the never-ending news reports of violence and anger and despair from the rural areas.
Sometimes I even feel out of place because of who I am: a white Afrikaner who had a privileged small-town upbringing. I benefited from apartheid and don’t know how I should feel about the past. Some people say I should reflect on it, quietly and remorsefully. Others say I don’t have to feel so bad about what’s in the past, that there are valid reasons for the cruelties and the outrages.
And then there are those, even members of my family, who tell me: forget everything, pack up, put your things on the plane and come with us to Australia or Canada.
Everywhere I come across people, especially on TV and radio, in the newspapers and on the internet and in debating forums, who tell me how I should feel about the country’s past or its future. I listen and join in, but there’s a time for listening and a time for talking, I’ve decided, and a time for hitting the road, for heading into the country.
In my bakkie that’s parked in front of the café, I have the basics: clothes, a laptop, a camera, notebooks, and a can of pepper spray for self-defence. I want to experience again this country we talk and talk about so much. I want to try and understand for myself what’s making me feel like an unwelcome stranger here. I want to try and find out where I fit in.
I want to know if I still belong here.
It looks as if the man with the spectacles and the people in the bakkie outside Valley Funerals have reached a decision. He pushes the sheet of paper into his jacket pocket and slides into the driver’s seat. A dark cloud of petrol fumes erupts behind the bakkie when he starts it. I try to count the people in the back when it comes past me, but they’re packed too tightly. For a moment the smell of petrol lingers in the street, and then it too is gone.
I drive back towards the N1, which passes the town to the south. To the west the Matroosberg, with one of the highest mountain peaks in the area, is covered in a haze that looks like steam.
Back on the N1, I turn in the direction of Touws River. A little way along, I see the road sign indicating left: De Doorns East.
Only then, once I’ve taken the turn-off, do I realise what I’m about to do: I’m going to look for the matric girl with the three children Attie mentioned in the café. But what will I do when I find her?
De Doorns East isn’t a squatter camp. The brick houses are small and without stoeps, their front gardens bare. In one of the yards an old-fashioned bedpost leans against a wall, and a woman wearing a green headscarf is sitting on a kitchen chair in the front doorway. Perhaps she knows the girl. I pull up in front of the house. It doesn’t feel right to turn up at a stranger’s house like this to ask strange questions, but what else am I supposed to do?
I’ve heard that some people, especially antique dealers, often visit townships and go through people’s homes in search of furniture to buy. Perhaps I should start by pretending to be interested in the bedpost leaning against the wall.
The woman comes over in her blue slippers. Emily Stuurman. Behind her, on a wall unit in the sitting room, an empty Grünberger Stein bottle stands on display, like an ornament. Tannie Emily’s in the mood for a chat.
After we’ve discussed the bedpost and a few other things, she teaches me a new word: AllPay.
AllPay is an umbrella term for the various social grants paid by the government each month, for children up to fourteen, for people over sixty, and for people with disabilities.
But AllPay also refers to the day, usually at the beginning of the month, when these grants are paid. Then a whole procession of officials and security guards descend on the community hall, because most of the people who get the grants don’t have bank accounts. They come to wait in line for cash.
“AllPay is our life,” she says, “and AllPay is the cause of some people’s troubles.”
She was employed in Cape Town as a domestic worker for many years, and now depends on the R1 080 old-age pension she gets from the government each month. She doesn’t know of any matric girl with three children around here, but perhaps her sister will. She also lives here, Emily explains as she goes to call her from the Telkom phone in the bedroom.
I wait in the sitting room. On the wall unit below the empty Grünberger Stein bottle stands a television set and several other items: a ceramic dog, a head-and-shoulders photograph in a paper frame of a girl in a school uniform, a torch, a mug that says Grandma.
Next to the wall unit is a couch. Although it’s no longer new, the cushions are still covered in plastic, just like the day they left the shop.
I listen to tannie Emily’s voice coming from the room, and it occurs to me that it’s impossible to approach this country as if it’s a warm bath on a cold day. There’s no way you can prepare yourself for what’s coming. Its warm-heartedness is completely overwhelming. One minute you’re sitting in the Central Café, and the next you’re standing in a stranger’s house.
She returns from the bedroom. Her sister doesn’t know of a matric girl with three children either. “But she says you must go and ask in Touws River. Tomorrow is their AllPay day.”
2.
I head for Touws River, the next town along the N1, to experience an AllPay day for myself. Perhaps there I’ll find a young girl who has one or more babies for the extra money.
Isn’t this what this country does to us? Force us to think the unthinkable? The child support grant is R250 per child. Would someone really have a child for a mere R250 a month? Or three for R750 a month?
The road climbs the Hex River Mountain, and when you get to the top the landscape changes to Karoo veld: wild rosemary, bluebush, nenta bush; here and there a clump of karee.
The bakkie’s radio is tuned to Radio Sonder Grense. The presenter is reading the financial indicators; the American dollar has dipped slightly against the euro and the British pound, but the rand is performing consistently on the markets.
Then my cellphone rings in the nook next to the gear lever. It’s Pa, from his cellphone. I pull over. He’d called early that morning too, from his bed. He sounded a little tired then, but his voice is stronger now.
He did get up eventually, he says, and is eating an orange at the kitchen table.
He’s in the old house in Ventersdorp, at the table with the oilcloth, the church calendar on the wall behind him. Some oranges, usually with three or four overripe bananas, are in a wooden bowl on the table, next to the portable radio that has a wire coat hanger for an aerial. He always sits on the chair that faces the window, with a newspaper or a magazine close at hand, usually open at the crossword he’s busy doing. His pocketknife with the narrow sharpened blade will be there too, with the long unbroken orange peel, because Pa believes an orange should be peeled with a knife, around and around carefully, without nicking the membrane.
“Where are you, son?” he wants to know. “Will you be sleeping in Franschhoek tonight?”
A few days ago I tried to explain to him over the phone what I’m going to do: that I want to drive around the country for a while, without any real plan, that I am tired of feeling out of place in our country. That I want to start where the Snymans’ story in South Africa began, on the farm outside Franschhoek. But I don’t think he understood much. For him, even on family holidays when I was a child, travel is just a way of reaching a destination. You drive from
