Now Is the Time for Running

by Michael Williams

  “I know you work at the Flying Tomato Farm too. I’ve seen you on their trucks. You should be at school—you are too young to be doing the work of men.” This from an older man, whom I had seen sitting outside one of the huts. He seemed to be one of the elders of Khomele, as the others grew quiet when he spoke.

  I had nothing to say in the face of such anger. The men stared at us with such hatred that it took my breath away.

  “What do you get paid each month?” asked the man with bloodshot eyes.

  “Fifty rand,” I answered, backing away.

  “We cannot live for fifty rand a month, but you hungry lions don’t know what real money is,” said the younger man bitterly. “You are happy with little because you don’t know any better.”

  “Deo, let’s go,” said Innocent from behind me.

  “Get out of here!” shouted the elder of Khomele, and then he turned to the boys of the village who were standing watching. “If these two come back to Khomele, there will be no more soccer. We don’t want kwerekwere here!”

  “You come back and you’ll feel some of this,” the younger man said to Innocent, shaking his fist. Innocent backed away hurriedly, lifting his hands in apology. The boys on the pitch turned away from me. One of them picked up the soccer ball and walked away. The game was over. I would not be back next Sunday.

  Kwerekwere.

  I had never heard that word before.

  As I walked out of Khomele, I looked around at the small village with new eyes. This place was very different from the Flying Tomato Farm. The windmill was broken, the houses were not painted, and the land was not cultivated. Here there were no tractors turning the soil; instead the men used hand plows. While everything hummed with activity across the road, here there was no action. The men sat around in front of their huts; only the women were busy with domestic chores. Here there were no conveyor belts, fluorescent lights, roof-high boxes of vegetables. Was there not enough work for these men on the Flying Tomato Farm? Surely earning fifty rand a month is better than earning nothing?

  And this word kwerekwere— what did it mean?

  15

  PHILANI’S DEAL

  The Flying Tomato Farm is Sunday-quiet.

  The packing shed is deserted. The roads are empty of vehicles. There is no one in the fields. We have come back earlier than usual. There is nothing to do, so I go to my bed in the corner of the room and take out the leather pouch from under my pillow. My soccer ball is now pancake-flat.

  Innocent goes to the basin and washes his hands. He scrubs his fingernails, the palms of his hands. After drying his hands, he takes out his Bix-box, which he has stuffed under the foot of his mattress. He knows that I have started thinking again and watches me silently.

  Meanwhile, I unpick the thread and take out the sixteen fifty-rand notes. I lay each note on my pillow.

  “That’s a lot of money you’ve got lying around. You’d better look after it—there are greedy eyes on this farm.”

  Philani is leaning against the open door and staring at the money. I scoop up the money and stuff it under my pillow.

  “I heard what happened at Khomele today,” he says, walking into my room. He slumps on the foot of my bed, winks at Innocent, and leans back against the wall. “Looks like you’ll have to find another soccer game. There’s a pitch about five miles from here, over the hills, but it’s a long way to walk for a game.”

  “I don’t need to play with them,” I say stupidly.

  He nods. “They might hurt your brother.”

  “I didn’t do anything to them. They shouldn’t shout at me. It’s not Innocent’s fault. Not one bit,” says Innocent sadly.

  I have nothing to say to Philani, but he is right. They have threatened Innocent, and I will not go there again.

  “Why do they hate us?” asks Innocent.

  “You took their jobs, Innocent. Before the people started coming across the river from Zimbabwe, the men from Khomele village worked on the Flying Tomato Farm. In those days Foreman Gerber paid them four hundred rand a month.”

  “Is that a lot of money?” asks Innocent.

  “Then your people started coming out of the park and ate Gerber’s tomatoes. He caught them and handed them over to the police, and the police sent them back across the border. But then Gerber got an idea. He would catch them, bring them here, and give them two choices: work for him or be arrested by the police.

  “When you come to a new land, you don’t know how things work. You have no friends, no family to help you. Who would not take food, a place to sleep, and work if it was offered?”

