by Robyn Scott
It was slow work, and the bush in front of the house had been cleared fewer than fifty metres deep. Dad was not deterred. One day, as he often excitedly reminded us, the new lawn in front of the house would sweep into an open grassy plain, clear but for a few tall trees, returned to the natural savannah state of the land. And there he would build a watering hole, where we’d watch the game drink just metres from our house.
Nor would he stop there: Dad was going to clear and restore all two thousand acres of Molope Farm. Eventually, from the house, we’d see the trees of the Lotsane River, which by then would be even taller and greener, watered by Dad’s many planned dams that would raise the water table across the farm and provide a lifeline to the trees and animals in the drier years.
With the Lotsane, all this was straightforward: we owned both banks and could build any dam we liked, wherever we liked. Not so though on the Limpopo. Here you needed the cooperation of your South African neighbour, who by law had equal water rights. And herein lay the present problem.
The site for Dad’s new Limpopo dam was opposite Fourie du Plessis’s farm.
A few months earlier Fourie had agreed, in principle, to help with the construction of the wall and share the water equally. We’d all been delighted; this dam would trap ‘water in a particularly barren part of the river that was always the first to dry up when the Limpopo stopped flowing. Worried that Fourie would renege on his offer, whenever he’d paddled across, Dad had repeatedly extended offers of help. “Anything I can do to assist you. Just give me a call’.”
“Is it still okay?” we’d ask anxiously, when Dad returned.
“Fine. Says there’s nothing I can do to help.”
But then, as it turned out, it wasn’t Dad’s help that Fourie needed.
The Afrikaans school in Pikfontein, where Fourie’s nieces studied, was about to lose a teacher. The South African government funded teachers’ salaries based on enrolled student numbers, and the Pikfontein school had fallen just three children short for the upcoming school inspector’s visit.
Lulu, Damien, and I didn’t speak Afrikaans and we’d never met Fourie’s nieces. The prospect of two days in the all-white, all-Afrikaans Pikfontein boarding school ‘was horrible. Compounded by the indignation of being bartered, it was a first-class nightmare.
I ‘was stuck, though. I loved the farm rehabilitation projects, and felt guilty about Dad’s clinics.
Somewhat regretting all the times I’d said as much, I marched back outside and glared at Dad. “I’ll only go if I can do my own work.”
“I’m sure that’ll be fine, Robbie.”
“And not have to go to lessons.”
“That too.”
“And not be disturbed.”
“Anything for the duchess.”
A few days later, Fourie came to the house to discuss strategy. “Jirre,” he said, sipping a beer, “this is very kind of you all. I don’t know what we would have done without your help.”
Mum started to say something. Instead she bit her lip and gave a grim smile. The more she’d thought about it, the more disgusted she’d been that the Pikfontein parents were prepared to import English-speaking children from Botswana, when they could easily find in South Africa three black children who actually spoke Afrikaans. But then they, of course, would have to stay once they were enrolled, whereas we could be promptly returned.
I was just generally disgusted. Fourie caught me scowling at him.
“Ag, Robyn, you’ll enjoy it.” He gave me a patronising smile. “You can play netball with all the other girls. There is a very good netball team.”
“My future,” I replied coldly, “does not lie in netball.”
Fourie stared at me, bewildered.
Mum made a small choking sound and looked away.
Dad said, “Right, then, when do you need these little brutes?”
♦
By the following Monday morning, when Dad prepared to leave for his clinics, I’d calmed down enough to give him a civil kiss good-bye. “Drive carefully, Dad,” I said, as I always said. “Watch out for animals on the road.”
“Will do. Always do. Now go easy on the poor kids in Pikfontein. And remember, Robbie,” he said gravely, “you’ll look back on this, and you almost certainly won’t laugh.”
I smiled defiantly as he drove away. Then I went inside to pack.
At midday, summoned by Mum, we loaded our luggage into the four-by-four.
