A NAMIBIAN CANVAS
Julia Stevens
~~~~~~~
Copyright 2002-2011. Julia Stevens.
Smashwords Edition.
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ISBN 9780987002556
Published
by
Truth House Publishing
Randburg
South Africa
~~~
Writers and travellers are mesmerized alike
by knowing of their destinations.
Eudor Welty
~~~
CHAPTER 1
A Symphony of the Purest Silence
‘The rising sun makes no sound. As day breaks on the Great Sand Sea in the Namib Desert, there begins a symphony of the purest silence I’ve ever heard. The notes played out in hues and the rising sun plays its soft tones over the early morning dunes. At first the colour is imprecise, delicate. Suddenly, a line of crimson appears, a dramatic major motive lingers in the air. Then like the string section awakening, the lesser dunes pick up the theme and toss it back and forth, in swirls of deepening colour.’ * Freeman Patterson
“SILENT! EMPTY!! THE BIGGEST SKY LINE I’VE EVER BEEN PRESENTED WITH. A big expansive canvas stretching out into the desert.” These are the words I write eagerly in my diary. How do I convey the sheer scale of this place to everyone back home. I look forward to the year ahead in this wild desolate sun-baked place. I must remember to drink a lot. The climate is hot and dry and I love it. I love the wide-open spaces and the harsh landscape. I love the dramatic sunsets and the star-studded skies at night. I love the children in the farm school where I am placed.
We are placed on a farm outside Windhoek. That’s the capital of Namibia for those of you who are wondering. The farm is situated a half hour’s drive up into the highlands called the Khomas Hochlands. We, being Jessica, my allotted partner from Project Trust, and myself. All Project Trust volunteers are sent out in pairs and I have been placed with Jessica because of our musical abilities and previous experience living in Africa. Jessica is the brighter one out of our partnership and far more musically talented than myself. She also has the added advantage of playing a much smaller instrument which she is able to carry with her all around the world and regularly practise.
“Phew, it survived the journey. No broken strings. The bridge is still in place. This dry atmosphere could be a problem. Do you think the wood will start cracking Julia?”
My cello proves far too cumbersome to take with me, so when I play, which is rarely, I have to borrow a cello from a kind elderly gentleman in town. While Jessica is doing backward somersaults on the fingerboard of her violin (or viola when she can get her hands on one) I am scratching my way through awkward notes trying to make sense of the timing.
Jessica is well travelled, having lived in Romania and Ethiopia due to her father’s work for the British consulate. She has the good fortune to have everything in her favour, a public school education, intelligence, confidence and good looks. I’ve forgotten to mention Lotti. I think she should feature at this point, as she is a crucial part of our lives. Lotti is a stray German Baroness whom we found waiting for us on the farm when we arrived. She is also between school and higher education and has decided to contact family friends in Namibia and come over and see what she can put her hand to. She is a dancer by training and sets to work taking the children for jazz classes. I enjoy Lotti. She has a cute German accent and a Marilyn Munroe appearance. Jessica isn’t so hooked.
“She’ll go bald before she is thirty if she doesn’t stop backcombing her hair and her eyes are sure to drop out with the amount of eyeliner she plasters on every morning!”
“Shhh … she’ll hear you. She’s next door”
Lotti comes from a very distinguished family and oozes down-to-earth aristocracy, a good upbringing, wonderful manners, and a sense of destiny. She has a very pleasant nature and probably finds us slightly cynical. Her English is coming along well and we’ve taught her not to say … ‘I stand on blondes.’
“Lotti, ‘I stand on blondes’ sounds painful. You mean … ‘I fancy blondes.’” The three of us live together. Our little stone cottage ‘Klippenhaus’ (Cliffhouse) is small and compact. Its sun-baked, bleached stone walls stay warm to the touch into the inky black star-studded nights. The air around the cottage shimmers in waves of oily summer humidity giving the place a look of a small ship floating in the sea. Spiky aromatic grass, like a worn blanket, lies over the dry dusty soil. Thick, tough thorn bushes and sharp edged stones. Snakes and lizards. All spread out under a wide clear sky that stretches forever. The canvas of Namibia is so large and uncluttered. Far, far, far away the desert sinks into the horizon under the ever-blue sky.
We are living in the bush. Our nearest neighbouring farm can’t be seen, lying a half hour’s drive away on the twisting dusty road that snakes its way for miles, up and down the Khomas Hochland highlands, in and out of the thorn scrub, giant grey boulders, and rough craggy peaks.
In the evening we hear jackals calling from over the ridge behind the tiny settlement of tin shacks where the farm workers live. In the soft early morning light touched with dew, we see the children walking along the line of land just below our cottage, carrying heavy pails of water back for cooking and washing.
In the afternoons Beethoven drifts down on the waves of cooling breeze, which punctuate the hot dry air surrounding our cottage. Our hosts live in the former farmhouse on the next ridge, a five minute walk across the valley. The main house nestles in the well-watered garden under big acacia thorn trees shading a stone courtyard. Fresh herbs hang drying from the tree branches outside the kitchen door.
Every evening a fresh steaming pail of creamy sweet milk is delivered from the dairy. An ordered vegetable patch hemmed in by wire fencing is also home to a handful of scruffy chickens. Our German hostess roots around lifting stones and weeds out of her neat rows, pausing to brush the stray wisps of white hair that fall into her beady piercing blue eyes, sunk like sparkling aquamarine gems in a tough leathery face. I admire and fear her, steely, thick skinned, a diligent farmer and tough businesswoman, a force of strength to be reckoned with.