  “They called us kwerekwere. What does that mean?” I ask.

  “Foreigner. Outsider. One who does not belong.”

  So this is what I am—a foreigner in this land. I have come from outside and I do not belong. I never knew there was a word for this.

  “You are not alone, Deo. There are thousands of people who come to find work in South Africa. And it is hard for the men from Khomele. They lose their jobs, and then they see people from across the river eating the food they used to eat and getting the money they used to get. They’re very angry, and who can blame them?”

  “I would be angry too,” I say. “But then why are the men who work here also unhappy?”

  “Ah, that’s easy to explain. It is because they have no choice. They have become slaves of the Flying Tomato Farm, Deo. If they complain about the pay, Gerber will hand them over to the South African police. The police will lock them up in their van and send them back across the river. None of them wants to go back, and so everyone keeps quiet. They work and get paid very little, while the men at Khomele do not work and do not get paid.”

  “And Foreman Gerber can pay what he wants,” I say, understanding for the first time why the men whispered angrily in the middle of the night. “Fifty cents even, and we would be so grateful.”

  “Life in Jozi is better than working in this dump. I have a friend in Jozi who fixes motorcars. When I worked in Jozi, he paid me a thousand rand a month.”

  “A thousand rand a month! That’s a fortune.”

  He laughs at me. “Yes, it is. And if I ask him, he will give you and your brother work too. I have a place to stay—you could stay with me for a while until you find your own place.” Philani speaks so softly and quickly, it’s easy to believe him. “In Jozi there are things that you have never seen before. It’s much better than being stuck out here. I will take you there, but you will need to pay for my taxi. Once we get work, I’ll pay you back. My uncle doesn’t allow me any money.”

  So now the truth comes. Philani has no money, and so he cannot leave the Flying Tomato Farm. This is Philani’s deal. He takes us to Jozi and gets us work and a place to stay in exchange for me paying for his taxi fare. It seems a fair deal.

  “How much is the taxi ride?” I ask.

  “One-way from Musina to the Jozi train station is one hundred rand.”

  I quickly do the math: three hundred rand for transport for the three of us leaves Innocent and me another five hundred rand to live on. Five hundred is so many billion Zim dollars that we shouldn’t have any trouble living off that for at least six months.

  Innocent takes out his photograph from his Bix-box. “Zero-two-one-six-five-eight-three-two-one-four,” he says quietly.

  “Okay, so are you going to tell me what that number is, Innocent?”

  “Zero-two-one-six-five-eight-three-two-one-four,” he says, grinning at me, happy to have distracted me from my conversation with Philani.

  “Yes. So?”

  “Where he’s at,” he says, pointing at the photograph. “The telephone number on the Removals truck. Dad’s work. We still going to find him, Deo? Right?” He leans over and hands me the photograph.

  I’ve never thought about finding my father in the same way that Innocent does. If he wanted to see us, he would have come back to Gutu a long time ago. But what if, by some miracle, we could find him in South Africa? What if he was pleased to se
e us? Perhaps we could stay with him? Perhaps he has a house? I know how to look after Innocent; he wouldn’t have to worry about him. We don’t need much money to survive, and I could go to school again, and we could be together. I look at my father in Innocent’s photograph. The man looks happy enough to be with his Zimbabwean family….

  “It is time to leave this place,” I say, making a decision that was waiting in the shadows for me to find it.

  “Good. It’s the right decision. We must get to Musina and catch a taxi to Jozi. If you hang around here the police will find you, arrest you, and send you back. You must go to the city.”

  Johannesburg. Jozi. I have heard about this place. Everyone talks about going to Jozi: plenty of work, plenty of money.

  We didn’t leave Gutu, flee from the Green Bombas, cross the Limpopo River, escape from the Ghuma-ghuma, and run through the park to end up in this place.

  “Will you help us go to Jozi, Philani?”

  16

  JOZI

  Innocent, Philani, and me—flying in a taxi—stuffed between thirteen other men and women going to Johannesburg.

