The man sat in front of the wood hut; a spear in one hand, a shovel in the other. Dingaan on his throne. King of the kraal. King of the world. In real life he was a madman and the villagers trembled. No one felt safe, no one dared approach but everyone needed wood. For their homes. Fire and food. Life.
My dad was nominated to reason with the king.
So…
…off he set.
Taking tentative steps towards the hut. Slowly…
…slowly.
From a distance the king appeared oblivious. Had I been standing closer; I’d have noticed chary eyes tracking the creeping white man in khaki shorts and a missionary’s stance. What would Jesus do?
My dad stopped. Not too close but not too far.
I could hear voices. Louder. Hands gesticulating.
The king rose from his throne, orb and sceptre in hand. My dad stood firm. Too firm. And walked away with a split cheek and no front teeth.
The pain was worth the wood.
They say that Africa gets into the blood.
They say.
They.
Say.
As I watched my dad walk away from the king, blood dripping down his cheek into the dirt, I felt alive – scared but alive. Something – no, not something: it – surged through my body, plucking at my mind. Staining my heart.
Clutching my soul.
I’d sit on the sand. Red and hot. So hot. And scrape my nails along the ground. Digging into the flat, dry earth. Witling time away. Every now and then I’d look up and see space. Eons of it. There were no roads. No cars. Until there were. When I returned to Zambia as a man, years later, the cars were abandoned along the side of the road, broken and decrepit, as if they’d had no right there in the first place.
When we needed water, Chesiwe fetched it from the river. It was a mile and a half walk. Sometimes I’d run next to him, kicking up dust clouds until his pace outmatched even my best efforts. And then I’d sit in the shade of the veranda that wrapped around the house like a coiled snake, and wait for Chesiwe’s return. He’d come with a bucket full of water balanced on the top of his head. Like it was nothing. We bathed in a 10-ton trough. On cold days we’d wash in front of a fire in the lounge to take the sting out of the air as we got in and out. Later, there was a windmill and a reservoir, and a generator. Until then, clothes were washed in the river. My mom or one of the local ladies would stand in the water with soap and a log, scrubbing; keeping a third eye for crocodiles, which were likely to come lurking with keen nostrils and hungry bellies. Once the washing was rinsed, it was draped on bushes to dry, waiting for the sun to sap the water out and add it to potions the sky was brewing for a late afternoon storm.
The toilet was a hole in the ground, in a hut 50 metres away from the house. It was made from grass and wood, with a thatch roof. It was dark inside, even in the daytime. I’d scan for snakes before squatting over the hole. No one used the toilet at night—lion, leopard and hyena owned the land when the moon was out.
Once a month a cow was slaughtered, and the villagers shared the meat with us. Their cattle also supplied us with milk, or we’d cross the river to the trading store for milk powder and maize. We had chickens for eggs and grew vegetables in a patch down by the river.
I caught a plane to boarding school. Not the first time though. The first time we went by car. It took two days. When shown the room I would be sleeping in, I walked to the bed furthest away and crept under it. Wrapping my arms around myself, I crunched into a ball and wept. From that day, I dreaded the first day of school. The plane was a four-seater and the first time, I threw up all over it. It only happened once. I loved being in the air. Fifteen hundred feet above the ground. It was way better (and faster) than driving all the way to school at Sakeji. Gazing out of the window, I wondered at the patches of bare ground all over the landscape. Like a desert. The pilot said that the bits of naked ground had been stripped by villagers, who chopped down trees for firewood but didn’t know to plant more. They farmed the land but didn’t know to rotate the crops either, leaving the earth barren. Then they moved on, chopping and farming somewhere else.
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine it—sand encroaching, spreading, widening, invading until…nothing. It scared me.
School ran for two 18-week terms. From the age of 5, for four and a half months, twice a year (nine months in total) for nine years, I had nothing to do with my parents.
It defined everything.
Boys and girls left in the grey.
The bush was our refuge. The land. It took us in.
The river, shaped like a horseshoe, wrapped around us. Its cool water bathing our souls. There was also a pool; a hole in the ground filled with cement and water. We swam and climbed trees, playing Tarzan & Jane; swinging on branches and pretending we were in the jungle. We learnt what we could eat in the bush and what not to eat. Loquats and monkey oranges, bananas by the million but my favourite was a shinda—the brightest, reddest fruit you can possibly imagine. We’d would dig them out of the ground when they were in season, using our hands to crack the shell and expose an oyster of pulp and seeds, much like a pomegranate. But a shinda does not taste like a pomegranate. It’s sour. I’d place the seeds on my tongue and regret it immediately – wanting to spit them out – but then a strange sweetness would take over, invoking a weird combination of something really nice and really horrible all at once, which was intriguing enough for us to eat the entire fruit and go back for more. It tasted wild, of the land; like nothing I’d tasted before, or since.
Apples were a treat. I had one maybe once a year… and when I did, I’d take my apple and my small penknife and sit next to the river, listening to crickets and keeping a beady eye out for ripples in the water. Then I’d slice that apple, eating it sliver by sliver—savouring every morsel of tangy sweetness.
In 1960 we thought we’d have to evacuate the school. An uprising in the Congo. Rebels close to the border.
It never happened.
Then we went to England.
A boy on the playground handed me something that looked like a golf ball. Big and white. It was called a gobstopper. I’d never seen anything like it. I thought I’d eat it quickly, before I got back into class, because Mr Draper would never allow it. I held it gingerly in a pincer grip, marvelling at the wonders produced by the playground in Highbury, North London—a far cry from the bright red shinda flesh that was offered up by the African soil. I put it in my mouth. Sweet. Just sweet. Running down my throat—I tried to swallow but swallowed the hard ball instead. Clutching my neck, I coughed, or tried to…this was it; dead, on the hard cement of the coldest, wettest place I ever knew. But it was not my time. By some miracle (perhaps the God I’ve never understood) the gobstopper was back in my mouth. I thought I’d best stick to the shinda I knew than the gobstopper I didn’t.
Where was the sun?
It was November and I hadn’t seen the sun for a month. I woke up in the dark and returned from school in the dark. I asked my parents where the sun was. The glory of the great yellow sphere confined to the lips of story tellers around campfires at the village back home in Zambia…
…where the sky was blue and the sun set red.
I saw those skies for another 8 years.
Until 1968.
Another furlough. This time I was at a Grammar School in Seven Oaks, Kent, with two friends called Murphy and Burford. I watched the 1968 Olympics on television, and a few months later saw a man walk on the moon. I played Under14 Rugby and won a regional high jump competition the day before getting on a ship headed for South Africa.
Along with my mom, dad and two sisters, I boarded the HMS Pendennis Castle Royal Mail Ship to South Africa and never looked back.
Except I did. Years and years later.
From a small flat in Reading, England, in the cold and the dark.
Except when I close my eyes, there is a red glint on the horizon.
Beckoning.
Storyteller: Noel Huntingford
Author: Andrea Zanin
Noel Huntingford was born in London. From the age of 6 weeks, he lived in Zambia with his missionary parents and two older sisters. When he was 14, he moved with his family to South Africa. Noel has been living in the UK for the last couple of years (to spend time with his three children and ten grandchildren) but plans to return to Africa, where he left his heart.
