Singing Lizards - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

What had I gotten myself into? I could tell that Tony was heartbroken and confused and all that, but it was just impossible to speak to him about Claire. The tender moment at the airport was gone. And he didn’t seem in a hurry at all to start with our investigation. Why was it so difficult for him?
Tony had to feel the same urgency to find out more. Why else was he here? But I couldn’t get him to speak about my sister, never mind making some sort of a plan.
Maybe Tony was under some kind of spell. Don’t fall off the rocker, Bridget, I called myself to order, Things will fall into place.
I did my best. Tried to be understanding, give him time. But I didn’t have time. I had come all the way from England for the sole purpose of helping him with the search. Just that he didn’t show any interest in searching. Here I was in a remote African village, virtually without support, ready to get started. And all I got were awkward silences.
I didn’t know Tony very well. Perhaps he’d throw me out, if I argued with him. And I hated confrontations anyway. But no way would I give up. So I had no choice, but to make the best of the situation.
I was still busy acclimatizing. Literally. The dust the heat got to me, and now to top it all, the rains had started. The rain cooled the temperatures during the day, but never for long. And my ability to think clearly suffered considerably in this heat.
Mom phoned promptly on Friday and I was so glad to hear her crackly voice. At least she wanted to help me.
“Perhaps Claire has crossed the border into another country.”
“I’m not so sure about that, Mom,” I said cautiously.
“It’s worth following up on, though. The police should check their records.”
“Yes, Mom, I’ll look into it.” How could I explain to my mother how easy it was to cross the green border without leaving a trace?
“Good.” She sounded pleased.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“I love you Mom.” I choked back homesick tears.
“I love you too, Bridget.” I heard my Mom swallow hard.
“Tell Dad I love him. Speak to you soon.”
I pulled myself together. It was awkward to be emotional in a hotel lobby.
“Bye, be safe,” Mom said slowly, as if she didn’t want to let me go.
“Bye.” I hung up and was alone again amid all those hotel guests.
The Botsalo country hotel boasted a large restaurant, a bar in the lobby and two pool tables. And on the counter resided the priceless telephone. On a Friday night, the Botsalo was the meeting place of the area.
Tony’s teacher friend, Neo Moletsane, came from a nearby town called Serowe. Neo was single and the two of them often spent the evenings at the Botsalo Hotel. The new school term hadn’t started yet and there wasn’t much to do. So I tagged along.
Neo Moletsane was a well-educated young man. He taught the bricklayers at the vocational training centre, while Tony was head of economics. He was a bit on the stocky side and always wore clean cotton shirts, never a t-shirt and never jeans. Tony told me that Neo was trust-worthy and knew why I had come to Botswana. That was a start.
The two of them played pool, had a meal, drank a lot of beer and chatted to the other patrons. I sat and read in one of the comfortable tub chairs in the lobby.
Hotel guests stayed at the rooms that were arranged around the swimming pool at the back and travelling salesmen often had stories to tell from other parts of the country. Nothing of use to me, but I listened politely.
For the sake of keeping up appearances, Tony introduced me generally as his visiting girlfriend from the UK. We had discussed that it would be better not to draw attention to the actual reason of my presence. I wondered how long it would take before the truth came out in this small community.
There were local girls at the hotel, often for two reasons: to meet a boyfriend or to find a boyfriend. Neo had said that with a sad expression. Most were from the village and lived in houses sponsored by their expat boyfriends.
On the main road halfway between Gaborone and Francistown, this was a convenient place for travellers to stop over. It took some getting used to the rough manners of men around here.
Other women were employed by the training centre and felt comfortable enough around the lekgoas. And then there were a few expatriate women like myself. Generally their area of interest revolved around gossip and G&Ts. I stuck with reading my books and the Government Gazette.
We often headed home along sandy back roads in the dark. I understood by now, why driving at night made people so nervous. One day, Tony had to come to a halt in front of two cows, resting in the warm sand. After much hooting and yelling, the beasts heaved themselves out of their soft bedding and plodded away mooing reproachfully. On another occasion, the car skidded against a mud-covered rock and spun off into the spongy field. It took two wooden planks and a lot of elbow grease to get it back on the dirt road.
“If I hear the question ‘so when are you getting married?’ one more time, I’ll scream!” I complained to Tony as we headed back to the complex one night.
