‘Are you sure?’ he began.
‘I grew up on ladders, Gerry. My dad had me walking around on the roof of our house, on my own, when I was two years old. It scared the wits out of Mom when she arrived home and saw me standing on the roof though.’
He chuckled, holding the ladder as I went up. Peering over the top, it took me a moment to orientate the line through the village out across the river into the bush. I was looking for signs of damaged or stunted trees, anything to indicate the possible negative impact of the energy line. Nothing really stood out. Perhaps the river negated it somehow on the other side. Climbing down, we headed to the other end. To be honest, I again could not see much, perhaps on the other side of the riverine bush? I pondered.
I explained my disappointment to Gerry and Angela as we walked across the village to the other side. Climbing up here, I did notice what seemed to be a line of lesser bush and trees along the orientation of the lesser of the negative energy lines running through the village. I mentioned this and Gerry confirmed it.
‘We always wondered why there seemed to be some sort of clearer path in the bush out there.’ Climbing up and peering along the line of what was the stronger of the two negative energy lines, I again did not see much and was quite disappointed. As I started to descend, movement on the river bank in the distance caught my attention. A crocodile was slipping into the water to hunt or simply to cool off from his sun bathing activities on the bank.
I almost fell off the ladder when the connection was made. That bank on which the crocodile and others of his ilk were lying, was directly on this energy line. I had missed this when looking over the other end. There too, was a bank of crocodiles. I felt elated, and vindicated.
‘Way to go, Dad,’ I said out loud.
‘What?’ from both Angela and Gerry.
‘Got it,’ I said, climbing down. After I explained it to them, they both went up in turn to have a look.
‘Amazing,’ Gerry said as he went off with the ladder.
‘Would that have such an effect?’ queried Angela.
‘No doubt about it. Their presence is enhancing the negative aspect of the line. Although they fulfil a valuable purpose, crocodiles are perceived as negative and have neither ability nor wont to be friendly.’
She chuckled as we moved off. ‘I guess not.’
Although there was still a fair amount of the afternoon left, I felt somewhat drained. It was possible that the telling of my story was taking its toll.
‘Let’s go to the rondavel, and I’ll make us a lemon tea.’ This consisted simply of hot water with a small piece of lemon floating in it. Depending whether you liked it stronger or weaker you squeezed the piece of lemon or not. There was an old citrus farm some three-hour brisk walk from us, and we regularly had a group go through and collect what they could. The fruit was very welcome, but except for the lemons it could be scarce if the elephants and baboons had been through there regularly. Angela handed me the mug, and I was again sitting on the floor, my elbow on the stool and my head resting on my hand.
Sipping the tea reminded me of my mother. Although my father did drink it occasionally, it was a real favourite of my mother. It was something she missed during those lean years, and I remember my father bringing lemons back whenever he found them during his excursions. Being a natural antioxidant, they at least kept well and so managed to last a few weeks each time.
‘I need to give you some idea of how we lived, before the catastrophe,’ I began. ‘It will help you to understand the massive change we had to undergo in our lives to survive. You recall that time you were out with a group from your previous village, and you walked through what I believe was a small town. You remember the time you explained to me that you were chased by a group of renegades you did not know were there.’
‘I have tried to forget that. One of them got his hands on me, and I thought I was going to die. He was like a mad animal.’
‘Luckily,’ I said, ‘Gerry and a few of our village men were nearby and heard your calls. This was also the day our two villages met, which turned out to be a great day as we both needed to know there were others out there like us, with the same ideas and feelings about life.’
She nodded, ‘Yes, it turned out to be good day, the day we suddenly obtained two sister villages. You can imagine the effect on our village, thinking up until then that we were all alone in this insanity.’
I went on to explain how we lived in those buildings she had seen.
‘We had systems of government, law enforcement, roads, water on tap, and electricity.’ Of all the concepts I explained in detail, electricity proved the trickiest to explain, and we eventually agreed to leave it simply as an easy-to-use energy source. ‘Back then, if we wanted or needed something, we simply went to the shops and used money to purchase it. For entertainment we had TV, movies, restaurants, and other avenues. We could communicate with mobile telephones; we had computers, had landed on the moon, and were building a space station—’
I stopped suddenly, the frown on my face obviously raising concern within Angela.
Before she could ask, my hand shot to my mouth. ‘Oh dear heaven! Those poor people!’
‘What people?’ Angela was concerned now, but it took me a moment before I could speak again.
I explained to Angela what the space station was and that there must have been people on the space station at the time of the catastrophe. ‘There were always people up on the station, either building it further or working on experiments. They rotated with other people, spending a few months at a time up there.’
Angela suddenly cradled her face in her hands as she began to understand.
‘They are probably still up there but would be dead by now,’ I said sadly. A tear rolled down my cheek, creating a path of chillier skin as I thought about how they must have been able to see the broader, global effect of the tidal waves. They would have been the only ones to see the full global picture of what had occurred. How would they have responded to seeing their only chance of returning to earth buried under water, I wondered? Did they use their remaining time to write down, to record what they had witnessed and how they felt? In all this time, I had not given a thought to them, and I felt inordinately sad about this.
