This is what happened.
Before my life started properly, I was doing the usual mewling and sucking, which in my case
occurred on a pair of huge, soft black breasts. In the African tradition I continued to suckle for my
first two and a half years after which my Zulu wet nurse became my nanny. She was a person made
for laughter, warmth and softness and she would clasp me to her breasts and stroke my golden curls
with a hand so large it seemed to contain my whole head. My hurts were soothed with a song about a
brave young warrior hunting a lion and a women's song about doing the washing down on the big rock
beside the river where, at sunset, the baboons would come out of the hills to drink.
My life proper started at the age of five when my mother had her nervous breakdown. I was torn from
my lovely black nanny with her big white smile and sent to boarding school.
Then began a time of yellow wedges of pumpkin, burnt black and bitter at the edges; mashed potato
with glassy lumps; meat aproned with gristle in grey gravy; diced carrots; warm, wet, flatulent
cabbage; beds that wet themselves in the morning; and an entirely new sensation called loneliness.
I was the youngest child in the school by two years, and I spoke only English, the infected tongue that
had spread like a plague into the sacred land and contaminated the pure, sweet waters of
Afrikanerdom.
The Boer War had created a great malevolence for the English, for the Rooineks. It was a hate that
had entered their bloodstream and pocked the hearts and minds of the next generation. To their
barefoot sons, I was the first live example of the congenital hate they carried for my kind.
I spoke the language which had pronounced the sentences that had killed their grandfathers and sent
their grandmothers to the world's first concentration camps, where they died like flies from dysentery,
malaria and black water fever. To the bitter Calvinist farmers, the sins of the fathers had been visited
upon the sons, unto the third generation. I was infected.
I had had no previous warning that I was wicked and it came as a fearful surprise. I was blubbing to
myself in the little kids' dormitory when suddenly I was dragged from under my horrid camphor-
smelling blanket by two eleven-year-olds and taken to the seniors' dormitory, to stand trial before the
council of war.
My trial, of course, was a travesty of justice. But then what could I expect? I had been caught deep
behind enemy lines and everyone, even a five-year-old, knows this means the death sentence. I stood
gibbering, unable to understand the language of the stentorian twelve-year-old judge, or the reason for
the hilarity when sentence was passed. But I guessed the worst.
I wasn't quite sure what death was. I knew it was something that happened on the farm in the slaughter
house to pigs and goats and an occasional heifer. The squeal from the pigs was so awful that I knew it
wasn't much of an experience, even for pigs.
And I knew something else for sure; death wasn't as good as life. Now death was about to happen to
me before I could really get the hang of life. Trying hard to hold back my tears, I was dragged off.
It must have been a full moon that night because the shower room was bathed in blue light. The stark
granite walls of the shower recesses stood sharply angled against the wet cement floor. I had never
been in a shower room before and this place resembled the slaughter house on the farm. It even smelt
the same, of urine and blue carbolic soap, so I guessed this was where my death would take place.
My eyes were a bit swollen from crying but I could see where the meat hooks were supposed to hang.
Each granite slab had a pipe protruding from the wall behind it with a knob on the end.
They would suspend me from one of these and I would be dead, just like the pigs.
I was told to remove my pyjamas and to kneel inside the shower recess facing the wall. I looked
directly down into the hole in the floor where all the blood would drain away.
I closed my eyes and said a silent, sobbing prayer. My prayer wasn't to God, but to my nanny. It
seemed the more urgent thing to do. When she couldn't solve a problem for me she'd say, 'We must ask
Inkosi-Inkosikazi, the great medicine man, he will know what to do.' Although we never actually
called on the services of the great man it didn't seem to matter, it was comforting to know he was
available when needed.
But it was too late to get a message through to Nanny, much less have her pass it on. I felt a sudden
splash on my neck and then warm blood trickled over my trembling, naked body across the cold
cement floor and into the drain. Funny, I didn't feel dead. But there you go. Who knows what dead
feels like?
When the Judge and his council of war had all pissed on me, they left. After a while it got very quiet,
just a drip, drip, drip from someplace overhead and a sniff from me that sounded as though it came
from somewhere else.
