The Windmill roadhouse in East London is also the bus stop on the route from Cape Town to Durban, I waited for the Durban bus and bought myself one of the excellent hamburgers on sale there. As usual I went and sat on the low wall next to the pavement where I could watch to see when the bus came into view.

There was a fellow sitting a little way from me, dirty, unkempt obviously down on his luck and I thought about how difficult it is to climb back once you had slipped down to his level, his eyes darted from one person to the other and I knew he was well aware of what was happening around him, and I knew he was looking for a mark, a person with a soft touch, there where too many mirrors in my past that could reflect that scene and I went up to him and offered him my burger.

He looked at me and accepted it with cupped upturned palms as if he was making a bowl, I realized by the colour of his palms that he was white, a fact that was disguised by the sun burnt skin and layers of dirt. He looked me in the eye and said in Afrikaans "God bless you sir", I watched him from a distance, he was eating slowly, enjoying every mouth full, chewing long as if to get the maximum enjoyment out of the experience.

I had quite forgotten about him when he came up to me and said that he wanted to thank me for the food and wish me another devine blessing, then he asked me for some money "asseblief oom maak n las ", please sir give me some money, I knew he thought he had found his soft mark, but I did not mind, I gave him a two rand coin, he cupped it in his hand, making a fist around it and said God bless you sir, then he paused and said, but not as much as for the food.

I looked away across the sea, I did not want him to think that the smile on my face was intended as appreciation, it was not, I was thinking that in these bad economic times everything had a net worth, even blessings, and I thought that when last did I buy myself a hamburgers worth of blessings and got two for the price of one.

I cannot remember a single instance when it was as cold as it is today while we lived in Natal, sure , it rained, sometimes a lot, but even the early mornings were mild to my recollection. Behind the Roadcamp, in the near distance was Talana Hill, a great battle took place there, I wandered up there once and came across a small heap of spent cartridges, rusted green and corroded away in spots, a reminder of the battle of Talana Hill, I used to go up there alone and wander around, soaking up the atmostphere of the place, I never could get myself to remove even a stone for my slingshot from the place, I sensed that it was a place of reverence and rememberance, an undocumented monument to the young men who died there, many of them thousands of miles from their homes.

I once visited a battlefield outside Bloemfontein on the Mazeru road, and I experieced the same feelings I had on Talana hill in Natal many years before, maybe the spirits of the soldiers never leave the battle ground, but gets mixed into the ground with their blood, funny thing is that even there I could not even disturb the dust in the area without feeling guilty.

When I was a lad I owned an airgun and used to go hunt with it in the veld around Tabankulu, strange thing though was that I could never hit anything in the local graveyard, the airgun became inexplicably inaccurate, it was old and full of quirks, but aquired skill usually made me compensate for errors instinctively and I was a crack shot anywhere else but in the graveyard, I stopped going there after my Grandpa was laid to rest, he would not have approved of killing anything unless you intended eating it.

Years later during military service doing a motorised patrol we came across a spot in the bush that made me feel quite uneasy, there was nothing to distinguish it from any other spot around there but I told the Lootie that it must have been a battleground sometime ago, much derision, but later one of the Police force members told me that a motorized patrol had been ambushed there a few years back, they shot the radio operator first and they found him sitting upright after the contact with a bullet wound through the eye, it was the scene of a short sharp battle that claimed a few of our guys, and it reached out with its clammy fingers and touched my concience on that hot sweltering day.

We dont know all the answers and we never will, some of us try to find explanation through research , others use the comfortable excuse of devine intervention and religion to explain away things that make them feel uncomfortable and the world for them becomes a comfortable place in which they never have to question or probe, yet when you think about it, we may from time to time fight each other, but collectively we are all fighting on the battlefield of life.

Danger signs ?

I am not an expert when it comes to the dynamics of running the financial affairs of a country, but I do know that it is like a boiling brew with the good stuff being tapped off until there is nothing left but the dregs. Now my question is, who is stirring the brew and who is tapping off the good stuff.

Somehow I think that the stirrers are not living here, else there would be a concerted effort at creating and maintaining good order through good governance. If I apply a percentage to the rate of deterioration in service provision in my area and apply a factor to scale up to a national level, and I use this in a linear analysis to project some probable future numbers, it looks dismal, now do the same for the population and compare the two totals, then the picture that emerges is truly horrendous.

Africa is reverting back to what she was before the settlers came.

Maybe the time has come to take steps, long and hasty ones, away from the fast approaching avalanche of disorder.

A cat called Sylvester

My daughter had got herself a cat, a male, tortoise shell I believe it is called, she gave it a name "Sylvester ", but I learned to refer to it as F@#$^*! cat, I would be typeing away when it would suddenly launch an attack on my fore arm, sinking its razor sharp teeth into the skin, naturally my response would be to shake it off, causing even more damage and leaving a bloodied arm as evidence of the cats playfulness, it would hide around a corner and attack me as I passed, running up my leg with its razor claws, and once even tried to damage my unmetionables with a gash of its claws as it tried to climb higher.

During the day it would take over my bed and at night when I woke up I would see it rolled up in a ball at the bottom, not a bad arrangement if it would just stay there and sleep, but it had the habit of crawling up to my face and trying to suckle my ears, I learned to sleep with my head under the pillow.

In time we grew accustomed to each other and I would offer it little titbits and other tasty morsels, it took to warning me when it wanted the window open, and I came to expect it at the foot of my bed at night, often just giving it a rub on the back on my numerous trips to the loo at night .

I renamed it to catazooks, shying away from any obvious term of effection just so as it would know I am still the boss, and it would respond to that name, poking its head around the corner if I called it.

When I retired that night the cat was not on the bed, not to worry I thought, it will come in its own time, I made sure the window was open just wide enough to let it in, when I woke at twelve, it was not back yet and though I did not want to admit it I was worried, I looked around the flat to see if it did not maybe find another sleeping place.

When the sun rose the next morning I went looking for it, but it was nowhere to be found, I resigned myself to the fact that it was gone, images of a cat torn to shreds by dogs haunted me, or maybe, mercifully, a car would have flattened it.

As the day whore on I settled down in my routine, but there was something missing, there was an uneasiness gnawing at me, a sense of loss if you may. I made myself some food and put a morsel aside for the cat, quite by habit, but I could not get myself to throw it away, that would be like admitting that it was not coming back.

I resigned myself to the loss of the cat and was typing away when it slunk past me and reduced the contents of its food bowl followed by about half of its water bowl, it went and curled up on the bed, gave me one look and slept until about twelve that night, when it woke me with an enquiring purr and plonked down next to my head on the pillow.

No doubt the damn thing had been out all night chasing lady cats of ill repute and now it was resting.




Just a damn cat I suppose, but still a companion.