Twenty Chickens for a Saddle

by Robyn Scott

  At last we had something to rival swimming with crocodiles. “We tracked lions,” we told Louis John junior and Riette. “They’re scared of people,” we then assured them coolly. And for the first time the two tough, bushwise children looked genuinely impressed.

  Asked about the Bothas’ blast-the-water-before-swimming technique, Jean shook his head. “Jirre, they’re crazy.”

  We nodded, shaking our heads too, enjoying for once not being the idiot new arrivals.

  Jean said, “They might get bilharzia.”

  “Huh?”

  “You are joking,” said Mum.

  “Ag, no, Linda, I got so sick with bilharzia.”

  We gazed at him in wonder. Bilharzia is a parasitic disease humans can catch by swimming in stagnant or slow-flowing water. It can be very debilitating, but it’s generally curable and rarely lethal – nothing to a crocodile.

  Faced with five disbelieving smirks, Jean told us gravely about one now famous occasion when he’d been having drinks with Roy Young, the nearby crocodile farmer. They were sitting outside Roy’s house on the banks of the Limpopo, which a few years before had flooded, sweeping all Roy’s biggest breeding stock from their fenced concrete pools back into the river.

  In the small river pool in front of them, crocodiles floated everywhere. Gazing at the eyes, nostrils, and slowly swishing bodies, Roy had said, “I’ll give you a million bucks to swim across.”

  Jean said, “I told him, ‘Do you think I’m crazy? I don’t want to get bilharzia ever again’.”

  We laughed once more, and Jean looked offended. You hardly ever hear of people being eaten by crocodiles, he explained. Except for that one time, when old Hendrik Swart shot and cut open a croc and found a red shoe inside. “But maybe I’m just different,” he conceded. “Lots of other okes swim in the river here. Especially after parties.” He paused, smiling thoughtfully. Then he said, “Did Leon de Wit ever tell you what he saw on the news?”

  “No.”

  Jean chuckled.

  Leon was a friend of Jean’s who lived a few? farms up the river. Now in his late thirties, Leon was a busy farmer, with a respectable wife who would never permit drunken river pranks. In the evenings, he drank slowly and moderately on his balcony overlooking the river, and afterwards, he went back inside to bed.

  In the Tuli Block, televisions could pick up South African stations, and Leon, like almost everyone else, watched the nightly SABC news bulletin.

  Mystery crocodile sighted In dam.

  Leon blinked as he listened to the report on the unexplained sighting of a single large crocodile in a small dam a few hundred kilometres from the capital, Pretoria. There had been no crocs in the area for years. No one could understand how it got there.

  After the news, Leon picked up the phone and called one of his old drinking mates. His memory confirmed, he sat back and sighed.

  Jirre!

  Years ago, he and several others had been drinking beside the Limpopo and had decided it would be fun to go croc hunting. They did, and caught a young crocodile, which they hauled onto the bank. They put it in a sack, tossed it in the back of Leon’s bak-kie, which stood beside the river, and carried on partying.

  First thing in the morning Leon departed, as planned, for Pretoria, not noticing the immobile sack when he set off to the border post. No one at the border post noticed either. A few hours later, stopping for a pee on the side of the road, he first saw the sack, now thrashing, the crocodile having warmed up in the morning sun in the back of his bakkie. As he could hardly arrive in the capital city with a crocodile, he stopped at the nearest dam, disposed of the disgruntled creature, and forgot all about it, until the now enormous crocodile appeared on South African TV nearly a decade later.

  ♦

  Around the same time that Leon de Wit’s croc resurfaced, an English TV crew appeared in the Tuli Block, following another sinister sighting:

  Fugitive lord seen in Botswana’s Tuli Block. Gambling with the local residents.

  For hours, the crew drove up and down the Tuli Block road, finding only abandoned old farmsteads and the homes of Afrikaans farmers. “Have you seen this man?” they asked again and again, displaying a constructed picture of what the elderly lord would probably look like. “You know, the famous English Lord Lucan, who killed his children’s nanny.”