As I had never seen a shower I didn't know how to turn one on and so had no way of washing myself.
I had always been bathed by my nanny in a tin tub in front of the kitchen stove. I'd stand up and she'd
soap me all over and Dee and Dum, the two kitchen maids who were twins, would giggle behind their
hands when she soaped my little acorn. Sometimes it would just stand right up on its own and
everyone would have an extra good giggle. That's how I knew it was special, just how special I was
soon to find out.
I tried to dry myself with my pyjamas, which were wet in patches from lying on the floor, and then I
put them back on. I didn't bother to do up the buttons because my hands were shaking a lot. I
wandered around that big dark place until I found the small kids' dormitory. There I crept under my
blanket and came to the end of my first day in life.
I am unable to report that the second day of my life was much better than the first. Things started to go
wrong from the moment I awoke. Kids surrounded my bed holding their noses and making loud
groaning sounds. Let me tell you something, there was plenty to groan about. I smelt worse than a
kaffir toilet, worse than the pigs at home. Worse even than both put together.
The kids scattered as a very large person with a smudge of dark hair above her lip entered. It was the
same lady who had left me in the dormitory the previous evening. 'Good morning, Mevrou!' the kids
chorused, each standing stiffly to attention at the foot of his bed.
The large person called Mevrou glared at me. 'Kom,' she said in a fierce voice. Grabbing me by the
ear she twisted me out of the stinking bed and led me back to the slaughter house. With her free hand
she removed my unbuttoned pyjama jacket and pulled my pants down to my ankles.
'Step,' she barked.
I thought desperately, she's even bigger than Nanny. If she pisses on me I will surely drown. I stepped
out of my pyjama pants, and releasing my ear she pushed me into the shower recess.
There was a sudden hissing sound and needles of icy water drilled into me.
If you've never had a shower or even an unexpected icy-cold drenching, it's not too hard to believe
that maybe this is death. I had my eyes tightly shut but the hail of water was remorseless, a thousand
pricks at a time drilling into my skin. How could so much piss possibly come out of one person?
Death was cold as ice. Hell was supposed to be fire and brimstone and here I was freezing to death.
It was very frightening, but like so much lately, quite the opposite to what I had been led to expect.
'When you go to boarding school you'll sleep in a big room with lots of little friends so you won't be
afraid of the dark anymore.' How exciting it had all sounded.
The fierce hissing noise and the deluge of icy piss stopped suddenly. I opened my eyes to find no
Mevrou. Instead, the Judge stood before me, his pyjama sleeve rolled up, his arm wet where he'd
reached in to turn off the shower. Behind him stood the jury and all the smaller kids from my
dormitory.
As the water cleared from my eyes I tried to smile gratefully. The Judge's wet arm shot out; grabbing
me by the wrist he jerked me out of the granite recess. The jury formed a ring around me as I stood
frightened, my hands cupped over my scrotum. My teeth chattering out of control, a weird, glassy
syncopation inside my head. The Judge reached out again, and taking both my wrists in one large hand
he pulled my hands away and pointed to my tiny acorn. 'Why you piss your bed, Rooinek?' he asked.
'Hey, look there is no hat on his snake!' someone yelled. They all crowded closer, delighted at this
monstrous find.
'Pisskop! Pisskop!' one of the smaller kids shouted and in a moment all the small kids were chanting
it.
'You hear, you a pisshead,' the Judge translated. 'Who cut the hat off your snake, Pisskop?'
I looked down to where he was pointing, my teeth changing into a quieter timpani. All looked
perfectly normal to me, although the tip was a bright blue colour and had almost disappeared into its
neat round collar of skin. I looked up at the Judge, confused.
The Judge dropped my arms and using both his hands parted his pyjama fly. His 'snake', monstrously
large, hung level with my eyes and seemed to be made of a continuous sheath brought down to a point
of ragged skin. A few stray hairs grew at its base and, I must say, it wasn't much of a sight.
More serious trouble lay ahead of me for sure. I was a Rooinek and a pisskop. I spoke the wrong
language. And now I was obviously made differently. But I was still alive, and in my book: where there's life, there's hope.
