Hallowed Ground

by Paul Twivy

  She looked at him quizzically.

  ‘Mares!’ he said by way of explanation, which kept Hannah in stifled giggles.

  Joe found himself wishing he had Freddie’s easy charm.

  ‘But I don’t want to talk about the school today,’ Ubuntu continued. ‘Many of you know it already and the newly-arrived amongst you will know it soon enough. All I will say at this stage, is that we are interested in the whole you.’

  ‘Ewe! Now he’s on to sheep,’ Freddie remarked, throwing fuel on to Hannah’s bonfire of giggles. Joe gave them both a ‘Have some respect!’ scowl.

  ‘I want to talk to you briefly today about the country in which you are now living and learning… my country…Namibia.’

  The sacred respect for his country in Ubuntu’s voice made Hannah’s heart slow and her muted giggles die in her throat. His passion and seriousness found an echo in hers.

  ‘Namibia is one of the emptiest countries in the world, as you can plainly see when you travel through it. Our population is small - about two and a half million - but our land is vast. Yet, Namibia is never empty of ideas, or of surprises. It is dominated by Nature and not by Man. There aren’t many places left on Earth where you can still say that. To walk through Namibian landscapes is to experience what our ancestors experienced: vast terrains in which we are small, vulnerable, stilled by the wonder of the world. To go, as some of you have, from Times Square or Tiananmen Square to the Namib or Kalahari Desert, is to travel 20,000 years back in history; to learn to be alone again; to be the hunted as well as the hunter.’

  As Jacob Ubuntu surveyed the rows of alert and still faces in front of him, he knew he had possession of their minds. It electrified him but also gave him an overwhelming sense of responsibility. His throat dried and he reached for a glass of water. Now that he had them, he must etch something deep and lasting in their memories.

  Hannah swallowed hard. Joe and others coughed as a release of tension. Freddie crossed and uncrossed his legs and stared deep into Ubuntu’s eyes.

  ‘This south-west corner of an ancient continent should inspire you about what human beings can achieve against the odds. You sit in a land which has been invaded, segregated, dominated, re-named and... shamed. Yet it is now a modern state and I, and many others, believe it could thrive. My fervent hope is that this story, of the country I love, will be your inspiration during your time here. I also hope that you will become ambassadors for Namibia when you leave here: a small but strong community of people who have been touched by its magic and who have learned from its resilient people.’

  He paused to take another sip of water. The hall seemed to collectively breathe out for the first time in minutes. The words were etched, the memory placed.

  ‘Now to slightly more mundane matters. Teaching begins tomorrow at 8.30,’ Ubuntu continued. ‘I will be teaching you all African Studies once a week.’

  After Assembly, Hannah, Joe and Freddie found themselves in a cosy corner of the Reading Room. It was on the ground floor of the Boarding House, designed as a relaxation space, a common room for those who weren’t in the sixth form. It was Victorian, with dark, wood-panelled walls and bookshelves filled with games, magazines and newspapers from around the world that were 2-3 days out of date. There were books as well, rows and rows of them, much to Hannah’s delight.

  Bizarre though it seemed in such a hot country, the founders of the school had built a large and grandly decorated fireplace: big enough to have an inglenook: an arched space jutting out from, and surrounding, the fireplace. It was like a little room inside the larger room and the three of them were drawn to its cosiness. You could be private and yet observe all those around you at the same time.

  ‘I thought what Ubuntu said was inspiring,’ Hannah said.

  ‘My father thinks Namibia is one of the most extraordinary countries in the world. He’s studied quite a few, so I tend to believe him,’ Joe added.

  ‘What does he do?’ asked Hannah.

  ‘Dad? He’s an anthropologist,’ Joe replied.

  ‘Anthro what?’ asked Freddie.

  ‘The study of different cultures,’ Hannah said, keen to impress and hoping she was right.

  ‘Yes. He’s a Professor. He wants to study the tribes here. One in particular. He’s been looking at the papers of some of the missionaries who came here, a hundred and fifty years ago.’

  ‘Sounds amazing,’ said Freddie, conjuring up an image of map-reading and ancient trails that he found intoxicating.

