Holding Up the Sky (21 page)

Saturday, 31 March
. The university's monitoring report read:

Thankfully, we had a quiet night in Caluza that extended into the morning. Robbie arrived and shared breakfast with us before we headed back into town, taking Jabulani with us to bear witness to the events in Caluza over the past few days. When we arrived at the town hall, it was packed. Monica was there, as well as Steve and Themba, Mdu and a number of the staff from the Council of Churches, the team from PACSA and a number of principals from the local schools that we worked with. Teboho and the ETHOS staff were sitting a few rows in front of us. I began to wonder about people I couldn't see; Sipho and his family, Skhumbuzo and Zonke, Thami, many of the youth leaders we knew from areas that had been badly affected. Had they made it or were they lost? If they were alive, were their homes still standing?

As head of the Centre for African Renewal, David stood up and spoke on behalf of the church. It was estimated that some 20,000 refugees were now in the city, he said, each one having lost everything. Up to one hundred people had been killed and no one could guess at the number of wounded. Neither the government nor the local municipality was willing to help with the refugees, who were for the most part ANC affiliated, for fear of being seen as partisan. Deputy Minister Tertius Delport was quoted as saying that not a cent would be spent in the region until the violence ended. David called for all community organisations to work together to respond to the crisis and committed, with the rest of the eminent persons' group, to raise the issue at a national level. David then invited eye witnesses to stand and speak to the assembly about what they had lived through in what was soon to be known as the Seven Day War.

The monitoring report read:

A
MONTH LATER IN MY NEWSLETTER HOME, I WROTE:

I have no memory of what happened in the weeks that followed the war, no recollection of the depth of emotion that the newsletter described. It is as if a heavy curtain has been drawn across my mind, not erasing the aftermath but locking it away in a place I cannot access. However, the retelling of the events of the war all these years later has left me shaken, with a patch of shingles re-emerging on my body as if the memories are still housed within the tissue itself.

What I am sure of is that I understood then that death attends life as the seasons sit adjacent to each other, spring not possible without winter. It wasn't that I believed I couldn't be killed, invincible in my twenties; it was that I knew I could be, as many others had been, and yet the world still turned. This knowing has stayed with me ever since.

Two weeks after the war ended, Msizi came to visit as promised, staying with me for a week up at the cottage. In my journal I wrote that our time together, as always, cemented our depth of feeling for each other, though I found it increasingly difficult to describe the nature of our relationship. We simply loved each other and that was all I knew for sure. Everything else was like mercury in my hand. However, even the detail of that week together is beyond the reach of my memory and I can only be sure that it happened from the journal entry itself.

The moment when the curtains open and my memory returns is my parents' arrival a few days after Easter. They were to stay with me for a month before going on to London to see my brother, Jon. It was a visit much anticipated by all of us, and for me, a relief to spend time with the two people who most represented stability and security in this place that was anything but stable. Mama Jenny had kindly offered to stay in one of the bunkhouses so that our family could share a home for a while.

In the true style of Africa, my parents had their own adventures on their way to be with me. They few into Harare, intending to visit Hwange Game Reserve and Victoria Falls before flying on to Johannesburg. They spent their first night in a hotel in downtown Harare and, as the hotel had no airport shuttle, were advised to catch the bus back to the airport in the morning. After a walk in the nearby park and a hearty hotel breakfast, they joined the end of the bus queue, discussing whether or not the bus would be on time. Immediately, the women in front of them turned and tried to usher them to the head of the queue, supported by the rest of the commuters who, for whatever reason, felt that they should be the first to board the bus. Mum and Dad were very embarrassed by this favoured treatment and declined their offer, saying they were more than happy to wait their turn. But the dozen commuters would not be deterred and, when the bus arrived a few minutes later, moved to the side and shuffled my parents and their luggage on board. My parents' only assumption was that their skin colour was already buying them preferential treatment, something they were not comfortable with but would have to get used to.