Tony drove slowly through the wet grey sand, deeply carved from small rivers that had formed during the last rainstorm. The headlights revealed random rocks and pebbles sticking out of the sand. One had to be hellishly careful.
“I know everybody wants to stick their noses into everybody else’s business,” said Tony. “They will have something else to gossip about, soon. Right now we are the bee’s knees when it comes to topics.”
Two mining prospectors had invited us to have dinner with them at the restaurant after a gin and tonic in the lobby. We were reluctant to accept, but they seemed starved for conversation, so we caved in. There were worse things than being invited for dinner.
The ‘Kingklip Thermidor’, the hotel’s specialty, had been fresh and tasty and the prospectors had ordered some wine.
“Remember when you went to the loo? The one guy actually told me to leave you and come with him to Orapa. Said he was making a lot of money at the diamond mine. Wanted to take good care of me,” I chuckled. “You should have seen his face when I told him off.”
Tony was quiet. Was he listening to me?
“When did that happen?” he asked worried.
“Well, when you went to the loo. He just took a chance, I guess.”
“I bet, he won’t offer himself again in a hurry.”
“I wasn’t really cruel to him. Just explained that money can’t buy love and that I would never leave you,” I said. “My sermon had him close to tears.”
“He probably remembered his wife and children in South Africa. And what a dog he is,” Tony said with contempt.
The car creaked along the sandy path. We reached a familiar fork in the road with a piece of trampled-down fence straight ahead.
“Yes, it was definitely worth a little white lie,” I giggled.
It had been one of the lighter moments. There were still these uncomfortable silences between us.
I just couldn’t understand Tony. For one thing, I wasn’t used to the slow pace and lack of urgency in general. I also felt that Tony had exaggerated his zeal to find out the truth about Claire. Or perhaps, I had misunderstood him. Perhaps I just wanted to think that he was as eager to solve the mystery of Claire’s disappearance.
But if that was the case, what was he still doing here in Palapye? Why had he invited me?
I convinced him somehow to come to the local police station with me. The grimy building sat lazily across the railroad tracks next to the grimy post office. Mail was delivered to the post office in a rickety van on a Thursday or Friday and had to be collected. So it was convenient to pop into the police station.
“Good day officer. We are here to inquire about this case…”
Tony pushed a piece of paper across the counter. The attending charge officer looked at the paper and disappeared into a backroom. He came back with an older policeman, who blew us off with no further ado.
“Sorry sir, but we are still investigating.”
I persisted with questions, which were met with an enduring indifference. It was like bouncing off an invisible wall. It was discouraging, but I put it down to things happening very, very slowly in Botswana. I had learned that much.
Then I paid the police station a visit once in a while by myself. Something had to happen sometime. Just how was I supposed to explain the situation to my family and friends back in Cambridge? I chickened out and wrote about how wonderful Palapye was, how the sunsets glowed between the hills behind the complex. Pure magic. That Tony was helping me find out more about Claire’s disappearance, that the police was being helpful…in other words, I lied through my back teeth.
The sunsets were rather spectacular, but Tony wasn’t being helpful. And especially not the police. What to do?
I would go to Gaborone and speak to the police there — and then to witnesses in Bobonong and Mochudi. Yes, that’s what I would do. In the meantime, I had to find my feet in this strange place.
In the last weeks of the holidays, the vocational training centre was slowly coming back to life. Very slowly.
Except for ground staff and a handful of expatriate teachers, the complex was still deserted. As much as I sometimes wanted to get away from the crowd in England, I now craved the company of a few sensible friends I could talk to. Oh Liz, Diane and Zaheeda, forgive me if I ever took you for granted! Those were the dinosaur days before communication became easy. No e-mail or SMS or mobile telephones. And something like Skype only existed in science fiction movies. In order not to lose my mind, I began to plant flowers and herbs and weeds that looked like flowers in Tony’s garden.
Tony thought it best to leave the project up to me. I spent day after day digging up the sandy soil. Then putting down foul-smelling manure, Tony had ordered by the truckload and digging everything over again. Bulky motsetsi cutoffs from the village lay in great heaps next to the driveway. The ground staff thought it hilarious, how I worked away. For me it was therapeutic.
Neo had assured me that the Motsetsi plants would take root quickly. All I had to do was stick them into the ground along the fence and water often.
So that’s what I did.
