Made it to Sunday

Sunday comes around and I am up bright and early and ready to head up to the church for the 9o’clock service. I note that there are still a few people in the shabeen as I pass it and I feel momentarily envious of their rather more exciting Saturday night. But it is nice to be out in the sunshine, walking around the town which feels very different to the hustle and bustle of Saturday and the few people I pass greet me in a very mellow and relaxed manner. It’s strange how that even here there is that typical Sunday morning feeling. As I approach the church, it’s evident that nothing is happening and so I pass it by and walk a bit further onto the road and then head east up the road to the top of a small rise about a quarter of a mile away. I pass a couple of buildings hidden in the trees but they stand out because they are painted a bright orange and blue and which I think will make a nice photograph so I stop and walk a bit closer along a sandy track. I crouch down at one point to look at the biggest beetle I have ever seen. It must be three inches long and half as wide and is almost intact but something has gone over it, probably a car and it is just still alive but already a pack of insects are steaming around or upon it and using it for an early Sunday morning meal. I’d like to put it out of its misery and think about stamping on it to finish the job, but I’m unsure if I won’t just end up causing it more pain if I don’t do it properly and so decide in the end to let nature take its course and so I step over it and continue on my way. The temperature is starting to rise and the sky is a clear cobalt blue (though we’ve had a couple of torrential downpours over the last couple of nights) but it’s still very pleasant and it’s nice to be strolling along on a Sunday morning taking it easy and exploring a little further than I have been before. From the top of the rise, I turn and see the town set out before me and the houses falling away into the dip where most of them nestle in a cluster before they rise again on the other side of the shallow valley. Heading back I return the waves of a few people who are sitting at fires outside their huts or houses and then stop to admire the riding skills of two young men that have come bounding out of the Bushman camp on horses. They are riding bareback with only a bridle and a switch of broom to keep their mounts in hand but they seem confident and in natural partnership with their horses and they are clearly having a good time. Seeing me they canter up and stop just short making the request that has become the norm - will I take a photograph of them, which I do. They head off whooping and laughing back through the camp at a fast canter and I hope that none of the children get in their way. Just as they disappear and as if I’m watching a stage show of Calamity Jane another Bushman comes hurtling out of the lane, this time in a buggy with two young horses and going full pelt. As he nears the road he makes a 90 degree turn only just keeping control but losing various commodities off the back in the process. The horses are not in sync in spite of his enthusiastic work with the whip and as one is pulling the other is holding back and so there is a kind of push pull effect that bounces and rattles the buggy around and he looks as though he should have appended L plates. But undaunted he manages to turn around and takes off again in the opposite direction striking up clouds of red dust in his wake. As the dust settles, I hear the faint sound of singing and as I get closer I see that some of the Bushman are having a Sunday gathering and the strains of Alleluia combined with tambourine and guitar filter across on the breeze. It’s a lovely sound, mellow and heartfelt and even though I didn’t get to a church service, this is enough for me to feel at least a bit spiritual. I listen for a few minutes and feel slightly uplifted by the experience and then walk back towards the village in parallel with a group of ten young bushman boys who are wearing fully or partly a white and black football strip that is many sizes to way too big for them. They arrive at the football pitch which is pot-marked with holes and runs downhill from one goal to the other. They proceed to chose teams until in the end there is a team of four bigger boys, maybe 10 or 11 and a team of six younger boys, maybe between five and nine. They form two huddles, shoulders together, conspiratorial as they talk tactics and then with sudden gusto they jump up and pump the air with their thin little arms, working themselves up for the battle. The energy is palpable and their enthusiasm is not quelled by the fact the ball is not round and it reacts to their kicks in a way that is somewhere between that of a football and a rugby ball. But it is clear they are having fun and I go over when they are having a break and ask them if I can get a team photo, which as ever, is done with much enthusiasm and chattering and with an impressive degree of professionalism.

