*
The Jamesons were all tall, thin and blond. I climbed in the back of the bakkie together with 2 Labradors and the 4 older kids. There was Kim, who was 16 like me, the 14 year old twins Coral and Julian and 9 year old Jamie. Mother Jameson, her friend Bridget and Hunter, the youngest boy, sat in the front.
It was the first time ever I travelled in the open like that. The German weather is not conducive to bakkies. Here under the African sun, it was great fun. The dogs also enjoyed it. They barked at every oncoming car. We crossed some suburbs, not all of them as affluent as the one where I was staying. In one area ramshackle houses with rusty roofs stood in tiny, weedy gardens and the people there looked a lot like the crowd living between the railway line and the cheese factory in Waldsee, the town where I went to school in Germany.
So even here being white doesn’t automatically mean to be wealthy.
We left the town on an avenue tunnelled by big blue gums and entered hills covered in dense bush. Monkeys ran through the trees and Ma Jameson nearly flattened a snake.
Dolphin Hoek was a stretch of coast not far away from V.B. A dozen cottages half hidden in the bush lined a narrow road. Huge waves thundered on big rocks and washed up little sandy beaches. Some fishermen’s silhouettes cut dark shapes into the greenish sea, white spray jumped into the deep blue sky.
Ma Jameson and Bridget put up a sun umbrella, surrounded themselves with picnic baskets and settled down on big towels.
“This is a fantastic spot,” I said. “Feels like being in one of those American movies where everything is perfect.”
“I’m glad you like it,” Ma Jameson said, rubbing sunscreen on her nose.
“Wait until the sand fleas bite you,” Jamie grinned.
The boys got their fishing gear organized. Kim, Coral and I set out for a walk on the wet, hard sand along the water.
“I hear you’ll be in my class,” Kim said. “When are you going to start?”
“Don’t know, sometimes next week I guess. I first have to get a school uniform and everything.”
“The whole school is already taking bets about how long you’ll last,” Coral announced.
“Gee, why is that?”
“One of the exchange students we had before was only here for 6 weeks.”
“What happened?”
“He spent one whole day calling all his friends back in Atlanta,” Kim said. “His host parents nearly had a heart attack when they saw the telephone bill. He was sent back on the next plane.”
Heidewitzka. That won’t happen to me.
Except for the fishermen there weren’t any other people around. I could hardly believe it. This was a week-end after all. In Germany the place would be packed.
“Is it true that the French guys are the world’s best lovers?” Coral asked out of the blue.
“That’s what they say but I can’t vouch for it.”
“You’ll see the guys at our school,” Kim said. “Some of them are quite nice but most of them are still little boys.”
“There is Johnny Bartlett,” Coral’s face melted into a dreamy smile. “He is the captain of the hockey team. Do you play hockey, Mathilda?”
“Sometimes ice hockey in winter, when the lake is frozen.”
“Wow, on the ice!” Kim said. “Isn’t that dangerous? What happens if somebody breaks through the ice?”
“You try to get them out with a plank.”
“I wish I could go to your place,” Kim said.
“Me too, ” Carol said, “cause in Germany you’ve got TV.”
“Why? Haven’t you got TV here?” I asked totally astounded. “I haven’t seen a TV set at Hannes and Mariekes’ but I thought it was because they didn’t want one.” It had never crossed my mind that a country with modern airports, the latest car models and the know-how of doing the first successful human heart transplant wouldn’t have an ordinary thing like TV.
“We’ll only get it next year,” Kim said. “I’ve already told my parents that all I want for my birthday and for Christmas is a TV set.”
There were yellow dunes in the distance, looking like the edge of a desert. The rock pools were populated by spongy, immobile ovals and green and red creatures with long tentacles.
“Let’s go for a swim,” I suggested wading into the waves.
“Are you crazy?” Kim frowned. “The water is freezing.”
“Where I come from it hardly ever gets warmer than this.”
“No, you can’t swim here,” Kim picked up a shell from underneath her foot. “The waves would smash you right into the rocks.”
“Ja, and there are sharks,” Coral said. “A couple of people get eaten up along the coast every year.”
“Have you ever seen one? A shark I mean?”
“Nope,” Kim threw the shell into the water. “But you can sometimes see dolphins right from here.”
“And whales,” Coral said.
“Yes, and then there is the sardine run. There are so many of them that they jump right onto the beach in Durban. You just go and pick them up. Don’t you shave your legs in Germany?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Kim sounded astonished.
“Why should we?”
“Well, it feels nice and smooth, and it looks more feminine…and the guys like it better,” Coral said.
“I don’t know, I think we just like to keep our bodies as natural as possible. Anyway, if a guy is really fond of you a couple of hairs shouldn’t make any difference to him.”
“At our school Peggy Atkins is the only girl who doesn’t shave her legs,” remarked Kim. “Her mom won’t let her. Peggy says the first thing she is going to do on her 18th birthday is to get rid of that bloody hair.”
I lifted one foot out of the water and looked at the tiny hairs clinging to my skin.
