A Rock and a Hard Place

by George Zelt PhD

  As I would later learn, 80 percent of the town’s population were honey-skinned Khoikhoi, 15 were percent white Afrikaner, and the rest were blacks of various origin. Although integrated shopping and living was prohibited, all residents walked the common streets together. They diplomatically subscribed to the apartheid system . . . until the sun went down. I discovered nature’s inescapable mixing force, cross-boundary sex, occurred as often as obscurity took place. Heavily tinted car windows assisted. The night was slippery with foxes chasing young hens.

  A day after I arrived I sat having a sundowner Castle beer on the hotel’s veranda. An older man next to me mentioned he was a former hunter from Rhodesia. That meant he was a professional big-game hunter who pursued his occupation in Africa. Most of them come from Europe or North America. He revealed finding gold. “It happened when I was tracking a rogue elephant that had trampled people.”

  Rhodesia, gold, a rogue elephant . . . ? I stopped breathing for a moment. Could that be? He did say “gold”? As I sat openmouthed, the old man showed me the nugget he picked up in a stream as he hurriedly tracked the fast-fleeing elephant. As a geologist, I knew pieces of gold could be found in streams, having been washed down gradient from a larger parent deposit. My imagination followed the bouncing nugget downstream as he spoke.

  Two long years later, my colleagues and I, following the old man’s pencil-drawn map, drove thousands of miles, crossing the Kalahari Desert, and entered the civil war in Rhodesia in search of the old hunter’s gold stream. This was Africa in the seventies and me in my twenties, when such untamed dreams were possible.

  However, my immediate task was to talk to people and poke around, looking for Precambrian rocks. In other words, to get to know the area I was to study.

  Chapter 3

  God Gave Us This Land

  Since I’d arrived, I’d heard the Afrikaners were called Voortrekkers and Boers. Some rather derogatorily nicknamed these men “rock spiders.” It was essential to learn more, as I would live among them for years and I couldn’t collect the rocks I wanted without going on their land. Many, as it turned out, were headstrong, opinionated, sunburned, honorable farmers—and that often led to unusual incidents.

  The morning heat had not yet arrived as I drove bouncing westward on a rough sand and gravel road to where I believed an isolated farmhouse was located. I slowed as a rock dassie—a chubby rodent similar to a woodchuck—scurried across the track on his way to gray rocks infrequently protruding like pimples from the sands. There was nothing else around. Intending to ask the farmer’s permission to go on his land, I was surprised to see a crowd of people standing around the two- or three-roomed concrete, weather-beaten farmhouse. Something had happened. Instinctively, I felt I should not be there. However, it would probably make it worse if I now turned around to leave. I had been seen. I remembered a few days prior when a young farmer had told me to leave his land and thrown a rock at my feet.

  I parked near the house and asked a roughly dressed man wearing a broad-brimmed, sweat-stained hat for permission to go on the land. He disappeared inside and then came back, saying I would have to ask the owner. He gestured toward the door. “My father is inside on his deathbed.”

  I was shocked. “His deathbed? Oh . . . I can’t disturb him!”

  “He wants to know who’s on his land,” he replied, staring at me.

  I went inside—everyone there was watching me—and approached an old, tired-looking man lying in a metal poster bed.

  “I’m a student,” I whispered. “I study rocks.”

  He looked at me for several moments.

  “What do you do with rocks?”

  “Look at them with a hand lens after I break off their weathered outer exterior to see a fresh surface,” I said after a moment of thought. “That helps me name them. Sometimes I sprinkle a little dilute hydrochloric acid on the light-colored ones. If they effervesce, it means they contain carbonate. If my compass goes in shaky circles, I know the rocks are magnetic. If they are important, I hit them with a fourteen-pound sledgehammer and take a piece with me. I’m new here, but after a while I will develop a feeling for the land I study; geologists do that. They become part of it. The rocks silently talk to us.”