A little rock garden was next. A rocky ride over sticks and stones to a dried-up riverbed had yielded a collection of smooth rocks. And it didn’t stop there. Neo mentioned that one could create a vegetable garden with different-sized car tyres.
“Stacked on top of each other and filled with compost, they make a ‘wakah’. It needs little water and maintenance. You can have lettuce and herbs at your fingertips,” he said.
A three-storey wakah tower was built in no time. The constant rain soon helped tiny green leaves to break through the soil. A hardy acacia tree completed the garden.
My hands were dirty and my nails ragged, but I was proud of my achievement.
All that must have been a breath-taking sight for Ethel Poppelmeyer to behold. Ethel was the prim and proper wife of the new school principal. A balding man, whose paunch just fit into his light blue safari suit. They were Tony’s direct neighbours.
We hadn’t been formally introduced yet, but I knew that she lived next-door. She often watched me from behind cream lace-curtains that had travelled with her from England. I suppose there was not much else to watch.
Apparently she thought that Tony and I were living in sin. At least that’s what I’d heard at the Botsalo Hotel. In the English town of Cobblestead, where she was from, such conduct would surely not have been tolerated. I found that amusing.
I went inside to wash after a day’s work, still bits of garden stuck to me. The water ran sparse and brown again. Great. It took me a while to scrub myself clean. I readied myself to take a cool drink out to the porch, when I noticed Ethel inspecting the empty pre-fab houses on the other side of the road. It had to be Ethel, because there weren’t too many middle-aged women with neatly permed hair around. She came over to inspect the new motsetsi hedge. Come on Bridget, take the first step in the spirit of good neighbourhood, I said to myself. After all, she took such great interest in my garden work.
“Hello Ethel, I’m Bridget, nice to meet you,” I greeted her while sauntering down the driveway. Everybody around here used first names to address each other, so I thought nothing of it.
A startled Ethel pushed herself off the fence as if it was electrified. Her eyes under the bushy blonde eyebrows observed me suspiciously. She made a feeble attempt to shake my hand, then changed her mind and began to nervously stroke one of the young Motsetsi plants. She hadn’t realized that I was still at home. You’re letting up, Ethel, I thought with some satisfaction.
“How do you do?” she replied stiffly and set her face in a self-important expression. ” We should address each other by our surnames. I’m the principal’s wife, you know.”
“Right then.” Everybody knew that she was the principal’s wife.
“A certain level of propriety must be observed at all times, especially in such foreign lands. In this wilderness. I shall address you as Miss Reinhold and do kindly address me as Mrs. Poppelmeyer.”
She lectured me without the trace of a smile on her thin lips. I wondered whether Ethel understood that it helped to be nice to people, if she didn’t plan to die of loneliness in the wilderness.
“Of course, beg my pardon. We shall observe propriety then, Mrs. Poppelmeyer.” I said in an ironic tone, which seemed entirely lost on her.
“Yes,” she mused. “Perhaps I’ll be able to greet you as Mrs. Stratton soon?”
Wow, I hadn’t seen that one coming.
“I doubt that very much. Tony and I have no plans to get married.”
“Oh how regrettable, Miss Reinhold,” Ethel said icily. “Then I’m afraid we shan’t have a great deal to talk about, Miss Reinhold.” Her nose went up a little higher.
She seemed to like the sound of my surname, since she kept repeating it so often.
“That’s indeed regrettable Mrs. Poppelmeyer. I’m sure you have good reason for that.”
“I certainly have.” She let go of the poor motsetsi plant at last and nervously stroked her embroidered apron instead.
“Well it was nice meeting you all the same.”
I could have said a great deal more, but kept smiling for Tony’s sake.
“Good day Miss Reinhold. If you will excuse me, I have very important matters to attend to.”
With that she turned around, nearly collided with a stray dog and marched back into the principal’s house. The drawn lace curtains moved a little. I just shook my head and went on to have my juice on the porch.
I couldn’t help thinking, with a touch of pity, that Ethel might have lost her marbles in the African heat. On the other hand, the Poppelmeyers had been on a similar assignment in South America, according to Tony. I that wasn’t just as exotic as Africa!
Tony laughed the whole thing off.
“Her nose is permanently out of joint,” said. “Ethel Poppelmeyer is a very lonely woman. All of her maids run away after a few days. She seems to think that she’s the lady of the manor around here, surrounded by lowly serfs.”