A small precise bullet hole hangs like a portrait in the pane of glass of the guest bathroom window. A reminder of the ever-present dangers of the bush, a tribute to Mrs Blek’s rock hard stone paving rather than her shooting abilities! The story goes that Sam and Rachel, our predecessors had invited Mrs Bleks over for dinner. She turned up looking very angry and brandishing a shotgun. They immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion, thinking they had an angry German on their hands, bent on revenge. Their fears were allayed as she shouted out orders for a torch and ordered the cowering garden boy to aim a jet of water from his hose in the direction of an old flowerpot. A shadow moved; Mrs Bleks fired. The bullet ricocheted off the stone paving and through the shower window. A poisonous adder had been sunning itself on the warm stone slabs.
We have been warned about the wildlife and are getting a little bit paranoid. Yesterday, when the gardener turned the sprinkler on Jessica thought the hissing noise was a snake and ran shrieking into the house. Last night I heard a rustling in the leaves and convinced myself through that warped logic of fear that it was a leopard. It was only a small bird! We have been advised that a snake will hear you long before you see it and will disappear. Hence we have taken to stomping around in single file like flatfooted cave women in an attempt to advertise our presence.
“I just hope none of them are deaf!”
“Or plain lazy. I was told the puff adder is so lethargic, it will bite the third person that steps on it.”
“Great, well I’m going in the middle then.”
I have spotted a new type of insect that looks like a fuzzy fluff ball. I call it ‘fluff’ and think it the cutest thing on multiple legs. Unfortunately it doesn’t live long and is eaten by a lizard. The lizard has a strange habit of bouncing off the wall and landing at my feet, then scuttling off up the wall and repeating the whole process. Maybe it’s trying to tell me something!
~~~
CHAPTER 2
Life in the Hochlands
I grew up naturally like the trees and the flowers that surrounded me. * Alberto Moravia– A tribute to Africa
We live like members off the cast of ‘Little House on the Prairie.’ Everything is rosy and wholesome. Three young ladies and a little cottage in the bush. Klippenhaus was made out of stones gathered from the cliffs. Which cliffs we do not know. But the idea of living surrounded by walls of cliff is appealing. We’ve found a little nook over the front door in which to hide our key. One morning we leave it shining like a shaft of silver and return after school to find a bird has pasted a mud nest over our crack. It must have worked hard all day building its new home. I peer in the cool dark interior, the nest is empty, a smooth bowl of mud and saliva, our key sits enthroned on the rocky ledge, king of this little empty kingdom.
After long hot days of sunshine, the evenings are cold and frosty. It feels so luxurious to plump up the cushions and read for hours. Snuggling down into a feather duvet I am rocked to sleep by the sounds of Africa at night, an African lullaby.
We teach at the school every day and then drive home late afternoon in the back of the truck with our pail of fresh milk. The truck is referred to as a bakkie. It’s an Afrikaans expression and everyone uses it for their vehicles. A bakkie can be anything from a small pick-up truck to a big four-wheel drive van.
In the cool winter mornings during the first month of our stay we eat steaming hot bowls of porridge and cream laced with honey. We are self-contained and content in our stone cottage. We have no telephone with which to contact any of the neighbouring farms; our only means of communication is a transistor radio. From sunset until about 11pm our electricity comes from a generator that chugs in the field alongside us. During the week when we are teaching we live in a flat at the school, a place to sit down and prepare for lessons during the day away from the cottage. Mr Bleks drops us off in the morning and Alfred takes us home in the late afternoon after the dairy duties are complete.
Alfred tells us there are some bush paintings in the hills nearby. He says he’ll take us to see them one day. Alfred is the German farm manager, an old friend of the Bleks. He is in his sixties. Alfred lives in a cottage on the school grounds, a bachelor with a large, slobbering, angry dog called Andy.
In the flat there is a bed to rest on, it’s often so hot around mid-day that there’s no motivation for anything but a siesta. Every waking hour is filled with the noise of children. The only time I heard them go quiet was when we were introduced to them on our first day. We walked into the noisy dining hall, tin plates clattering and benches scraping. On seeing us the whole place fell silent, you could hear a pin drop. Two hundred eager faces lit up. Every head was turned to look at us. They took a minute to absorb the novelty of a new set of teachers and then the noise resumed.
At lunch we eat with them sitting on long hard wooden benches, clawing with greasy fingers at tough stringy meat caught between our teeth, getting used to the idea of no cutlery and scooping warm sticky mielie pap into a cupped hand. The children are from the different farms in the area. They are children of the workers. They come from an assortment of different tribes. The bushmen have small frames and delicate features. Their hands are tiny, half the size of everyone else’s. Their eyes are a haunting amber colour. I found a little Bush girl scratching in the dirt at the base of an acacia tree today - she was looking for edible roots and bulbs. In contrast the Damara and Herero kids have much larger frames, they are huge in comparison, with smooth ebony skin and wide generous faces. The ladies of the tribes are famous for their high-collared, starchy Victorian dresses under which they wear loads of petticoats, even in the scorching heat of summer. It’s a throw back from the days when missionaries persuaded them to cover their semi-nakedness with European dresses, totally unsuited to an African climate! Nama children have yellowy orange faces. The Basters are a mixed race; they live in their own separate colony in Rehoboth. They are a mix of European and African descent and there’s a lot of interbreeding amongst them. They have Mongaloid features, flattened noses and slanting eyes.