  ‘What about your mother?’ Hannah asked, always wanting families to be defined by their mother as much as by their father.

  ‘Ah! My mom is here for different reasons,’ Joe replied. ‘She works for a hotel company… for people who want ‘real adventures.’ When they heard that my dad was going to be posted here, they saw it as an opportunity for her to scout for new sites.’

  ‘Gosh, your parents are glamorous,’ Freddie exclaimed.

  ‘Oh yes, there speaks the son of an Ambassador!’ Hannah retorted.

  ‘Hold on. Your father’s an Ambassador?’ Freddie said keeling backwards with the kind of laugh that signalled he’d been upstaged, like someone in a card game who’d suddenly been presented with his opponent’s unbeatable cards.

  ‘Well yes, he’s the UK High Commissioner to Namibia,’ Freddie said, half with embarrassment and half with pride.

  ‘So, how come you’re not living in splendour at the Commission?’

  ‘And inviting us to posh receptions,’ Hannah added. ‘I asked the same question.’

  ‘My parents thought it was better for me if I boarded during the week; even though they’re just here in Windhoek. Good for my independence…’

  Joe and Hannah both tried to work out whether Freddie was hurt or whether he’d been happy to ‘take the medicine.’ They were also wrestling with the same question.

  ‘You’re so lucky to have them nearby,’ Hannah said, trying to make Freddie feel better.’ My parents are in Swakopmund. I don’t know how often I am going to see them.’

  ‘Why Swakopmund?’ asked Freddie, happy to be taken away from his own situation.

  ‘Dad’s job. He has to be based there. The mines are nearby. Mum found a job at a school there.’

  ‘What does she teach?’ Freddie asked.

  ‘Languages. She’s also a translator,’ Hannah added, feeling pride. ‘She says there are clicking languages here.’

  ‘Clicking?’ Joe exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, the clicks are like consonants,’ she said, feeling the strangeness of it as she said it. ‘Mum played me a recording of it. It’s extraordinary. You have to hear it, both of you. I’ll find it on my phone for you. What about your mother Freddie?’

  ‘She’s a doctor!’ Freddie replied. ‘But not a witch doctor…’

  Joe wasn’t sure if he was annoyed by Freddie’s verbal juggling or jealous. His skill was with numbers not words. He felt at home with their certainty. Sometimes words felt like a lake in which he might drown. But then he also thought how paltry the permutations of twenty-six letters seemed, compared to the infinite sequencing of numbers!

  ‘Witch doctors don’t still exist, do they?’ said Hannah.

  ‘Of course, they do,’ said Joe, relying on half-understood conversations with his father about local tribes.

  ‘My mother is working with AIDS patients,’ said Freddie. ‘She says the tribal doctors believe it’s a curse on Africa, a plague!’

  Their conversation flowed for what seemed like hours, halted only by the bedtime bell. They banished anxiety with laughter. They started to confront the exciting if unsettling truth that they were living in Africa. What kind of Africa, they didn’t yet know. But they were about to find out…

  3

  Sossusvlei

  A month later

  It was the Augustineum field trip to Sossusvlei, the mo
st spectacular range of sand dunes in the world, the russet-red jewels in Namibia’s crown.

  Their school coach had set off from Windhoek absurdly early, in the dark and relative cold of a February morning, to get to the dunes at a reasonable time and avoid the blistering heat of mid-day as they climbed. The bleary un-reality of it all only added to the excitement, as they drank in the cold air, slung rucksacks into the gaping mouths of the coach’s innards, and fell up the coach steps to their seats.

  Hannah, Freddie and Joe sat as far forward as they could. That was always their instinct: in classes, assemblies, queues for lunch and now field trips. It hadn’t been Joe’s, but he had learned to go along with it. They were enthusiasts…. or ‘swots’ as other pupils liked to call them. Each had the kind of mind that rarely rested: a fault they encouraged in each other to the point of exhaustion.

  After only a month of knowing each other, they were inseparable, swimming as a shoal. Like most close friends, they had a shorthand between them; a store of references to hilarious moments that bonded them ever tighter.

  They had been trying to pronounce Sossusvlei from the moment that the trip had been announced.

  ‘Sausage vlei!’ Hannah giggled.

