lerato, the maid, put a platter of scrambled eggs and bacon on the table. The baby was sleeping strapped to her back.

  Gilly moved Solomon’s envelope out of the way. “This is Solomon’s homework. We help him to get his matric.”

  I nearly choked on my bacon. “But…I thought he is the headmaster.”

  “Ja, he’s the guy the government sent for the job. And he’s very motivated. He wants to give his son a good education and that costs money.”

  After I had digested those facts I asked if there were any other teachers.

  “Ja, 2 young women, they are both doing teaching courses.” Gilly poured some milk in her coffee. “That’s a bit of a problem, of course. Every time they have to go to their teaching college they can’t come to school, and Solomon has to look after 80 kids all by himself.”

  To get to the school we had to drive for 20 minutes on a dusty dirt road winding its way round the hills. Halfway there we picked up the 2 lady teachers. It was almost 10 o’clock and classes were supposed to start at 7.30! While the teachers climbed on the back of the Chev, Gilly explained that they lived in a township 18 km away, and that there was no public transport to speak of, and that they had to hitch hike and walk every day, so one couldn’t really blame them for being late. We also picked up a couple of kids. Gilly said that most of them had to help at home before they left for school, and then they had to walk up to 8 km, and also the African concept of time was different to what First World people were used to.

  The school stood like a haunted building on the slope of a hill. There was veld and sky and nothing else. The first thing I noticed was that half the corrugated iron roof was missing.

  “It’s just after the holidays, not really a good time to come,” Gilly said as we climbed out of the car.

  I wondered why but she didn’t elaborate. Denzil gave me a box to carry and we followed the teachers and the kids to the low, longish building.

  The remains of 2 wooden doors hung skew on worn hinges, a third door was missing all together. All the windows were broken. I stepped around some turds of unidentifiable origin, my picture of the romantic little farm school totally shattered.

  The schoolchildren were sitting outside on the bare ground in a semi circle looking at Solomon, who was writing on a propped up piece of plywood with a piece of chalk. We put our boxes down next to Solomon and unpacked 4 typewriters, several packets of typewriting paper, chalk and pencils, a stapler, books, and the things Gilly had especially asked for: a tin of black paint, buckets, brooms, leather gloves and a shovel. The kids pressed around us watching with shiny eyes, commenting in Xhosa. The biggest hits were the typewriters and the stapler, objects none of them had ever seen before.

  Solomon pointed towards a drum and 2 clapped out car seats and asked us to sit down. My car seat was quite comfortable except for a spring drilling my bum. Everybody had a good look at all the stuff we had brought and then the kids and the teachers began to sing a clicky Xhosa song. They clapped their hands and stomped their feet; even the smallest kids moved with an amazing sense of rhythm.

  Gilly, sitting on the drum said: “I learned that song as a kid in Lusikisiki.” She jumped up and started to sing, clap and stomp next to Solomon, who, like everybody else, had a totally ecstatic expression on his face – because of some old typewriters, a stapler and a tin of paint! Their expressions alone were worth the trip.

  It felt a bit stupid sitting there like dignitaries, so Denzil and I joined in the dancing. It was good fun although it was much more complicated than it looked. When the dancing stopped the sun was high up in the sky. The teachers assembled their pupils and got on with their teaching.

  I asked Gilly if w
e could have a look inside the school building.

  “Ja sure, but after the holidays it’s always the worst.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see.”

  We went in through the only intact door. I nearly shot out of my bio sandals. I looked around and couldn’t believe my eyes or my nose. The stench was indescribable. The floor was covered in shit and pieces of glass. The bent remains of a metal shelf lay in a corner. A single wooden desk with 2 of its legs missing stood lopsidedly in front of a smashed blackboard.

  “Hells bells,” I said. “What happened here?”

  “School holidays,” Gilly said.

  “Huh?”