Late afternoons here are spent sitting around and chatting. The two main social spots are outside the headmaster’s house, where Mrs Hippondoka the headmaster’s wife sits resplendent in her Damara dress surrounded by friends and relatives. They sit and gossip while they cook, sew and style each other’s hair. The second social spot is by our flat. Under a tree is situated a wood fire that never dies out. It is stoked all day by whoever happens to be sitting by it. A black pot of tea usually sits on the fire and this is the gathering place of all the workers. I suppose socially the Hippondoka gathering is refined and like a ladies tea party, the workers gathering is more like the local pub.
We are settling in at school but find ourselves on the outside of a tight circle of old loyalties. As we are the only white teachers amongst a mixture of South Africans and Namibians, and added to this, we are the only teachers who don’t live on the school property, we are faced with a feeling of distrust and resentment. Working with the other teachers is an uphill battle in miscommunication. Stemele has been appointed to look after us. This she promptly does by rescheduling all our English club afternoons to cover afternoons she wants off. Recently I turned up at class all enthusiastic and raring to go only to find an empty classroom. Disappointed I thought the kids didn’t like me and were playing truant. I went to confess my failure to the headmaster, Mr Hippondoka, (the name says it all! An apt description of a hippo, piggy eyes and rolling gait) and found out all the kids were taking exams. Talk about a lack of communication. I went to see how they were doing, expecting a group of nervous children, only to find them lined up and singing outside the hall without a care in the world! They hadn’t started and Stemele saw it as an opportunity to get out of work and dragged me in to invigilate…
“They had me standing on a chair and dictating at full volume whilst Stemele and Nangula who were supposed to be on duty, gnawed and crunched on a mid-morning snack of chicken’s feet, wiping their greasy fingers all over the exam papers.” I recount to the girls, agitated and still speaking at full volume after straining my voice over the dictation. “I could hear the bones cracking in my pauses for breath, and then when Stemele borrowed Maria’s compass to clean her teeth; that was it, I felt violently nauseous and had to leave.” Jess and Lotti have an ear blasting before I readjust my voice level.
Stemele is supposedly in charge of the sports curriculum. She only visited the storeroom once last term. We finally managed to prise the key out of her hands and found a store full of unused equipment.
Just today the clock moved back an hour without warning. No one told me about the change. My class were stunned and surprised when I strode into their Afrikaans class and demanded they put away their books and then proceeded to teach them. Stemele came back from her ‘loo visit’, to find me wiping all her carefully written work off the black board!
She retaliated later when I was having a particularly rowdy class with 4B. They had only five textbooks between thirty kids! Stemele stormed in and hit six of the kids with a cane, and then turned and walked out. In the staff room at break she informed me the six she picked on didn’t have enough respect for me. Strange woman! I think the power went to her head. Next time she tries that trick I’ll be quicker off the mark.
On Tuesday my crayons go missing from class 4B. I think I am being absent minded and return to the flat muttering ”You’re losing it girl. Go and find yourself some pills to take!”
Back at the flat outside the door is a huddle of boys perched on an upturned oilcan drawing with my crayons. They are so excited and lift up their works of art for me to admire. I am too touched to scold them.
Boxes of old clothes arrive for the kids. We have been asked to distribute them. I am slightly worried about any spiders that might be lurking around inside. Ever since Alfred produced a Tarantula from his bookshelf, completely flattened between two books, I have been extra cautious, tiptoeing into the shower, emptying out my shoes before I put them on.
“You have to watch out. They are so fast. They can pelt across the room at the speed of light, nip you on the toe and dash off in a flash before you know what’s hit you!”
“Oh yeah, who are you kidding. Come on Jules, let’s get this over and done with.”
We settle into our teaching duties and look forward to our evenings at the cottage. We are often invited over to the Bleks for dinner and then find ourselves sinking into silence as they draw Lotti into long conversations in German. One evening Mr Bleks announces that he wants to hold a party for us to introduce us to some nice young men!
“What’s his idea of nice young men going to be like?”
Fortunately we never find out as the party never materialises.
We haven’t seen any nice young men for weeks. There was one happy incident when an engineer was called in to oversee the new pipeline construction. Jessica was trying to drill her class with the difference between ‘We shall go’ and ‘we want to go’ when …“a young tanned blonde, dressed in khaki, materialised without warning as if out of thin air and walked past my classroom window. I thought I must have been hallucinating and got back to the lesson when he reappeared again! I nearly fell over …”
It was the first sighting of a young white man and the cause of much jubilation. Many happy hours are spent on the lookout for this new interest at the school, and we day dream of romance. It never happens. He has a girlfriend.
We, however, haven’t failed to draw the attention of some of the male teachers at school. Jess and Lotti both seem to have admirers. I am constantly hiding in the loo making foul noises in an attempt to dissuade anything similar happening to me!
“I am planning on giving Murangi a sweet with ‘BOG OFF’ tippexed on it,” announced Jessica this morning.
Lotti chipped in …”Tall teacher talked to me over lunch and was telling me he have a problem. I said …well never mind, only two more weeks and it’s the holidays. He says…No, I really have a problem. I say ..Oh really? He is looking like he must cry. He says …Whenever you are not here I am so lonely… I say nothing Then he says …
“I LOVE YOU.” Jess and I chorus in unison, laughing at Lotti’s perplexed face.