“Just that there is no manor here. And no lowly serfs.”
“Exactly.”
“Maybe she’s just in the wrong place, you know. Some people don’t easily adjust,” I offered.
“Probably more ‘wrong century’,” Tony grinned.
Palapye was not exactly the lively place I had pictured in my mind.
No teeming marketplaces, no riotous music and dancing and no smiling fishwives in colourful garb. The locals could be rather shy until sorghum beer got the better of them.
And not one single African warrior in sight, who remotely resembled Shaka Zulu in the video-series. And nobody wore such creative, African attire I had seen on film. There was just a lot of red earth, grey sand, dusty plants and searing heat. Only very few people to speak to, but far too much time to think.
Mrs. Poppelmeyer did me the honour of another brief visit about a week later. For lack of another listener, she complained to me bitterly about her gardener, who had torn a pair of work pants. He had not returned after she took 10 Pula quite rightly off his monthly pay.
Never mind that the poor chap only earned about 50 Pula a month and needed to feed his family. 10 Pula was a fortune to some in 1988. About 1 Pound Sterling if I remember correctly. A fortune for a simple gardener.
“When my husband and I lived in Bolivia, where he was of course the principal of a very large college, servants were so much easier to handle. My husband would just say ‘Hey chico, come here and do that’ and the servant would obey. But these blacks are so difficult —,” she grumbled.
I kept my peace and went back to my garden work, giving Ethel some excuse that Tony expected me to finish the planting by the end of the day.
Ethel didn’t speak to me again. I just heard rumours later that she had returned to Cobblestead for good, leaving her oh so hardworking husband to his own devices in the African wilderness.
Another neighbour had come back from England. Alfred Jones lived next-door. He was the woodwork instructor and one of a kind. His heavily pregnant wife had stayed behind in Cardiff.
Alfred was quite a character, burly with a mop of unkempt grey hair and a big wiry beard hiding most of his face. He wrote to his wife Judith every day. Usually in the afternoon before downing a few beers on his porch. He sometimes gab me a lift to the police station when he posted the letters. Alfred Jones sometimes competed with me for telephone time at the Botsalo Hotel.
Tony invited him often over for a chat to help ease his loneliness. It was a sight to behold, when our neighbour got onto his footstool and climbed clumsily over the fence with a candle in his hand. Power cuts were frequent.
On one such occasion, he had even grabbed my hand in the darkness and held it tight — drunk of course. He didn’t remember afterwards, but Tony had requested that Alfred should bring a candle with him.
The beginning of the term drew closer and the wives of two Tswana teachers were setting up home in the complex. They were busy with meal preparation for their extended families all day long.
Mielie pap, the staple food, was cooked in three-legged black pots in the garden. The stiff mash was made from crushed white maize and the wooden stomping sounds never ceased. Surely driving Ethel Poppelmeyer around the bend.
The pap was often eaten with marogo, wild spinach. The women also had to run after their brood of children and wash everybody’s clothing. Or they supervised young girls doing these chores for them.
Unfortunately, there was an insurmountable language barrier between us.
My Setswana was non-existent, which put paid to a meaningful conversation. At least Mrs. Matija, a matron with five young children, managed to say Hello in English, while giggling and staring at her feet.
“Good morning, Mrs. Matija, how are you? Oh, is this your youngest? Hello.”
“Good morning, Miss Reynole.” That was usually it.
Her husband was one of the heads of department at the training centre. A position he assumed with dignity and a sense of tradition.
By now, I’d had to make peace with the fact that I would be staying longer than expected and I realised that I had to learn how to speak Setswana.
Tsanana, our maid, came up from the village every day to clean for both Alfred and Tony. She was the only female I could have a meaningful conversation with. Tsanana had been to school and — lucky for me — spoke some English.
She cleaned the house and taught me the bare basics of Setswana: “Dumela mma — Good day ‘m'am.”; “Dumela ra — Good day sir.”; “Le kai? — How are you?”; “Re teng — I’m fine.”; “Ke utlwa Setswana gologonje — I understand a little Setswana.”
I had to repeat the phrases parrot-fashion. But she never grew impatient if the words didn’t roll easily off my tongue. Oh, all those harsh ‘g’ sounds. And then those little intricacies, such as pronouncing ‘ph’ as ‘p’ and ‘sh’ like ‘s’ and that a ‘he’ often became inexplicably a ‘she’.
