Photo's Tell Stories!

Great to be able to say ‘hi’ to everyone – I like it when people read my stuff so to all of you out there in digital-land, my sincere thanks for your interest.

Been story-blogging for more than a year, now; my English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa is coming along nicely and my current love affair with the sequel to Sons of Africa is clamouring for release. So beware, this summer will tear the wrappings off Empress Gold, of which I am immensely proud, thrilled and super-chuffed with. However, not all stories are portrayed through text alone; some, like the picture embodied here, will ensnare our literary psyche without the need for a single, written word.

The stories are all there, told via facial expression, true colours and an intensity of purpose that the photographer, Phill Steffny has brought to life with a masterly dose of ‘show not tell’. A million words in a single moment; to me, that’s what photography is all about.

Taken during a guided safari along the Serengeti’s south-eastern border with Loliondo,  Phill has captured this classic moment; the Maasai people’s honest and open wonderment for new technology.

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Back again to that Little Boy...

... The office people gave my dad the keys for our house; it was easy to find – first left, first right to number 34 Glenview. A stony silence befell our little Morris and not until its engine was finally switched off did anyone manage to speak.

34 Glenview, with its whitewashed walls and red tin roof, stood to its non-existent garden, the way an unloved, rusty tractor would stand to a drought-stricken field – straight from Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

If my father had the spare cash he would have turned our car about, loaded us up and headed on back to Wankie Colliery. But he didn’t, so we stayed and all piled out, but not without those fateful insects of dread first crawling up our shirtsleeves.

‘Please tell me I’m dreaming,’ my mother whimpered and flapped around in her bag for a box of cigarettes.

My father said nothing. The door key squeaked its way around the lock and I watched some insects abandon their home in the keyhole.

Mother was first inside; she wasn’t pleased, I could tell. Something about flared nostrils and flashing eyes that frightened me. She lit her cigarette and breathed fire.

‘They’ve put us in a concrete shed; have you seen the kitchen – a bloody coal stove for God’s sake!

‘We’ll get you a proper one,’ said dad and squeezed out a grin. ‘We’ll make it nice for you.’

Mother fiddled with her iron cooker; ‘Dover Stove’ had been cast in big black iron letters over the front of it.

‘That’s where you put the coal in,’ said dad and pointed out the iron firebox. Mother scowled at him, unlatched the heavy oven door and like some evil, Bodmin jailer, swung it back against the wall.

‘After a couple of years they’ll upgrade us to a better house,’ dad told her.

‘Or a room in a lunatic asylum,’ mother countered, then peered inside the cavernous firebox. ‘There’s something living in there.’ She backed off and pointed with her cigarette. ‘I heard it move...’

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Mothering Sunday!

Mother’s Day; got up really early and took my lovely wife for a trip into the countryside – how different! How many wives can lay claim to chain-sawing logs in lieu of breakfast in bed? I did the cutting and my wife, with strong back and even stronger mind did the carrying and loading. After the first ton she politely suggested we go back home for breakfast – said I looked a little tired...

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Back to a boy in Africa...

The General Office was a gloomy sort of place; a sign saying, Gath’s Mine had been stuck up over the main entrance. Outside, struggling to grow in a mixture of soil and asbestos dust, fire-proof Cannas and Busy Lizzies guarded asbestos-coloured grass and paved pathways. A black boy stood on the lawn, his hosepipe dribbling tepid water. I think he had all day because he hardly moved. Maybe the sun had got to him – wasn’t sure. Anyway, I smiled and thought I saw his eyes flicker.

Dad went in, papers and stuff in his hand for the man to read; there was a button thing on the wall and when he pressed it a lady opened the door to see what he wanted.

Mom lit a cigarette and finished drinking her coke. Wavy heat lines wriggled up from the car’s bonnet; dad said that black cars got hotter than other colours.

‘Why don’t black people get as hot as white people, then?’