_______________________________________________________
By the end of the first term I had reduced my persecution time to no more than an hour a day. I had the
art of survival almost down pat. Except for one thing: I had become a chronic bed wetter.
It is impossible to be a perfect adapter if you leave a wet patch behind you every morning. My day
would begin with a bed-wetting caning from Mevrou, after which I would make the tedious journey
alone to the showers to wash my rubber sheet. When the blue carbolic soap was rubbed against the
stiff cane bristles of the large wooden scrubbing brush I was made to use, fiercely stinging specks of
soap would shoot up into my eyes. But I soon worked out that you didn't need the soap like Mevrou
said, you could give the sheet a good go under the shower and it would be okay.
My morning routine did serve a useful purpose. I learned that crying is a luxury good adapters have to
forgo. I soon had the school record for being thrashed. The Judge said so. It was the first time in my
life that I owned something that wasn't a positive disadvantage to adaptation. I wasn't just a hated
Rooinek and a pisskop, I was also a record holder. I can tell you it felt good.
The Judge ordered that I only be beaten up a little at a time. A punch here, a flat-hander there, and if I
could stop being a pisskop he'd stop even that, although he added that, for a Rooinek, this was
probably impossible. I must confess, I was inclined to agree. No amount of resolve on my part or
saying prayers to Nanny or even to God seemed to have the least effect.
Maybe it had something to do with my defective acorn? I forced a hole in the side pockets of my
shorts through which my forefinger and thumb would fit. I took secretly to pulling my foreskin and
holding it over the tip of my acorn as long as I could in the hope that it would lose elasticity and
render me normal. Alas, except for a sore acorn, nothing happened. I was doomed to be a pisshead
for the rest of my life.
The end of the first term finally came. I was to return home for the May holidays: home to Nanny who
would listen to my sadness and sleep on her mat at the foot of my bed so the bogey man couldn't get
me. I also intended to enquire whether my mother had stopped breaking down so I would be allowed
to stay home.
I rode home joyfully in the dicky-seat of Dr 'Henny' Boshoff's shiny new Chevrolet coupe. Dr Henny
was a local hero who played fly-half for the Northern Transvaal rugby team. When the Judge saw
who had come to pick me up, he shook me by the hand and promised things would be better next term.
It was Dr Henny who had first told me about the nervous breakdown, and he now confirmed that my
mother was 'coming along nicely' but her nervous breakdown was still with her and she wouldn't be
home just yet.
Sadly this put the kibosh on my chances of staying home and never leaving again until I was as old as
my granpa, maybe not even then.
As we choofed along in the car, with me in the dicky-seat open to the wind and the sunshine, I was no
longer a Rooinek and a pisskop but became a great chief. We passed through African villages where
squawking chickens, pumping wings desperately, fled out of the way and yapping kaffir dogs, all ribs
and snout and brindle markings, gave chase. Although only after my speeding throne had safely
passed. As a great chief I was naturally above such common goings-on. Life was good. I can tell you
for certain, life was very good.
Nanny wept tears that ran down her cheeks and splashed onto her huge, warm breasts. She kept
rubbing her large, dark hand over my shaven head, moaning and groaning as she held me close. I had
expected to do all the crying when I got home but there was no competing with her.
It was late summer. The days were filled with song as the field women picked cotton, working their
way down the long rows, chatting and singing in perfect harmony while they plucked the fluffy white
fibre heads from the sun-blackened cotton bolls.
Nanny sent a message to Inkosi-Inkosikazi to the effect that we urgently needed to see him on the
matter of the child's night water. The message was put on the drums and in two days we heard that the
great medicine man would call in a fortnight or so on his way to visit Modjadji, the great rain queen.
The whites of Nanny's eyes would grow big and her cheeks puff out as she talked about the greatness
of Inkosi-Inkosikazi. 'He will dry your bed with one throw of the shin-bones of the great white ox,'
she promised.
'Will he also grow skin over my acorn?' I demanded to know. She clutched me to her breast and her
answer was lost in the heaving of her belly as she chortled all over me.