Finally I could say a simple greeting in Setswana: “Dumela”. Not enough for a conversation yet, but a good start. In the afternoon the rain drummed onto the tin roof and we had to shout at each other.
“Tsanana, why don’t people look at me when I speak to them?” I asked. This curious habit of Tswanas staring at their toes had puzzled me for a while.
“No madam, she look at feet, because she respect!” Tsanana explained.
This was of course against the very principle of respect in western communication. Tsanana still called me madam. African hierarchy rules were rather strict. She looked at me in wide-eyed horror when I told her to call me Bridget.
‘Oh madam, I cannot call Mma Bridget. Must have respect,” she told me .
She also refused to eat with me in the same room never mind at the same table. Instead she preferred to sit on the kitchen floor. The floor was admittedly very clean, but I still didn’t understand. Tsanana insisted that it simply was her custom. She had to show respect. As her employers, we were like her elders. That’s all there was to it. If anyone found out that she didn’t respect us, she’d be in trouble. I gave in reluctantly.
Communication with England was dragging. Apart from the phone calls, letters were my only lifeline to the outer world.
Despite a considerable delay, they kept me up to date with news from Cambridge.
That’s how I found out from Zahida that David had a new girlfriend. I knew Pippa and that she was nowhere near as stroppy as yours truly.
Good, David had found his match. No jealousy, not even a twinge of pain. Just a little homesickness. What I missed sorely by now were pubs and cinemas. And to my great shame I had to admit that I missed British television.
But the more I got into tune with my African surroundings, the less I thought about pub grub and the next episode of Coronation Street.
I wrote back diligently. About the birdsong in the mornings, Tony’s garden and the stony smell of the savannah. About Mrs. Poppelmeyer and how noisily Tswanas spoke to each other in the streets.
They wanted to know my as yet unsuccessful search for Claire. Just how was I supposed to explain the insurmountable obstacles piling up in front of me?
How naïve I had been. One couldn’t just take a bus or train. In Palapye was simply no infrastructure to speak of.
Bobonong was apparently close by. I wanted to go there. And from there to the Tuli Block. But even if I had a car, taking the tedious trip through rain and mud on my own was likely to be crowned by failure.
There were virtually no street signs, but many side roads. Tony’s Toyota was in the repair shop and I couldn’t even drive to the Botsalo to phone the Tuli Block game lodge. Tony didn’t have the time or inclination to accompany me there in a cramped minibus.
And what if the car broke down? One couldn’t ask direction with ‘Dumela mma’ .
Not even Claire had to drive through muddy roads and she had been on her way to the reservation. I was scared. The risk that I could lose my way was just too great. Again I had to wait.
Much to my parents’ relief, I reported that there were no gun battles or bomb blasts anywhere. The only guns I knew about hung over the shoulders of soldiers at roadblocks.
I missed Claire the most! She would have had some idea what to do. She would not have waited. I was already being as brave as I dared to be.
A small valley marked the boundary behind the housing complex. Because of all the high fences, one had to leave the complex and pick a narrow path back to a good spot in order to get an unobstructed view. I often day-dreamed that somewhere behind the hills, I would find Claire one day. Soon.
In the meantime we needed food and I had to walk to the shops. The long road from the training centre to the ‘mall’ was newly tarred, but took a wide berth around the village. Not a speck of shade from the blistering sun and the oily tar got stuck to shoes.
It was better to take the shortcut between trees and motsetsi-kraals. Even if it meant wading through deep grey sand. A trip I wouldn’t recommend barefoot. The sand was too hot and there were sharp objects hiding in it.
To my disappointment, Palapye did not have a traditional market place. The only thing that resembled a village hub was the short row of brick houses we called the mall. The Botsalo Hotel was far away, on the other side of the many kraals.
The only two shops were a greengrocer, where one could purchase mainly cabbage, spinach and squash and a little corner market that offered the mere basics. Bread, Crosse and Blackwell mayonnaise and long-life milk.
Next door was the local shebeen. A sort of pub, where one could eat a bite. Tswanas went to shebeens mostly for the sorghum beer.
Neo Moletsane had invited us proudly to try the local specialty of pap and fatty boiled meat with tomato relish.
