We passed towns I’d never heard of. We stopped at some strategically located spots where we ducked behind bushes to relieve ourselves. Young people laugh at me these days when I tell them there were no Shell or BP halfway stations where people can get out of buses and cars, go to sweet-smelling and well-appointed toilets where they relieve themselves at their leisure, after which they can go to a Wimpy, or a KFC or Nando’s outlet and settle for a meal before resuming their journey. Those days there was no such luxury. Especially not for black people. Of course, the story was different for white people. White people, whether travelling by bus or car, could take a detour from the highway and sleep over at motels and hotels. Or they could choose to nose their cars into caravan parks where they would reach for their picnic baskets, unfurl their blankets and towels and spread these under the cool shades of trees. They would tuck into their roast chicken and potato salad and cheese and tomato sandwiches which had been lovingly prepared by their black maids. They might dig into the back of their truck and come out with a braai stand. They would chat away in good humour as the steak sizzled on the coals. If the weather was pleasant enough, and they were not in a hurry to get to their final destination, they would sleep on their picnic blankets under the stars.
No such luck for black people. For black people, the bus had to stop on the side of the road. People would fan out and find strategic positions behind bushes where they did their thing. I am recalling this specifically because as we were relieving ourselves out there in the bushes, it turned out that one of the men had suddenly been afflicted with a terrible tummy bug. Every time he thought he was done and he had already wiped he would soon start groaning again. A new onslaught of noises – bhah-bhah-bhah! – would ensue from the thickets where he was hiding. It was so bad that the driver of the bus almost drove away, leaving him behind. Of course, I would only know about this later, when the bus was back on the road and the men were talking at the top of their voices about the man’s smelly misfortunes.
As the shadows lengthened outside, the landscape became starkly beautiful, ever more breathtaking. Many outstanding writers, ranging from BW Vilakazi to Alan Paton, have written lyrically and eloquently about the landscapes of Zululand and Natal. The Drakensberg with its frowning craggy cliffs and precipices; the chattering and laughing waters of uThukela river. The graceful Valley of a Thousand Hills. But I am no poet. Suffice it to say that I could not help staring out there as the landscape swept past.
Mbongeni kept me entertained with stories about the various towns we passed. The battles of yore that had been fought in the mountains and valleys or some historic event that had led to the birth of a particular town. But I was only half listening. My mind was on the women who were on the bus. Not many women, by the way, just a sprinkling. But you could feel their presence. Some were dressed in their best city clothes so that everyone back home would see that they hadn’t gone to Johannesburg to play. They had gone there to scoop their pieces of gold. Or at least a handful of the gold dust that made them rich enough to afford these modern outfits. But some of the women were old. They had gone to Johannesburg only to fetch their husbands. Or to visit their husbands who were still obliged by their long work contracts to remain in the city. I’d been told that some men would go home only once a year. Or maybe once after two years. When this was the case the men’s wives were obliged to visit them in Johannesburg and other mining towns in the Greater Witwatersrand area. The women would spend a few days, a week, with their husbands, always praying that they would fall pregnant on this rare visit. It was called ‘ukuyolanda isisu’. Literally: to collect a belly.
I was lucky to not fall into that category. My man was right next to me. He was a modern man. I was a modern woman. He was not condemned to the life of a miner. He was an actor. I knew his time was coming. The time when he would grace the stages of the world. The time his name would appear on the front pages of newspapers. I would be there to support him. We would only go to his ancestral village so that I could be introduced to his people. Then we would go back to Johannesburg, where we would start our own family, far from the rivers and mountains.
I wondered what Mbongeni’s village looked like. He’d warned me that there were no tarred roads, women still fetched water from the river or stream nearby, that they still cooked on open fires and primus stoves. It was already dark outside when the bus finally came to a stop in eMtubatuba, our destination. Well, not exactly. From eMtubatuba, we took a van which served as the local taxi. We rumbled through the gravel, penetrating thick bushes, the van’s headlights carving a canyon of light in the thick darkness which had suddenly taken over. Finally, we arrived in Mbongeni’s village, eNhlwathi. The place of the python, to translate the Zulu moniker. The village of eNhlwathi is one of many villages in the Greater kwaHlabisa area, which in turn looks up to Mtubatuba as its seat of power and commerce.
‘Here we are, then, sweetheart,’ Mbongeni said as he picked up our luggage. The distance from where the car had dropped us to the Ngema yard was not that long. Except that it was pitch-black. Not a pinprick of light. It was like walking around with a blindfold on. Sadly, I was wearing high-heeled shoes, and I kept stumbling on the uneven traditional path leading to the yard. By the time we arrived in the yard, my calves and ankles were sore.
It was only when we’d been ushered into Mbongeni’s room and I sat on his bed that I realised just how exhausted I was. But the excitement of being there, on the premises of the Ngema people, being right there on the threshold of joining this family officially as their makoti, filled me with such energy and joy that I couldn’t resist making love to Mbongeni.
When it was over, we slept like logs.
Chapter 3
Why not two wives?
To wake up to the noise of cows mooing and cocks crowing was something I hadn’t heard in a long time. Those sounds reminded me of the Transkei, more specifically that terrible, terrible school in Nzimankulu where I had spent an unhappy year before transferring to St John’s College. Nzimankulu bore traumatic memories.
The mooing of cows on my first morning at the Ngema house invariably hurled me back to my first year of rural life. But those bad memories soon took a back seat when I realised that my lovely Mbongeni was right there next to me, smiling at me, asking me how I’d slept. He gave me strength and hope. He brought me joy. With him at my side, I could withstand anything. Including the traumatic mooing of cows and the crowing of cocks.
I got dressed in an outfit appropriate for a makoti trying to make a good impression on my soon-to-be in-laws. Instead of the pants I normally wore back home, I put on an ankle-length skirt. The Ngema household was a four-bedroomed house with a lounge plus an outside kitchen. It being a weekend, the yard was full of people: children who were free from school; middle-aged women – who turned out to be aunts of Mbongeni – and other relatives. Although I had been introduced briefly to some of these people when we had arrived the previous night, it was expected of Mbongeni to properly introduce me in broad daylight, to all those in the yard and those who would later come to the house in order to ‘view’ me, as was custom. With seven siblings of my own – I was number five in a family of four girls and four boys – I’d always known ours was a big family. But by Mbongeni’s family’s standards, ours was an average-sized family. There were around 30 people in that family. It was just overwhelming. So many children buzzing about, women walking in and out of the house. I soon got sucked up in the maelstrom of activity around the yard. Cleaning things,