  ‘Or Saucisson vlei…if you’re French!’ Freddie added.

  ‘Or S.O.S. susvlei, if you’re in trouble!’ Joe concluded.

  Hannah fell on to Freddie’s shoulder laughing hysterically. Three was an awkward number, especially when it came to sitting on a coach. So, Hannah and Freddie had sat themselves in one row, Joe in the row immediately behind, with the promise of a swap on the next leg of the journey.

  Joe felt slightly displaced but covered his tracks with a constant exuberance. His long fringe often came in handy, covering one eye and several emotions.

  The coach slowed and stopped by the entrance to the Namib-Naukluft National Park.

  ‘Here at last,’ said Joe, jumping up and ready to make a sprint to be the first out of the coach.

  ‘Please sit down,’ said the coach driver abruptly ‘We are only stopping for a minute…just to pick up our guide.’

  Joe sank back down again, his quest for fresh air thwarted.

  The coach door swung open with a hydraulic hiss and a blast of sandy, midday air. The driver answered an invisible, enquiring voice from outside the coach: ‘The Augustineum trip? Yes, this is it!’

  A tall, thin and proud Namibian woman with broad shoulders and muscular arms, climbed the steps with the slow-moving grace of a leopard conquering a tree. Ilana van Zyl’s head was angled slightly upwards, catching the full force of the light. Her hair was thick, black and shoulder-length as it tumbled down her long elegant neck. From her ears hung two large earrings: red discs like traffic lights. Her smile was of someone in charge and comfortable with it.

  Behind her, wearing a bored, sulky look, was a teenage girl, clearly her daughter. The mother was dressed in beautiful native colours, fresh green against the relentless orange and red of the landscape. Her daughter was boyish and dressed in a blood-red T-shirt and jeans. Her hair was cropped short. Her face was strong and timeless, almost regal.

  ‘Go and sit down somewhere, Selima. There, next to that boy.’ She pointed to the empty space in the second row next to Joe.

  Joe, intrigued by this beautiful, boyish girl, obligingly moved to the seat by the window and brushed the breakfast crumbs off Selima’s seat as a welcoming gesture. Selima settled next to him but refused to look him in the eye, twisting her body to face diagonally across the coach away from him.

  The tall woman was now blowing on the coach microphone to see if it was working. Her breath grated on the suddenly erupting speaker system like sandpaper. A few who had been dozing opened their eyes.

  ‘Good morning, everyone,’ she said.

  ‘Good morning,’ the uneven chorus returned.

  ‘My name is Ilana Van Zyl, and I am going to be your guide here at Sossusvlei,’ she continued.

  ‘Ah so that’s how you pronounce it,’ said Freddie out loud, almost involuntarily, and to the amusement of his fellow travellers.

  Ilana laughed with them, which warmed everyone to her. At first, she had seemed too daunting, too proud by half. Now they had some measure of her.

  ‘Yes, it’s not one of the easiest names. Someone once said it sounds like a snake sneezing.’

  This caught Joe unawares, touched his funny bone, and triggered an unstoppable cascade of laughter.

  Selima looked at him, half-attracted, half-alarmed.

  ‘What it means in English is “Dead-End Marsh.” So, you might prefer the Afrikaans,’ she said smiling.

  Selima knew these words as if they were the script of her childhood. She found herself fascinated by Joe. Her sneaky, sideways glances gathered as much information about him as possible: his black American trainers and his rectangular smart watch with which he was clearly obsessed. This was another culture made flesh.

  ‘We are now inside the Namib-Naukluft National Park and we are going to drive to the famous sand dunes, some of the highest in the world.’

  Joe plucked up courage and turned to Selima.

  ‘Hi, I’m Joe. Joe Kaplan,’ he grunted.

  ‘Selima.’ She didn’t feel the need to add her surname. Her first name would be distinctive enough and anyway she felt suddenly self-conscious about the link to her mother.

  ‘This is Hannah and Freddie,’ Joe added, as they both spun round, proffering a ‘high five’ through the space between the headrests.

  ‘That’s your mum I assume…our guide?’ Hannah asked, immediately wanting to validate her theory.