  “It looks like this after every school holiday,” Gilly kicked an empty tin. “I’m getting tired of it. I’ve sort of managed this school for about a year now…organized school material and 2 long drop toilets, and until Christmas one of our tractor drivers used to bring a full water tanker every week, because there is no water here, only a little stream about a kilometre away… and then, just before Christmas, some idiots pinched the water tanker, maybe the same idiots who come in here and smash the place.”

  “Who are they?” Denzil asked.

  “We don’t know. Guys from the townships, maybe from the farms…”

  “You mean black guys?” I asked totally astounded. “Why would they smash a black school?”

  Gilly shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t ask me. I’ve lived with blacks all my life and there are things I’ll never understand.”

  The other 2 rooms looked not much different from the first one, except for carbonized debris on the floor and soot all over the walls.

  “School started 2 days ago,” Gilly frowned. “I wish Solomon had organized a clean up…” she kicked another tin, “but well, he didn’t, same as last time.”

  Gilly got a clean up team together and asked us to draw a big rectangle on one of the walls in each classroom. Once the dust had settled somebody would paint them black with the paint we had brought. No use having real blackboards when they got smashed every couple of months. The clean up team never stopped chatting and laughing while they swept the junk in heaps and filled it into buckets.

  “I see they don’t wear school uniforms here,” I said to Gilly.

  “Their families haven’t got the money,” Gilly replied.

  She turned to the kids and said something to them in Xhosa. “I told them to chuck all that stuff in the donga,” she said to me.

  “What’s that?”

  “You want to see?”

  I nodded.

  “All right. It’s probably good for your education.”

  We walked with some of the kids about 200 metres on a much trodden path through the veld. There was not one tree in sight, nor any other plant than grass, nor anything else. The feeling of space was overwhelming and the barrenness of the landscape beyond belief. The veld petered out to red dusty soil. We came to a ravine-like tear in the ground, maybe 5 metres deep and just as wide.

  “That’s the donga,” Gilly said. “The kids use it as a toilet.”

  “But I thought you had 2 long drops at the school.”

  “Ja,” Gilly didn’t look too happy. “But you don’t want to go near those long drops. I’ve tried everything to keep them usable and it just doesn’t work. One day I thought ‘bugger that, I can’t stand there all day checking if everybody has learnt to shit straight’, so now they’ve got to use the donga – like their ancestors did.”

  I looked at her astounded. That didn’t sound like the Gilly who had told us that Africa was in her blood, that she never wanted to live anywhere else and that the blacks were great people.

  Gilly gave a grin and shrugged her shoulders. “I think I know what you think, but there is only so much a person can do. We’ve replaced the sheets of corrugated iron for the roof once, out of our own pocket. We haven’t got the money to buy new window panes and doors and the government doesn’t pay for that, only for a couple of books. But those blooming toilets got me beat.” She sighed. “It can be very frustrating at times.”

  We spent the rest of the week fishing, hiking, horse riding and making use of Ludwig’s condoms. Every afternoon Solomon came to the farmhouse to put the boxes with the school stuff in the shed for the night. Usually Gilly gave him, Vusi and Thandi something to eat and then Denzil and Solomon disappeared into the study to work on Solomon’s matric, while Gilly showed Vusi, Thandi and me how to use a typewriter.

  On Thursday afternoon we were sitting at the table on the stoep practicing the Ten Finger System, when a blue BMW came up the drive.

  “Oh no,” Gilly groaned. “Not them.” Her face turned from red to white to dark red. Gilly didn’t seem to like them very much.

  “Who are them?” I asked with interest, that somebody could evoke so much emotion in old Gill.

  “Piet and Annatjie van Rensburg from Pretoria, the people we bought the farm from. They said they’d come one day to fetch some things that belong to them, stuff that has been collecting dust in the shed for a decade or 2.”

  The car stopped in front of the stoep and out climbed an incredibly fat woman and a beanpole of a man. They were both in their 60s. The woman was dressed in a long, floating outfit and she had a towering, false lock, orangey hairstyle. Her husband wore long socks, a khaki safari suit, a leather hat and a holster with some kind of a gun in it.

