Leaving the airport and heading
towards Pretoria, we drove past the infamous Soweto (South
Western Township). At the time I was unaware of the significance
of this city. Having already seen turmoil in the 1950’s, as well
as the 1960’s, Soweto would be the battlefield of the student
uprising to come in 1976. The students would organize a peaceful
demonstration against the Afrikaans Medium Decree, which made it
mandatory for black schools to use the Afrikaans language as the
medium of instruction at secondary school levels. Afrikaans was
considered by many to be the language of the oppressors, and so
the policy was extremely unpopular among the students. All I
could see where slums far off into the distance, later I would
learn the truth.
On the outskirts of Pretoria, we arrived at the motel where my
father booked rooms for us. It was called The Oklahoman. Dad was
beaming, he was so proud of the irony. Until my mother gave her
seal of approval on the house that was chosen, we would live in
The Oklahoman, which was owned and operated by (of course) a man
from Oklahoma. I spent my days snooping around the motel and the
surrounding areas. The weather was generally dry and very hot
with few clouds. Pretoria and Johannesburg, which were (at that
time) part of the province called the Transvaal, now known as
Gauteng, were inland, upon a plateau of grasslands seemingly in
desperate need of water. The foliage and grass around the motel
was manicured and watered to a lush green.
Finally, my father took us to see what would become our new
home. At the base of a ridge, outside the city, were 2 plots of
land in the country. Our landlord and his family lived on one
plot while we were to take the other. The house was a single
level home, brick with polished slate floors and a corrugated
iron roof. All the doors and windows were open, no screens
(these were considered something that only the wealthy could
afford). The front grounds were terraced. There were four
levels, our house on the second from the top. On the third
terrace down were rows of Avocado and Mango trees, while on the
terrace below them all the way to the property line and dirt
road were orchards of Peach, Apricot and Lemon trees. The top
terrace behind a wall was basically a junkyard and a huge
storage garage owned and used by our landlord who was an
architect. Behind the junkyard all the way to the top of the
ridge was raw land, unused land, which would become my
playground for the next four years. If I remember correctly, it
began raining the day we moved in, and it rained, and it rained.
We waited. We played Yahtzee, and Charades, read books by candle
light. We waited for the rain to stop and for our electric power
to be restored. We waited forever it seemed, in our new house,
in the suburb called Montana.
1:
On the Move—December
2007
2: Rain—January
2008 (top of this page)