Mother shook her head and looked away. The window sill burned her arm when she leaned on it and she said something rude that I wasn’t supposed to hear.

‘I hope they give us a nice house,’ she said, and peered out through the haze at a double row of cloned cream-coloured bungalows shimmering in the heat.

A black man on a bike peddled out of the haze and I remember thinking how tired he looked. His face shone and his hair sparkled – I think it was sweat. A basket dangled from his handlebars, the ‘madam’ had sent him on a four mile bike ride in a hundred degrees of heat for a loaf of bread and twenty Stuyvesant.  In his shirt pocket there would be a note and ten bob to give to the lady at Gruber & Sager’s. I waved to him and he looked surprised and waved back. Don’t think he got many waves. Whites didn’t wave at blacks – just wasn’t done.

There didn’t seem to be any gardens, at least none to cheer about. Hardly anything grew, not voluntarily, apart from raffia-type grass and ‘chinda bush’, a sort of pointy-leafed shrub that thrived on acid soils and whatever moisture came its way.

I didn’t like it here and wished we had stayed in Wankie...

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Gold or Just Can't See For Dust!

Hi – been reading one of my birthday presents; Maize Turns to Gold, a fascinating insight to the beginnings of South Africa’s most optimistic mining venture, the Free State goldfields. Proven by deep-hole drilling and later, through extensive geophysical exploration, the future of the Free State goldfields was expected to rival the production rate of the already famous Witwatersrand.

That was back in 1947 – for South Africa, the good times were about to roll, and for sixty years they did. Mining towns such as Odendaalsrus and Welkom sprang from the dust, seemingly overnight, but now the wheels are in reverse; mines are being closed, capped and left to marauding bands of out of work locals to strip and thieve whatever they can. Looks like the vicars are spot-on – ‘Dust to Dust’ about fits the bill. Below I have included a quote from General Smuts in a Cape Town Address, March 23^rd, 1947.

GOD’S  BOUNTY

‘I sometimes think that God had something left over and emptied His pockets over this southern continent. He scattered over South Africa not only gold and diamonds and minerals, but beauty and something to appeal to the human spirit.’

If only...

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And on a lighter note, another edit of my own adventures in Africa:

... With pee-stops and tea-stops it took us and our little Morris two more hours to reach Mashaba. First impressions were not good; Rhodesia’s Wild West.

Mother stared through the window in abject horror, for the first time that day she was totally speechless.

‘I’ll find us something cold to drink,’ said dad and parked in front of Mashaba’s hillbilly version of the Co-op. Had a big sign above the door: Gruber & Sager. More cars parked alongside ours and the people stared; we were something new to look at – outsiders. Reckon they were sizing us up as stand-ins for their local ‘hoedown pig-on-a-spit fest’. A skeletal dog sauntered over and peed up our front wheel.

‘You’re new here?’

Mother wound her window down; ‘Yes,’ she said, then, like some recumbent tortoise, drew in her head. The woman climbed out from her pick-up truck and the springs rejoiced. Twenty stone of small-town woman took up the space between the cars.

‘You’ll like it here.’

‘We hope so.’

‘One big happy family. Lived here myself for five years now.’

‘That’s nice,’ mother whimpered and reached for her cigarettes. I watched from my unreachable back seat. As long as the doors held I was safe. The woman’s head was wrapped inside a scarf, haggis-like. Those curler things stuck out the front – end-on like spiky plastic pipes.

Mother opened the box and offered her cigarettes.

‘Thank you,’ the woman nodded. Four fat fingers scrabbled for a grip on a filter. ‘Got no matches.’

Mother lit it for her. Dad came back with bottles of Coca-Cola and mother breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Hello,’ the woman said to my dad. She was bigger than him, broader across the shoulders. Her dress had red flowers on it – a bit like splatters of blood. When she smiled her teeth looked really big. I can remember thinking that maybe she’d eaten her kids. She sort of hovered over my dad like a grizzly bear.