Completing my explanation, as best as I was able, of how we had lived in the past took us well into the dark, as many of the concepts were fairly difficult to explain. People were reasonably disciplined and controlled, I explained, and although there was a measure of criminal activity and violence, it was on a much smaller scale than we currently experienced. I did take time, though, to expand on the social ills of our times: the tension between races, stress in marriages, drug and alcohol abuse, and so on.
At the end of it, Angela sat quietly for some time, and I respected the silence.
Eventually she ventured, ‘It sounds like it was both good and bad – just as we have now. The only difference between the two times is that there is a different good and bad.’
I sat there, stunned by her evaluation. I had always in the back of my mind worked on the basis that we were worse off now than before. But that was my perception, my evaluation, based on my past exposure. I had never stopped to ask those who had never experienced the ‘before’ what they thought of our current lives.
Angela mistook my look, and said quickly, ‘I’m sorry, I did not want to disturb you so.’
It took me a moment to reply, and this raised further concern for her, bringing her over to clutch and hold my hand.
‘It’s OK, wonderful actually, what you just said.’ It took me many more minutes before I was able to gain sufficient control and answer her as to why I was crying then. I realized I had one more excursion to make to each of the other villages, to talk to the villagers, especially my counterparts there who had also experienced the ‘before’. That would be Jim, in the nearest
of the two villages, and Yvonne and Sam, in the other. But first, I had to talk to the people in my village. There were obviously some questions I had not yet asked, and which I needed to.
‘Thank you, Angela, thank you. You have made an old woman far more content than she has been in a long time. Bear with me, I cannot explain it yet.’ Not yet fully understanding what I was talking about, I knew she would grasp it when listening to me talk to the villagers.
Chapter 16
I slept fitfully that night, not sure if it was because of the revelation with Angela, or because, in the telling of my history to Angela, I knew we were approaching portions that still greatly disturbed me. I rose early, feeling the oncoming winter creeping into the morning air. It was still dark as I went outside, comforted again as always by the sheer beauty of the night sky. This must have been what my father described he had seen as a child, a sky full of stars. We saw only a minute fraction of these in the towns when I was young. The pollution in the air, that we conveniently ignored back then and which must have obviously been far worse than we were led to believe, saw to that, along with the glare from all the lights that consumed so much of the irreplaceable energy sources we had. We were too caught up in our conveniences to give up anything for the benefit of the planet. Oh, we did the superfluous stuff, such as recycling, but nothing really meaningful or effective. My father had been correct when he had said mankind was too selfish to do anything voluntarily, that he would have to be forced into it by circumstances beyond his control. He had been constantly astonished by how even supposedly educated and learned people responded to the approach of cutting back on water and power usage. The most common response was, ‘If I don’t use it, someone else will, so why bother?’ In his later years, before the Fall, my father had found it difficult to restrain himself from physically harming those people.
Well, whether you believe in the earth, Gaia if you will, as a living organism or not, you have to admit the ice cap section slipping into the sea did an exceptionally effective job of cleansing the planet. Air pollution had cleared relatively quickly it seemed, although at the time we were very busy surviving so perhaps could be excused for not chronicling the change. I knew deep down that we were more than the parasites my father likened the human race to before the Fall.
‘We know organisms can live in harmony together, but when one becomes abusive, more excessive in its demands on the others, then the host organism has no option but to take remedial action to limit the damage, either completely destroying the out-of-control guest or at least severely reducing its numbers back to a manageable size.’ Well, mankind had certainly been reduced to manageable proportions as far as Gaia was concerned.
I heard a soft footfall behind me. I lowered my gaze and turned slightly, expecting to see one of the night guards. Angela! Why I was surprised I didn’t know. She was fast becoming very tuned in to me and had obviously either heard me or sensed my change in mood. Hanging the blanket over my shoulders, she stood close behind, placing her arms around me, and simply stood there quietly with me. Hugging had become a forgotten art since the Fall and it was something I had recently begun promoting in the community.
‘Hug each other, it doesn’t matter who with whom, just do it, and make it a habit. Even men with men! We all need the comfort, the positive energy exchange.’ It had taken a while to get them used to a decent hug, as it was meant to be. Not the superfluous A-frame nonsense that had crept into society when I was young. The strange thing was we all felt it as false, yet we simply kept on doing it.
‘Another of our crappy modern habits,’ I remember my dad saying. He and mom had taught me the proper hug, so to speak, yet when I was out with friends it was hard to do. A whole host of comments from my dad went through my head at that point, but it had been hard to be different.
‘I will get us some lemon tea, if you wish to talk.’ Bless her. It would probably be best to get it out sooner rather than later, as it would simply eat at me now that it had surfaced after all the years of repressing it. ‘That would be lovely, thank you, Angela.’ Even though still dark, there would be hot water. One of the tasks of the night guards was to keep a small fire going, so we had agreed that a large pot of water could be kept warm at the same time. We had collected a number of large, sturdy pots over time, what had been called a drie-poot pot in our country or three-legged pot in English. It was made from cast iron, I think my father had said, and it was able to stand in the fire. We used these same types of pots for the communal breakfasts and dinners. Doing it this way, rather than every family always doing their own, released more hands for the caring and chores of the village. In addition, it kept the villagers more connected, more a well-functioning team, so to speak.
