by Elsa Joubert
This was one thing that puzzled me: when it rained the people took off their shoes.
I asked Lindiwe: Why do you walk barefoot when it rains?
Not to spoil our shoes, said Lindiwe. We must save our shoes.
But I kept on my shoes. Only when I climbed down the donga did I take them off, so as not to slip in the mud. I was scared of all the rain and the thunderstorms, but not terribly scared. I was born like that, nothing ever frightens me very much.
The country was so different, with all the mountains around us. Before the sun set the mountains threw such long black shadows, and then the place where we were living was in the shade. But over the other side, on the far-off slopes, the sun was still shining.
Lindiwe, I asked, ‘how can you people live here for ever? It is to me such a strange thing to be in the shade before the sun has set.
Far away in the mountains we could see huts and the smoke curling up from them, then it was time for us, too, to make a small fire in front of our huts on which to cook our food.
The food was quite different. We had to grind the mealies by hand. And that sour kind of porridge I was given the first night, I wondered what kind of food that was! Early in the morning Lindiwe called me. We knelt on the grinding-stone and pressed the mealies down till they were mashed, then we wet them again. We ground them to a fine mash. In Xhosa they call it ukokola. And we left the soft dough lying in warm water overnight. It went sour and we boiled it up the following morning and this is what they called inqodi. It seemed to me a lot of work; in Lamberts Bay if we wanted sour porridge, we added tartaric. It was their chief food, like tea. If somebody came visiting, they gave him a dish of inqodi to drink.
I learned how to bake bread in new ways: straw bread, and water bread. I wanted to see everything and learn as much as I could to be able to tell my people all the new things I had seen.
Lindiwe took Poppie to the fields along with the other women. They put a long pickaxe in her hands and showed her how to hoe. But she was clumsy, the hoe was too heavy for her to use.
Sisi, you are chopping out our food, said Lindiwe. But she was not cross, she was laughing. She showed Poppie how to chop out the weeds and not the mealies.
Poppie found it too hot in the fields in the long dress. She wished she were Lindiwe who was only a few months younger than she, but might wear the short dress and go bare-headed. The doek on her head irritated her.
Go home now, said her mother-in-law. She saw to it that Poppie didn’t work too hard. Go and rest in the shade. When you are rested, you can prepare our food and bring it to the fields.
She took care of her because she knew that Nonkosinathi was with child. Shortly after she arrived, her mother-in-law had asked her: How many months far are you gone?
Poppie cast down her eyes and stared at the big black ants carrying small twigs to their holes. It was shortly before the rains came. She answered so softly that her mother-in-law had to repeat her question.
Four or five months, I think.
Then the mother-in-law fetched a herb which she called isicakathi and put it into a jam tin filled with water. It looked like grass. If one plants it, it will grow, she said, but now it must be left standing in water. Every morning you must drink some of this water, Nonkosinathi, and every evening before you go to bed.
Stone’s childhood friends came from Bloemfontein and Johannesburg for the holidays and there were many wedding feasts. When he had finished working in the fields, he took off his boiler suit and put on his best suit and went out with his friends.
We Xhosa people have different ways, says Poppie, the men don’t take their wives along when they go out, you must be content to stay at home.
I was curious to see everything and went around with Lindiwe. We took sacks and walked to the mealie fields to chop dry mealies for firewood, or to gather dry dung, or wet dung to smear out the house. But I was only allowed to smear out one side of the hut. Only she who is related by blood is allowed to smear on the men’s side.
We walked a long way to church. One week we went to Lindiwe’s church, the Apostolic church, and the next week to my husband’s church, the Methodists. If the service started at eleven o’clock we had to start walking at nine o’clock. It was in another ilali or location.
I kept my shoes on when I walked, I couldn’t stand going barefoot.
Don’t the thorns prick your feet, I asked Lindiwe.
We’re used to it, she said.
My father-in-law had been married in the Xhosa way, but his children were baptised in the Baptist Church.
They believed strongly in the Xhosa faith. They prayed terribly much. We could not eat until they had prayed. In the way of all people who believe in God we all gathered together to pray before going to bed. Sometimes they were a bit drunk, then they would fall down on to their beds, but even if it was only the Our Father, or a Nkosi sikelela osiphekona, which means, Father bless this· food we have been given, which is actually a mealtime prayer, before they could sleep, they had to pray.
My father-in-law had worked as a shearer in the Free State, and married my mother-in-law in the Free State, but here at his home yard he kept very strictly to the Xhosa faith. They were not really what we call raw people, but like all Xhosas he set great store by his own customs and beliefs. And the old people liked drinking their sorghum beer called mqomboti. They watched to see whether I had been brought up correctly by my parents, whether I knew precisely the time when I must make tea or coffee, or the time to light the lamps.
My father-in-law didn’t speak much to me. I was shy of him and they had taught me not to say his name. He took in all the old people to live with him. The ouma whom we called gogo Nomthinjana I loved best, she was always cross, but still she was full of fun. This old ouma had been a witchdoctor, but she was old now, and her power had left her. She used to doctor people and help them.