Unannounced, a group of inspectors arrive to inspect the school. Normally Bleks is ready with the children lined up and singing beautifully for visitors. But this time we are threatened with closure due to health reasons. They say the dormitories are unfit for human habitation and we are politely informed we are not qualified to teach and can only take English club on Wednesday afternoons.
“You should have seen Stemele’s face drop. All her extra lessons that she’s palmed off on us will be given back to her!”
The uncertainty of our future here is getting to Jessica. She has been wandering around morosely mumbling …”I am nothing. I am but a piece of furniture and a morbid coffee drinker. We are nothing but dust and shall return to dust. Oh woe is me, we shall sit here over the aeons of time developing nervous twitches and lamenting over our lost teaching. Goodbye cruel world… Aahhh…Let’s have a fag!”
Bleks is livid with the inspection team and the place is being scrubbed from top to bottom this weekend. Classes will resume on Monday. We will continue to teach.
This afternoon we caught Slasher, a thirteen year old kid who reeks of tobacco, wielding a knife. I asked him what he used his knife for and he said … “stabbing people!”
“What, bad people? “ I asked.
“No, ALL PEOPLE!!”
Great! Remind me to watch my back whenever he’s around.
~~~
CHAPTER 3
A couple of Love Stories
If you have never told your life story then do it. Take a whole evening and sit down with a friend, tell them everything. We all have a story to tell. * Larry Crabb
Under a starlit night in the company of good friends, gathered beside a winter fire, a story unfolds. Lotti listens and later relates this narrative to us as she heard it that night whilst visiting a mutual family friend with Mr Bleks.
“Now to the story of Helmut and Gertraude,” begins Lotti in her soft German accent ...
“During the Second World War Helmut Bleks was an officer in the German army. This is where the story begins. He works hard and earns for himself a break for two weeks in which he can return home. Before he leave the Major in charge ask him to carry a parcel to the family of the Major who live very close to the family of Helmut. He was being told that the Major’s daughter would meet him at the station, he must give her the parcel and return home with her to collect another parcel to bring back to the Major.
As Helmut’s train pull into the station out of the window he is seeing a beautiful young girl in the crowd.
‘I must not look at her’ he thought ‘for I have to look for the Major’s daughter.’
“He got out of the train carriage and stood on the platform. There was no one there to greet him it was appearing. He wait as the crowd begin to be thin, but still nothing. Finally he was left on the platform with the pretty girl. She is turning and look at him it seemed on him that this was actually the Major’s daughter. He also knew that this was the girl he wanted to marry.”
“Talk about love at first sight. These Germans know how to get what they want and don’t waste time making evaluations,” Jessica comments.
“What does it mean, ‘we don’t waste time making evaluations’?”
“You know, you get what you want and don’t beat about the bush.”
“Beat about the bush, what is this?”
“Oh, don’t worry I’ll explain it later, let’s get on with the story.”
I sense the tension between Jess and Lotti; it’s always difficult when we get onto subjects of nationality, especially when related to the war.
Lotti continues … “He travel back to the Major’s house, finding on the way that she had only fourteen years whilst he twenty. He stayed there for a few days and when the time comes for him to go to his own family he ask if he can stay longer. At the end of his time Helmut had two whole weeks with the Major’s family and had not gone home at all!
When he return to the army and is telling the Major the story the Major is angry and shouts, ‘She is only fourteen and you twenty, you will never marry her.’
“But after some thought the Major change his mind and tell Helmut that he can marry her if he did not show his love for her until she is eighteen. He agree to this and so begin many long letters.
“Helmut could read between the lines in her letters the confusion over his not telling her of his love feelings. His heart was sore but there was nothing he could do, he had made promise.”
“Blimey, that sounds a bit too honourable for old crusty features.”
“Finally the day before her eighteenth birthday arrived and Helmut travel to her home to see her. When he arrive he was being surprised and angry to see three other men trying to win her. In an anger he run into the house and tell her mother of his plan to marry her. Then he wait for a chance to get Getraude on her own and ask if he can marry her.”
“Stop! Did you say Gertraude? Mrs Bleks?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t imagine her being young and beautiful.”
“Yes, well it is the same … She was happy with Helmut and agree. At last the happy couple is together. He want to marry her that very day but she ask for a week to prepare her wedding dress and he agree, what was one week after waiting for so long.
“The next week they married, it was eight days before the Germans surrendered.
“At 4.00pm on the day of their wedding an officer arrive and call Helmut back to the battle field. Helmut cry to be left for just one day with his new bride but it was no point. He must go. He order his new wife and mother-in-law to leave the country in the shade of darkness for fear for their lives in the danger of this end of the battle.
After a quick goodbye he leave, the salty tears of his wife wet on his cheek.”
“The salty tears of his wife on his cheek! You’ve been reading too many books Lotti.”
“A day later he was back in the ditches facing the angry Russian army. A message arrive to say that someone was wait for him back at camp.
‘I cannot leave my soldiers at this time,’ he is saying, but they say this wisitor is not to be missed.
“So Helmut return to base camp to find his wife waiting for him!”
“My, she is a tough cookie, so that’s where she learnt to be hard as nails.”
“Fighting continue all around him and quick Helmut order her to change into uniform. She stay with him fighting in the trenches but on the eighth day the Russian troops come and catch them all.
