Wessel Ebersohn's Blog, page 7

Fire Arms and Explanations

Most male plot owners go armed. Hand guns are carried on the hip, either tucked into the wearer’s belt or in a holster. While the bushveld that surrounds us is a home to some creatures who could be injurious to your health, primarily the guns are carried for protection against

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The Replacement Waitress

We have a meal occasionally at a place that often seems to have too many waiters and waitresses. You get served very fast, staff members almost bumping each other out of the way to get to your table. This situation is good for patrons, but it results in some unhappiness

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Christmas on the R101

The R101 cuts through the centre of the Springbok Vlakte. Often you cannot avoid it to reach some destination in our area. Apart from its high accident rate it is also noted for its proliferation of traffic cops, especially at this time of the year. The official reason for so

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Strange Echoes

South Africa is a strange country and always has been. All true South Africans love their country, but many have chosen to leave. During Apartheid years some people left because they were suffering intense discrimination and wanted to get away from it. Today, people are leaving largely because they have doubts about the country’s future. The corruption of the last quarter of a century is as unavoidable to most ordinary people as the discrimination of the past was to the majority. So South Africans leave and are replaced by waves of desperate people, seeking a living, from countries as far north as the Congo, Senegal and even Somalia.

Some South Africans survived very well in the past, and some survive very well now. And some, a minority, survived very well then and still do. Strangest among these are those who were functionaries in the Apartheid government and remain a valued part of the present government. None are stranger than those who played a part in keeping order for the old government and do the same now.

No part of the old system was more widely hated than the security police. For good reason they were blamed for the killing of activists like Steve Biko, Ahmed Timol, Rick Turner and many others, too many for the peace of mind of any South African. When it was clear that the old system was coming to an end security policemen, who had documented proof of their crimes, spent weeks shredding the evidence.  How strange that, faced with a radical change of government, a few security policemen from the old days survived into the new dispensation.

In all changing societies there are some who possess the singular talent of making themselves acceptable to those in power – whoever they are, and carry with them strange echoes from the past. The South African case that is most surprising of all is that of a security policeman from the old days who rose to a senior position in Crime Intelligence in the modern South Africa. The echoes of past brutalities have clung to him though. Shaking himself free of them has proven almost impossible.

For most people such radical adjustments have not been necessary. The metal worker who welded steel items in past days, welds them still. The wheeler/dealer business person still exercises those singular skills. The writer still writes, but about somewhat different subject matter now. Politicians still desperately seek personal power at the expense of their followers. And preachers still welcome sinners to salvation.

As the saying goes: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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Sonwabile and the Power Switch

Like everyone else in the country we have to plan around the times when we have power. And, also like everyone else in the country, we anticipate some pretty erratic load shedding times. A message from head office might say that the power will be off from twelve noon till two in the afternoon. It will go off at twelve as expected, but not return as announced two hours later. Sometimes an extra fifteen minutes passes without power, sometimes an extra half hour, even an extra two hours. By that time water is leaking out of freezers, some kitchens have run out of water and Auntie Marie is late with Oom Gert’s lunch. And he gets terribly irritable when his lunch is late.

To deal with this problem the community appointed a spokesperson, more a negotiator actually, to try to get the power back as scheduled. The first time the power gods overshot the advertised time by an hour, he called head office to ask them to give attention. After being passed from office to office he was handed to an officious-sounding person who told him, “No, not us. We are head office. You have to speak to the region. This is a regional matter.”

At the region no one seemed too sure who dealt with the switching times of power outages. Our man eventually spoke to a lady who told him she was just a relief, helping out for a few weeks. “But I’m pretty sure this is something they do locally. Why don’t you speak to the local people.”

But the local people didn’t know either until one of the cleaning ladies answered a persistently ringing phone. “What did Sonwabile say?” she asked.

“Who the hell is Sonwabile?” our community spokesperson wanted to know.

“He’s the one who works the power switch,” she said.

“Do you know him?”

“I should hope so. He’s my nephew.”