Dadebawo Nozasi who came for a visit at Christmas, was also a witchdoctor. They told me she became very sick because she didn’t do what her dreams had told her to do. She went out of her mind, but she would not submit. But then when she got too ill, she went to study under a fully-trained doctor, an isanuse. They don’t do wicked things; a witch, or what you call an igqwira, is the one who does the wicked things, but she became an igqira, a doctor who helps people.
I saw many witchdoctors in Kaffirland. They wore white beads around the feet, around the head and on the arms. They study in the same way in which a nurse studies. When you are a probationer you have one string of beads and the further you go, the more strings are added till your arm is covered up to the elbow, and then you wear a string of beads round your head and a second one, till you are fully clothed and then you are an important doctor. It’s the same as a nursing matron who is given her stripes.
In the evenings we could hear them playing the drums in the huts and dancing. As I was makoti, I was not allowed to watch them, but Lindiwe and I stood outside in the moonlight and watched the dancing from far off and listened to their beer-drinking and singing and drumming.
Mama wants me to come and have my baby with her, said Poppie to her mother-in-law. Poppie wasn’t happy any longer in Kaffirland, she wanted to go home. Mama sent a letter to the post office and said: We are longing for you to come home.
When Stone’s holiday was done, they got on the bus, and changed to the next bus and travelled by train for three days.
Early in February they arrived in Lamberts Bay. Mama and Mosie and Hoedjie and mama’s younger children fetched them at the bus stop. It was hot and the wind had risen and blew the sand against her legs. It was nice to smell the fish again and the guano factory.
The people themselves smelled of fish.
Where’s buti Plank, mama? asked Poppie.
He’s at sea, says mama, but he sent a message that he’ll bring you a fish tomorrow.
20
Poppie’s baby was born in mama’s house. Old Martha Horings, the midwife, a coloured woman who lived with a Xhosa man, helped her. It was
a little boy and Poppie called him Themba which means Hope. His English name was Andrew. During the first winter, at five months, he died of whooping cough.
I don’t know what it was that year, says Poppie, but all the people’s small babies died. I can’t say it was especially hard in the houses made of corrugated iron, in the cold weather and the thick mists, because after all my ma had all her babies there and reared them. That year was just a bad year, many died, coloured and black, and were buried in the graveyard.
Poppie didn’t realise that the baby, who was feverish and breathing heavily, was so very ill, till her sister-in-law came to her and said: Cover the child and take him to your mama’s house.
Before the early hours of the night people began arriving and taking their places in the sitting room. Mama stayed with Poppie in the bedroom, the sister-in-law and the neighbours were there too. Give the child the breast, said mama. Poppie tried but the child would not take the breast, even when she tried to press the nipple into its mouth the lips stayed slack. The eyes remained closed and the child had stopped crying. Mama took the child from Poppie. Early the next morning the child died.
The men stood outside in the yard. Xhosa men are not men who weep, says Poppie. The father of the child stood with hanging head, the other men tried to talk to him. He bought a good little coffin and the women covered it with white cloth. All the people stayed with me, they did not leave me alone one minute, till after the funeral.
Ag, but then it was so sad to be back in my house again. When I came in from outside it seemed as if I saw the child lying on the bed, or when I was in the backyard I seemed to hear him crying inside the house. Meisie said I should come back to work at the factory, but my husband would not let me go. He was earning four pounds a week and things were not so expensive and he said: It is enough for us to live on.
They taught school at Langa, in the church, and Pieta and Katie started school. Pieta was eight years old when he started. Mosie had already left school and was working at a garage in the village, but he didn’t want to stop learning so studied for his Standard Six with the Union College, by post.
This was the time when Meisie married a coloured man of Dal Josafat, Sammie James. Auntie Lena gave her a big wedding, first in the Catholic church and then a dance in the Gebou location. They lived in auntie Lena’s house.
A few months after Meisie’s marriage Poppie’s second child was born. Ouma Martha Horings stood by again, and once more it was a little boy. Poppie called him Bonsile which means: We have proved something, something has been mended. His English name was Stanford and when she was nursing him, or when she and mama played with him, they called him by the Afrikaans name of Klonkie. Now when she spoke of her husband Poppie called him tata-ka-Bonsile, which means father-of-Bonsile, by way of showing him respect.
21
When Bonsile was one year old, we came to Cape Town.
Two white men walked through the location and told us we could go where we wished, but we Xhosa people had to see that we leave Lamberts Bay. The longer we stayed, the more we were caught and taken to the police station, even while sitting at table at night eating our supper.
The people were angry. I grew up here, said Mosie, I’m not leaving. I’ve got a good job at the garage and I’m studying with the Union College.
Buti Mbatane had worked at Lamberts Bay for twelve years, and before this at Lüderitzbucht. Where to is it that I must go now? he asked.
Before her child’s birth Poppie saw in a dream that the white paling round ouma’s grave had broken down and weeds were growing over it. Hoedjie and Mosie helped her to make it neat again. Must we leave the grave for the weeds to grow? she asked. And my baby’s grave?