Upon arrival at the airport, Mum and Dad were told that their fight to Hwange was delayed indefinitely. President Mugabe had taken the plane the night before, flying out of Harare on government business and they were unsure when he would return. Apparently the President did not use a private jet for his travels for fear it would be shot down. His strategy was to commandeer an Air Zimbabwe plane whenever he needed to travel, making his movements indistinguishable from those of ordinary commuters. Unfortunately, this strategy virtually crippled the domestic travel industry as well as making his movements all the more visible to anyone who chose to watch.

My parents, like all the other travellers, made themselves at home at the airport and attempted to adjust to the pace and unpredictability of life in Africa. After a mere three-hour delay, they were boarding the plane. However, just as the doors were to close, the pilot made an announcement indicating that the plane was overloaded by one passenger and he would not take off until one person disembarked. An awkward silence followed. The plane, given its destination, was mostly full of foreign tourists who were unwilling to take pot luck with the President's next out-of-town meeting. Mum had been chatting to members of a tour group of Australian farmers who were here to explore trade opportunities with Zimbabwean farmers. She noticed none of them were interested in abandoning their seat either. After fifteen minutes or so, a courier approached the fight attendant and agreed that he would leave the plane if the pilot gave his personal guarantee that a satchel of documents would be delivered to a government department in Victoria Falls that same day. As the man left the plane, my parents had their doubts that the promise would be kept.

Mum and Dad made the short fight to Hwange where, the night before, a large male lion had settled itself for the evening in the middle of the runway. All attempts to move the animal failed; before finally running off into the bush the lion stood its ground and attempted to attack a plane as it landed. My parents' landing, however, offered no such welcome and they were soon settled into their game lodge, from where they spent three days exploring the game reserve, experiencing the miracle of the African bush. When they had their photos developed in 'Maritzburg, they realised that the lack of a zoom lens had left them with three reels of mostly unidentifiable black dots standing under thorn trees.

After Hwange, my parents took a tour bus through to Victoria Falls which at the time was a small town a few kilometres away from its watery namesake. The bus deposited its passengers on the main road where a cluster of hotel shuttles were waiting. As Mum and Dad disembarked, there appeared to be a commotion a few metres away. They could see a white middle-aged man, presumably another tourist, his face shredded and bloodied. As they stood watching, the man was helped away to find medical attention. Apparently he had just been mauled by a lion that had found its way through the fence surrounding the bus stop. My parents were quickly bundled into an awaiting hotel shuttle bus.

The next day they returned to the bus stop on their way to the Falls, and heard other tourists discussing a large dent in the fence. My parents questioned the tour guide on her thoughts about the lion attack but she told them that nothing of the sort had happened. Mum assured her they had seen the victim of the attack on this very spot, but the guide continued to deny that anything like that was possible. ‘Bad for business', my father whispered to my mother as they moved off in the direction of the Falls.

Two days later, my parents made their way to the small airport just outside Victoria Falls, where they were once again told that the President was afoot and had commandeered their plane. This time, however, due to the lateness of the hour, all the passengers were taken to the Victoria Falls Hotel for the night. They were each given a meal before the men were led off in one direction and the women in another to bed down for the night. The women were taken to a small conference room where mattresses, pillows and blankets were waiting. However, it soon became clear that there was not enough of everything to go around and so the women would have to share. They were also shown the bathrooms they could use: two showers and two toilets for approximately fifty women. My mother is the most patient of women yet even she was harbouring ill will towards the President by this stage.

After a restless night, the women were ushered into the foyer to take the bus back to the airport. My mother found my father amongst the crowd of men waiting there and was told of the excess bedding that the men had found in their spacious ballroom, some sleeping atop a pile of five mattresses to save the effort of unpacking them. It was a quiet ride to the airport.

My parents' connecting fights to Johannesburg were uneventful, but the delay in Victoria Falls meant they arrived two days later than planned. As they made their way through customs, a humourless official queried the authenticity of my father's camera. Dad made a move to demonstrate its functionality, but his hand was batted away, the offcial seemingly interpreting his actions as a threat. Welcome to South Africa.

