Читать книгу To Survive and Succeed - Mkhuseli Jack - Страница 6

Uprooted

The sun was beginning to set when the last things were added to the pile on the borrowed wooden wagon. One of the local men, helped by my older brothers, inspanned six oxen – I think they were ours – and we climbed up, settling ourselves as best we could. We were ready to leave. The man driving the oxen cracked his whip, the wheels creaked and the people who’d helped us pack stood in a group and waved as we drew away. I looked back at our little brick house with its chimney built on one side. It was empty and lifeless and the cold dry ash from fireplace outside, where my mother always cooked our food in a three-legged pot, was blowing around in little drifts.

Soon I was hungry and thirsty but I didn’t tell my mother. There’d been no time for cooking and I could see by the way she was looking straight ahead, without turning back, that her heart was sore. As we bumped along on the gravel road, I was distracted by the oxen bellowing now and then, complaining as they strained to pull harder when the driver cracked his whip. I was also trying to hear what the older boys were saying as they walked alongside the wagon.

As darkness fell we crossed the old Gamtoos River bridge. I knew the smell of the muddy river because we often played on its banks. I couldn’t tell how long we’d been moving and I didn’t dare ask when we would get to my uncle’s home. Instead, I listened to the night sounds: the frogs were the loudest. I was tired but my curiosity wouldn’t let me fall asleep – besides, I had to be careful not to fall off my perch. It was dark, but I was not afraid. I was with my family and we were going to my Uncle Oudenks. I even began to wonder if we might land up in a place where we would have a better life.

Although the journey to Mondplaas was only about eight kilometres, the wagon was slow and it was very late when we arrived at our uncle’s house. It was exciting for me and the other children. About four of our cousins were younger than me and two were the same ages as two of my older brothers, and with the two families together the house was overflowing. I overheard my uncle tell my mother that we should stay indoors the next day until he had come up with a plan of how to approach his boss. He was tense and nervous about a possible negative reaction from the farmer. My mother told the older children to keep us indoors until matters had been resolved.

It was hard to stay inside when our cousins were outside. I kept getting up and peering through the window – I could see as far as the lucerne fields. At night, when everyone was home, we smaller ones had to pile into a corner so that the adults didn’t fall over us. There were two sleeping rooms, which were filled with bodies once each person had found a space to lie down. My little brother and I shared a bed with our mom. The two girls slept on the floor on amakhuko (grass mats) and all the big boys slept in the space used as a family room and kitchen.

Two of our cousins had the same names as my brothers: Bonakele and Galelekile. The two Galelekiles were born in the same year and had been close friends from childhood. My brother Bonakele, who was twenty by then, was the oldest. The younger Bonakele was two years younger than me. We had to get used to having double Bonakeles and Galelekiles in such a confined space!

My uncle, aunt and their children tried their best to make it seem as if everything was normal, but as time went by I felt that things were getting worse. Food in the house was running out. Generous neighbours started to contribute food for every meal. We never went to bed without food in our tummies, but how this was managed I still do not know. My uncle was the kindest of all the children of Kholisile. His wife, our Aunt Nowise, was the daughter of a devout lay preacher of the Ethiopian Church and she too was the kindest of souls.

Clearly our numbers in the small house had to be reduced, but no solution to our homelessness was being devised. Sorting it out would have to be achieved by some farmer employing my mother or any of her older sons. Should that happen we would be lucky to get a place we might call home but a resolution seemed a million miles away. Days, weeks and months rolled by and my uncle’s employer became increasingly suspicious and started asking questions about the increase in numbers at my uncle’s homestead. It was obvious that my uncle was fast running out of plausible stories to explain this population explosion.

Finally, my uncle ran out of excuses, and was forced to speak to the farmer, who was also coming under pressure from other farmers who complained about their fears of thieving and other kinds of mlungu paranoia. My mother and uncle then came up with a plan to send three of the older children to my grandpa’s place in Oyster Bay. This was an attempt to appease the farmer, along with an appeal to allow the smaller children to stay with their mother. My uncle pleaded with the farmer to accept the arrangement, at least until suitable accommodation was found for us. For some reason the farmer yielded, but not without serious threats of the consequences if he did not ‘sort out this mess’.