What my parents had insisted on though, and what was now ingrained in the villagers, was to give thanks for the food, to bless what was providing sustenance to us. This positive approach improved the energetic quality of the food, and although my parents were vegetarian, they understood the need to thank and bless and also instilled this into those responsible for the provision of meat. The San people of the Kalahari were labelled savages by the early European settlers in this country, yet they understood this principle and thanked each animal they hunted for providing the food to sustain them, and blessed its spirit – I remember reading that in one of the books. This approach could not have worked when I was young. We were far too self-centred and selfish, too absorbed in our own lives to care much about others.
Angela returned and placed the warm mug in my hands. Strange how such a simple thing could feel so good. Turning, I entered the rondavel, knowing it was no use trying to delay it any further. Sitting in the dark, I explained it to Angela as I remembered it, seeing it virtually as a movie being played out in my mind.
Chapter 17
That first night we slept there I thought I was not going to be able to sleep. Strangely though, I slept well. When I woke mom was busy frying eggs and making toast.
‘You at least seemed to sleep well’, mom said, when she saw I was awake.
‘I know,’ I replied, ‘strange that considering where we are and what’s happening.’ We had not cooked the night before, having bought take-out dinner on our way to the plot. Dad had obviously understood that we would have had a lot on our minds and had tried to make it easier for us. Watching my mom at the stove, I suddenly realised it was electric. ‘I thought we had no power?’
‘Your father says everything is still connected, only the lights are currently battery, or solar, whatever. If the main power goes down, we will have gas for a few years, but he doesn’t want to use it until forced to.’ Following her pointing finger I saw a row of large LPG bottles.
‘Wow!’ I said. ‘Normally a small bottle lasts us over six months.’ My mom was quiet though, and I sensed I had missed something.
‘What happened?’ I asked. That was the end of the cooking, from my mother’s perspective in any event.
‘Please finish,’ she said. ‘I will call dad. He’s sitting outside, watching the birds or something.’
Breakfast was a quiet, uncomfortable event after which I cleaned up. We had hot water from a solar geyser on the roof, and my father had apparently connected another one in the cover of the trees, making it look like it was simply abandoned there. There was a wash basin, a small shower, and a toilet.
‘All connected to a large septic tank and soak-away,’ my father had said. ‘We should have no trouble from it.’ There I did not doubt him. He knew his plumbing and had complained on many occasions how unconcerned people had become with doing even a semi-decent job. He was right there. Very few still had the drive to do a good job, to provide a decent service, or to even care whether they were or not.
Finishing the cleaning up, I joined my parents, sitting in a small patch of sunlight within the trees near the entrance. My mom was sitting between my father’s legs, both of them on the grass, with his arms ar
ound her. She was crying quietly.
‘I sat down next to them, and my mother said, ‘You tell her.’
‘Tell me what?’ I remember saying.
‘I took your cell phone away for a good reason,’ my dad began. Oh, yeah! I was still peeved by that. When we had left home the day before, my dad had taken my cell phone away. ‘No one can know where we are, or how we have set ourselves up here’ he said, ‘even by accident. We simply cannot risk it.’ This was starting to get spooky, and very frightening. He was deadly serious though. He had taken Mom’s phone too, and we did not know where he had hidden them. Sitting there, thinking about this, it took only a few moments for the realisation to sink in.
‘No one else is coming here?’ I already sensed the answer to my question.
‘No one!’ Although he did look at me at when he answered, it was plain to see this was tearing him apart inside, despite the brave front he was putting on for our benefit.
‘How many people can this realistically support, for any length of time?’ he continued. ‘Apart from that, the more people there are here, the greater the chance of being discovered. Every extra person here increases our chances of discovery many-fold.’
‘Granny? Ouma?’ I ventured. He looked away. Both were in their late seventies, with my ouma having diabetes, serious short-term memory loss, and poor health physically. My granny was fairly healthy, but not very mobile, with a foot damaged years ago; she was also diabetic, although not to the extent of my ouma, who had now been on insulin for a number of years.
‘Where do you draw the line?’ my father added, watching me again, ‘who do you leave out? This is tough, and it’s going to get worse, but this is about survival, not just of us specifically but also the retention of knowledge, the things we need to remember to recover quickly, to have learnt the lessons and implement them before we regress back to stone-age man status and have to claw back from there. You have watched me over the years, seen my discontent, and seen me looking for a place like this. I didn’t dream this up. It just seemed to appear in my mind, to form of its own accord. There is something bigger than us as individuals here. I know I am not alone in this and that there are others like me, like us, out there. We may not be doing this the same way, but we have to survive, to be able to meet later, to allow this, I don’t know what to call it other than the resurrection of mankind from the catastrophe, to occur.’
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