The problem of the night water was much discussed by the field women who pondered deeply that a
matter so slight could bring the great one to visit. 'Surely a grass sleeping mat will dry in the morning
sun? This is not a matter of proper concern for the greatest medicine man in Africa.'
It was all right for them, of course. They didn't have to go back to the Judge and Mevrou.
Almost two weeks to the day Inkosi-Inkosikazi arrived in his big, black Buick. The car was a symbol
of his enormous power and wealth, even to the Boers, who despised him as the devil incarnate yet
feared him with the superstition of all ignorant God-fearing men. None was prepared to pit the
catechism of the Dutch Reformed Church against this aged black goblin.
All that day the field women brought gifts of food. By late afternoon a small mountain of kaffir corn
and mealies, gem squash, native spinach and water melons had grown under the big avocado tree next
to the slaughter house. Bundles of dried tobacco leaf were stacked up beside it and, separated by two
large grass indaba or meeting mats, lay six scrawny kaffir chickens.
These were mostly tough old roosters, four-hour boilers, their legs tied and their wings clipped.
They lay on their sides with their thin, featherless necks and bald heads caked with dust. Only an
occasional 'sckwark!' and the sudden opening of a bright, beady eye showed that they were still alive,
if not exactly kicking.
One especially scrawny old cock with mottled grey feathers looked very much like my granpa, except
for his eyes. My granpa's eyes were pale blue and somewhat watery, eyes intended for gazing over
soft English landscapes, whereas the old cock's were sharp as a bead of red light.
My granpa came down the steps and walked towards the big, black Buick. He stopped to kick one of
the roosters, for he hated kaffir chickens almost as much as he hated Shangaans. His pride and joy
were his one hundred black Orpington hens and six giant roosters. The presence of kaffir chickens in
the farmyard, even though trussed and clipped, was like having half a dozen dirty old men present at a
ballet class.
He greatly admired Inkosi-Inkosikazi who had once cured him of his gallstones. 'I took his foul, green
muti and, by golly, the stones blasted out of me like a hail of buckshot! Never a trace of a gallstone
since. If you ask me, the old monkey is the best damned doctor in the lowveld.'
We waited for Inkosi-Inkosikazi to alight from the Buick. The old medicine man, like Nanny, was a
Zulu. It was said that he was the last son of the great Dingaan, the Zulu king who fought both the Boers
and the British to a standstill. Two generations after the Boers had finally defeated his impis at the
Battle of Blood River, they remained in awe of him.
Two years after that battle, Dingaan, fleeing from the combined forces of his half-brother Mpande and
the Boers, had sought refuge among the Nyawo people on the summit of the great Lebombo mountains.
On the night he was treacherously assassinated by Nyawo tribesmen he had been presented with a
young virgin, and the seed of the second greatest of all the warrior kings was planted in her fourteen-
year-old womb.
'Where I chose blood, this last of my sons will choose wisdom. You will call him Inkosi-Inkosikazi,
he will be a man for all Africa,' Dingaan had told the frightened Nyawo maiden.
This made the small, wizened black man who was being helped from the rear of the Buick one
hundred years old.
Inkosi-Inkosikazi was dressed in a mismatched suit, the jacket brown and shiny with age, the trousers
blue pinstripe. He wore a white shirt meant to go with a detachable starched collar, the collarless
shirt was secured at the neck with a large gold and ivory collar stud. A mangy-looking leopard-skin
cloak fell from his shoulders. As was the custom, he wore no shoes and the soles of his feet were
splayed and cracked at the edges. In his right hand he carried a beautifully beaded fly switch, the
symbol of an important chief.
I had never seen such an old man; his peppercorn hair was whiter than raw cotton, small tufts of
snowy beard sprang from his chin and only three yellowed teeth remained in his mouth. He looked at
us and his eyes burned sharp and clear, like the eyes of the old rooster.
Several of the women started keening and were quickly rebuked by the old man. 'Stupid abafazi!
Death does not ride with me in my big motor, did you not hear the roar of its great belly?'