“They are being surrounded and make to march into a hut. Then the Russians order the leading officer among them to make himself known. Everyone is silent. One Russian officer get up and stand before Helmut …
“ ‘You are the officer, get up and come with me.’
“Helmut obey and is about to be taked off when Gertraude jump up and say, ‘No, if he goes I go with him!’
“Yeah, go Gertie go!”
“Seeing that she was female and very pretty along with it they agreed for her to go instead of her husband.
“Knowing the reputation of soldiers with captured girls Helmut jump up to say, ‘I will not let you take her.’
“It’s slightly melodramatic don’t you think, are you sure this is true?”
“Yes, of course, but what is melodramatic?”
“Don’t worry, that’s another word to explain later, write them all down Julia.”
“A fight broke out. Finally both of them were taken off to a concentration camp. I forget the story here, sorry, um … the next thing that I remember is Helmut making a pretend certificate for Gertraude to go out. He use a boiled egg skin and makes a stamp to a fake document.
Gertraude is being free. Helmut makes life on his own as a solitaire prisoner. That evening another prisoner call him and say someone is urgently wait to see him at fence. Under the darkness Helmut go out to the fence. He is wondering who this stranger can be who will risk their life to see him. Once he reach the fence he can see a wet bed ragged Getraude …”
“Bedraggled is the word you want there Lotti!”
“Oh, thank you, bedraggen … She had swum through the tunnel and risk her life in the icy water as well as running the problem of the looking lights picking her up. She would have been shot if she was being seen. She bring food and clothes and continue to do it every night for a week until the German prisoners were being changed to Siberia to serve for five years in a concentration camp.
“In this time life is very hard. The Siberia people have few clothes and the prisoner has little food. Sometime Helmut will get one of his old shirt and sew a new clean collar to the top of his shirt using the cuff. Then late at night he will go to the toilet and stand on one and peer over.”
“Pee over?”
“No, look over. On the other side sitted Siberian women who clean and cook in the camp. Only his head and shoulder is wisible. Helmut ask how much they pay for his shirt.
“5,6 Rupples?”
“What’s that, a few rand in equivalent?”
“I don’t know, something like that.”
“Jess, you’ve lived in Eastern Europe, what’s a Rupple worth?”
“I don’t know, sorry. Anyway what’s it matter, it was basically very little I should imagine.”
“He was paid in food, handing his dirty old shirt, which look very clean from over the dividing wall between the toilet. In this way Helmut is getting himself extra food. Once he was catched and they were putting him in the solitaire cell.”
“It’s ‘solitary’ Lotti, not ‘solitaire’.”
“This solidarty cell is tall and narrow with only just enough room for a man to stand with his hands by his side. A man is having to stay there twenty four hours and can no sit or bend down. There is no room. Sleep was impossible and legs ache with the weight of a man’s whole body on them for twenty four hours.
“Helmut serve his five year sentence and is finally allowed to return to Germany. At the German border the prisoners were sended back to East Germany. The Russians would not let go of their hold over them that easily.
“Helmut knew that East Germany was soon becoming a communist state under Stalin’s control. When his passport is being stamp with East German stamp he refuse to go there.
“ ‘I do not know the language, the people. What could I do there? If you do not send me to West Germany then I’d rather you sent me back to Siberia.’
“The officers decided not to fight him as the problem of sending him all the way back to Siberia is too great. So Helmut is being free, one of the lucky few to be able to return to West Germany.
“Helmut however did not go straight back to his wife. He was now very weak with no hair. It had all been shaved off; he was swollen with all the water caught in him …”
“Water retention probably.”
“It is from all the water soup he is eating in Siberia to survive, the warm it provide was good to stop one from freezing to be dead. Helmut work on a farm with friend for six months, slow he is getting his health and figure.
“The friend is noticed that he have not been in contact with his wife. They became worried that he may like many others feel not enough to be a husband and never again contact his wife. Many young women all over the country have been in wedding before or in the war. They never see their husband again not because they die but rather because they had no self-confidence and worth.
“So Helmut’s friend secretly is calling to Gertraude. Helmut is told that he have to go to meet a friend of theirs at the station on the next Saturday. Without knowing it he goes happy to the station and sit waiting on the platform for the wisitor to arrive. When the train stop and out step Gertraude he recognise her immediately. He freeze in horror …”
“Correction, froze in horror.”
“Sorry, he frozed in horror and decide if she made one wrong move, one blink at his appearance, one second of not knowing him he would run. He could not face her if she not know him. He is sitting still as she walk by. He is sure she had not known him. He was ready to make a fast run when she turn round and catch sight of him. Running into his arms, tears of happiness in her eyes, that is where this beautiful warlove story ends.
“Helmut then work very hard and became a powerful rich industry man. His hard work is making it’s bad work on his heart and he is being telled to change his lifestyle or live for only three more years. So he move to Namibia.
“The farm was a hunting farm when they first take it. Helmut was not a man to sit and watch life pass him by. As he saw the poverty around him he come to talk to the children. The beginnings of a school had now been put inside him. Slowly the Helmut Blek’s Foundation built up and today he is planning a third school. A famous German history man is making his story in a book called ‘Those who dare to tread new paths’ in which Helmut has got a place.”
We sit in silence as Lotti’s narrative comes to a close. Could the story we had just heard really be the history of our hosts? The room hangs with a ponderous pause. Lotti watches as we take in the implications of this narrative. It seems a story too large for life. Jessica isn’t convinced, but I sit rooted to my chair in awe of what I have heard.