  Each time, shaking heads. No one had heard of the story. No one had seen him. Anyway, the only Englishmen nearby were the new doctor from Selebi-Phikwe – no, much too young – and Roy Young, the crocodile farmer.

  Roy Young had, however, lived in the area for years. And no, he didn’t resemble the picture. Nevertheless, desperate for any lead, the frustrated posse set off towards the Youngs’ farm, which lay about twenty kilometres to the north of us. En route, their car broke down, and they had to spend a night of terror in the bush, surrounded by unfamiliar barks and cries.

  The next day, Charlotte Young, Roy’s wife, greeted the exhausted, dishevelled team. To looks of dismay, she told the visitors Roy was not in. Too tired now to beat around the bush, they thrust the picture towards her and demanded, “Is this man your husband?”

  “No, definitely not,” said Charlotte.

  And thus, with one old crocodile and one crocodile farmer, ended the Tuli Block’s unsung and unfulfilled short-lived claims to fame.

  While an escaped croc from the Tuli Block might thrive unnoticed for years, as any of the locals could have told the British TV crew, an escaped English lord wouldn’t have stood the slightest chance of going underground in the Tuli Block.

  In the Tuli Block, outsiders, especially English outsiders, did not blend in.

  Even Jean, an Afrikaner, stood out: his mother tongue, a love of hunting, and an insatiable appetite for meat aside, his background made him almost as conspicuous in the Tuli Block as we were.

  It had been Jean’s grandfather, too, a man Jean spoke of with misty-eyed affection, who first established the South African family’s links with Botswana.

  Jean Baptist van Riet had bought the farm just a few years before Grandpa Ivor had left Johannesburg to escape his divorce and to begin a new life in Botswana. For van Reit, Botswana was an escape route too, but a preemptive one only. He had remained at his home in the Free State – one of South Africa’s traditionally more conservative provinces – where he became deputy president of the newly formed Liberal Party. If things got too dangerous for him and his family under the apartheid regime, they would use the Botswana farm as a bolt-hole. As it was, though, the Liberal Party disbanded in the late 1960s, when the South African government outlawed mixed-race political parties, and van Riet stayed in South Africa, the Tuli land standing empty until the younger Jean arrived, just a few years before us.

  Now in his nineties, the sprightly gentleman still drove up to the Tuli Block with Jean’s parents. He loved the bush and strode around the land with his grandson, dispensing advice on farming, which had been his livelihood, and the other outlet for his once notorious politics.

  On one of their visits, the four van Riets drove across to our farm, laden with gifts of homemade jam, chutneys, and rusks from their Free State farm, and we sat outside drinking pots oirooiboj tea while Mum and Dad plied Jean senior with questions.

  Eyes twinkling, the old Jean told us delightedly how the profit-sharing agreement with his black workers had in the 1960s caused fury amongst local Free State farmers – only to be surpassed when he then built proper houses with running water and installed flush loos for his labourers.

  “They called me,” he said, shaking his head and chuckling, “the man who even builds kakhuisies for his kaffirs.”

  Dad said, “These guys here still wouldn’t like it.”

  Mum sighed. “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!”

  Our staff did not have flush toilets, as we did in the house. But their long-drop toilets were well built, and Dad had erected a large prefabricated building with an emergency clinic at one end, and the rest divided into bed
rooms, a lounge with a television, two bathrooms, and a kitchen. It was not grand. But over the months, when local farmers had come to the clinic, many had been shocked by Dad’s explanation that the rest of the building ‘was for his staff.

  Jirrel

  In the Tuli Block most black workers lived in ramshackle mud huts and tiny buildings, sharing bedrooms and collecting water from a communal outside tap. Pay was poor too. When we first went to the Tuli Block Farmers’ Association meetings – held under the grand thatched gazebo on the lawns of the chairman’s house – pointed remarks were made about how newcomers mustn’t offer higher wages. Or else all Tuli Block farmers would have to pay the price.

  Livelihoods might be ruined!

  Which was not to suggest that many of the Tuli Block farmers were poor. Most had hundreds of head of cattle and owned large farms. Like Jean’s family, many also owned a farm on the South African side of the river, directly opposite their Tuli Block farm.

