is loading the lorry now. He’ll be taking the post today.”
When a reply arrived at the trading store, Sipho’s father brought it home.
“Mr Aaron said he could read it to me. But I told him, thank you but my son, Sipho, can read it.”
So Sipho read the letter to his parents.
When he had finished, his father said, “Good! Sipho can write a letter, and the letter comes back. It’s time for him to look after the cattle again.”
With that, Sipho’s schooling came to an end.
But Sister Katherine asked Sipho if he would like to come once a week to fetch her old newspapers. “I think your father likes to know the news, Sipho.”
So for several years Sipho ran over the hill each Friday to fetch the newspapers. His father heard what was happening in the world, and Sipho did not forget how to read.
*
The army lorry braked and Sipho pitched against the man next to him. His face scraped against a rough army uniform as he came out of his reverie.
They were at the prisoner-of-war camp.
Sipho climbed off the lorry onto spiky desert scrub so different from the misty grasslands he had left.
He knew that if he had stayed, if he had not taken Job’s advice, he would probably have starved in his beautiful hills.
4
To the city
Early in the morning the day after the funeral, Job had appeared at Sipho’s rondavel with an enamel bowl of imasi heaped with ground amabele grain. He pulled a woven-grass mat out into the sunlight and sat next to Sipho.
“Here, eat. From my grandmother,” Job said. “She got a shock when she saw you at the funeral. Said you were just big eyes in a skinny face.” He paused. “I don’t see anything for you here, Sipho. So what are you going to do?”
Sipho waved a spoon at the vivid green veld around his kraal. “I have lots of grass this summer but no animals to graze it, and no mealie seeds to plant. Our crops died two summers in a row. There is nothing here for me, Job.”
“Do you have any food at all?” Job asked.
Sipho pointed to a sack of mealiemeal and a big tin of powdered milk under the thatched eaves behind him. “I just saw these a few minutes ago. From the trading store. Enough for a few weeks. And there’s a note.” He read it to Job.
“Dear Sipho, We were sorry to hear of your father’s death. He was a fine man. Mrs Aaron joins me in wishing you a long life. Joshua Aaron.”
Job nodded. “They liked your father.”
“My father liked them.” Sipho took a spoonful of the creamy curds and nutty amabele. “I haven’t had time,” he added slowly, “to think what I will do. My uncles have nothing left either. No cows … Their sons are going to work in the coal mine, but I promised my mother I wouldn’t.”
“Your uncles!” Job stretched out his legs and laughed wryly. “They mocked your father for watching the cattle so you could go to school. Don’t count on them!” He pointed at a hill, far down the valley, where two cows grazed.
“See there? I sent money to my grandfather so he could buy those two cows. Sipho, did your mother say anything about gold mines?” he asked.
Sipho shook his head.
“You know South Africa is fighting a war?”
Sipho nodded. “Against Hitler. Against Germany.”
“And Italy,” Job added. “The Nazis and the fascists.”
“My father thought Jan Smuts was right to fight Hitler. Because Hitler’s not a man you can talk to.”
“I agree,” Job said. “But now so many miners are going away to fight that the mines are looking for men. I work at the mine, and sometimes at the dynamite factory, but I stay there at the mine. Come back with me. They will listen to your heart and, if it is strong, if it beats slowly, you can work underground.”
“Am I old enough?” Sipho asked.
“You’re quite tall. Are you eighteen?”
Sipho shook his head, a little embarrassed. “I don’t know. Maybe sixteen, maybe nearly seventeen.”
“I know plenty of miners who don’t know how old they are,” Job said confidently. “And perhaps the mine bosses won’t ask. The mine is dangerous, it’s dark and too hot, and the food is bad. But you need not stay long. Save your money to buy a couple of cows and you can come home in a year. I’m going back after Christmas. Think about it.”
*
And so, on a night in January 1941, Sipho sat on a hard bench next to a sleeping Job as their train steamed through bright lights into a town. The brakes screeched, the coaches clanged together and men shouted. A large white board appeared on a platform.
“SPRINGS,” Sipho read.
Job awoke and he led Sipho through the streets of a strange world. There were men who seemed angry for no reason, and policemen with batons, and other men who looked fearful. Job and Sipho walked out of the town until they reached a large gate in front of the grim compound of a gold mine. Silhouetted against the moonlit sky was a tall metal structure with a large wheel, higher than anything Sipho had ever seen, and with red lights that seemed to float above it. Under his feet, the ground felt unsteady as he gazed up.
“Just until you can buy some cows,” Job reassured him. “If you know it’s not forever, it’s easier. They will check your heart and lungs in the morning and then sign you on.”
Job showed his pass to the mine policeman at the gate and told him who Sipho was. Inside the compound they entered a long room where a light shone through high steel windows onto twenty concrete bunks, and eighteen sleeping men. The men did not stir as Sipho and Job found the empty bunks. Dirty clothes were piled on the floor next to the bunks; Sipho saw that there was nowhere else to put them.
Wrapping his blankets around himself that strange night, he lay awake on the bare concrete bunk, listening to snores and grunts and a high whistling, whirring sound from outside. All night he worried – Will I be able to do this work so deep underground? What will it be like down there in the dark? – until at dawn a bell clanged.
Sipho trained at the mine school for a week. At one point a man from the dynamite factory came to give the new miners a lesson. Job came into the room with him and translated the lesson from English into Funagalo, the strange language they spoke on the mine. Sipho listened, amazed; Job spoke such beautiful isiZulu, and this language was like that of a small child.
In Funagalo, Job told them, “You will not be working with dynamite but, because it is so dangerous, you must know something about it. We don’t ever hurry with dynamite. We get things ready and then we work calmly.”
The instructor showed them what a fuse wire was, and how long it needed to be, and he told them