~~~
CHAPTER 4
Windhoek Symphony Orchestra
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert …
* Ozymandias. Percy Bysshe Shelley
We are young and starry eyed and despite our hosts’ romantic and noble past we find them rigid and difficult. As with many pioneers great achievements can be made at the cost of more endearing characteristics such as grace and patience.
One night we have problems turning the diesel-fed power generator off.
“Lotti, can you come out here, I can’t turn it off.”
“It’s stuck, do you have a torch.”
“Yes, somewhere inside, hang on …”
“It’s really not going to budge, should we call the Bleks.”
“It’s late, they won’t be pleased.”
“Well it’s only six hours until they’ll be up, Mrs Bleks is up by 5.00am”
“O.K, who’s going to set their alarm and get up to tell them?”
“Not me.”
“Me neither.”
“It’s cold out here.”
“Let’s go inside.”
We leave the decision unresolved. The generator runs all night finally running itself dry in the early hours of the dawn and spluttering to a breathless death. Mr Bleks is furious with our irresponsible behaviour. He has good reason to be. Living in the wilds of Africa and getting machinery repaired is a time consuming and costly effort. I can understand his icy reception of the news. All three of us are bundled unceremoniously into the back of the school ambulance he is driving to school that morning. He drives at full speed over the rough dirt road. Skidding round corners, over boulders, up and down the gullies. Throwing us from side to side in the back and catapulting us high into the air to land with a heavy thump on the hard cold floor in the back of the ambulance. We arrive at school shaken and bruised and learn quickly not to push the boss’s patience.
After that incident we long to sacrifice the idyllic stone cottage for a room further away from the old couple.
“She’s scary Julia, I don’t want to run into her in a bad mood.”
“I know what you mean. I find it hard to relax around her.”
“I feel like we’re a big disappointment to them.”
“No, I think they’re both just very reserved with their emotions and not very good at expressing themselves in English.”
“What do you think Lotti? You’re German.”
“They like you, look at the big bucket of peanut butter she bring over when she hear Jessica like it.”
We all turn to look at the bucket; I’ve never seen so much peanut butter in my life.
“Do you think they make it themselves?”
“No, there’s no peanuts growing here. It’s probably from a neighbour at cheap price.”
“It’ll take us all year to get through it!”
“It’s much better than the shop stuff.”
“Think of the calories! Oh dear.”
Although we love our little cottage, we do find ourselves on tenterhooks around the Bleks. It’s a pleasant surprise when we are invited to join the Windhoek Symphony orchestra as they are short of players. Helena, a member, is a first class clarinet player. She rings up the Bleks and persuades them to let us get involved.
This weekend we are being thrown in at the deep end, joining the Orchestra for their dress rehearsal.
Helena is married to David Godfrey, our Project Trust co-ordinator in Namibia. There are twelve Project Trust volunteers in Namibia. We flew out together. David met us all at the airport and took us back to his house to orientate ourselves before being sent out to our projects. His home is a place of refuge whenever we can get into town; he and Helena are our Namibian parents. David is a very attractive man. Clever, good-looking, charismatic, he exudes an aura of well-being and is generally very nice to be around. He’s also head of the Rossing Foundation, which is the educational side of the Rossing Uranium mine which is one of the biggest earners in Namibia. It’s actually one of the biggest uranium mines in the world and supplements the country’s tiny agricultural projects and the larger fishing industry. Helena is a dizzy artistic South African, brilliant musician and generally fun lady.
He and Helena have just become parents. They turn up to rehearsals all soppy and in a muddle over the baby. Helena is beaming. David is beaming. He holds the baby during rehearsals whilst Helena tries to concentrate on the notes.
I have borrowed a cello from Mr Von Segern. Mr Von Segern makes and repairs musical instruments. He is busy fixing his bows with superglue instead of resin when we first meet him. He is very pleased with his innovation and beams at us through little half-moon glasses.
“Superglue, resin … what’s the difference?”
He points at a large cello case behind the sofa,
“There she is, how about you get her out, have a play, get used to her, we could try a trio, Jessica on the viola, me on the violin and you on the cello.”
Why did I let anyone know I play the cello? It’s not that I don’t enjoy it, but these people are professionals and I am certainly not! I am so ashamed of my sight-reading I want to dodge this, but there’s no getting out of it. I open the case and the familiar smell of wood varnish and resin rise to greet me. My hands reach out to hold the slim neck; the strings are dusty. She is a mellow honey colour. I can tell she will be friend and my enemy all in one. When I play well she will be a delight; when she creaks and groans and the strings snap I will curse her. Sitting in this grand German lounge with Jessica and Mr Von Segern, we play a pretty piece of chamber music that rides on the dancing waves of dust caught in the light falling through the large window. Maybe I’m not as bad as I thought...
I sit at the back of the orchestra trying to hide in the shadows. Sitting next to me is a young cellist with thick goofy glasses. He has a bowl haircut and wears an outdated jacket with sharp collars and a synthetic sheen. In between getting lost and faking my cello playing I’ve noticed he’s actually very attractive and has a nice smile. He’s a brilliant player, much better than I. I really would love the opportunity to grab him and give him a haircut, a groovy pair of glasses, a faded pair of Levi 501’s and a tight T-shirt. He’d be the spunkiest cellist around. And he’d be on my arm, my discovery, my caterpillar metamorphosed into a butterfly …
I day dream along these lines until the sound of someone’s mobile phone ringing brings me back to reality. The lead cellist who is a doctor is examining his bleeper and reading his message. He crouches down and whispers into his little black box. Then quietly he creeps out, leaving his seat empty. The conductor must be used to this and orders dream boy to take his place.