  When we stop in the town of Musina, Philani takes us to a two-for-the-price-of-one PEP store with nice, nice clothes.

  “If we’re going to Jozi, we’ve got to look sharp. It’s time to throw these clothes away and buy what you like,” he says as we wander through the shop, dazed at the quality and variety of the clothes.

  “We get one free?” asks Innocent, holding up a T-shirt.

  “That’s how it works here, boys. Two for the price of one rules!”

  We buy new shirts, jeans, shoes. I throw away my old clothes right there and then. Philani laughs at us and rolls his eyes at the shop person as we go in and out of the changing room with piles of clothes.

  “Now you boys are ready for Jozi,” he says as we leave the shop, swinging our bags of clothes.

  The Soutpansberg Mountains are forgotten; the rows of red tomatoes forgotten; the boys of Khomele village forgotten. Philani does all the talking as the countryside whizzes past. All we do is stare at things I could never have imagined: wide, wide roads with five lanes packed with so many shiny, smart cars. Roads built in the sky with lights. Long two-lane tunnels right through a mountain.

  At the next stop, a place called Louis Trichardt, Philani takes us into a clean, clean shop with loud music where every shelf is packed with sweets, chocolates, nuts, chewing gum. Big loaves of white bread twice the size we get in Zimbabwe. We gawk at the women who drink beer, smoke cigarettes, talk as loudly as men, and wear modern clothes that no woman from Gutu would wear.

  “In South Africa anything is possible. You can be poor one day, and a multimillionaire the next day. Look. Saturday’s lotto draw is ten million rand! Ten million rand!” he says and shows us how to play.

  And it’s true. The board says I can win ten million rand on Saturday. I can’t even do the math as to how many gazillions of dollars that would be in Zimbabwe.

  “Choose six numbers, Innocent, and you can be a millionaire. Fill in the square, pay twenty rand, and we wait for the draw on Saturday night. You’ve got lucky rubbed on your forehead. I can see it.

  “Give me another twenty rand, Deo, and you can play too. Hey, maybe all three of us should play? That gives us three chances of winning. Give me another twenty rand, and I’ll also try. I’ll keep all the tickets for us. If one of us has the lucky number we all share. Cool? Cool.”

  And that’s Philani’s new deal. It sounds like he knows what he is doing. So I give him sixty rand, choose my numbers, and watch how they are entered into a machine.

  “We’re going to be millionaires this weekend,” he says, kissing the tickets and stuffing them into his pocket.

  Sounds like a good deal to me.

  In Mokopane Philani shows us how to order finger-licking chicken and Fanta Grape. “Order whatever you want, Innocent. Look at those pictures—doesn’t it make your stomach grumble? A streetwise deal gets you two chicken pieces, chips, and a cool drink. What do you want, Deo?”

  I can’t believe how easy it is. The photos seem so real, you can almost taste the food. Behind the counter men and women in smart uniforms are busy cooking, packing, and selling. People are lining up and giving orders, and moments later they walk out of the shop with brown paper bags of chicken and fries. It’s all so quick, so easy. Philani calls it “fast food,” and I can see why.

  “That will be forty-four rand, Deo. Give me that fifty-rand note—that will be enough. You don’t need the silver change—those coins aren’t worth much. What a bargain, hey? This is much better than tomatoes on the farm.”

  And Philani is right. The food is delicious. I’ve never tasted anything so good. Innocent grins as he licks his fingers.

  “It’s like the sign says, finger-licking good. Can I have some more, Deo?”

  And I buy three more boxes of streetwise chicken, the best meal I have ever had.

  After hours and hours on the road, my stomach full and my eyes tired from seeing so much, I fall asleep in the taxi. Innocent leans against the window and snores quietly, his Bix-box lying loosely in his lap. I rest my head against his shoulder, and soon I am dreaming.

  I wake up only for a moment as the taxi goes over a bump in the road, and I see a sign flash by: WARMBATHS 10 KM.