We sat down at one of the wobbly tables covered in brightly patterned oil cloth. The food he ordered was served on tatty plastic plates with beetroot salad and none too clean knives and forks. I was no fan of fatty meat and stuck to the pap and beetroot. I had to try hard not to spit out the unusual-tasting sorghum beer. Neo noticed how I was struggling and ordered a coke.
My shopping trip to the mall ended pleasantly when Alfred, who was on his lunch break gave me a ride back to the complex.
When the car was in running-order again, Tony took me to Serowe and Selebi Phikwe to stock up. There were real supermarkets! With fridges and one could buy fresh milk and produce.
“Finally,” I moaned. “I’m tired of tinned food.”
“That’s why we need cooler boxes. In the heat, lettuce can boil to mush in no time. Like cooked spinach.”
“Crummy. And instead of yoghurt we end up with cheese cake.”
“Exactly. Although that wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Claire loves cheesecake.”
“Mhm.”
That was all he said. Nice try, Bridget. How long would he carry on like this?
Tony wasn’t in a bad mood or anything , so after the shopping, we went to the Museum of Tswana Culture. The gate to the modest building was locked, despite a sign declaring that the museum would be open on a Saturday. Tony asked a few passersby, who spoke broken English and told us that the director of the museum lived around the corner. They offered to fetch him and soon he came running.
“I didn’t expect any tourists at this time of year,” the director apologized.
I began to like the flexibility of rules. In Britain, if a museum was closed, it was closed. End of story.
“Just look at that Tony, what is it?”
I was fascinated by the small wooden animal statues made by the Khoi San. A small wooden board with flattened nails that could be played with one’s thumbs lay on a pedestal.
“That’s a bushman piano,” explained the director, “all hand-carved by Bushmen from the Kalahari Desert.”
Bushmen. I had read about bushmen.
Still out of breath, the man took his position behind the counter and charged us two Pulas entrance fee per head. A group of Americans had also found their way to the museum and queued behind us.
“Awesome man. They have a museum in the middle of the desert, hey Bob?”
“Yeah, wonder if this statue’s for sale. I still need a birthday present for Meg.”
After viewing the exhibition of huts, cooking vessels made from clay and grass, the museum director told us everything there was to know about Tswana beer making. The Americans oohed and aahed and took lots of photographs.
“Beer — that’s my kinda thing, hey Bob.”

Next, we stopped for lunch at a cheerfully painted restaurant on Serowe’s dusty thoroughfare. The place was run by a sweaty Scotsman and his fat Tswana wife. We had a simple meal of hearty stew and samp, a mash of whole white maize kernels. Surprisingly tasty.
We sat by a large window with the best view of Serowe. The view consisted of a great number of houses painted in shades of pink and green. Donkey carts plodded along at snail’s pace between hooting motor cars.
Babies were strapped to their mothers’ backs in bath towels. The women dawdled along the road in the middle of the traffic chaos. Serowe wasn’t the bustling African market place I had imagined, either. What was Bobonong like, I wondered, and the Tuli Block? I shouldn’t get distracted too much from my mission in Botswana.
But I did get distracted.
Tony and I were invited to barbecues, which were called braais around here. Our hosts were mostly South African contractors, who worked at the mine in Selebi Phikwe. An American teacher, who lived in a hippie-style house in the hills, far from the main road was our most unusual host.
Of course, everybody thought that I was Tony’s girlfriend and we were teased mercilessly about not being hitched yet.
Women were either wives or fiancées in this close-knit society. Not twin sisters of missing girlfriends. We kept quiet and smiled.
People in Southern Africa — black or other-skinned — were rather hospitable. They were also rather religious. In a Christian sense.
On weekends, Tswanas could be seen wearing long robes and church ‘uniforms’. They congregated underneath large trees, singing, drumming.
Purple was for Catholics and white and green for apostolic church members. Groups of women in bright red garb would often meet at bus stops, but I never found out to which church they belonged. Some of the white women wore white doilies on their heads on their way to church. Astonishing.
The season was moving into early summer and I soon learned the importance of wearing sun block and a hat during the day. My arms had turned an angry red after hiking to a deserted settlement, once built in the hills west of Palapye for the McAlpine Company. I could feel that my face and neck didn’t look much better and it took a good few days, before my skin started to peel. A painful lesson.