Meanwhile, I'd been pacing the floor for the past two days since hearing of their delay, so it was a joyous reunion when they finally turned their hire car into the gravel driveway. We spent the evening sharing tales of their adventures in Zimbabwe and I marvelled at their ability to graciously adapt to whatever was thrown their way. I knew Mum, in particular, was keen to catch up on my news as I had kept them largely in the dark about recent events, thinking it better to tell them in context. But it was getting late so we decided to call it a night and go to bed.

The next few days few by. I was back at work and, given the displacee crisis, we were run off our feet. Mum and Dad quickly joined the rhythm of our little community, offering to take on some of the daily chores and joining us for our team lunch on the stoep. One of their favourite chores was to fetch the milk which we collected in two five-litre containers from the dairy across the road. Phezulu was located in an area where 2.2 hectare properties were common although some, such as the dairy, were much larger. If Beth went to fetch the milk, she often drove but if Mum and Dad fetched it, they went on foot. They soon learnt that white people in South Africa rarely walk. Local residents would stop and ask them if they were alright. Black people, who did walk everywhere, would stare curiously at them as they passed by. However, as soon as they began using the Zulu greetings I had taught them–Mum having more success than Dad–their fellow pedestrians ceased staring and were all smiles and conversation. To get to the dairy, it was quickest to go via the old gate, which took them in the opposite direction to the cottage entrance, buckets in hand. Two of the three streets that bordered Phezulu were lined with tall pine trees that stood like sentinels along her boundaries. The trees also filtered the hot African sun, making my parents' journey a pleasant one. After turning off the main street some 500 metres beyond our gate, they walked down the long driveway towards the dairy. While it was very different from the dairy my parents had owned for twelve years in the wheat belt of central New South Wales–that was all fat grassland and scrub as opposed to the lush pasture and forest they were now walking through–the sounds and smells of the cattle were the same. They were both instantly taken back twenty years to the clanking milking machines and the swaying gait of the Friesian cattle as they wandered up to the shed for their morning milking. While they waited for the black farmhand to fill their containers, the white farmer, delighted to meet fellow cattle lovers, chatted about South African breeds and yields and the challenge of running a small dairy against the larger conglomerates in Natal.

Mum and Dad also took it upon themselves to collect the post each afternoon at the small local post office which was two kilometres down the road in the opposite direction from the dairy. The road sloped down into the valley, pine trees giving way to the hedges and iron gates of the old established homes that dotted the landscape. The tiny modest post office and its adjacent grocery store stood alone like two Shetland ponies in a stable of thoroughbreds. Given that the post office was a government building, it was also staffed by another rarity, an Afrikaans-speaking official in an almost exclusively English-speaking town. By law, schools were required to teach both English and Afrikaans, so the postmaster made the assumption that all custom could be handled in his mother tongue. When Mum and Dad arrived at the post office and sought to strike up a conversation, they discovered that it was not a political statement the postmaster was making but rather, his English was so poor that he struggled to make himself understood. However, they managed to muddle through; Mum and Dad eventually left the post office with Sizwe's mail in hand. They then made their way back up the valley towards Phezulu, stopping to explore a few intriguing country lanes along the way. (This was an annoying habit my father had developed during my childhood. When on holidays, he would follow his nose, taking interesting side routes on our way to our final destination. Despite being driven to distraction by this habit, Jon and I learnt that if we complained, Dad would take a few extra detours just to teach us patience.)

On their first trip to the Phezulu post office, Dad's exploring got them completely lost. They stood looking up and down the road for a familiar landmark and were just about to pronounce themselves in need of help, when Mum looked behind her and discovered they were standing with their backs to the Sizwe gate. The thought occurred to Mum that if they needed to ask for help, it could only have been from the black passers-by as the white residents were firmly locked away behind gates and fences.