Sonwabile’s aunt had a phone number for him, but calling it got no reaction. She also had the address of his girlfriend. While the power stayed off, the community spokesperson found his way to the girlfriend’s home, but she was at work. He again called the aunt and she did have other possibilities which she shared with our spokesperson.

The place to which he successfully tracked Sonwabile was to the shebeen where he was asleep after a too generous portion of brandy. All the addresses and contact points from Sonwabile’s aunt have proven useful and the spokesperson has quickly gotten to know where to find him at any time of day. Nights he is usually with his girlfriend, Saturday afternoons he can be found cheering on his soccer team, most any time he may be in the shebeen supporting that unlicensed liquor outlet or at the local chesa nyama, a take-away restaurant that specialises meat. It has seats outside where he likes to sit with his chums and pass the time of an afternoon. He never seems to mind having these activities and entertainments interrupted though. He uncomplaining leaves whatever is occupying him to throw the switch in the sub-station and get the lights back on. A good fellow is our Sonwabile and altogether reliable, if you can track him down. He keeps the lights burning on the Springbok Vlakte, a little spasmodically perhaps, but a better than no lights at all.

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The Last Jackal

I remember clearly our first night in the house on the Springbok Vlakte. Unlike the city, we saw few lights in any direction. And the world was silent. Or so it seemed to ears that were used to the incessant humming and occasional hooters of traffic.

I stood outside in the cool night in the place where our garden would in time develop. At that stage it was a jumble of rocks and tough little bushveld thorn trees. Standing there in the dark, I heard the sound for the first time. It was a thin, lovely and wild, but plaintive cry that has stayed with me ever since.

Credit: Brad Taylor from Pixabay

The next night I listened for it again and this time I was sure I heard a second animal. The moon was up, but I cannot say that inspired them. Perhaps they would have sung anyway. Miriam was at my side. “Jackals,” she said. “We had them on the farm when I was growing up.”
A few days later I saw one of the family of black-backed jackals. He was trotting along the track on the adjoining cattle farm, running in the lovely loose-limbed way of all jackals. I watched until he rounded a corner and disappeared from sight.

A few nights later, this time on a moonless night we were entertained by a chorus of the jackal family. It was their best performance and the only time that we heard so many voices at one time. After that we sometimes heard two, but later there only seemed to be one. We were not sure if that one had a mate, but hoped it was so.

It was about that time that Shadrack who handles our garden on once-weekly visits came to us, dragging a construction of wood and wire he had found in the bush. “You chop it up,” I told him, “and burn the wood. I don’t want to see anything like that around here, not ever again.”

Shadrack did what I asked him to do and at night we still heard the cry of our last jackal, calling perhaps for a mate that would now never come. Some months later his cries too stopped. What had happened to him was a mystery until Shadrack found another trap, the same kind of wood and wire affair. When baited with meat, the jackal would enter for the meat, but not be able to get out again. He was still in the trap, but no longer alive. He seemed to have died of dehydration after some days in the trap. Whoever had set it had not returned to see if anything had been caught.

We do not hear the jackals any more. We listen for the possibility of perhaps more distant cries, but there are none. We have asked other plot owners, but they too never hear them now. The nights are truly silent, and the worse for it.

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Lemons, Lemons and More Lemons

We had it all planned. We would have pomelos, oranges, naartjies and a few other kinds the names of which escape me. The first citrus trees, three pomelos and one lemon tree have done very well. The pomelos have been large and delicious and the trees have borne well.

Not least is the single lemon tree. It is a runty little thing that does not seem to grow bigger no matter how much we encourage it by watering, adding growth pellets to the soil around it and just standing in front of it and telling it how wonderful it is. It refuses to grow any bigger, but boy does it bear. Some of its skinny little branches are so weighed down by fruit they have to be supported to stop them breaking.

I am told the most important area of support you can give a citrus tree is your admiration and appreciation. They need to be encouraged repeatedly. I’ve noticed Miriam among them, chatting away in a friendly fashion.

In any event, the obvious thing for us to do was to acquire more citrus trees and plan it so that we would have a greater variety of fruit. We decided on adding two orange trees, two naartjies and one more pomelo. That would give us a bountiful selection of citrus fruit every year.

