Ancient Rites. Diale Tlholwe

lack of consciousness of any wrongdoing that it is often very difficult to challenge them. So, the awkward, untidy adolescent sits next to a scrubbed, gap-toothed child wrapped in a patched shawl.

      “It is sad that most of the giraffes at the back will never achieve much once they lose interest in book-learning,” Mokoka told me in low voice while Motaung berated the children for some vague misdeed. “They don’t appear on the official class lists, but we try to give them something while they are still here. Age is their problem, and a fast-changing world that seems to be leaving them behind. The old inspectors turned a blind eye, and some even encouraged them to stay as long as possible in the school system, but one never knows with these new ideas people.” He shrugged. “I always wonder how they turn out after they go to the big cities. Especially the poor girls. One always hears such terrible stories . . .” He shuddered. “But we can’t keep them here. There is nothing for them here anymore.”

      This was when I began to warm to T. B. Mokoka. His concern was so genuine that I wanted to pat him on his back and assure him that none of it was his fault. I wished that he was at another school far away, preferably in a different province, in a saner, purer age.

      The children sang and we sang with them. We chanted the Lord’s Prayer, whose noble sentiments have long lost their power through years of mindless repetition, before I was introduced to the children by a beaming Mogae.

      * * *

      During the lunch break I took a tour of the school. I found Mokoka eating something out of a small brown-paper bag in his office. He grimaced at me before returning to his lunch. Mogae, in turn, was in his classroom, chomping energetically. He also wrinkled the corners of his eyes in a simulated smile. Motaung was the only one not eating. Instead, he was marking books. As I had nothing to eat, I decided to join him. He looked up expressionlessly as I wandered in and sat down at the desk nearest to the door.

      “It’s cold in here don’t you think?” I said, trying to make small talk. “Why don’t you sit outside in the sun?”

      “The lunch break is too short for taking desks in and out of the classrooms,” he replied, and then, before I could object, he asked, “Have you been doing this for long?”

      “Doing what?”

      “Being a substitute teacher.”

      “On and off . . . Maybe two, three years.”

      “What type of schools? Urban or rural?”

      For no reason at all, at that moment, Tankie Motaung struck me as having that indefinable quality of a sneak. To turn him away from asking about my life I replied to his last question with one of my own. “Where is Bullsdrift?” I asked.

      “It’s our nearest town. You wouldn’t have seen it when you arrived. It’s on the other side of the turn-off.”

      “I see,” I said and looked out through the window. “This lady teacher, the one who disappeared, how long had she been teaching here?” I continued, quickly moving in another direction to keep him off balance even as I studied his reflection in the windowpane.

      “As long as the school has been here,” he said. I sensed a hesitation, a tightening of screws inside his head before answering, but he recovered himself quickly.

      “And how long is that?”

      “Four, five years.”

      “And before all this,” I waved an arm. “Where did the Marakong children attend school?”

      “At Majaneng,” he said. “The village that Mogae and I stay in.”

      Motaung rose, seeming suddenly much older. “The lunch break is almost over. I have to prepare for the next lesson,” he said woodenly and with that I was dismissed.

      After that the first day passed like any first day in a new environment: trying to memorise names and faces, the location of this and that, finding out who was responsible for what. On the whole it was pleasantly unthreatening in its banality.