Silence fell as my granpa approached. He briefly welcomed Inkosi-Inkosikazi and granted him
permission to stay overnight on the farm. The old man nodded, showing none of the customary
obsequiousness expected from a Kaffir and my grandpa seemed to demand none. He simply shook the
old man's bony claw and returned to his chair on the stoep.
Nanny, who had rubbed earth on her forehead like all the other women, finally spoke. 'Lord, the
women have brought food and we have beer freshly fermented.'
Inkosi-Inkosikazi ignored her, which I thought was pretty brave of him, and ordered one of the women
to untie the cockerels. Two women ran over and soon the chickens were loose. They continued to lie
there, unsure of their freedom, until the old man raised his fly switch and waved it over them. With a
sudden squawking and flapping of stunted wings all but one rose and dashed helter-skelter, their long
legs rising high off the ground as they ran towards open territory. The old cock who looked like
Granpa rose slowly, stretched his neck, flapped the bits of wing he had left, his head darting left and
right, slightly cocked as though he were listening; then, calm as you like, he walked over to the heap
of corn and started pecking away.
'Catch the feathered devils,' Inkosi-Inkosikazi suddenly commanded. He giggled, 'Catch an old man's
dinner tonight.'
With squeals of delight the chickens were rounded up again. The ice had been broken as five of the
women, each holding a chicken upside down by the legs, waited for the old man's instructions. Inkosi-
Inkosikazi squatted down and with his finger traced a circle about two feet in diameter in the dust. He
hopped around like an ancient chimpanzee completing five similar-sized circles, muttering to himself
as he did so.
The incantations over, he signalled for one of the women to bring over a cockerel. Grabbing the old
bird by its long scrawny neck and by both legs, he retraced the first circle on the ground, this time
using the bird's beak as a marker. Then he laid the cockerel inside the circle where it lay unmoving,
its eyes closed, a leg protruding from each wing. He proceeded to do the same thing to the other five
chickens until each lay in its own circle in front of the crowd. As each chicken was laid to rest there
would be a gasp of amazement from the women. It was pretty low-grade magic but it served well
enough to get things under way.
Inkosi-Inkosikazi moved over and squatted cross-legged in the centre of the indaba mats and
beckoned that I should join him. It was the first time he'd acknowledged my presence and I clung
fearfully to Nanny's skirts. She pushed me gently towards him and in a loud whisper said: 'You must
go, it is a great honour, only a chief can sit with a chief on the meeting mat.'
He had the strong, distinctly sweet smell of African sweat, mixed with tobacco and very old man.
After all I had been through in the smell department, it wasn't too bad, and I too sat cross-legged
beside him with my eyes glued to the ground in front of me.
Inkosi-Inkosikazi leaned slightly towards me and spoke in Zulu. 'Tomorrow I will show you the trick
of the chickens. It's not really magic, you know. These stupid Shangaans think it's magic but they don't
deserve to know any better.'
'Thank you, sir,' I said softly. I was pleased at the notion of sharing a secret. Even if it was only a
trick, it was a damned clever one which might confound the Judge and the jury if I could get my hands
on a stray chicken at school. My confidence in his ability to change my status as a pisskop was
growing by the minute.
Inkosi-Inkosikazi indicated to Nanny that she should begin the matter of the night water. Two women
were quickly delegated to start the cooking fire and the rest of the field women settled down around
the indaba mats, taking care not to touch even the tiniest part of the edge.
African stories are long, with every detail cherished, scooped up for telling a thousand times over. It
was a great moment for Nanny as she stood alone in the rapidly fading twilight and told her story. She
spoke in Shangaan so that all could share- wide-eyed and groan and nod and sigh in the appropriate
places.
The hugeness of Mevrou with her moustache they found amazing, the injustice of the Judge and jury
they took in their stride, for they all knew how the white man passes sentences that have no
relationship to what has been done. The pissing upon me by the Judge and jury had them rocking and
moaning and holding their hands to their ears. Such an indignity was surely beyond even the white
man?