My dad nodded and smiled politely. ‘Is that the road to Gath’s Mine? I’m looking for the General Office.’

‘About four miles,’ the woman nodded, ‘the offices are on the right. Can’t miss them.’ Her eyeballs bulged with obsessive need-to-know-right-now syndrome. ‘Are you looking for a job?’

‘Got one,’ dad said. ‘I start next Monday.’

She seemed disappointed, ‘I could have told you who to see. What do you do?’

‘Carpenter.’

‘That’s nice.’

Dad handed out the cokes and climbed inside. Mother pleaded with her eyes for him to start the engine.

‘We’ll be seeing you then,’ said mother.

‘Friday night at the mine club,’ the woman held on to the door. ‘The company does a free draw for ten pounds, but you have to be there to win it.’

‘We’ll try to remember.’

Dad let out the clutch and the woman let go of our car...

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Profanity & Little Bridges!

Had a short email from one of my readers, a sort of thank you note for writing a reasonably clean book. I know there’s sex, but there has to be – even in the eighteen nineties people ‘did it’. However, profanity and sex beyond the norm just leaves me cold – don’t see the point in lewd descriptions, or maybe it’s me? The odd four-letter word in the right place can bring a story to life, too many and the story falls apart. Better to leave some things locked away in your personal cupboard of private imaginings. Stick with Occam’s Razor – less is more.

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A modified extract from An English Boy’s Wanderings...

 

... Down went our little car for what the Rhodesian authorities defined as a low-level bridge, which in reality meant the bridge was too small;  for that, read: wide enough for one vehicle.  And for chrissakes don’t be halfway across when a thirty ton, trailer-dragging Oshkosh is coming the other way – or when the river’s flooding. Neither of these would be good – especially if one is of a nervous disposition.

‘What in God’s name is that!’

‘A bridge, my darling.’

Mother waggled her fag at the windscreen. ‘I meant the name, dearest. Not the death trap we’re about to drive over.’

Dad got his lips around the pronunciation, Umzingwani River.

The bridge was a long one; a sort of tarred strip on concrete legs – trees jammed underneath, left there by the last flood. The water was brown, deep enough to hide crocodiles and other boy-biting creatures. Mother stayed quiet. I think she held her breath all the way across. Then we rose up, phoenix-like and crested the far bank.

‘Goes all the way down to join up with the Limpopo,’ said Mother, with what was now her favourite map pressed against her knees. ‘And there’s another big river just before we reach Mashaba.’

I craned my neck and tried to read the names.

‘What is it called?’

‘The Lundi,’ mother chirruped, pleased with her map reading. Her cigarette wriggled south-eastwards over the paper. ‘Then it joins up with the Sabi down here in the corner.’ She folded the map and shoved it under the dashboard, for the time being satisfied with her discoveries.

The clouds had turned a sort of, ripe plum colour. I watched them boiling up in front. Outside our car nothing moved. Trees hung their leaves straight down and dead still. Just the drone of our little engine hummed through the quiet.

‘We’re coming into some rain.’

Mother thought it necessary to lean as far forward as possible and peer upwards through the top edge of the windscreen – just as sixty zillion gigawatts of lightning blatted the sky. For the second time that day mother screamed, banged her head and bust her cigarette. But onwards we went; our little Morris like a bedraggled spaniel bounded through the puddles and with barely glowing headlights took us through and eventually, out of the storm. From almost pitch blackness to bright, roasting sunlight in a matter of minutes. The strips steamed, the trees glittered and again the sky was there, that limitless, egg-shell blue above us.

‘God, that was terrifying!’ mother blurted. ‘Is it always like that?’ As if my father knew.

I looked back over a tissue box and oranges piled against the window. Like a black, demonic wall the storm chased after us then swung sideways and sulked away to the south east. In front, like some outdoor sauna the road steamed on and on and on; up and down from river to river. When I wound my window down the smell of rain and rich red earth rushed in at me...

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