Each of us took a small bag equipped with clothes and toiletries for two nights. Lulu added her hideous, almost life-sized orangutan soft toy. Damien, who had nothing else, helped me carry outside my large cardboard box, which according to the label once held latex rubber gloves.
The box was for my work, and contained assignments from the correspondence course that Lulu, Damien, and I had been more or less following for about a year. My current module was on the theme of fishing, fisheries, and the environment. In each module, which contained a fortnight’s worth of work, the English, geography, science, and maths components related to the same general theme. Like fishing, most were broad, practical topics – agriculture, architecture, transport – that you were encouraged to develop creatively.
The flexibility and scope for pursing intellectual or practical fancies was the main reason Mum had chosen the course, which was inconveniently run from New Zealand. Even so, from the start, she’d incorrigibly bent the rules. We were meant to work five days a week, but we often still devoted whole days to reading or other projects. When Damien had wanted to spend a day taking apart his motorbike, Mum had happily obliged, with her usual, “You can always catch up later.” During ‘school time’ we built cross-country courses for the horses, paddled on the river, and often just hung around Dad as he oversaw dam building and explained to us basic structural engineering. One school day, in anticipation of the forthcoming winter, we’d helped Dad construct a solar swimming pool heater made out of coiled black plastic pipes between sheets of glass, which looked impressive but turned out to be completely ineffective.
Then, every two weeks, a few days before we were due to post the work, suddenly Mum would become officious. The gaps would be hurriedly finished, the assignments quickly wrapped, and a stressful forty-eight hours would be finally concluded with an exhilarating drive to the Sherwood Ranch Post Office.
If our faraway teachers in New Zealand had wanted to protest, they probably knew it was pointless. With the slow Botswana post, we wouldn’t receive the marked modules for another month. And it took us only the duration of the drive back to the farm to relax and return to the almost-any-excuse-not-to-work-will-do school days.
No excuse, of course, could beat actually going to school. And when we finally sped off towards the border post, Lulu and Damien had nothing with them resembling work.
I had more than I could manage in a week, working day and night. In the cardboard box, in addition to two weeks’ worth of assignments, paper, pens, and a calculator, was our large electronic Olivetti typewriter, which though I hardly used, I felt would lend gravitas to my request to be left alone in the library. Reasoning that everything would be in Afrikaans, I’d also packed the Oxford dictionary and an encyclopedia. For my free time, when I feared being coerced into school activities, I’d searched our bookshelves and thrown in the thickest Dickens and Shakespeare I could find.
I was determined to emerge untouched and unpleased by Pikfontein.
On the two-hour drive there, Lulu and Damien chatted and giggled as they practised our limited Afrikaans vocabulary:
Lekker, ‘good, great’
foetdek, ‘go away’ (rudely)
kak, ‘shit, crap’
donner, ‘to beat up’
morer, ‘to beat up’
blixem, ‘to beat up’
(As a class of words, those relating to beating up are particularly expressive in Afrikaans.)
But even Lulu and Damien fell silent when we drove through the grey pillars of the school and pulled up in f
ront of the long grey concrete buildings. The old blue, white, and orange South African flag hung flaccidly from a pole. A small white sign, rusting in one corner, read PIKFONTEIN SKOOL.
Mum switched off the engine. After a moment’s silence, she said, “You’ve got to admit it’s ironic that this should be your first visit to school after Kopano.”
None of us said anything.
“Two nights will go in a flash,” she added. “And better to start with low expectations…And look at that exquisite jacaranda tree…so beautiful. Such a pity it’s not indigenous. Now-come on, guys. This is such an adventure…”
Inside the headmaster’s office, we were enrolled officially as students. The headmaster was a small, blandly dressed man with very neatly combed hair. I watched his face for signs of guilt as he added our names below the Schmidts and Schoemans. There were none.
“Thank you so much for helping us, Mrs. Scott,” he said. He didn’t thank Lulu, Damien, or me. Instead he turned to us and said, “I’ve explained to the students why you’re here. The whole school is expecting you.”
He left the office and reappeared with a boy of Damien’s age and a girl about my age. “Piet and Deanne will show you your rooms.”