In the sudden way of Africa it was dark now. A piece of green wood crackled sharply in the fire
sending up a shower of sparks. The leaping flames lit Nanny's face; there was no doubt that they
would remember this teller of a great story of misery and woe. Tears flowed copiously as she told of
how death finally arrived in a shower of icy piss that jetted from the loins of the great, moustached
angel of perdition.
I must admit I was hugely impressed, but when Nanny got to the part where my snake had no hat
which, in my opinion, was the most important bit of the lot, they cupped their hands over their mouths
and, between the tears, they started to giggle.
Nanny concluded by saying that the business of my night water was an evil spell brought upon me by
the angel of death with the moustache like a man and waterfall loins, so that she could return each
morning to feed her great beating sjambok on my frail child's flesh. Only a great medicine man such as
Inkosi-Inkosikazi could defeat this evil spell.
The light from the fire showed the deeply shocked faces of the women as Nanny finally sat down,
heaving with great sobs, knowing that such a tale had never been told before and that it might live
forever, warped into a Shangaan legend.
I can tell you one thing, I was mighty impressed that any person, most of all me, could go through such
a harrowing experience.
Inkosi-Inkosikazi rose, scratched his bum and yawned. With the handle of his fly switch he prodded
my weeping nanny. 'Get me some kaffir beer, woman,' he demanded.
Dee and Dum, the twin kitchen maids, served me my dinner, as Nanny was required to attend to the
drinking and other needs of the scrawny old wizard. Both little girls were wide-eyed with the
excitement of it all and told me I was the bravest person they had ever known.
By bedtime Nanny was at my side as usual, arriving with a large sweet potato, its tummy open with a
spoon sticking out of the middle, tiny wisps of steam curling upwards, condensing on the handle.
There is something about a sweet potato that cheers you up when you are low and celebrates with you
when you are happy. Sweet potatoes baked in their jackets have a very large comfort factor built into
them.
Nanny's excitement was still with her, she grabbed me and crushed me to her enormous bosom and
laughed and told me how I had thrust greatness upon her with the coming of the old monkey who was,
nevertheless, the greatest medicine man in all Africa; how the telling of the tale of the night water
showed that a Zulu woman could be a teller of tales superior in every way to even the best told by the
most eloquent Shangaan.
I pointed out that she had entirely missed the matter of my school record for canings. A large tear
rolled down her cheek. 'In the matter of white man's punishment, the black people already understand
that the body can be broken by a sjambok but never the spirit. We are the earth, that is why we are the
colour of earth. In the end it is the earth who will win, every African knows this.'
Whatever all that was supposed to mean, it didn't answer my question. Nanny finally left me, but first
she lit the paraffin lamp and turned it down low, but not so low that I wouldn't recognise the bogey
man should he try to sneak into my room.
'Tonight Inkosi-Inkosikazi will visit in your dreams to find the way of your night water,' she said,
tucking me in.
_______________________________________________________
The morning after the night Inkosi-Inkosikazi went walkabout in my dreams, he summoned me to sit
alone with him again on the meeting mat. From an old leather bag he produced the twelve magic shin-
bones from the great white ox. Then, squatting on his haunches as he prepared to throw the bones, he
commenced a deep, rumbling incantation that sounded like distant thunder.
The strange bone-yellowed dice which would solve my bed-wetting habit briefly clicked together in
his hands and then fell onto the ground in front of him. Inkosi-Inkosikazi flicked at them with his
forefinger, and as he did so, tiny rolls of thunder came from his throat. With a final grunt he gathered
them up and tossed them back into his ancient leather satchel.
Inkosi-Inkosikazi's eyes, sharp pins of light in his incredibly wrinkled face, seemed to look right into
me. 'I visited you in your dreams and we came to a place of three waterfalls and ten stones across the
river. The shin-bones of the great white ox say I must take you back so that you can jump the three
waterfalls and cross the river, stepping from stone to stone without falling into the rushing torrent. If
you can do this then the unfortunate business of the night water will be over.'
I nodded, not knowing what to say. After all, five-year-old kids are pretty rotten at riddles. His face
became even more simian as he chuckled, 'When you have learned this lesson I will show you the
trick of the chicken sleep.'