  In some cases, this was out of very different motives to the van Riets’: rumour had it that many a Tuli Block family fortune had been made on the back of the once rife diamond and cattle smuggling route across the Limpopo. By the 1990s, however, the police had become more vigilant, and smuggling was a dying industry. One old smuggler turned this to his advantage. Bragging to a neighbour, he explained that by moving his watermelons across the Limpopo and selling them in South Africa, he’d almost doubled his profits. It would be crazy not to. All one had to do was pick the right time and date – about which he also was happy to advise.

  Not at all. We’re neighbours, after all.

  On the chosen night, the would-be smuggler loaded up his bakkie-with watermelons and drove down to the Limpopo. Around the river, all was still and quiet, and his workers began ferrying the melons across.

  Suddenly there was sweeping flashlight and shouting. Policemen jumped out of the undergrowth and took the farmer off to jail, where he spent the night. Later, the neighbour expressed his utmost shock and sympathy. Terrible, but these things happen to the best of us.

  Mostly, however, the web of feuds between old Tuli Block families was spun and reinforced by legitimate business. Like the cabbage wars, which began not long after we arrived, when one successful cabbage farmer started selling all cabbages to a busy vegetable shop in the town of Palapye. Not more than a month had passed before his rival began selling discounted cabbages from his truck, parked directly outside the vegetable shop.

  The list went on: in the Tuli Block, it seemed, everyone had something against almost everyone else. Although, at the Farmers’ Association meetings, this was sometimes hard to believe. Come a discussion on wages, or some such generally supported cause, and all fights would be put aside. Standing up in the semicircle of chairs, shaking his fist as he spoke, a farmer would be cheered by his bitterest rivals, all united in adversity.

  Apart from the occasional impassioned rant, these gatherings were tedious: one khaki-clad farmer after the next complaining – generally in poor English – about exactly the same thing as the speaker before. Wages too high, government assistance too low, roads not maintained…

  Mostly, during the discussions, Lulu, Damien, and I read books on the lawns or climbed the huge trees in the beautiful gardens of the chairman’s house. Sometimes we spoke a little to the Afrikaans children, including once a boy called Stefaans who seemed nice and liked horses. He was a year older than me. I asked him what he wanted to be.

  “I’ve always wanted to be a vet,” I explained.

  “I’ve always wanted to be a butcher,” he said cheerfully.

  After the meetings, the men stood around the braai, drinking beer and turning slabs of steak and coils of thick boereword sausage that dripped sizzling fat onto the coals. The women attended to the other food. Clustered around tables on the lawns of this little oasis in the middle of the bush, the farmers’ wives were an amazing spectacle: gleaming with gold jewellery, high-heeled shoes, nail polish, and extravagant outfits more suited to a wedding. Pink and orange featured strongly, often together. Cheeks glowed with bright blusher. Lipstick was frequently reapplied. Many sported implausibly coloured hair, permed or blow-dried into a state of shock.

  Driving home after our first meeting, Mum said, “The tan-nuj must think I’m a terrible wife. Don’t dress up for you. Don’t feed you.”

  On the tables, the shiny, coiffed women had laid out white bread rolls, coleslaw drenched in sweet mayonnaise, and bean salads in a thick sugary sauce. Mum’s bright mixed salad, dressed with an olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette, had hardly been touched. Dad had finished it when he returned for second helpings, surrounded by women as he ladled food onto his plate. All the Afrikaans women served their husbands, and they’d stared from Mum to Dad with undisguised disapproval.

  “But just so you know, Keith,” added Mum, “not over my dead body will I ever serve you from a buffet.”

  “Fine,” said Dad, “but you must then accept that you’ll never get to see me in khaki shorts three sizes too small.”

  In the backseat, Lulu, Damien, and I howled in disgust.

  “Jirre, Keith,” said Mum, laughing. “On second thought, it might just be worth serving you for that spectacle.”

  After several meetings, during which Dad frequently spoke out about mostly unchallenged motions, it became clear that he was the only person really prepared to stand up to the powerful incumbent chairman. A group of disillusioned farmers took Dad aside, pointed this out, and asked him to stand for the position in the next general meeting. Dad said, “No, thanks. I don’t want to get involved in your politics.”

