Africa Stories

Now that Mbulaheni Mulaudzi won the gold in the 800m for men, I think it is only fair to his competitors that he be subjected to a gender test. Just imagine, (s)he could have broken the women world record!

A South African comedian once had a show where he was in hospital for a sex change op. He exclaimed: "I'm a lesbian in a man's body!"

Well, let's wait for Semenya's test and I'm sure all the dust will settle.

A friend of mine has some cattle in Zim, now roaming in or near a reserve because his farm has been occupied by a new settler. This new grazing has just been occupied by the white Mugabe, Billy Rautenbach. Fact has always been stranger than fiction!

The Zimbabweans should have long ago chased Mugabe and his cronies into the nearest Aardvark hole and closed them up. How much patience do they have?!

Let's be honest, everybody compare themselves to someone they feel they should be compared to. What a stupid part of human behaviour. This will hurt your family, your purse and your friends but not your ego.

So, see yourself as authentic and start acting that way. Your ego will get in the way but after a while it gets used to it.

In September during a holiday in Mozambique my son fell ill and we needed to take him to a doctor. The barman at Zavora gave us directions to the hospital at Inharrime. At the hospital we enquired at reception if it will be possible to see a doctor since there was a queue of about forty sick people. The assistant immediately took us to the doctor. I felt terrible because we were put in front of an old asthmatic gentleman and a baby with stitches on its head. Upon enquiring about a private doctor in the village the receptionist said that the nearest one was in Quissico about 45km away. We did not have enough fuel and the only service station in town was empty.

The doctor could not speak English and by using signs and gestures I could make him understand what was amiss. Within five minutes he made a diagnosis, weighed the boy and gave us a prescription. The pharmacy was just around the corner on the veranda of the old Portuguese house which also contains the consulting rooms. You are supposed to put your prescription into an old box on top of the others underneath a rock (because of the breeze). Every ten minutes or so the lady, without looking, sticks her hand into the box and starts preparing the prescriptions. After a while she starts calling out the names. Now you are required to pay for the service. When we received our medicine we were asked to pay 5 metical (about R1.80). I only had rand which she refused and I gestured with a circling hand that I'll be back with metical if I could change some rand at the market about five blocks away.

The old asthmatic, behind us in the pharmacy queue by now, learnt about our problem and offered us 5 metical. We gave him R10 and after many obrigado's we passed the long queue back to our car. No one complained about us being jumped to the front of the queue. What an incredible experience! Afterwards I told my son, who is ten years old, that now he also knows what it was like in the apartheid time.

Ed Eastwood passed away last week. He told me a story a couple of weeks ago about his time as horticulturist at the local municipality. He became friendly with Erasmus, a massive boer from the mountain, who had to look after a gang of labourers. So Erasmus and Ed started having their lunch together everyday. Ed with a few dainty sandwiches and Erasmus with his pap and vleis.

One day Erasmus came into Ed's office and saw a book, with a humanoid skull on the cover, on the table. Ed was studying archaeology. He raised his voice: "Hoe oud is die aarde?!" Ed stammered and then said he thinks it is about 5 billion years old, give or take..... Erasmus shouted "kak!!" and hit the table with his big paw.

He then told Ed that he worked it all out. It took him about four weeks with his Bible and some notes he made on the back of an old packet of Gunston 30's. He added all the years from Adam to Revelations and came to the conclusion that the earth is exactly 6 432 years old.

On one Sunday he called the Dopper dominee to talk to him behind the strelitzias opposite the konsistorie. He asked the dominee how old he thinks the earth is. When dominee replied with a very unsatisfactory guess of a few billion years, he declared the Doppers as being unfaithful to the Word and joined the AGS. Ed and Erasmus thereafter had their lunches separately.

Ed became a very successful researcher of San paintings and culture in Limpopo and wrote a book about it.

The day before yesterday (African time) I was driving through the village where Sam Shilowa comes from and where his mother still lives. There is a tarred road now, finished 2 years ago, that goes past this very rural setting. No taxi or bus use this road because it does not go through the villages where their customers reside. Some planner/s thought this road could be a gateway to God knows where. You will only meet the occasional bakkie or mlungu taking a short cut to Mooketsi.

Driving through the village on the dusty main road, I could see heaps of cars and bakkies bundled around a general dealer. It was the day of mudende (pension pay-out). Young school girls with their babies on their backs, old folk and the disabled come to collect their pension. The cars and bakkies are the traders. They bring pots, cabbages, clothing, chickens and funeral policies for the pension benificiaries to choose from. All the traders look more or less the same, old bakkies and lots of patience on their faces. The ones that stand out like a sore eye are the funeral people. Shiny cars, sweaty faces, impatient and mostly white. The others are clearly coconuts. Such a contrast to the surroundings!

My father told me a story of a white funeral lady who said to an old man who couldn't pay this month: "Jy beter volgende keer dubbel betaal of ek roep Mapog" (You'd better pay next time or I'll call Mapog!). Mapogo a Mathamaga is a notoriously violent "security firm" mostly favoured by whites.

When the pay-out is finished the armoured trucks leave in a bowl of dust and the traders scramble to do the last bit of business before they chase them to the next pay-out point. Almost like the whores who trailed the big Roman armies.

After the dust has settled and a few cripples are still shuffling home, a quietness falls over the village. The Indian trader sits pan-faced in his shop with his legs wide apart underneath the skirt, bare feet on an empty Coke crate. He looks quite in tune with his surroundings except he is not in Calcutta. Only black faces.

Driving out of the village I cannot believe that all these people are scraping out a living where there is no farming, no industry, no nothing. All they depend upon are the pension and family in the city or on farms sending money.

I'm wondering what Sam Shilowa thinks when he visits his mother? About the poverty, the youth, the old people, his country.......?