  He stared at me, then smiled. “Soon I will be part of the land. I’ve talked to it many times.” He gathered his strength and continued. “Leave the land as you found it.”

  “I will, sir.”

  “I hope your conversations go well.” Then he turned to his son and said, “Let the student look and take rocks.”

  I thanked the farmer then said to his son I would come back in a few days. It was an Afrikaner farm: The land was the only thing there was. I was glad the conversation had gone well. When I returned, I saw the overturned sandy soil he lay under, not far from his now quiet and empty home. A simple concrete tombstone rose up awkwardly. I stood next to it. A few football-sized Precambrian rocks had been inadvertently placed around the base of the chicken wire fence surrounding it along with other rocks. They were what I was looking for. I figured he wouldn’t mind if I took them.

  Who were these Afrikaners? I wondered as I drove off. Of predominantly Dutch origin, in the 1800s they had singled themselves out from the Dutch and British officials who ran the Cape area by naming themselves Afrikaners. Growing tired of being taxed and lectured to by the officials during those early settlement days, they decided to move farther inland, and in doing so further defined who they were. Using oxen and covered wagons, these white Afrikaner men, women, and children trekked from the Cape into the remote north and northeast interior of southern Africa. There, in the flat, open, empty, dry ranges, they claimed huge plots of land. Families multiplied like mosquitoes by having a dozen or more children. When they lined up for a photograph in age-order, they looked like the edge of a steep stairway. They saw apartheid as the will of God.

  The Afrikaners’ land was passed down from father to son, and their very survival depended on it. “God gave us this land,” they claimed. “It says so in the Bible.” They cultivated the concept in church each Sunday as they made themselves feel superior and safe. Their proud and determined nature stood out on their unbending faces; they believed God would take care of them. In the rural places where they lived, anyone who disagreed with their philosophy was basically shunned. As long as there were no external winds to blow on their apartheid cloud, it all held together.

  I continued westward in my elongated field area to within thirty miles of the Atlantic coast and reached a point where a very steep, rocky-faced escarpment presented itself. Below that eight-story edge, the barren coastal region began; and within it, miles farther ahead, the bone-dry Swartlintjies riverbed appeared. I would look for rocks throughout this area.

  * * *

  Standing on the escarpment lip one day toward evening, I stared downward across the forlorn sandy plain. A track headed off into the distance. Heat waves shimmered upward in all directions, curtaining off the horizon. Although it was not termed a desert because rain fell once a year or so, it sure looked like one to me. The sun shrouded me in heat so intense it seemed heavy. I struggled to believe that the cold, distant ocean, far out of sight, actually lay just beyond. Behind me was my Land Rover. Should I face the challenge of descending on the very steep hairpin-turn track, thin and carved from solid rock? Ripping a tire or sliding off seemed all too easy to do.

  An intriguing feature I named “The Oasis” captured my attention. Defined by eight palm trees that stretched sixty feet in the sky like a group of sentinels, it had almost monumental status. I saw a small house with a twenty-five-foot-tall native sweet-thorn tree growing in its courtyard. Palm trees were not indigenous, and I hadn’t seen any others planted in Namaqualand. They were an odd display of grandeur, encouraging my imagination. Whoever planted them was not typical. Yeah, I had to go forward and see what was there.

  Slowly inching down the escarpment in low, whining gear, the box-like Rover’s nose fell and the blue of the sky dis
appeared from my view. I pushed myself with locked arms away from the steering wheel while my notebook and everything on the front seat slid to the floor after the first bounce. Pushing hard on the brake to slow momentum, I looked down directly at the road like an arched-over vulture might look down from a tree, undecided as to what was below. It was scary. Steering is a mental and physical process. Eyes follow the target while arms and hands react based on the knowledge given them. If the two didn’t work together, I would go off the thin track and likely plummet to a rolling death.

  Almost giddy with relief, I reached the plain and the Rover leveled out. Hell, that was a pisser . . .

