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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