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Chapter 3

Chapter 3

An old, silent woman had given us the keys to the cottage at its door. The cottage itself was a half-mile from the school. It was roughly halfway between the school and the village, but it was not visible from either because it had, for some obscure reason, been built in a small, unexpected hollow. It was therefore not part of the village which stood on higher ground above it.

Mamorena had literally buried herself in this place, I thought, as the Principal began to reassure me, at great length, that the cottage was safe from flooding as the rain water, if and when there was any rain, ran into the underground streams in the area. I didn’t really believe him, but I knew I would be long gone before the summer rains came and transformed the cottage into an ark or aquarium.

The first room was a combination of a small kitchen at the rear and a general living and dining area in front. An open door in the left-hand wall led into the bedroom where two medium-sized beds sat close together with only twin nightstands separating them. Back in the kitchen space a small gas stove and a couple of wooden chairs were placed on either side of a sink, and a steel table, like those in the Principal’s office, stood against one of the walls. In the front, where I was standing, four more wooden chairs were placed in a large, loose ring around a sturdy wooden table. The whole area was bare of any decoration and the walls had recently been repainted a flawless white – I could still smell the new paint. The whole cottage looked austere and forbidding.

The old woman had left a covered plate of food and a jar of milk on the draining board. The one thing rural folk will never deny you is food. Still, the old woman had not seemed to be the hospitable sort. Maybe it had been T. B. Mokoka’s presence.

Tiro had told me that Mokoka had been around these parts for many years. He had only left to further his studies and to gain experience in his field. In fact, he had been raised close to where we were standing now. But he and the old woman had behaved like complete strangers. I trust my instincts and I knew something wasn’t right. Mokoka, as Principal of the local school, had to know or be known by everybody within fifty miles of this sparsely populated place.

“I am sure you will be all right,” T. B. Mokoka said. “If you need anything, go up to the village and go into the first yard on your left.” He seemed uncertain and scratched his head. “Yes, on your left. Ask for Rre Molefe. He will help you. Better yet, send a message with one of the school children . . .” He picked up the lost thread of his stumbling speech. “Yes, that’s it! Send a child. It will save you time and a long, steep walk.” He was so taken up with this idea that he was breathless. He nodded his head so enthusiastically that I nodded along with him. “Don’t bother them up there and they won’t bother you.”

He looked past me into the bedroom as he said this, and I could have sworn that he was speaking not to me, but reassuring someone he was seeing in there, somebody who scared him.

Watching Mokoka as he nervously surveyed my temporary residence, I thought of my fiancée, Lesego, and what she would think of my current circumstances. Lesego, whose whole world is urban and upwardly driven, would have been appalled.

“You are out of the mainstream,” she likes to say when she is in one of her fault-finding moods.

I don’t know what she means by this. The shallow alien stream transplanted from another continent? Or the stream of people who carry the old ways with them? Whichever she means, I had a feeling that this time she was right.

Lesego Senatla is a beautiful pilot of her own personal mainstream which she navigates with admirable skill as an independent property developer.

For some years she worked in different positions for a large multinational construction company. She knew her bricks and cement, but her last boss had begun making clumsy amorous advances. He had spiced these with hints of unlimited travel to foreign ports of exquisite pleasures. And him being a married man too, with pictures scattered around his office to prove it. Pictures of people Lesego did not know. Although their real-life counterparts sometimes dropped in at the office and stared through her with glassy smiles fixed on their faces. People she often had to buy last-minute birthday cards for.

So she walked away. Part of being free is having the right to walk away from a demeaning and exploitative situation, she often declared

She had gone on to form her own small construction company, and her first major project had been to build additional classrooms at the high school in which I broke chalk and my spirit for birdseed pay.

And here I was, at it again. The only good thing was that I was not stuck here, and this time I could leave whenever I wanted to.

* * *

Principal Mokoka finally left after I got the name of the old woman out of him. He told me that she was old Mme Molefe, the mother of the Molefe I was supposed to seek assistance from.

After Mokoka had left I suddenly felt very tired and set about getting myself into bed. After unsuccessfully trying to use my cellphone to contact the broader world, and Lesego who was in it, I turned off the lights.

That night I dreamt of the food I had left untouched – the milk was achingly sweet but always just out of reach.