  Coated with wafting sand, the road ahead appeared golden in the blazing afternoon sun. A yellow sand and gravel track leading to the strange palm-treed Namaqualand. It reminded me of Dorothy following the yellow brick road to Oz. I stopped and urinated on withered blades of something brown. Climbing back in and feeling oddly upright, I changed into less noisy gears.

  A mile or so later and at a right angle to my sandy road, the track leading to the palms and farmhouse appeared.

  It was obvious The Oasis had been vacant for decades; it lay passively decaying. No one watched over it, and there were no tire tracks or signs of life. Next to the palm trees I saw a tall, old-fashioned metal windmill, continuously pumping water into a pool made of odd-shaped, basketball-size rocks cemented together. Some were Precambrian age.

  The pool, about four feet deep, served as an irrigation tank. It provided water via a very clever system of gravity-driven seepage channels leading to the furrowed remains of a once-sizable family garden. I guessed even in the hottest summers the rock tank would be full of water. It had a slight odor of sulfur, as it came from a heated portion of the earth far below the surface, making the water warm.

  Hot and dirty, I climbed into it as darkness fell. Naked and floating on my back under the superb desert air, the sulfur smelled stronger and prickled my body. I could see far into the sky; there were no industrial-produced particulates to obscure vision and make the southern stars appear to twinkle. A parade of enormously bright planets stared back at me. It felt kind of sacred, a privilege in my life I felt thankful to have. I kept hold of that private world, thinking about my travels, thinking about where I would go as my life passed. Reality came back with hunger.

  The floor of the Rover’s back door served as my chuck wagon. I pulled out and screwed a cooking platform to a gas cylinder, then carried it and my food box to the shelter of the pool wall. Tonight I would cook my version of mulligan stew.

  In the absence of fresh meat, it was one of my favorite meals. Normally it consisted of finely chopped onions, peppers, garlic, a pinch of lemon pepper, and a half-cup of wine. To this I added several cans of chunk tuna fish in oil and stewed tomatoes. It was a very nourishing concoction. Tuna and tomatoes retain their strong taste and nutrition better than most canned food. Due to the ample liquid content, it was very satisfying at the end of a dehydrating day, the kind of meal I looked forward to.

  As the stew burbled, its aroma permeated the air.

  The evening wind increased and blew above me, over the top of the rock walls that shielded me as I ate. The windmill blades purred softly while the long, stiff palm leaves rustled and brushed against each other. The machine’s iron frame creaked, making its own rhythmic sounds as it lifted water with its plunger and poured it into the pool. I lay down by the side of the pool and listened to the peaceful orchestra. All alone in the immense empty darkness, challenged only by the crescent moon above, I curled up in my blanket. It was just enough to shield me from the chill of the night.

  I wished I’d had someone with whom I could share moments like this. Yet who would appreciate the isolation and hardships of heat and the uncertainty of being in such an area? No woman I’d met would have endured it. I fell sound asleep without dreaming until morning’s sun and the subtle sounds of lone birds and scurrying things woke me.

  Morning came. I ate the remainder of my stew with great appreciation and followed the short, sandy walk from the palms toward the abandoned farmhouse. Small, square, and slumped, the farmhouse looked discarded and forlorn, huddled near the ground like something crippled and dead. A thick post supported one wall like an old man with his cane. The straw-and-pole roof had partially caved in. The remaining roof varied from windblown bald patches to tattered, bleached straw sticking up like a haystack. The edge of a glassless window showed walls about a foot thick constructed of rocks fitted in place and cemented together the same way the walls of the pool had been. Thick walls and small windows kept the house cool during the day.

  The little two-bedroom farmhouse had one door, which showed no signs of ever having a lock. The owners just walked away, pulling it shut. People of the land did not steal. It creaked as I pushed it open, letting a spotlight of sunlight precede me. A white-faced barn owl fled silently through the tattered roof, its feathered legs dangling beneath it. It left behind small rodent bones, feathers, and scattered balls of excrement.