As time dragged on, I wondered, if it was wise to be so secretive about my identity. Perhaps someone had information about Claire’s case and would have told me. But it was too late to change my story now. There had to be another way.
I should be making contact with Gaborone. The central police head quarters and the British High Commission. Just that communication with Gaborone was still difficult.
Mr. Poppelmeyer categorically refused to make the telephone at the training centre available for private calls. I had managed to phone the British High Commission once from the Botsalo Hotel, but had to give up after five minutes of holding to the tune of Greensleeves. Adding to my woes, I couldn’t discuss salient details at the hotel without risking undue attention. What could I do but wait for Tony to take me to Gaborone.
I didn’t have long to wait.
The following weekend, Tony decided to take a daytrip to Gaborone. At last!
Gabs could have passed for a small country town in Britain. But it had the regal appearance and bearing of a capital. The flow of traffic was unhurried. The roads were dusty but properly tarred. There was the occasional traffic light and even a few roundabouts.
We took a tour around town and I saw spacious houses with lush palm gardens. Bougainvillea bushes in shades of pink, purple and red spilled over walls and climbed into majestic blue-flowering jacaranda trees. I was enthralled by the beauty of Gaborone. Plants I had only ever seen in British indoor flowerpots grew hugely in the open air.
In the centre of town was the shopping mile, also called ingeniously ‘The European Mall’. Not at all like our mall in Palapye. This mall stretched from a monument in the east all the way to the government buildings in the west.
There were banks, a book store and a supermarket, a cinema, a couple of clothing shops, a hardware store and a curio shop. Consulates and offices completed the picture. The British High Commission was just across the road. Although there were other smaller malls in Gaborone, city life happened right here.
Claire walked here, I thought woefully. She must have bought warm bedding in one of those shops.
In the middle of the mall, the multi-storied President Hotel oversaw graciously the pedestrian precinct. Broad stairs led the way to a popular restaurant on a large, shady terrace. The bustling mall came close to the African market I had imagined.
The book store was well stocked and I cheaply purchased a couple of Jane Austen classics. There was even a copy of Grandpa’s earlier work ‘El Jadida’ in the historical fiction section. I bought the copy.
On the way out, I bumped into a portly gentleman in a light blue safari suit. Although it had been my fault, he apologized to me. How polite. “Ah sorry, no matata,” he said. Roughly translated, it means ‘no problem’. The word sorry was quite useful.
My trolley bumped by mistake into an ample behind inside Corner’s Supermarket and the reply to my stammered apologies was ‘Ah sorry, madam, no matata.’
To greet people in the street was an important part of Tswana etiquette. Even in the capital, nobody could just walk past without being polite.
I respectfully greeted two elderly ladies, who gave me curious looks in the supermarket’s fruit and vegetable section. The signal to greet!
“Dumelang, bo-mma.”
“Dumela, mma.” The matrons nodded smiling approval and walked past.
I would have liked to meet with Claire’s former colleagues or go to the British High Commission. But it was a weekend. Tony’s priority was to shop for necessities. Before we left, we had lunch at the Gaborone Sun Hotel some ways off the mall. Then we had to get back to Palapye.
I couldn’t believe my eyes, when cows were herded through the city streets right in front of traffic. Tony said, they were probably on their way to the big abattoir in Lobatse.
“Where did you and Claire stay here in Gabs?” I asked Tony randomly.” Where about is this company house?”
“Oh somewhere over there —” he waved his hand without looking.
“I would like to see it. Can’t we quickly drive past?”
Perhaps I thought I would pick up Claire’s scent there or that I would have an epiphany.
“Rather not now. Next time maybe,” he mumbled.
I knew that Tony was still avoiding other expatriates. My sister’s disappearance had caused a small scandal in those circles. And anyway, he avoided everything to do with Claire.
“What am I supposed to do?” I wailed as we waited in traffic. “I’m getting absolutely nowhere with my search.”
“Well, you could come to Gabs on your own and stay for a few days with Uli Winckler and his family,” Tony suggested.
We saw the backside of the last cow disappear behind some trees and drove on.
“Uli is a senior guy at the Automotive College and his wife Rita is just terrific. I’m sure they won’t mind if you stay with them. You can catch a lift with one of the mining guys next week, and I’ll fetch you on the weekend. If Poppelmeyer doesn’t need me, that is.”