We could stay – as long as we hurried up and found somewhere else to go, the farmer told Uncle Oudenks. We spilled out of the house, playing, running, walking freely outdoors, except anywhere near the farmer’s house, which was totally, utterly forbidden. My cousins and I ran around pushing old tyres or bicycle wheels, skilfully keeping them on track with our hands. Sometimes we played games such as ugqabs – skipping while two others turned the rope – and, a favourite, upuca, using small stones and a circle drawn in the dust. Chores immediately kicked in too and we quickly got used to going to collect water and firewood for the house.

Life started to feel normal again, except for those scary times when my chest closed up and I could hardly breathe. I had developed asthma. I desperately wanted to walk at the pace of the other boys, to play like other children and do everything my peers were doing, despite my clenched lungs. But if I walked fast or uphill, I would find myself gasping for breath. I begged not to be left behind, although sometimes I must have been irritating with my loud hacking cough.

Although they were twelve and fourteen years old respectively, two of my siblings started attending a farm school. Despite their advanced ages, they began in Sub A, known today as Grade 1, which is about seven grades below where they would be in today’s education system.

Our lives were improving. My mother was able to sell some of the animals being cared for by relatives and friends on other farms. She could also work in the potato fields of local farmers and earn a small wage to buy basic necessities, such as the weighty samp packed in brown paper, salt, soap, sugar, and the cheapest available version of coffee.

The popular food at my uncle’s house was roosterkoek, umphokoqo namasi (crumbled mealie meal and sour milk), inkobe (slow-cooked samp) and umcabosi (plums from the ngwenya or wild ash tree). For the first time in our lives, we didn’t have home-grown vegetables and meat. As this was a dairy farm, there was no space for labourers to grow vegetables to feed themselves and the number of livestock my uncle could keep was strictly limited. The only time we had meat was if one of the farmer’s cows died – even then, we would get only some of the meat, depending on the farmer’s mood. We ate meat when there was a traditional party, wedding, or the umgidi party thrown for young men, the amakrwala, returning from the bush after having undergone the sacred circumcision ritual.

In the spring of 1964 I overheard a conversation between my uncle, aunt and my mother. We were going to be relocated again, this time to Oyster Bay. I pretended to be fast asleep as my uncle spoke about what was going to happen. Apparently my grandfather had asked his employer for permission for us to live at his place. The farm owner was said to be a kind man and was willing to accommodate us until we found a place of our own. I told my sister what I had heard and she told the others. After discovering that I was the source of the leak, my mother gave me a severe scolding.

On the Saturday we were due to leave my uncle’s house in Mondplaas one of my uncle’s neighbours was hosting umsebenzi, a feast, at his house. I can’t remember what the occasion was, but there was plenty of food, meat and umqombothi, African beer. There was a wonderful atmosphere – everybody seemed to be happy. It was so different from that evening not long before when we’d left our home. This time, a big snub-nosed truck – a Thames Trader – arrived from Oyster Bay to fetch us, driven by one of my uncles, Lungile. The truck belonged to his employer, a Mrs Phoebe van Tonder, who had lent it to him. She and her husband Karel, who was wheelchair-bound after an airplane crash, founded Oyster Bay, which they developed into a holiday resort. One of my brothers, who had gone to find work in Oyster Bay to reduce the number of people staying in our Uncle Oudenks’s house, came with my uncle to fetch us. We were delighted to see him again.

My uncle and brother joined the celebration, where everyone was eating, singing, dancing and drinking. Suddenly, there was a loud bang: the truck had crashed into the house, knocking out a few bricks. There was a big dent in the front of the truck and my brother was sitting behind the steering wheel. A trail of older men came out of the kraal to see what was happening and spoke sternly to my brother, who apologised. I thought the whole thing was embarrassing and, most of all, I was scared that my brother, who had just come back into our lives, was going to be arrested. Some of the most traditional Xhosa men concluded that this was a sign that my brother’s time to go the bush had arrived, arguing that this antic showed that it was long overdue.

Fortunately, although the truck looked a little different from when it arrived, there was no mechanical damage and at sunset we loaded it up with all our possessions. It was a big truck, the kind that was used to transport crushed stone and building sand. This time I couldn’t wait to get moving: it would be my first trip in an engine-driven vehicle. The light was fading as we pulled away from Mondplaas.

The journey was much faster than our wagon trip and I found this exciting. We approached Humansdorp in the dark and for the first time I saw the bright lights of a ‘city’. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. As we rumbled through the centre of Humansdorp my brother who’d been living in Oyster Bay explained to us that those lights were generated by something called electricity. I would have liked more time to look at those lights but soon we were back on a gravel road for the last sixteen kilometres to Oyster Bay.