Well, the trees grew nicely, they all looked sturdy and healthy. Flowers appeared and with them some disgustingly greedy beetles who wanted to eat all our flowers. Of course, we could not allow that. No flowers would mean no fruit. So we took action against the little so-and-so’s.

And our fruit started to appear, in abundant quantities. With great enthusiasm we made regular visits to our new trees, but gradually, as they developed, the fruit started taking on a form that was not what we planned for. We visited them daily, hoping that we were mistaken. But we were not. It slowly became clearer and clearer that they were all lemon trees.

“Oh no,” Miriam said. “We now have two pomelo trees and six lemon trees.”

“If they all bear like the little one, we’re going to have enough lemons to open a bottling plant,” I said. “Who sold us these?”

“A guy from Limpopo called Sarel. We bought them along the road. I haven’t seen him since.”

They do seem to be bearing as well as the little one. So we are going to have a lot of lemons this summer, more than we could possibly give away, but no oranges and no naartjies.

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Zora’s Village

Zora’s village got started a few years ago when the man in her life died. He was not a young man any more, but no one thought he was going to cash in his chips just yet. She was left wondering how she was going to pay her fairly limited bills when a Zimbabwean by the name of Charles appeared on her doorstep.

“Ma’am, I’ve got nowhere to stay,” Charles told her, “and you’ve got so much space.”

“You want to move into my house?” Zora was aghast.

“No, ma’am, nothing like that. I would never ask that.” He was looking at the twenty acres or so that surrounded Zora’s house. “If you can give me a little bit of space I’ll build my own house from poles and zinc. And I’ll pay rent.”

“And your eh-eh, what about that. Where will you go to the toilet?”

Charles had the answers. “I’ll dig a long drop.”

“How much rent?” Zora raised one eyebrow, a habitual reaction of hers. The idea was starting to interest her.

“Maybe five hundred?”

“And water?”

“Ma’am has got a bore hole.”

Zora contemplated the matter for some time, maybe a full half minute. The five hundred would be useful, no question about that. “You got any friends who also need accommodation?” she asked.

The first month Charles moved in. The second month Meshack, Abel, Jonas and their families arrived. They had their poles and corrugated iron and their first month’s rent with them.  The third month saw Lazarus, Luke and Saul get to work on their dwellings. They told Zora as soon as they had a place to stay their families would come.

At five hundred a time, Zora’s new source of income was approaching that of her late partner. At this point, to make the situation understandable it has to be pointed out that the earth on Zora’s small holding consists of the dust of weathered rock. Trying to grow anything in it is a waste of time.

As her village grew, so the number of long drops multiplied, until last month a delegation of her fellow small-holders came to see her. “Your tenants are polluting the ground water,” they said.

“You’re just a bunch of racists,” Zora snarled. “If my tenants were white people you wouldn’t mind. Let me tell you white shit and black shit is all the same.”

And that’s where the matter stands. The growth of Zora’s village shows no sign of slowing, no one knows for sure if the bore hole water is being polluted and, if so, how seriously. So far, no one has died. Oom Willem’s gout is getting worse, but that might not be caused by Zora’s village. It could be the cheap sweet red wine he is always drinking.

As for Miriam and me, we’re so glad we live on the hillside way out of reach of Zora’s villagers and their long drops.

 

 

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Spring’s First Rain

The worst part of life on the Springbok Vlakte is the second half of winter. There is no rain whatever and the sun is a merciless tyrant, terrorising humans, burning the leaves off plants and turning the ground beneath your feet to dust.

Spring is a different matter entirely. It starts with the first rainfall, not on a particular date. And the world changes. While temperatures are officially still warmer, the moisture that descends on everything keeps the ground underfoot damp and the sun seems to be friendly rather than tyrannical. The landscape turns from brown to green.

With the gentler, sweeter surroundings my inclination turns to writing. Two years ago, it was this change of climate, landscape and state of mind that got me started on DELUGE, my most recent novel.