  They said “middag” with a disapproving look at us, especially the 2 black kids, and stayed at the bottom of the steps. After a short chat in Afrikaans with Gilly, she introduced me as Mathilda, the exchange student from Germany. Piet screened me from head to toe and said in English: “I have always admired Adolf Hitler. He is one of the great heroes of the 20th century.”

  I had got up from my chair, but after that I sat straight down again. Speechless. I was glad that I was sitting because the next thing Annatjie threw into the conversation was: “This farm is a lekker plek. We stayed here lots of times while our son Daan was running it.” She shot a piercing glance at Vusi and Thandi. “The men used to go out and shoot a couple of those black monkeys before breakfast. Ha ha ha.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a joke. I just hoped that Vusi and Thandi hadn’t understood. I looked at Gilly, who was now purple in the face. Before she or I could say anything, Vincent came out onto the stoep.

  “I thought I heard a car,” he said, and after greeting the van Rensburgs,” would you like some tea or coffee?”

  Gilly cast her eyes towards heaven. Annatjie leaned against the car and, looking at Vusi and Thandi, said: “No thank you. We don’t socialize with Kaffirs.”

  “You know,” Piet said to Vincent, “it was your choice to buy this farm and I hope you won’t regret it, but those black okes will bugger up the Transkei in no time and you are right next to it. Let’s face it, without us whites these blacks would still live like savages. Africa hasn’t even invented the wheel, let alone the toilet, they still crap in the donga…”

  That was when I got up and left taking Vusi and Thandi with me.

  “But I thought she is a German.” I heard Piet say.

  “Ja she is,” Gilly had found her voice again, “but that doesn’t mean she agrees with you.”

  Later that night, after Denzil and I had made love and the moon was throwing its silver sheen across the universe, I put my head on Denzil’s chest and said: “You know what disturbs me most?” He stroked my hair. “It’s that Gilly who would do anything to help the blacks and that racist fart Piet van Rensburg say the same thing: the blacks crap in the donga.”

  Denzil stroked my nose. “In the countryside there is nothing wrong with crapping in the donga; the jackals take care of the drolls; that makes much more sense than flushing litres of water down a toilet on a continent where water is scarce.”

  Back in V.B. I got stuck in making sandwiches for iSkolo and also in organizing my birthday party. I decided to invite Denzil, Harriet, the entire Jameson family, Joelle the director of t
he Funny Thing, some kids from my class, my first host parents Hannes and Marieke, and Victoria. Julie said it would be politics to ask Victoria’s husband as well, although in my opinion he was a pompous poep. In the end I did ask him but fortunately he said he couldn’t make it. Hannes and Marieke couldn’t come either; Marieke was feeling quite fit again and they were planning to visit their son in Cape Town. I had 2 weeks to organize everything and it felt weird – I was used to having my birthday in spring and not in autumn like here. At school we were back to winter uniforms and sometimes on my bike in the mornings I nearly froze my fingers off.

  I went to Wendy every day to make sandwiches for the iSkolo kids. Wendy was 40, plump, red haired and always in a good mood. She was also a golfer and had a husband called Clive, who owned a shoe factory. I wondered if Clive also had a government contract like Victoria’s husband, and if it was government money that paid for Wendy’s golf trips all over the globe, but I never found out.

  I spent a lot of my time at architecture lectures and on the beach. Denzil got it finally into his head that he couldn’t keep me away from iSkolo I and helped Agnes with the small iSkolo kids. Protea High didn’t see much of me and nobody said anything. Life could have been lekker if I hadn’t had to go back to Germany in 9 weeks time. I arranged a special meeting with the president of my host Rotary Club. He was pleased that I liked V.B. so much but there was nothing he could do to prolong my stay. Rules were rules and after 12 months my exchange year was over and that was that. The Department of Home Affairs and the airline with which I had my ticket were of the same opinion.

  Phhhhh