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.......?