  Inside, I stood, amazed. Painted on the living room wall was an enormous floor-to-ceiling flower. Although crude, it had large bright red and yellow petals, a long vibrant green stem, and three base leaves. Like an apparition, it dominated the roughly plastered white walls that had become brown with age.

  How unexpected. Afrikaners normally were rather drab people. It seemed whoever lived here had brightened their lives with the image of a short-lived desert flower. The house was empty now of everything else.

  I turned and walked into the courtyard at the front of the house, also defined by rock walls about three feet high, tall enough to prevent young children from climbing over them. The large sweet-thorn tree I’d seen from the top of the escarpment grew in its middle, providing shade. A child’s wooden swing hung from wire leads tied to one of its branches. Over the years, as the tree’s limbs adjusted and grew, the swing had become lopsided. There was no one to straighten it.

  Looking back at the house, I tried to visualize it as it once was when children played. Now it was crumbling, disintegrating. The wooden shutters hung at angles and door paint curled. I searched for graves; there were none. Where were the children now? Had there been enough time for them to grow up? Did they return years later to see where they had lived?

  Regardless of the number of times that I drove that road in the following years, I always stopped at that intriguing oasis. It was like a magnet to me, like magic in the desert. Who would plant palms there? Who would paint a flower?

  Over time I learned that droughts, recorded from the early 1800s and on, overtook this portion of Namaqualand every five to ten years, and some were very severe. I guessed that meant even the once-a-year rain did not arrive. Farmers abandoned their land. Undoubtedly, they resisted until starvation neared. The land was all they had; it was a part of their family. Where do such people go?

  I could taste the fine, dry dust on my tongue as I wondered what had driven the owners away.

  Years after I first visited this farm, a native Khoikhoi family built a shack near the palm trees. They made a garden in the same place as the original owners’ plot and irrigated it from the same windmill and seepage channels. As I looked down from the escarpment, I was shocked to see the palms were gone! They apparently took too much water from the garden, so the new squatters chopped them all down. At some point they must have needed a piece of wire; they took one from the swing, leaving the wooden seat dangling vertically.

  The farm that had stood under the silver sickle of the moon was no more. I never stopped there again.

  Chapter 4

  Blue Lace and Hobbit Holes

  A month or so after I arrived in Springbok, I first visited George Swanson, an American who was a well-known independent Namaqualand prospector. He was middle-aged, of average size with longish gray-brown hair, and his weathered face matched his battered clothes. His ornaments were a large silver belt buckle holding up his pants and, at times, a bolo tie. Living unceremonious
ly, he didn’t hide that he wanted to make money. To that end, his whimsical smile hid a devious, inoffensive nature; he came across as charismatic. He had claims all over Namaqualand and elsewhere and allowed his findings to be exaggerated considerably if it supported a situation he was involved with. Actually, the same was true about most anything he said. I remember asking him once about the location of Precambrian rocks. “Are they worth any money?” he replied, smiling. I remember George as one of the most colorful and decent men I’ve ever met.

  George decided to make his home and work in Springbok; his parents, working at the local mine, had brought him to South Africa originally. America was too boring for his lively character; he would have no inhibiting boss in Springbok. George, a white man, didn’t believe in apartheid; young, pretty Khoikhoi and colored girls drifted in and out of his rural home with their children. It seemed to me a young boy in particular was strikingly similar in looks to George, a point I never mentioned.

  Prospecting for minerals included encouraging others to invest in claims George had discovered. The Swanson home, right on the main road from Cape Town to Springbok, stood surrounded by piles of ore from George’s various claims, and he showed these to prospective buyers with what seemed to me a disproportionate amount of encouraging details. He had a drilling rig that he dragged around and set up at new claims. From the distant roadside he pointed at the rig with its tall tower and told clients work was progressing. I don’t recall seeing much activity, however.

  George had a way of getting businesspeople from Cape Town and elsewhere interested in his out-of-the-way deposits. He would agree to meet with them after being certain they had the most positive information based on some kind of high-level gossip network he developed.