There are ugly noises coming from the trumpets. I watch amused as the conductor takes a pin out of his imaginary hand grenade and throws it at the brass section. The conductor has been flown in especially for this concert from Cape Town. His English accent and constant references to cricket are very comforting. I could be back at Charterhouse playing in the Youth orchestra. Now the cellos are depleted I hope he doesn’t home in on us, my playing is getting worse and I was counting on the brass section to deafen my sound. It’s a strange feeling to be playing Handel in this dry hot country. The familiar notes jar on the unfamiliar surroundings.
Back at the cottage I try to rehearse my part. Jessica is reading a book. Lotti listens. A flat, C, E flat … I feel a sharp stabbing pain in my foot. The ants are particularly ferocious around here and while I’m trying to concentrate I have one sinking its jaws into my big toe and clinging on for dear life. I try and shake it off. It won’t be parted and I finally have to wrench it off with a pair of tweezers.
Lotti is listening and smiling until she sees a movement behind the bookshelf. Then she looks positively angry and stomps off into the kitchen to get a weapon.
“All these crawling things..!”
Armed with Doom spray she is about to nuke whatever it is when she finds trembling behind a hardback volume of Wilbur Smith a cute, fluffy, minute mouse. It’s teeny. She’s smiling again and cooing over it.
Sunday, Alfred takes us to see the bushman paintings. We have been pining to see them ever since he told us about them. We drive along the road out to Friedenau dam and turn off onto a rarely used hunting track. We bump along going further and further into the bush. It is beautiful and green with sprinklings of blue and yellow flowers everywhere. We finally stop on a hill overlooking a deep rocky valley. We walk down pushing through thorns and creepers. My legs are scratched by the dry brittle grass. A shallow river flows through the valley. Some rocky pools lie at its base with an outcrop of rocks lining the other side of the valley, covered in vines. We walk along the water’s edge looking for a cleft in the rocks. Everything looks wild and overgrown. There’s not a hint of a break in the heavy vines.
“Sorry, I was sure it was here.”
We are lost, but further on we stumble across an old bushman camp with a circle of boulders sticking upright out of the ground making a fireplace. We pass a bushman burial site, a pile of pebbles with a thorn tree growing on top of it.
“OK, I know this, we must turn back. This is too far...”
We retrace our footsteps and with the light now behind us it is easy to find the cleft in the rocks. Climbing inside, under a heavy mossy ledge, everything looks dark, there’s no sign of any paintings. Lotti moves along the wall scanning it for any signs of anything …
“Here, here’s something. A bird. Alfred they’re here.”
There is a faint painting of a guinea fowl, only the feet and mid-body are visible. Further along we find a scene of hunting. It is just visible. Red stains reveal men with bows and arrows. I find a Kudu, and other animals with legs missing due to weathering on the rock. Alfred points out a woman dancing. Some of the rock has been chipped away. The red copper clings to the face of the stone. How old is this site, hundreds or thousands of years? Do the spirits of the bushmen still roam this valley? We decide to come back one day and explore it further.
Monday, to distract myself from the concert, which is rapidly looming larger on the horizon I sit outside our flat at the school watching the kids entertain themselves. The little ones play cars in the dirt or make mud houses with twig fences. The older kids chase each other around, whispering and giggling. There’s a car city building up on a slope of ground with a network of dirt roads being used by fifteen little boys pushing homemade cars along them. Next to a hole in the ground is a mountain of dirt, which is being used as a slide by a little boy and girl on a dustbin lid. Down by the lake there is a pipeline crossing right over the centre with cement blocks at intervals to support the pipe. The kids find it great fun to see if they can cross the whole expanse without falling into the murky water below. Another play pastime is the camps made of stone walls and tin roofs scattered around.
Matthus, one of our students has become a permanent feature at our flat at the school. He likes to come and chat with us and visits every day. Jessica wrote him a fake cheque last week with ‘IT’S ONLY A JOKE’ blazoned across the front. Matthus was delighted for a few days. He turned up today looking anxious and asked …
“What does ‘it’s only a joke’ mean?”
I got my first lot of photos developed today. It was great until I gave Matthus one, and then a hundred and fifty kids all wanted their own ‘piccie’.
It’s Tuesday and I seem to have run out of energy for this term. Must be the building heat. My class and I just mess around. We seem to have a secret unspoken understanding between us that as long as the work gets done and no one else can see us, it’s much more fun to have a good laugh. 4B is my favourite class. After a particularly noisy morning, Stemele comes raging in again and asks what all the noise was. I grin and say we were just reading aloud. I can’t believe how insolent I’m becoming. As soon as she has left I grin at the kids and we continue. For some strange reason I am really enjoying annoying Miss Stemele. She’s so darn lazy.
She keeps scheduling study periods on Friday afternoons so she can deceive the headmaster into thinking she is supervising work whilst she is actually catching a lift into town for the weekend. What a nerve.
Wednesday, there’s a steady thumping noise coming from outside. It drifts through the window and the incessant noise drives Jess out to confront the offender. She puts on her sternest teacher’s face. On sighting the upturned smiling face of a little boy drumming on an old cardboard box all grievances are quickly forgotten. In the winter the boys drag their blankets outside and sit under our window soaking in the sun. They make up a row of cheeky smiling faces.