That sounded almost as if Tony tried to get rid of me.
“What and risk another marriage proposal?”
“Yes —“ Tony had to laugh.
“What about you, then, don’t you want to come with me?”
We had to stop a red light.
“I, I can’t…not…not yet,” he suddenly stuttered.
“What if I find out something important about Claire?” I probed. We had to talk about her, so why not now?
“I have to work and just can’t deal with it right now, okay?”
There we go again, I thought and stopped probing. I didn’t want to fight. I couldn’t do anything without Tony’s support.
“We have to talk about this sometime, Tony.”
We were on the main road.
“I know. But not just now.” Whyever not? Oh, I could kick him sometimes!
“Okay, then I will go by myself. What about Monday?” I pushed. Why wait?
“I’ll give them a call on Monday,” Tony promised.
But then nothing came of it. On Monday, the English teacher still had not returned back from her village in the Okavango Delta. She had no phone.
Tony was head of department. he couldn’t wait any longer and begged me to take over her classes. The last term of the year was vitally important and exams had to be prepared.
“We urgently need a substitute,” he said.
“What if this teacher has also disappeared?” I said. Who knew what could happen out there in the bush.
“I doubt that. More likely that she had to go to a funeral or a wedding. Maybe she simply changed her mind and doesn’t want to work here anymore. Time works differently in Botswana, you know.”
“I’ve noticed that. But what about the exams, doesn’t she care about the students?”
Tony just shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows what she’s thinking. Nothing seems to compare to a good old funeral around here. Chances are she’ll be back before the exams.”
“But Tony, I’ve never taught anybody anything — ever,” I groaned.
“Doesn’t matter. You have a degree in linguistics. That counts as a qualification around here.”
“I don’t know — “
“Please help me out, please,” he begged.
What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t let Tony down. Oh well, no matata.
My visit to the Wincklers in Gaborone had to be put on hold for a while. Instead, classes needed to be prepared and I prayed that I wouldn’t make a complete fool of myself.
A few nights before my debut lesson, I woke up scratching all over. I felt for my alarm clock. 1:34 am. Ouch! I jumped out of bed and switched the bedside lamp on.
An army of red ants was trekking right down the center of the mattress and onto the floor. And they were all over me!
I pulled my pajamas down and wiped my arms and legs in a panic. The nasty little fire ants were biting relentlessly.
I bravely ripped the sheets and covers off, piled them into the bathtub and let water run over the linen. Ants hated water. Then I took a shower. Oh, what was wrong with the water? why didn’t it run quicker? I watched the last of the red-brown critters disappear down the gurgling drain amid the soapy foam.
My skin was still itchy, but at least I could put on another pajama.
Where was the insect spray? The bright yellow bottle of ‘Instant Death’ was on top of the fridge, where Tony also kept the spirals that were burned at night to keep the mosquitoes at bay.
I grabbed the spray and ran back into the room.
I hated anything to do with poison, this was an emergency. I pushed the bed away from the wall and sure enough, the ants came crawling through a hole just above the skirting board.
Tony’s sleepy face appeared in the door. The commotion had been enough to wake even a sound sleeper like him. Great, he could help me get rid of the ants!
“What you doing?” he asked and yawned broadly.
“Red ants!” I sounded hysterical. “In my bed, everywhere.”
I could still feel the burning bites of the little devils all over me.
Tony yawned. “Oh no, sorry ‘bout that. Spray’s on fridge.” He turned around and tottered back into his room to go back to sleep.
“Thanks,” I said as he closed his door, “for nothing.”
I copiously sprayed the skirting with ‘Instant Death’ and felt like dropping dead myself from the smell alone. I opened the window and moved into the guestroom.
Luckily, it hadn’t been only fire ants and not a large hunting spider or worse, a scorpion or snake. My standards of what was normal were shifting by the day.
During my near insect-free existence in Cambridge, I would have had a heart attack at the mere sight of a tiny spider on the bathroom wall.
I soon forgot about the ants and snakes and scorpions and fell asleep. Only to wake up to another African morning with birdsong, the crowing of roosters and incessant donkey braying.
This morning would turn into a scorching day, so I jumped out of bed to make the best of a few cool hours before midday.
Before long, Tony’s word processor droned away, printing out worksheet after worksheet. There were still piles of documents to go through and the first day of term drew closer by the minute.