As I push my trolley through
“So what are you doing in
“I’m coming to work here.” He looks at me for the first time, interested.
“What are you doing?”
“I am a doctor. I’m going to work in a hospital in rural
“Hey, we need you.” He breaks into a broad grin. “Thank you for coming. We need you. You take good care of those people. You look after those people up there.” He offers his hand, bags forgotten, and we perform the classic handshake widespread among, particularly, black South Africans: Western-style grip, shifting to a arm-wrestle style grasp, returning to standard grip. “Have a great time!”
A timely shot of encouragement. The hours of conversation with the pleasant white South African lady I sat next to on the plane had been a little demoralising. Returning from a reconnoitre of Canada for the purpose of locating both a job and a location in which to settle with her family she had little uplifting to say about her country. Crime, potential political instability, limited job opportunities for whites, corruption in government. “I don’t want my daughters to be trapped here and I need to move before they finish school.”
“Why before then finish? Why not after?”
“Well, if we leave too late they won’t want to come because they will have all their friends and want to go to Varsity in
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It is now Thursday. I have been in the country two days. I am looking for a car, and hey there are expensive. Few people can afford new so the second hand market is extremely robust. £5000 gets you near nothing. £6000 gets you a 4 year old Corsa, which despite myself I cannot stop thinking of as a girl’s car. I have found a dealer owned by a car rental company that sells on their old stock. Musa, a young Zulu is showing me the only car on their forecourt in my price range: a 2 year old Toyota Tazz. He asks what I am doing in the country. I tell him and tt turns out that his family are from the region in which I will be working.
“But we moved down to
“What do you mean?”
“Those people. They show too much respect.”
“To white people you mean?”
“Yes! They never change.”
“You mean, like apartheid never ended?”
“Yes! In the city, we are different but up there it is the same as always.”
He asks where I am working. I have been practicing my pronunciation. “Hlabisa” with the “Hla” in your cheeks like the Welsh. Many white South Africans pronounce it “Shlabisa”. He graciously congratulates me on my efforts.
“These other people,” he says, gesturing to the city of
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Another day, another dealership. I am paying a second visit to Pattie, a lovely white South African in the second-hand sales department. It is my second visit. She tells me with a grin that the receptionist, with whom I have spent some time talking whilst waiting, has been referring to me as “her English Gentleman.”
“She phoned me whilst I was out with a client, and said ‘Pattie, your English Gentleman is here.’ I felt like the Madame of some exclusive House of Ill Repute.” She laughs at the thought. This town is known locally as “God’s waiting room” being a prime location for well-heeled retirees. Such a House would have to demand medicals of the majority of its clients before allowing them beyond reception.
We are test driving a
Whilst it is being prepared I nip over the road to the barber. He is stocky fellow in the unofficial white South African uniform: white short-sleeved shirt, tan shorts and socks pulled up to the knee. As I enter is shaving the head of a boy who looks around 7 or 8. His mother is standing by him as he squirms under the clippers. She speaks English with a strong Afrikaans accent
"You are so brave! You look so cool! You are going to look like one of those American Army soldiers. What do they call that haircut?” She addresses her friend, sat by the window immersed in a gossip magazine.
“A crewcut.”
“A crewcut! So cool.” The boy is whimpering and crying now. I think that a crewcut leaves considerably more hair than will remain after this boys’s encounter with these naked clippers.
“Ach, shame man,” says the friend absently, turning the page of the magazine.
The boy’s torture is soon over. He looks at himself in the mirror, shocked into silence by the stranger looking back at him. “10 rand,” says the barber.
It is my turn. I sit in the chair and ask for a grade 2 back and sides, “and short on top but not so short I look like Tintin.” He starts cutting. I look in the mirror and wonder whether grades are different in
“I can’t charge you for this.”
“Why not?”
“Because I forgot to put the grade on the clippers.” He has been cutting with the same setting he used on the boy. I make polite noises and he has to extensively “debulk” the hair on the top of my head in order to prevent my face appearing even longer and thinner than it is. He doesn’t talk very much. I leave feeling rather bald and spikey.
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It is Sunday night. I have been here 5 days. Tomorrow I leave at 6am to drive the 5 hours to the hospital in the car I have just purchased. Lucky, the gate guard at the complex in which I have been staying and with whom I have struck up a polite banter, has just phoned the house to wish me good luck. “You enjoy Hlabisa. Get to that hospital and look after those people. I will see you soon.” I thank him and hang up very in touch with my inner sap, feeling as I do, slightly misty eyed.
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