Piet and Deanne smiled shyly. They were both barefoot. Out at the car, Piet saw my box and went to summon another boy to carry it. Damien grabbed his bag, and dashed after Piet without another word.
Mum walked with Lulu and me, smiling reassuringly. As we followed her, Deanne described the buildings, which were all the same ugly grey. She spoke in slow, careful English, smiling apologetically when she made a mistake. “You must teach me,” she said. And I liked her, despite myself.
“The hall, the church, the science rooms, the English rooms, the library…” Then we entered the corridor of a long building. “This is where you will sleep,” she said, turning into the doorway of a gloomy room.
The floor was dark, bare concrete. The room was a four-by-four-metre square. Against each wall was a steel bed with a brightly covered duvet. In the corner stood a tall dresser. There were no pictures.
On one of the beds sat another girl, also about my age.
“This is Annalise,” said Deanne. Annalise smiled shyly at us. Lulu and I smiled back, and shook hands. Then we stood awkwardly by our beds, glaring at Mum.
Mum said, guiltily, “Well, nice to have company.”
Lulu and I said nothing. Mum swallowed.
Then there was a yell, and we all turned to the single small window.
Through the burglar bars we watched as Damien whizzed past on a bicycle, his front wheel high in the air. A group of boys ran after him, cheering.
Mum laughed. “Well, one less to worry about.” Then she said, “I must go or I’ll miss the border,” and we followed her out to the car, where she kissed and hugged us good-bye. “It’ll fly past. And just think of that dam.”
Back in the depressing room, Deanne informed us that we had half an hour before dinner. Then, sitting cross-legged on her bed, she explained the school routine to us: lessons in the mornings and afternoons, then sport, then free time in the evenings, followed by dinner in the big hall. Except on Sundays, when the whole school went to morning church and had the afternoon free.
“We get dressed up for kerk,” she said, hopping off the bed.
From the dresser, she retrieved shiny white high-heeled shoes with bows at the front, and a lacy white dress bedecked with white ribbon bows. She squeezed her bare, tough feet into the shoes and, holding the dress up in front of her shorts and shirt, twirled before us.
“Mine’s pink,” said Annalise. She joined Deanne by the dresser and displayed a similar outfit, which was entirely bright pink, including the high heels.
Lulu and I stared in amazement at these girly miniatures of the tannied at the Tuli Block Farmers’ Association meetings. We hadn’t worn so much lace and ribbons since our short-lived ballet lessons; we’d never worn high heels.
“They’re nice,” we said.
The shoes and dresses replaced, we went to the bathrooms to wash our hands and then followed the two girls along several corridors to the big dining hall.
Already seated at long trestle tables were most of the school’s several hundred students. Everyone looked up curiously and stopped talking. The cook had made a special vegetarian meal for Lulu and me, and ushered by our roommates – followed by hundreds of eyes – we collected plates of overcooked vegetables and sat down beside the two girls.
When the last of the students had hurried to their seats, the headmaster stood up.
“Tonight,” he said, in slow English, “we must all welcome Robyn, Damien, and Lauren Scott, who we are very pleased to have with us.” He paused, and gazed around the room. “They are doing a nice thing for us, and we must all be very nice to them.” He added a few words in Afrikaans and concluded with an English grace.
“Amen.”
“Amen.”
Knives and forks clattered on plates, and the meal began.
Lulu and I ate quietly, hoping the stares would stop. We need not have worried: Damien soon made sure that the entire hall was looking at him. Talking loudly between mouthfuls, he spoke in English, but in a thick Afrikaans accent, adorned with occasional Afrikaans words. Donner! Kakl Lekker! Jirre! YUMIUII Even from two tables away, I could hear most of what he said.
It was his old trick. His methods no more refined, Damien was just as successful a social chameleon here as he’d been as a little boy talking to Batswana in his thick Setswana accent. Every few minutes, the group of boys around him burst out laughing. By dessert, he was inserting fock – fuck with an Afrikaans accent – every few sentences. I tried to give him a warning look, but he avoided my eye. After dinner, he disappeared to the boys’ dormitories before Lulu or I had a chance to get near him.