  ‘Do we look alike?’ Selima asked ‘Or is it just because we came on the coach together?’

  ‘Actually, you have a similar voice,’ Freddie offered. ‘I think that’s how you often recognise families.’

  ‘Well yes, she is my mum,’ Selima replied, sounding curter than she had intended. So, she followed it up with a warm enquiry.

  ‘So, you are all at the Augustineum right? That must be so cool. You board, yes?’

  ‘No, we’re never bored,’ Freddie jumped in, ‘that’s the whole point.’

  ‘That’s why we board,’ Joe added.

  ‘Ignore them,’ said Hannah ‘They give up…eventually.’

  Selima laughed, liking Hannah instantly for the way she could handle boys, and decided to plough on with her interrogation.

  ‘Isn’t it strange to be apart from your parents though?’ she asked.

  ‘It is. But it feels free,’ said Freddie, who twisted round to face Selima full-on, slightly to Hannah’s annoyance.

  Selima, gazing at her mother, who she knew would be checking on her, felt the thrill of this idea pass through her.

  ‘It’s also odd and lonely at times,’ said Hannah, determined to be more honest than the boys. Then she worried that perhaps only she felt like that.

  ‘I agree,’ said Joe. ‘It can be lonely. It’s like you’re drifting sometimes. On a space-walk.’

  ‘Never heard you say that before,’ Freddie interjected.

  ‘Perhaps you weren’t listening,’ Joe replied curtly.

  ‘I wasn’t criticising. I just wish I’d known,’ Freddie said, remembering a few nights he’d lain awake feeling wretched and abandoned. His parents and Clara were only a few miles away, but it felt sometimes like the dark side of the moon.

  Selima was touched by their honesty. She also looked at her mother with new appreciation.

  ‘Where do you live?’ Joe asked.

  ‘Swakopmund,’ she replied.

  ‘OMG. That’s where my folks are living,’ exclaimed Hannah. ‘My mum is teaching at a school there. She helps students… with problems.’

  ‘Which school? Which problems?’ Selima asked.

  ‘Swakopmund High… learning problems?’

  ‘T
hat’s my school. What’s her name?’ Selima asked.

  ‘Sarah. Well, I suppose she’d be Miss Chiang to you.’

  Selima shivered and went quiet. So, she was ‘a child with problems’ and this was her special needs teacher’s daughter. She felt pinned and classified, like a butterfly. It was true of course and she knew it. Yet somehow it was shocking to hear it said, and by someone she’d only just met.

  ‘No, I haven’t come across her,’ Selima said, hoping she wouldn’t blush and that the subject would change.

  The road had narrowed to a corridor flanked by dunes, two hundred metres high, on either side. It was as if a Red Sea of sand had parted for them.

  ‘Wow! Look at the size of that!’ Joe exclaimed.

  Ilana flicked the ‘On’ switch of her coach microphone.

  ‘On our left is the famous Dune Forty-Five’ she announced.

  Thirty heads turned as one, as if watching a tennis match.

  ‘I bet it’s named after the forty-five-degree angle of the slopes,’ Joe suggested.

  ‘Dune Forty-Five refers to the fact that it is forty-five kilometres from the entrance to the park,’ Ilana explained.

  ‘That’s just so dull,’ Joe commented in a loud stage whisper.

  Selima giggled in inverse proportion to her mother’s frown.

  Hannah’s arm shot up.

  ‘Are we going to climb it, Miss?’

  ‘No. We are holding out for something even better. We are going to climb the father of all dunes, literally. I am talking about “Big Daddy”.’

  They stood, open-mouthed, at the base, staring up at its full 325 metres. ‘Big Daddy’ seemed to taunt them with its size.

  ‘Remember Lawrence of Arabia?’ Freddie asked, and then declared, ‘I’m not daunted by this.’

  He swept a white kufiyah around his head, adjusted the agal, and shook out the headscarf, so that it flowed over his shoulders. His father had bought it for him on a diplomatic trip to the United Arab Emirates.

  ‘Remember Selima of Namibia,’ Selima declared, twisting her prized baseball cap around her head so that the peak fell at the back and protected her neck from the overhead sun. She wouldn’t have been so sensible had her mother not been there.