I had seen the faint marks of last night's circles, but no chickens. I guessed that they had been
consigned to the communal tummy. I only hope he doesn't use one of Granpa's black Orpingtons, what
a kerfuffle that would be, I thought.
'Now, listen to me carefully, boy. Watch and listen. Watch and listen,' he repeated. 'When I tell you to
close your eyes you will do so. Do you understand?'
Anxious to please him I shut my eyes tightly. 'Not now! Only when I tell you. Not tight, but as you do
when your eyes are heavy from the long day and it is time to steep.'
I opened my eyes to see him crouched directly in front of me, his beautiful fly switch suspended
slightly above my normal sightline. The fall of horsehair swayed gently before my eyes.
'Watch the tail of the horse.' My eyes followed the switch as it moved to and fro. 'It is time to close
your eyes but not your ears. You must listen well for the roaring of water is great.'
A sudden roar of water filled my head and then I saw the three waterfalls. I was standing on an
outcrop of rock directly above the highest one. Far below me the river rushed away, tumbling and
boiling into a narrow gorge. Just before the water entered the gorge and churned white I noted the ten
stepping stones, like ten anthracite teeth strung across its mouth.
Inkosi-Inkosikazi spoke to me, his voice soft, almost gentle. 'It is late, the bush doves, anticipating
nightfall, are already silent. It is the time of day when the white waters roar most mightily as water
does when it is cast in shadow.
'You are standing on a rock above the highest waterfall, a young warrior who has killed his first lion
and is worthy now to fight in the legion of Dingaan, the great impi that destroys all before it. Worthy
even to fight in the impi of Shaka, the greatest warrior king of all.
'You are wearing the skirt of lion tail as you face into the setting sun. Now the sun has passed beyond
Zululand, even past the land of the Swazi and now it leaves the Shangaan and the royal kraal of
Modjadji, the rain queen, to be cooled in the great, dark water beyond.
'You can see the moon rising over Africa and you are at peace with the night, unafraid of the great
demon Skokijaan who comes to feed on the dark night, tearing its black flesh until, at last, it is
finished and the new light comes to stir the sleeping herd boys and send them out to mind the lowing
cattle.'
As I stood on the great rock waiting to jump, I could see the new moon rising, bright as a new florin
above the thundering falls.
'You must take a deep breath and say the number three to yourself as you leap. Then, when you
surface, you must take another breath and say the number two as you are washed across the rim of the
second waterfall, then again a deep breath as you rise and are carried over the third. Now you must
swim to the first stone, counting backwards from ten to one, counting each stone as you leap from it to
the next to cross the rushing river.' The old medicine man paused long enough for me to work out the
sequence he had given me. 'You must jump now, little warrior of the king.'
I took a deep breath and launched myself into the night. The cool air, mixed with spray, rushed past
my face and then I hit the water below, sank briefly, rose to the surface and expelled the deep breath I
had taken. With scarcely enough time to take a second breath I was swept over the second waterfall
and then again I fell down the third roaring cascade to be plunged into a deep pool at the base of the
third waterfall. I swam strongly and with great confidence to the first of the great stones glistening
black and wet in the moonlight. Jumping from stone to stone I crossed the river, counting down from
ten to one, then leaping to the pebbly beach on the far side.
Clear as an echo, his voice cut through the roar of the falls. 'We have crossed the night water to the
other side and it is done, you must open your eyes now, little warrior.' Inkosi-Inkosikazi brought me
back from the dreamtime and I looked around, a little surprised to see the familiar farmyard about me.
'When you need me you may come to the night country and I will be waiting. I will always be there in
the place of the three waterfalls and the ten stones across the river.' Pointing to what appeared to be
an empty mealie meal sack, he said: 'Bring me that chicken and I will show you the trick of the
chicken sleep.'
I got up and walked over to the sack and opened it. Inside the sharp, beady red eye of the chicken that
looked like Granpa blinked up at me. I dragged the sack over to where the previous circles he'd made
in the dust had been and the old man rose and called over to me to draw a new circle in the dirt. Then
he showed me how to hold the old rooster. This was done by securing the main body of the chicken
under your right armpit like a set of bagpipes and grabbing it high up its neck with your left hand so
that its featherless head is held between forefinger and thumb.
