Later I discover that my friends at school in Fouriesburg go to the big cut-stone Dutch Reformed Church on Sundays and sing similar hymns and pray similar prayers only all in Afrikaans. They argue with me about why I have ‘church’ on Saturdays and ask their parents why they go to church on Sundays. I feel embarrassed because they giggle and say,
,,Julle is snaaks”- “You are funny.”
(Afrikaans quotation by convention uses the first quotation mark as above, and second quotation as English standard.)
We have neighbours who are Afrikaners, and I understand early in my life that they are not to be trusted although I don’t remember anyone saying so. They don’t have the same values as us English I hear from Mommy. We don’t get to see them very much, although we listen in to their telephone conversations on the shared telephone line after we learn to speak Afrikaans. I have little to do with the Basotho who come to buy mealie-meal and goods at Daddy’s trading store. They too are different. By now I know why we are not supposed to mix with them or eat their food without being told. There is one new reason though - I am a girl, and it is dangerous!
John, Ginny, Ian, Viccie, David (with Boxer), James, and Bill
On the other hand, when John and I ride into the Lesotho mountains, the Basotho are always friendly and willing to share conversation and their food with us, just like at Mapoteng and the amaXhosa had been long ago at Dallas.
When I am ten years old, in 1955, Daddy becomes very ill with kidney-stones. Mommy drives him and my younger brothers to Johannesburg, where Daddy is admitted to the hospital. Ian is at Sedaven, an Adventist boarding school in the Transvaal about an hour south of Johannesburg. John, Petro our cousin, and I have been booked into the local weekly boarding school in Fouriesburg; where y Afrikaans is the language spoken. Granny and Grandpa Hartley had moved to Beginsel at the same time we did and live in one of the Rondavels. Granny Hartley takes us to school on the first day and drops us at the school first, then drops our suitcases at the hostels. Everything is so strange and different, and I want to cry and go home to Mommy.
„Bly jy in die koshuis?“ - “Do you stay in the hostel?” is the first question asked by my teacher and classmates. I must learn Afrikaans fast! John is fortunate enough to have our cousin Petro Jonker, who is half Afrikaans, and an English-speaking classmate Arthur Macaskill as backstop, but Arthur doesn’t stay in the hostel, so doesn’t have to endure the taunts of, bleddie Rooinekke - bloody Rednecks2, and the fights that are inevitable power struggles at the hostel.
John and Arthur remain lifelong friends.
I have never been to school before, but since I can read and write, I am placed into Standard three (Grade five) and John into Standard four. Although Daddy recovers and returns home, within a month, life has changed for me. I am shy and don’t quite fit in at school; ’n plaasjaap - a farm girl, that doesn’t know about the seemingly sophisticated life and scandals of a small town.
One day, during my first year at Fouriesburg school, my best friend Lynette gives me some yellow powder to throw at the boy who sits behind me, because he sometimes pulls my hair and calls me names. So, the next time he does it, I throw the powder at him. He sets up a huge fuss, screaming and crying. At first the teacher is puzzled and then angry when he tells his side of the story,
„Jy kon sy öe verniel het, vir die res van sy lewe!“- “You could have damaged his eyes for life!” she yells at me.
When I say that my friend had given me the powder and I didn’t know it was mustard, Lynette denies knowing anything about it and Teacher sends me to the principal.
How could my best friend do that to me? I am alone, betrayed and uncomfortable. A feeling that stays with me, although there are so many beautiful hours spent at Lynette’s home. I love her, her mother and sister Marie, who is in John’s class, but have no way of processing this hurt.
Reflecting on this incident highlights that it probably reinforced my sense that Afrikaners can not be trusted. I forgot all about it until recently, and now I wonder how these dear friends are doing? I also regret the childhood impressions that lingered so long.
We spend each week at school, and on Friday afternoons, the five-ton Magiris Deutz lorry comes to fetch us after loading up goods at the station. A Basotho man named Daniel drives, and we sit in the cab with him, bumping our way over the 24 miles to the farm. John has fluent conversations with Daniel in Sotho, to which Petro and I are not privy. We often tuck into a loaf of dry but fresh white bread meant for the store on our way home. Sometimes in the rainy season the Caledon river floods. John declares over the phone that he will not stay at the hostel over weekends under any circumstances! The drift is impassable, so Daddy sends the horses with their groom for us to ride over the mountains. In the dark and rain the sure-footed ponies take us over hazardous terrain. I would have been terrified if I had been able to see the sheer cliffs and deep valleys which we are traversing. Blinded, I hang on and pray to get home safely. Fortunately, we never have an accident. As soon as he can, John joins Ian to attend Sedaven, a boarding school in the Transvaal Province, now Gauteng.
The next year with John gone I am sent to school in Ficksburg with my brother David, while Mommy teaches James and his Basotho pal named Tlapie - little fish! Granny Hartley takes care of us in a house that our parents own. Granny has a navy 1949 Chevrolet and takes us back to Beginsel for most weekends, a two-hour drive, except when it is Polo season all winter. Then Mommy and Daddy come to Ficksburg for the weekend so that Daddy can play polo on Sundays. He buys ‘also-rans’ from the race track and schools them for polo in the evenings after work.
One such horse, a 17-hand chestnut mare named Rastrum, is my favourite. Jack, the groom and garden-boy (another derogatory term I realise) saddles her up, and I ride her to the polo field and back each week, with Jack riding ahead and leading the other horses. When we get home one Sunday Daddy announces with some satisfaction,
“Billy Peacock has bought Rastrum, for £200 more than I paid for her. He will fetch her tomorrow.”
I run to my room and lie on my bed, crying. Mother comes in and says,
“What are you bawling about Ginny?” The numbness in my throat seems to press home and it is difficult to breathe let alone speak, by now I am banging my fists into my pillow,
“Why didn’t Daddy tell me he was going to sell Rastrum?” I yell.
“Hush! Daddy has every right to sell Rastrum. She belongs to him, and he can do as he pleases with her. You are very unladylike. Ladies do not get angry and behave like this. We live by what we know is right; feelings are not reliable guides for making decisions. Now dry your eyes and set the table for supper. Let’s have no more of this skittishness.”
I lie a minute longer, then go to the bathroom to wash my face. Mumbling to myself,
“Hell, life like this is so unfair.” Defeated, I help to put supper on the table.
I share a room with Granny Hartley, she is a tall, slender, very strict lady, she wears dresses and skirts down to below her grey stockinged calves, and long sleeves irrespective of the ambient temperature. Granny’s grey hair is plaited neatly and then wound around her head, secured with grey hairpins. As Joey Louise Sieg, she came to South Africa from Germany when she was a young girl and married my Grandpa, William James Hartley, known as Bunny. He was one of the grandsons of the 1820 settler Thomas Hartley. Unfortunately, Bunny
