excited. Neither of us had tasted fruit for weeks. We took it off to a quiet place behind the toilet sheds, where I tore off a few pieces with my teeth and passed them to my brother. It was the nicest thing we’d eaten since arriving at the camp.
Over the next few days, I got to know some of the other women in our block. I made a point of targeting one tent per row: that way, they were less likely to catch wind that I was running errands for all of them. Heila Du Preez, Lynette Bekker, Sonja Erasmus — they were the most generous with their handouts. I tried to choose mothers whose children had died, as they were more likely to take pity and now had fewer mouths to feed. By the second week, I was taking food from six different women, none of whom knew that I was being fed by the others.
Maintaining that deception was just about my only pastime. Most people at the camp simply sat about waiting for the war to end. Time moved more slowly here than it did back home. It was measured differently, too. On the farm, the cock’s crow and the height of the sun had told us when it was time to rise, to rest, and to eat; here, our lives were regimented by the curfew bell and the interminable ticking of the hospital clock.
It didn’t take long for me and Gert to grow numb with boredom.
“Tell me a story,” he would say. But after a few days of telling tales about Ntombazi, my brother grew restless and whined about being bored by the exploits of the African queen who had her enemies buried alive within the high palace walls.
So I devised a fresh tale in which all of the characters were animals. My brother and I had seen all we needed to see of human suffering, and it was the wild beasts of the veld that helped us escape into our memories. We still talked about the vervet, and wondered what had become of him after the
laager
was abandoned.
“There once was a little dikkop,” I began, “that had spotted wings and knobbly knees, and a tiny voice that squeaked. He lived alone in a nest built into a
koppie
overlooking a huge lake, and he used to dream of going down to the water to drink and spy for fish. But the lake was guarded by great, belching hippos, who everyone knows are by far the most dangerous animals in all of Africa.”
I paused here, waiting for Gert to urge me to continue. By this point, one or two other children had stopped to listen, idly staring on with wide eyes and slack jaws.
“Even more troubling to the little dikkop were the rhinos, who would bellow and rear their horns at the slightest nuisance. You might think that the dikkop would simply fly over their heads, but he was too afraid — and when a dikkop is fearful, it can’t fly. The only thing it can do is run, but to do this it must keep its head lowered, and this causes it to lose any senseof direction and makes the animal become even more panicked. The little dikkop knew this, and so he never dared to venture off of his
koppie
.
“One day, a klipspringer came up the
koppie
, looking for something to eat. He greeted the dikkop, who at first was afraid of this four-legged creature with long, twisting horns. But the klipspringer was friendly, and said, ‘You and I aren’t so different, little dikkop: I can leap almost as high as you can fly. That makes us virtually brothers.’
“The dikkop considered this before saying, ‘But you don’t need to drink to survive: everyone knows that you get all the water you need from the leaves you eat. I, on the other hand, am thirsty but too frightened to go down to the water alone.’
“The klipspringer considered the stretch of land between the
koppie
and the lake, and he noticed the rhinos and the hippos sunning themselves on the riverbank.
“ ‘I’ll take you to the water,’ he said at last. ‘Hop onto my back, and hold on tight.’
“The dikkop did as he was told, and at once they were off, bounding left and right, so that the rhinos — who have a sharp sense of smell but very poor eyesight
Over the next few days, I got to know some of the other women in our block. I made a point of targeting one tent per row: that way, they were less likely to catch wind that I was running errands for all of them. Heila Du Preez, Lynette Bekker, Sonja Erasmus — they were the most generous with their handouts. I tried to choose mothers whose children had died, as they were more likely to take pity and now had fewer mouths to feed. By the second week, I was taking food from six different women, none of whom knew that I was being fed by the others.
Maintaining that deception was just about my only pastime. Most people at the camp simply sat about waiting for the war to end. Time moved more slowly here than it did back home. It was measured differently, too. On the farm, the cock’s crow and the height of the sun had told us when it was time to rise, to rest, and to eat; here, our lives were regimented by the curfew bell and the interminable ticking of the hospital clock.
It didn’t take long for me and Gert to grow numb with boredom.
“Tell me a story,” he would say. But after a few days of telling tales about Ntombazi, my brother grew restless and whined about being bored by the exploits of the African queen who had her enemies buried alive within the high palace walls.
So I devised a fresh tale in which all of the characters were animals. My brother and I had seen all we needed to see of human suffering, and it was the wild beasts of the veld that helped us escape into our memories. We still talked about the vervet, and wondered what had become of him after the
laager
was abandoned.
“There once was a little dikkop,” I began, “that had spotted wings and knobbly knees, and a tiny voice that squeaked. He lived alone in a nest built into a
koppie
overlooking a huge lake, and he used to dream of going down to the water to drink and spy for fish. But the lake was guarded by great, belching hippos, who everyone knows are by far the most dangerous animals in all of Africa.”
I paused here, waiting for Gert to urge me to continue. By this point, one or two other children had stopped to listen, idly staring on with wide eyes and slack jaws.
“Even more troubling to the little dikkop were the rhinos, who would bellow and rear their horns at the slightest nuisance. You might think that the dikkop would simply fly over their heads, but he was too afraid — and when a dikkop is fearful, it can’t fly. The only thing it can do is run, but to do this it must keep its head lowered, and this causes it to lose any senseof direction and makes the animal become even more panicked. The little dikkop knew this, and so he never dared to venture off of his
koppie
.
“One day, a klipspringer came up the
koppie
, looking for something to eat. He greeted the dikkop, who at first was afraid of this four-legged creature with long, twisting horns. But the klipspringer was friendly, and said, ‘You and I aren’t so different, little dikkop: I can leap almost as high as you can fly. That makes us virtually brothers.’
“The dikkop considered this before saying, ‘But you don’t need to drink to survive: everyone knows that you get all the water you need from the leaves you eat. I, on the other hand, am thirsty but too frightened to go down to the water alone.’
“The klipspringer considered the stretch of land between the
koppie
and the lake, and he noticed the rhinos and the hippos sunning themselves on the riverbank.
“ ‘I’ll take you to the water,’ he said at last. ‘Hop onto my back, and hold on tight.’
“The dikkop did as he was told, and at once they were off, bounding left and right, so that the rhinos — who have a sharp sense of smell but very poor eyesight
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