Getting a good hold of its feet with your free hand, you dip the chicken towards the ground at an angle
of forty-five degrees while squatting on the ground with the chicken's beak not quite touching the rim
of the circle. The beak is then traced around the perimeter three times whereupon the bird is laid
inside the circle.
The old man made me practise it three times. To my amazement and his amusement, the old rooster lay
within the circle docile as a sow in warm mud. To bring the chicken back from wherever chickens go
in such trying circumstances, all I needed to do was touch it and say in a gruff voice, 'Chicken sleep,
chicken wake, if chicken not wake then chicken be ate!' Which is, I suppose, a pretty grim warning to
a chicken.
I did not ask lnkosi-Inkosikazi how a Shangaan chicken could understand Zulu because you simply do
not ask such questions of the greatest medicine man in all of Africa.
I was as yet unaware that this chicken was pretty exceptional, that the ability to understand a couple
of African languages was probably not beyond him.
'The chicken trick is our bond. We are now brothers bound in this common knowledge and also the
knowledge of the place in the dreamtime. Only you and I can do this trick or come to that place.'
I'm telling you something, it was pretty solemn stuff. With a yell across the farmyard the old man
called for his driver who was asleep in the back of the Buick. Together we walked towards the big,
black car.
'You may keep this chicken to practise on,' Inkosi-Inkosikazi said as he climbed into the back seat of
the car.
As if from nowhere, the car was surrounded by field women who loaded up the trunk with the tributes
they'd brought the previous day. Nanny handed the old man a small square of brightly coloured cloth
into the corner of which were knotted several coins. Inkosi-Inkosikazi declined the offer of what was,
for Nanny, two months' salary.
it is a matter between me and the boy. This place is on my way to the Molototsi River where I go to
see Modjadji, the rain queen.' He stuck his head out of the rear door window and gazed up into the
sky. 'The rains have not come to Zululand, and in this matter her magic is greater than mine.'
The rains had been good north of the Drakensberg Mountains and now Nanny grew fearful as she
asked for news of her people.
'The fields are ploughed three months and the seed maize is ready in the great seed pots, but the wind
carries away the soil as we wait for the rains to come,' the old man sighed.
Nanny translated the news of the drought to the women. Drought is always news to be shared among
the tribes. The women broke into a lament, doing a shuffling dance around the Buick and singing about
the great one who brought the rains, gave barren women the sons they craved and cured the bite of
snakes, even of the great black mamba.
Inkosi-Inkosikazi stuck his ancient head out of the window again and shook his fly switch impatiently.
'Be gone with you, you stupid old crows, sing for Modjadji the rain queen, this old rain maker has
failed to squeeze a drop from the sky.'
With a roar from its mighty V8 engine, the big, black automobile shot down the road, raising a cloud
of dust behind it.
_______________________________________________________
By the time the holidays were over Granpa Chook, for that was what I had called my chicken gift, and
I were practically inseparable. Calling a chicken a 'chook' was a private joke my mother and I had
shared. We had received a bunch of photos from a distant cousin in Australia one of which had shown
a small boy not much older than me feeding the chickens. On the back of the photo was written:
'Young Lennie, feeding the chooks on the farm in Wagga Wagga.' We had called the two old drakes
who always quacked around the farmyard together Wagga Wagga, and had started referring to
Granpa's black Orpingtons as, 'the chooks'.
Granpa Chook was, I decided, a splendid name for the scraggy old rooster who came running the
moment I appeared at the kitchen door. There was no doubt about it, that chicken had fallen for me. I
don't mind admitting, I felt pretty powerfully attracted to him as well.
We practised the chicken trick for a couple of days but he got so smart that the moment I drew a circle
in the dust he stepped into it and settled down politely. I think he was only trying to be co-operative,
but it meant that I had lost all my power. Granpa Chook was the first living creature over which I held
power and now this not-so-dumb cluck had found a way of getting back on even terms which was
damned annoying if you ask me.