Thursday and we have a knock on the door and a skeleton of a boy enters holding out a hand covered in weeping warts. As the nurse has left we are the newly appointed first-aid centre.
Friday a group of girls knock on the door with a bag of flour asking if they can come in and make bread. They, like us, are scraping together the last morsels of food before the weekend. Still I am confused at how they are going to make bread from just plain flour. Working our way through our communication barrier I work out that they want to borrow a pan and some oil. They mix the flour with water into a dough which they roll into flat pancakes and fry. The flat is soon filled with the smell of frying which attracts more kids. The terrible trio, Thomas, Lawrence, and Lazarus ask to come in to listen to a tape. The music and smells of cooking draw an even larger crowd squishing their noses up against our glass window. They are after the food but the girls won’t let them in and shout at them slamming the door locked. We watch in amusement. The others will probably troop off to the kitchen and plead with the cook for food.
We drive into town on Friday night. We sit in the back of Alfred’s bakkie with three dead sheep and a cello! Alfred’s bakkie sounds very sick. It is embarrassing to crawl into town at a snail’s pace with smoke billowing behind while we are over taken by every other vehicle on the road, including a bicycle. At least at this speed we aren’t in danger of having a crash. Mr Bleks had a bad accident last week whilst driving to the airport. Mrs Bleks was driving him in the BMW. On one of the dirt roads just before you reach the tar she hit a Kudu. It bounced off the windscreen smashing it into tiny pieces. The shattered glass fell in on the car and cut Mr Bleks. Mrs Bleks was protected by the steering wheel. He had a plane to catch so they didn’t stop. He had to walk into the airport with blood streaming down his face much to everyone’s fright. It looked like something out of a horror movie.
Alfred drops us off at the Godfrey’s. Tomorrow evening we will play in the concert. Tonight we can relax. David tells us how he and Helena met. We sit drinking sundowners and watch the sunset from their balcony; the hills that surround this city are glorious in the evening sun. After sunset the city lights up, one by one each pinprick of light is turned on. I watch mesmerised, all the sparkling fairy lights nestle in a valley surrounded by the harsh jutting skyline of hills. We eat and chat. I fall asleep to dream of cellos and dead sheep.
The dreaded concert is about to begin. The Bleks, Alfred, Mr Hippondoka and Lotti are here to watch us! I am sitting at the back of the cello section feeling petrified. There are full stage lights and microphones hanging. This is for real. I try to scrape as far away from the dangling microphone as I can. The conductor taps his stand, the last few coughs, scraping of chairs, tuning of instruments. The last few noises settle into a quiet hush, the hall waits in silent expectation. And then we are off, skipping through the pieces of music like new born lambs in the spring! I concentrate on the back of the lead cellist’s head. I’ve worked out that if I can just get my bow to keep pace with his, moving in the right direction at roughly the same time, I can fake it. I am running my fingers up and down the fingerboard in all the right places. From the heights of crashing crescendo’s, to the depths of low bass notes, sweet harmonies swirl through dancing melodies. We run and we glide, we trip and we jump. We laugh and we cry in mournful sighing pauses. An hour and a half later and it’s all over. The audience rises to its feet. My cup runneth over.
We pack our instruments away and join everyone for drinks. Mr Bleks is so proud of us and keeps refilling our wine glasses.
“My girls, I am so happy. Beautiful. You were beautiful.”
Mrs Bleks beams, Lotti smiles and chats easily to Mr Von Segern, Mr Hippondoka is downing as much free juice as he can get his hands on. David and Helena join us. We all coo over baby Gabriel.
Driving back under the stars, I finger my cheque. My first paid performance, unbelievable. We are paid the same amount as the professionals. It’s unbelievable, and it’s over. What a relief. Could life get any sweeter? A shooting star falls in a million sparkling pieces.
~~~
CHAPTER 5
The Poisonous Shower
He who does not know the advantage of light, let him enter darkness. * Swahili folklore.
It is Saturday morning and we have been slow in getting up. Last night we were listening to the ‘Last Night at the Proms.’ We bellowed out ‘Land of Hope and Glory,’ to Lotti’s bemusement and worked ourselves up into an emotional frenzy over ‘Jerusalem.’ She went off in a sulk to fight with the rusty old toaster in the kitchen. When we first saw it we were so excited at our good fortune in having such a homely piece of equipment in our kitchen that we rammed in four pieces at once. Of course they all burnt. Now we have learnt how to catch the toast as it rises gracefully through the air, propelled in smoking glory towards the sink!
It’s a pleasant leisurely start to the weekend. We have a big function on at the school today. The new borehole and waterline are to be opened. Jessica and I have been commissioned to play a duet. There will be loads of guests. I think we’re ready for the occasion. Jessica is brilliant. I’m not so confident. But it’s too late now. We’ll practise one last time this morning.
The shower is still cold; it takes ages to warm up. Jessica copes by bellowing out loud operatic numbers, I find my own version of a North American Indian tribal dance more invigorating, or flinging my arms in the air and jumping up and down like a Masaai warrior. Lotti screams and talks rapidly to herself.
Today Jessica is surprised by ‘gherkin,’ our very own pet gecko, awaiting her arrival in the corner of the shower. She shrieks, runs head first into the door in blind panic, swears, slams the door and demands that we get rid of him.