Women - The Ultimate Pioneers!

There are many accomplished writers out there; my desk is filled with their work. Ruark, Cloete, Smith and Brett Young, to name but a few; all, through their chosen genre, are linked indomitably to the continent of Africa. Some were/are loners, others were nurtured, driven and held to their literary straights and narrows by the foresight of highly intelligent, though hardly mentioned women, without whose unflagging insight, editing skills and general common sense would have left many of our manly writers floundering. I for one would never have made it this far.

Time for schools and pools!

No more than a week after our arrival I was steered towards what was, by locals, lovingly referred to as Wankie Old School. I supposed it was built before the snottier, Wankie New School on the other side of town. Those of us who were sons of carpenters and miners were financially fenced off, held at arm’s length by the size of our pocket money allowance. Fraternising with girls who were driven to school in Opel Kapitäns and Plymouth Plazas was sort of frowned upon; our girls rode in Zephyrs and Standard Vanguards; Old School girls; girls with jam on their sandwiches. And they all spoke English – not African.

Another week and I ate my first mango. Came back home with yellow all over my face. Gave me a sore belly; guess I wasn’t used to it. The ‘squirts’ I think my father called it. I had the squirts quite often and then one day they stopped – I was mango-proof. That Sunday night it rained, I mean ‘really rained’. Not like English rain; this was like getting slapped all over – drops the size of plate pies. Three would have filled a fish bowl. Half a dozen would ‘drown the dog’ my Dad said, and I believed him.

‘You’re going to learn how to swim, Jeffrey.’

‘Why?’

My mother lit a cigarette. When she sucked in the smoke her eyelids trembled.

‘Because drowning won’t be good, Jeffrey; people will stare.’

She bought me a yellow costume, I would have preferred a blue one. Took a month for me to rid myself of the nickname ‘mango-arse’. Once the yellow had faded, wasn’t so bad.

‘Out one – two to the side,’ my mother warbled. ‘Out one – two to the side.’

All my friends were watching. The bottom looked good. I could drown down there quite comfortably with the chewing-gum wrappers and dead ants.

‘Breaststroke, Jeffrey! For God’s sakes stop waving your arms! Out one – two to the side!’ Apparently, my father realised I wasn’t floating anymore and dived in. From then on mother was sent to sit with her brandy and coke and Matinee cigarettes under one of the beer garden umbrellas. My dad persevered and eventually, I touched on the art of staying afloat...

Sons of Africa; an extract:

‘You have equipped yourself well, young man.’

Mathew looked up from checking the wagon’s offside brake-block.

‘Like mister Burnham told me, sir. Leave nothing to chance.’

Rhodes nodded agreeably. ‘Sound advice. There are no suppliers to call on once you have cleared the town’s limits. It would take a foolish man indeed to leave Kimberley without adequate preparation.’

Rhodes sat his horse with quiet authority, deep into the saddle and long into the stirrups – collar turned up for the wind. He drew out his watch and flicked back the lid.

‘You have less than an hour before Burnham takes the column out on the north road. Make sure you have accounted for every need and that your chattels are well battened down. The road is a rough one and knowing our mister Burnham, he will not take kindly to anyone rattling along like a tinker’s workshop.’

‘Everything is in order – double checked and enough provisions to last the journey out – all the way to Mashonaland.’

Rhodes kneed his horse into a slow walk alongside the oxen. All sixteen were bright-eyed, their flanks well muscled from lavish attention, but he knew that in two month’s time the tortuous journey would have taken its toll. At least one of them would have died from a broken limb or snake bite; others struck down by the infectious, bloodsucking bite of the tsetse fly – that tiny, winged insect no bigger than the English housefly. He turned back to where Mathew was shouldering a hundredweight bag of maize meal, up over the wagon’s tailboard.

‘Who will lead your oxen?’

‘Mathew will.’ Catherine shot the answer back. ‘That is if you have no objections, Mister Rhodes.’ She swung herself onto the wagon box. She remembered Rhodes from their first meeting on that cold morning next to the diggings; this time she was prepared. Her hair was tied with a ribbon of silk and it hung defiantly to one shoulder – an auburn battle flag. ‘Or you could, if you wished, take on the task yourself. Though the pay, I’m sure would not be to your liking.’