Conceiving DELUGE was not easy for me. By the time I started to write I already knew I wanted to interweave two stories, one set in the present time and the other in times past of the old South Africa. Drawing the two together was the challenge and had to be undertaken.

The story set in the present day concerns a lost soul that plans the most horrifying act, not of vengeance for the country he feels he has lost, but because he feels he cannot continue under present circumstances. The other story is set in a community both on the other side of the country and on the other side of the South African social divide. As the change from one power structure to another approaches, an entire group is desperate, but in this case a horrifying act, almost as frightful as the other, has already taken place and the community is desperate to avoid its consequences.

The two stories are radically different, but the state of minds that bring them about have many similarities. I worked long and hard on the structure that would reveal their similarities and also bring the old and newer versions of South Africa into a single tale.

Read more about DELUGE and Yudel Gordon here.

DELUGE Synopsis

Creating Yudel Gordon

The Events that Inspired DELUGE

Reflections on my new thriller – DELUGE

The Common Purpose Doctrine

DELUGE Available here

                 

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End of Winter

The rains bring the end of winter.  The rain falls here in the summer, and only in the summer. If you have a wet summer then underground water fills up and the boreholes last through winter. A dry summer means boreholes running dry somewhere between the last rain, usually in about April, and the first of the new season, sometimes as late as December. After a dry summer, crisis point is usually reached in the middle of the year, leaving a few months before your borehole is recharged.

Last summer was wonderful. Rain commenced in October and came down on and off till April. At one point the dirt road leading to our place looked more like a river than a road. The result has been a good winter, at the end of which we still had fairly good water from our borehole. The rains have started but only in the last few days.  We will need sustained rain to recharge our borehole.

An additional issue is that the later the rains begin, the longer fire season lasts. This year we thought fire season was coming to an end a few weeks ago. So much veld had been burnt that there did not seem to be much fuel left for new fires. We were wrong about that. In the last few weeks the biggest fire of the season broke out not far from our place. The cloud of smoke was bigger and blacker than any I have seen in the time that we have been here. It was also closer than any, excepting those on our own land. Many acres of grazing were destroyed and two houses burnt to the ground.

More tragic is the effect of these fires has on our four-legged co-inhabitants of this piece of earth. After three families lost everything when their houses burnt down, two little dogs from one of the houses were missing. Despite long and hard searching, they have not been found. With the house they knew as home, now destroyed, they may have they escaped and run off in a panic and still be lost in the bush somewhere.

Two weeks after the fire devastated the veld, an old wild tortoise, his shell badly scorched, starving and thirsty, waddled slowly to the door of a house next to where the fire raged. When water and food were offered to him, he ate as if it was the last food and water he would ever taste. His burns were attended to and he was given a sheltered spot with fresh food and water on hand while he recuperated. He must have been a wise creature to look for help, or just very lucky that the closest house was where caring people lived.

For some time we have been under the illusion that the fires were started by lightning strikes, but in fact all the fires have taken place on days when the area has not experienced lightning. The fire starters have been seen fleeing into the veld at night, but so far there have been no arrests for arson.

Fire starting is not the only problem of the area’s small holders. The amount of theft is greater and more destructive. My friend, Dawie, recently lost 4000 chickens in a single incident, shortly after having most of his pigs stolen. He has had to give up farming and has taken up a job in town. No property owner in the area has been able to keep out the thieves. Tools, car wheels, farm implements, but most of all livestock, are favourite targets.

While life on the plots has its grim side, it also has a lighter side. One of those has been the adventures with bees one of our little dogs had. Until recently he was a great fly catcher with reactions faster than a striking cobra. He caught any fly that was foolish enough to venture close. But until recently he had not noticed the difference between flies and bees. He discovered his mistake while exploring the garden one morning. The result was a badly swollen face that took a week to go down completely. Since then he has been a lot more careful around small insects. He still hunts round the garden in his usual confident way, but sometimes he will pull away suddenly, his whole body jerking, when confronted by a harmless beetle, mantis or even a moth. You just never can tell who might have a sting in the tail.

More stories on fires

Fire Season

Peace and Destruction

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