I’ve been feeling under the weather a bit for the last few days and I am not sure whether it is the malaria tablets I am taking or whether I have got a bit of a virus. But whatever it is, it is enough to send me to my bed and I retire with my book which I manage to read for only a few minnutes before I drift off and then fall into sleep. I’ve been asleep for about three hours when I hear Kat calling me to tell me that the Bushman kids are outside having come for the bi-Sunday ‘sausage sizzle’ and that they are just too cute to miss. So even though I still feel a bit fuzzy and headachy I get up and grab my camera and head outside. There are about 20 children ranging from age one to fourteen and there is a complicated skipping game going on. Kat tell me they invited her in but she lasted less than ten seconds before they told her to sit back down again. But it’s obviously a game they know well and they take it in turns to run and jump into and over the rope, taking over the ends as their penance when they don’t make the grade. Stu who looks after the project in Pos 3 has the bbq running and while it heats up and he cooks the sausages we all pile into the reception area of the clinic to watch a DVD called ‘The Gods must be Crazy’. It’s a funny but poignant 1980s film about a Bushman from the Kalahari that has to find the end of the earth in order to throw away an evil thing that the gods sent from the sky (a coke bottle thrown out of a light aircraft window). At first it seems like a great gift and they find many uses for it but quite soon they start to argument and fight over it and the chief tells one of the young men to take it to the end of the earth and give it back to the gods. On his travels which takes him from the remoteness of the Kalahari into Botswana he comes across many things he has never seen before and only just manages to avoid jail and hanging in his naivety and misunderstanding. Though it has some serious undertones there are moments of pure slapstick and the children have seen it many, many times before but it is one of their favourites and is probably unique in that it features Bushmen speaking in their own language as well as actors speaking English. It’s especially funny because the children laugh at the Bushman language jokes and Kat and I are laughing at the English language jokes but neither of us understand what the other is laughing at. The sausage sizzle comes hard on the heels of the film and the children know the drill which is to line up smallest first to be handed a sausage smothered with tomato ketchup in a slice of bread. The Bushman children seem remarkably well behaved and though there is a bit of shoving and pushing while everyone gets themselves in position it is generally well humoured and nobody falls out. After the children have had their fill it’s the parents turn and by the time they have eaten too it is dark, the bbq embers are starting to burn out and the Bushman slowly start to drift back to their camp. We’re famished by this time, hunger pangs brought on by the sound and smell of the sausages roasting over the coals and Anna have slipped a tray of frozen Boerwurst in the microwave to defrost. As she is doing this we are told that one of the young Bushman girls who is a known epileptic has had a fit and is in the clinic. We know which one it is, a fifteen year old that we had met on the first day at the Bushman camp and who Stu had checked was taking her daily medication. She often forgets and it appears that she ran out of tablets and hasn’t been to the clinic to get some more. When we get to the clinic she is laid out on one of the examination tables and I ask Kat what I can do to help. She tells me that I should check that she is still breathing which I do but at first I can hardly tell if she is but then she gives a big gasp and her chest starts to rise and fall though more quickly than is ideal or natural. She is somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness and I stand there holding her hand and looking at her face, watching her eyes flickering. Apparently all we can do at this point is to watch her and let her tripped out brain take its time to settle down and reboot. Her breathing slows down after a while and she looks as if she is sleeping peacefully and we try to wake her up. When we eventually do, she is not quite with it and she stands up very unsteady on her feet swaying and leaning back against the bed. It takes two of us, a hand under each elbow to guide her out to the reception and into the car which will take her the short ride to the Bushman village. Normally after an episode like this a patient at home would be admitted to hospital but it is 7 o’clock at night here, already pitch black and two hours from a hospital so that isn’t an option. Anyway, it’s not unusual for her to fit I am told and so everyone really just takes it in their stride. We hope to hear in the morning how she is but there is nothing more we can do now so we walk the 50 yards or so back across the compound to the accommodation to cook our sausages on what remains of the heat from the bbq but the atmosphere is a little more subdued than it was.

Comments

[Richard]

No Heinz beans to go with the sausages?
I enjoyed the report on the trip into Town. Have you ever walked around Filey? That doesn't take long either.
Keep dreaming of that beer.
My Harrier is off the road otherwise I'd have called in.
Cheers,
Richard