Later, as we climbed into bed, Deanne said, “Your brother is nice.”
“He’s a windgat,” I said. Windgat meant a reckless show-off, which I knew because Dad often described the young Tuli Block men as wlndgatd.
Deanne laughed. “Ja, but friendly.”
Lights went out at nine o’clock. After a few minutes, the two girls were breathing deep, sleeping breaths.
“You okay, Lu?” I whispered.
“Yip.”
“Don’t snore.”
“You don’t snore either.” She started to giggle.
“Sbhh, man.”
Lulu’s soft giggling was suddenly drowned by a ripping fart sound. Lulu let out a muffled squeal. I bit my sheet, choking back laughter. We lay in strained, wakeful silence; cheeks bursting with held back laughter, faces in our pillows.
After about five minutes, another fart trumpeted through the room.
Someone stirred in one of the two beds.
Seconds later, another fart.
“Ag, did, man, Annalise,” said Deanne. “Shbb!”
“Sorry,” came Annalise’s low sleepy voice.
“Yijdud, Annalise,” giggled Deanne.
Annalise started to giggle too, sheepishly.
Lulu and I joined in, and this time, when the giggling finally subsided, we fell asleep too, bellies aching with burnt custard pudding and laughter.
After breakfast, Lulu and Damien went off to join the day’s lessons for their age groups, which, except for English, were taught in Afrikaans. I dragged my box off to the empty library, where I worked until midday. Over lunch, Damien behaved exactly as before, adding a few newly acquired Afrikaans words. Lulu said she was having fun and introduced her new friend, a little blond girl called Louisa. Louisa hardly spoke any English, but she and Lulu talked happily to each other in their respective languages.
By four o’clock in the afternoon, I’d done more work than I’d ever done in a day before. I was just congratulating myself on a successful escape when Deanne crept inside. “You must come to Religious Education,” she whispered. “The dominee is making a special English lesson for you.”
“I’m still ‘working.”
“He told me to call you’,” said Deanne, looking scared. “Please come.”
Reluctantly, I followed her to a smalls packed room. About forty twelve- and thirteen-year-olds were seated on the floor, forming a semicircle at the feet of a swarthy, moustached man. Lulu and Damien were already there and looked relieved when I walked in. I sat down, as far from the front as possible.
“Welcome! Welcome!” said the dominee. He explained, in a droning voice, that for our benefit he was going to teach his lesson in English. Not being sure what subject would suit everyone, he’d selected the beginning. “The Garden of Eden,” he said, ominously.
The lecture was tedious, mainly about sinfulness, and I only half listened. No one else seemed to be listening either. Whispers swept back and forth across the room, in the opposite direction to the Nominee’s swiveling gaze.
Some of the boys in the class passed around sheets of paper and examined them admiringly. When one was at last handed to the boy beside me, I leaned over to have a look. It was a large, meticulously drawn shotgun, signed ‘Damien Scott’ in the bottom corner. A few minutes later I glimpsed another one – this time a handgun, also signed by Damien.
Then a girl beside me pressed something into my hand, and when the dominee next looked away, I bent down to examine it. It was a folded piece of paper. Inside, in big irregular writing, it read:
Dear Robyn,
Hello. My name is Jannie. I only wanted to tell to you that I think you are very pretty!
I would like to some time get to no you a bit more.
Love,
Jannie.
I looked up, blushing and furious. The girl who’d passed me the note pointed surreptitiously to the corner of the room. A big sandy-haired boy looked guiltily at the floor. The boys around him smirked.
I frowned at them and then scowled at Jannie when he raised his head and smiled at me. I looked away and studied the note, plotting my reply and wondering if he wanted to be a butcher – which, since speaking to Stefaans at the Farmers’ Association meeting, I suspected every Afrikaans boy in the Northern Transvaal of wanting to be.