  To us Dad said, “I’m not farming. And for what I want to do with this place, I don’t need them.” Dad was rehabilitating: for our once-overgrazed farm, he had grand plans to clear away invading thorn scrub, restore savanna grasses, stop soil erosion, and plant more indigenous trees. And for this, the only thing Dad needed was water – the price of which unexpectedly turned out to be not his own involvement in local affairs, but his children’s.

  ∨ Twenty Chickens for a Saddle ∧

  Twenty-One

  Good Neighbours

  Dad leaned back in his chair and eyed us expectantly. “Well?”

  Damien said, “Okay. I’ll go if you want.”

  “Me too,” said Lulu.

  “Great,” said Dad. “What about you, Robbie?”

  I stared out of the window at the bird feeder, not trusting myself to look at Dad. We’d been in the Tuli Block nearly six months. Life on the farm, until now, had been perfect.

  “It’s illegal,” I snapped. I turned to Mum. “Isn’t it?”

  “Not exactly,” said Mum. “I have other reservations, though.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, I think they should ask black children.”

  “And I agree with Mum,” said Dad, “but that’s never going to happen in Pikfontein. The point is, we need good neighbours. And this is an easy way to help Fourie.”

  “Look it’s not ideal,” said Mum, “but it’s a one-off, and it’ll be a good cultural experience. Come on,” she added, smiling, “you’ll probably find you quite enjoy it.”

  “I know I’ll hate it.”

  “Then it’ll be character building,” said Dad.

  “My character’s fine,” I snapped.

  “Clearly not, Robbie.”

  I glared at Dad. Dad smiled back at me.

  Lulu and Damien looked eagerly from Dad to me. Mum sighed. She was the one who had to broker peace after the regular furious arguments between Dad and me – usually over much smaller things than this.

  “I can’t believe,” I fumed, “that you’re going to do this to your own children.” I turned to Lulu and Damien. “And I can’t believe either that you two are just letting him.”

  “Chill, Rob,” said Damien. “What’s the big problem?”

  “The principle,” I yelled, feeling my face going red. “We’re being bartered. By our parents. For water. Doesn’t that bother
you?”

  “Listen, Robbie,” interrupted Dad. “I’m not making you do anything. I’m asking you for a favour. And before you refuse, just remember that in life we all have to do things we don’t like’.”

  “You’ve just said I don’t have to do this,” I spluttered.

  “It’s only two days. I go to my clinics for three days. Every week.”

  I tried and failed to think of something to say. With this, Dad had me. I gaped, and he smiled. I jumped up and ran towards the house. “Think about it,” he called after me.

  But he knew, as well as I did, that I was defeated.

  Since leaving Selebi, Dad had compressed his working week, his days now longer than ever. He’d also inherited more village clinics – the last of Dr. Meyer’s old practices, which had, at the time of his death, been taken over by another flying doctor, Dr. Odendaal. Until, in 1992, in a tragic echo of the past, Dr. Odendaal had crashed in bad weather too, killing himself and his pregnant wife. Now in just three days, Dad drove over a thousand kilometres, to six different villages – Tonota, Mach-aneng, Tsetsebjwe, Bobonong, Sefophe, and Sherwood – to see up to three hundred patients. For three days, we hardly saw him. We all felt terrible about the draining work and, come Thursday, relief that for the next four days Dad would be free to work on the farm, doing the ambitious, costly rehabilitation projects that he so loved, and which – together with his responsibilities to us – kept him chained to his lucrative practices.

  It was several months since we’d moved in. The house was finished, and, as I sat on my bed, torn by guilt and fury, I looked out of my window onto the early stages of Dad’s gargantuan bush-clearing project, which he’d begun directly in front of the house.

  The owner before us had run too many cattle on too little land, and much of the work involved removing the scrubby thorn-bushes that had invaded the overgrazed soils. For this, Dad had hired a number of casual workers, who under his direction were chopping down thousands of bushes, wrenching out the bigger ones with a chain tied to the old Land Cruiser.