Rhodes’ expression hardened, his itinerary spared nothing for argumentative women. He stood the gelding into the bit; with its neck arched the beast stamped and trembled; a show of masculine temperance.

‘Then would I be right in thinking, Ma’am, that if your wagon is under threat your son will lead and you, a woman of half his weight, will take up the whip?’

‘That would be my intention,’ said Catherine, suspicious of Rhodes’ implication.

‘Then let us hope for both your sakes your ability will prove adequate...’ he paused mid sentence, openly amused by the way Catherine had dressed herself in shirt and britches. ‘Though your dressing in manly attire does not necessarily guarantee manly results.’

‘And who perhaps, would be a better judge of that than you, Mister Rhodes?’

The remark angered him. The woman had overstepped her mark but he discarded the incident on the acceptance of her leaving Kimberley within the hour.

‘I do not believe you have the strength, Ma’am. Call it as you will, that is the way I see your predicament.’

‘Then take up my wager.’

 Mathew gave up on loading the meal. There was trouble brewing. His mother had just squared up to the most powerful man in Kimberley. She scowled down at Rhodes, strutty as a bantam cock.

‘Five English pounds says I will put the lead animal hard to its yoke with a single stroke of the whip.’ She looked around her, aggravated by a growing crowd. All of them men, opportunist scavengers were gathering for the kill; little boys in mute support of their playground bully. Her eyes glittered; her anger had risen up, but her voice she kept diminutive, deceptively ladylike. ‘I will match any wager, gentlemen – pound for pound.’

Within minutes, Mathew had collected upwards of forty pounds; a small fortune. Rhodes reached inside his jacket pocket.

‘And my twenty to your five, Ma’am. Like the gentlemen behind me, I say you do not have the brawn for it.’ Rhodes’ presence alone had swelled the crowd. They watched with jewelled eyes, waiting for Catherine’s attempts to flounder.

She drew out the stock from behind the wagon-box and attached the leather; its tapered voorslag a slender riem of supple giraffe hide.

 ‘Come on sweetheart! Let’s see you put up the lash instead of your kitchen curtains.’ 

Rhodes recognised the futility in what Catherine was trying to prove. He saw her cheeks colour and raised his hand for the attention of those behind him.

 ‘Afford the lady a fair chance, gentlemen – take your time Ma’am. Give it your best shot or lay down the whip and save yourself any further embarrassment.’

Catherine waited for a lull in the trailing wind and prayed for its return at the right moment to give the leather its full flight, anything less and the lash would unfurl with a feeble, impotent slap at the air, her credibility and contents of her purse destroyed in the winking of an eye. The whip had to be put back along the side of the wagon with a single, fluid roll of the arms; her timing was critical.

 Catherine locked her leg against the tent frame and stood at first with her chest and outstretched arms to the front, then, with a prayer on her lips put every ounce of her strength into putting back the lash.

As a fisherman’s weighted salmon line the lash curled up and away from the ground in a single, rolling loop; Catherine waited, shoulders tensed for that tell-tale drag on her arms, only then did she know that the lash was fully out. She reversed her stance; shifted her weight. The wind she had prayed for sprang from the South West and when coupled to all her strength took the lash away on a shallow, hissing arc.

The sound it made was that of a goose’s wings skimming the surface of a lake – then, like the shot from a hunter’s rifle, the voorslag cracked just inches away from splitting the cupped ear of the lead ox. Wide-eyed the beast lunged forward and snatched its trek chain cleanly from the earth. The rest followed suit and Mathew was forced to run to the span’s head to prevent sixteen, half-ton trek oxen lumbering away with the wagon.

As quickly as it had gathered, the crowd dispersed. Rhodes shook his head, momentarily stunned by what he had witnessed.

‘Whatever our differences, madam...’ he tipped his hat to Catherine, reined his horse about and nodded to Mathew.

‘Put the winnings to good use, young man – perhaps some embrocation for your mother’s shoulder...’