Nothing wrong with that.
“I guess that whole smooth leg business was started by some razor producer with a good marketing strategy.”
Coral crinkled her nose. “I like smooth legs, nice hair styles and pretty dresses.”
I thought of my bio sandals and said: “I’d always go for comfort.”
The rocks were getting hot. A huge tanker glided across the horizon. The Labradors fought over a stinky, dead fish.
“Here comes dad,” Coral announced.
Kim stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled for the dogs.
Father Jameson, also tall, tanned and blond unloaded a bag of charcoal and some packets from his car. He started to make a fire on the sand.
“Why don’t you use driftwood, Mr Jameson?” I asked.
“It doesn’t burn so well, salt somehow puts the fire out…and please call me Gordon.”
Smoke curled into the air. Gordon cracked beers for the adults. Kim poured us minors coke into plastic mugs. Mother Jameson, whose first name was Allison, said: “Boys, get that sand off yourselves and I don’t want any crabs in your pockets. Julian, you can help your father with the braaing.”
Coral’s twin brother put a long sausage on a barbecue rack.
This is really great. In Germany they’d probably throw you into jail if you made a fire on the beach.
I asked if I could do the grilling.
Coral giggled. “Braaing is a job for men – not that Julian is a man. You can help us girls to butter the rolls.”
Gordon grinned: “Mathilda, you must know that we South Africans are the world’s number one barbecuers. We call a barbecue a braaivleis. It’s an art that has to be learnt. Today you better watch how it is done.”
During supper, back at the Wiefferings, Marieke said: “My child, don’t forget to get your stockings and your hat out for tomorrow. Church starts at 9.30.”
Heidewitzka, they have not only got school uniforms in this country, you even need a uniform to go to church.
“I don’t have a hat and I don’t have stockings.”
“Oh yes of course my dear, you belong to a different church.”
“Uh…I don
’t have a church either.”
“Oh…ag?!…” Marieke’s eyes nearly popped out of her head.
Hannes sprinkled some salt over his potatoes. “Do your parents belong to any faith?”
“Mmh, my mom was brought up as a Rosicrucian. They believe in reincarnation and don’t eat meat. When she met my dad my mom learned how to fry sausages and became a Christian like him. One day my parents found out that the church tax went to some liberation army, which used the money to buy guns. They decided not to pay the tax anymore. The next thing that happened was that the bailiff walked through our house to confiscate the furniture. Yoa, my parents were angry. They went to the Pfarrer the same day and told him, that they didn’t wish to be associated in any way with an organisation that preached love and peace and at the same time organized weapons for terrorists and was prepared to pull out chairs right underneath innocent little children’s bums. And that was the end of the church in our lives.”
Marieke hadn’t moved a millimetre since the beginning of the conversation. Her fork, loaded with beans and a piece of meat, hung suspended in mid air.
“But you were baptized as a baby, weren’t you?”
“Oh no, my parents always maintained that one’s religion is a very personal choice and that everyone must make it for themselves, once they are old enough.”
Marieke lowered her fork gently onto her plate and said with a voice full of pity: “My dear child, I’ll lend you some stockings and a hat and then you can come to church with us tomorrow.”
The church, an orange brick building, towered gloomily into the sky. Everybody was dressed in darkish colours, and the ladies and the girls wore hats. The children looked bored and nobody smiled. There weren’t any blacks, which was not surprising, because this branch of Christianity had discovered that the Almighty himself had invented apartheid, and that it was all written down in the bible.
We sat down somewhere in the middle. The whole place was barren and somehow crushing, even more so when the Dominee walked in and started to growl from the height of his pulpit. It was all in Afrikaans and I only understood the words sonde - sin, and hel - hell, at the sound of which everybody shrunk a couple of centimetres each time. Within 15 minutes the congregation was reduced to guilt ridden little heaps. After that the service went on for another 2 hours. Maybe they subscribed to the theory, that God’s bounty is proportional to the time you spend in the kerk, although it didn’t take much to figure out that the tiniest little babies were already considered to be filled with sin up to their nostrils, and that even a life time of prayer and repentance wouldn’t get them out of their misery. The stockings on my legs felt like icy spider webs. The air was thick with guilt, fear and suppressed anger. Even the flies were paralysed. I swore to myself never to put a foot into a kerk again. If this was religion they could have it.
In the car back home nobody said a word. We sat down to a big meal Paulina had cooked. After that there was nothing much to do. On the 7th day you had to rest like Him. I went to my room and wrote a letter to Friederieke. It was a shit letter because I was thinking of all the beaches and exciting places to explore only a couple of minutes away. Why did these people hate life so much? This wasn’t exactly like I had imagined a year of adventures in Africa to be. Even the dogs were miserable because they didn’t get their walk. On the radio they only played hymns and sombre classical music. Hannes explained to me that South Africa rested to the extent that there were no sports competitions, no movies, no concerts, no theatre shows. The gold mines were about the only places that worked. They probably had a special deal with Him.