  Warmbaths. Sounds like a nice place. I wouldn’t mind a warm bath. As I start to drift off to sleep again, I overhear the people behind me talking quietly.

  “We can’t do business with these people, because today he calls himself Abdul, and tomorrow he is Muhammed.”

  “I know what you mean. The Somalis are Arabs and Muslims, and those countries have lots of money, and they help only their countrymen.”

  “While our own country does nothing to help us.”

  “They should put those Somalis in camps and send them back.”

  “These refugees are causing too much trouble.”

  “Too much trouble.”

  My dreams take over, and I am far away again.

  I wake up to shiny, tall glass buildings piercing the sky.

  And lights—a blinking, dazzling, never-ending stream of lights—so many lights it makes my head dizzy. We tumble out of the taxi and look around at the night, which is almost as bright as day. Thick, big buildings have eaten up all the trees and grass, and the thousands of people are talking, shouting, moving in every direction.

  Jozi.

  I don’t know where to look first. The city is all around me, noisy, sparkling, and overwhelming. Next to the Nelson Mandela Bridge there is a giant soccer ball—the largest soccer ball I have ever seen.

  “What’s that?” I ask Philani.

  “You don’t know about the soccer World Cup? All the nations of the world will come here to play.”

  Of course I knew about the World Cup, but not that it was happening here, in South Africa!

  Innocent is holding my hand tightly and has the index finger of his left hand pressed into his ear.

  “There is a storm coming, Deo,” he says, shaking his head as if there is an insect crawling around inside. “There’s a storm coming. I can feel it.”

  Innocent does this sometimes. He feels the weather change. He can tell us about a storm days before it arrives. Grandpa Longdrop said that Innocent was our own weather satellite, and he was more trustworthy than any radio weather reports. He walks around now with his fingers in his ears, looking miserable.

  “Stay close to me,” I whisper to him. “Philani will take us to his home. Don’t worry about the storm.”

  There is something wrong with Philani. He is irritated. He is not so talkative now and glances back at us as we follow him to the next taxi stand.

  “We need to take another taxi to Alexandra,” he says, holding his hand out for more money. I am too tired to ask any questions, so I hand him some notes.

  We climb into another taxi. Now no one talks as we speed through the night. This driver seems to be in a great hurry. He doesn’t stop
at the red lights, and the other passengers in our taxi shout at him and he shouts back. He blasts the horn and flashes his lights at cars in his way. He seems angry and overtakes on corners. I close my eyes, not wanting to see the big truck crash into us. The passengers shout at him. He doesn’t answer them but just goes faster.

  Innocent is in the back corner with his eyes closed and both his fingers pressed into his ears.

  “What’s wrong with your brother?” asks Philani when we get out of the taxi and walk along the dark streets of Alexandra.

  “Nothing. I think he’s a little scared. He’ll be okay,” I say, staring at the crush of shacks and huts, packed closely to one another. We have left the road and walk down narrow alleyways, following Philani through the heart of this township called Alexandra. He walks fast. Every so often he turns around to check that we are still following him.

  A gunshot makes me jump. Screams and angry voices follow.

  “Come on,” says Philani, and he starts running. It’s hard to keep up. It’s almost like he’s running away from us. The doors of the shacks are closed; curious faces appear in the windows.

  Philani is more than irritated. He is upset, almost angry. He stops before a small shack stuffed between two other huts at the end of a pathway. Inside is light, and people are moving about. He looks at us nervously and then looks back at the hut.

  “Wait here,” he commands and calls to someone. The door is opened by a man who stares briefly at Philani before slapping him across the face. It happens so suddenly that I’m not even sure I saw it. Philani is crying now, holding his cheek and backing away. He points to us and talks in a rush of a language I do not understand. The man comes out of the house to glare at us.

  This is not going well. Innocent slips behind me and searches for my hand. The man looks very unhappy. I don’t like the look of him at all.

  “Come here,” he says, and I step forward. Will he slap me too?

  “Philani says you paid for him to come back from Musina. Is that right?”