The men may stay, the policemen said, but the women who lie around doing nothing, waiting for full season to start work at the factories again, must go. Back to the places from where they came. Or look for work elsewhere. They said: This part of the country is a coloured preference area. Too many black people are coming from the tribal lands to work in the Western Cape.
When it was not full season, says Poppie, the people locked their houses and went to Tulbagh or Paarl to pack fruit. When they came back to Lamberts Bay they were homeless because the municipality had burned down their houses. The houses were built of wooden boards and sheets of corrugated iron, lined with cardboard. It took only one match for the house to flare up and burn down.
The house across the road was burned down. Poppie saw the coloured policeman help the white policeman carry the stuff from the house: an iron bedstead, a cupboard, a kitchen table and a few chairs, some broken down, a few pieces of crockery, tins and paraffin cases. The policeman had kicked the door down, it swung in on its broken hinges, when he struck the match.
The children gathered in the street to watch.
Before he drove off the white man asked the women who had joined the children in the street: Do you know the people who lived here?
Yes, we know them, they said.
Well, then you must carry away their stuff and keep it till they pitch up again. It can’t be left standing in the street.
Poppie and the other women carried the stuff away.
When he came home from work, tata-ka-Bonsile dragged a few sheets of iron from the burned-out rubble. He dragged it to his yard and built a lean-to as a shelter for the people’s belongings.
When the law became so strict that they were burning down many houses at Lamberts Bay, we started to think about leaving, says Poppie.
One day a policeman, whom they called Adonis, came to my house where I was hanging washing on the line. He was new at Lamberts Bay, a coloured man, and he did not know me. He asked: Where is your pass?
I said: I don’t have a pass. My mother has got some papers, ja, but I never had no papers myself.
Then he said: You must come with me to the police station.
I put my child on my back and went with him.
There were other women waiting at the police station who had been caught too. Oompie Japie, a policeman who had known me from my childhood days, saw me and asked: Now for what have you come here, Poppie?
I was upset, I said: They catched me, oompie Japie.
Then he said: Ag no, child, you go home now.
I went home, but the other women had to stay behind.
They were keen on catching the women. The men who were working, could stay.
Many people started leaving. Mama left in 1955. Some went to Cape Town on the lorries, others went to Tulbagh or Worcester, others went by train to Mossel Bay. My stepfather said: The Xhosa people are being pushed out of Lamberts Bay, it’s better to go. First we were pushed out of the barracks, now we are being completely sent away.
A white man held a meeting in the location: A special town called Nyanga is being built for the Bantu people on the flats near Cape Town, he said, that’s where you must go.
But the people were scared of going to Cape Town because of the stories they heard of the skollies. The schoolteacher tried to give them courage: In Cape Town it’s not as rough as they tell. The skollie, he’s not going to grab you by the shirt and say: Now you, you’ve had it, and stick a knife into you. There’s no such thing. It’s you yourself who’ll get trouble if you look for it.
Buti Plank did not mind going because he had worked along the coast, southwards to Hout Bay. Hoedjie left his job at the hotel and went along with mama.
I didn’t want to leave, Mosie says. My boss at the garage said: Don’t go, man, let your ma go, you stay behind, you can send her money every month.
But I said: No, where my ma goes, there it’s my place too. I had many friends, too, white children. Jannie Koertse worked in the butchery, I helped him after school, and Ferlands, when he needed someone to take his cow to graze and bring it back in the afternoons, I helped him out, and so we became friendly. I was sorry to leave Ferlands and Jannie Koertse and Tredoux. My boss in the garage was just as sorry to let me go.
At first Poppie stayed on b
ecause tata-ka-Bonsile did not want to leave his job at the factory.
I can’t let him stay alone here, Poppie said to Meisie. He’s so fussy about his food, and he’s fussy about clean clothes. Every day he brings his boiler suit for me to wash. You know the way I have to wash and iron his clothes. I can’t go away and leave him just like that.
But she was homesick for her mama and her brothers and later on, when she was the only woman left in her street and all the houses around her had been flattened, she couldn’t feel at rest. Early in 1956, a year after her brothers and her mama had left, she packed up to go.
At sunset one evening tata-ka-Bonsile walked with her to the bus stop. He carried her suitcase and she carried the parcel with the child’s milk and food and a fried chicken and a loaf of bread she was taking to her ma.
I left my house just as it stood, and gave my things to coloured people to look after. I didn’t find it hard to go, because the place wasn’t the same any more. The way all the people had to leave, it made you feel they didn’t want you there any more, there was no other way but to go away too. And I was glad to go to my mama and my brothers.
The train was very full, but the Lamberts Bay people who travelled with me in the bus to Graafwater, helped me with the child and the suitcase. We got into the third class compartment. The child luckily was very restful and slept all the way. At De Hoek we liked to look out and watch all the black Rhodesians who got on the train. They had very loud voices and strange ways. I suckled the child after De Hoek and then he slept until we reached Cape Town.
THREE
Cape Town
22
Mama had written to tell Poppie to get off the train at Bellville. But there was nobody at the station to meet her until she heard a strange woman mention her name.
Your ma sent me, she said. Your ma is at work.
At the factory? asked Poppie, thinking of her mother at work in the factory of Lamberts Bay.