Zebra Horizon

Zebra Horizon

A novel

Gunda Hardegen-Brunner

Published by Timshel

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Gunda Hardegen-Brunner

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for brief quotations in a book review.

All characters in this publication are ficticious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Design and Layout: Nathalie Shrosbree

Cover photo: Jenny Metelerkamp

Jolly Jumper: Heather Metelerkamp

Cover design: Nathalie Shrosbree

Table of Contents

Title page

Part I

Part II

Part III

About Gunda Hardegen-Brunner

Contact Gunda Hardegen-Brunner

Other Books by Gunda Hardegen-Brunner

Sample Chapters from other books

Interview with Gunda Hardegen-Brunner

PART I

When I was 12, I decided that there must be more to life than going to school in a little Bavarian town. I told my parents, that all I wanted for my birthday, was to be sent to Summerhill School in England, a place where they knew that it is more important for children to be themselves, than force them to learn the anatomy of the inner ear and make buttonholes by hand – in the age of the automatic sewing machine. My father told me I was crazy. I wrote to the headmaster of Summerhill anyway. He sent me a very funny letter, at the end of which he said, that I was already too old to start at his school. He probably thought I was too far down the process of becoming a ‘good’ citizen.

My friend Anna and I then wrote a poem of 23 verses, in which we gave our school a piece of our mind. It filled 3 pages in the school-newspaper and became the scandal of the district. The newspaper was promptly banned and the only reason the school didn’t expel us was that Anna nearly died because of a burst appendix, and they couldn’t put more strain on her mother, who had already lost 13,5kg in 2 weeks, she was so worried.

I boycotted the buttonhole/needlework classes as much as possible. It wasn’t easy, because that old witch Frau Semmelweiss would wait in front of our door 10 minutes before her time to take over, to make sure that nobody escaped. That’s why I also had to skip the English classes and my English marks were terrible. Later, when my National Geographic collection took up about 2 cubic metres of my room, I knew words my teacher hadn’t even heard of, but my marks were still terrible, because my vocabulary was not in the curriculum. I realized that to get away from the German system I would have to persuade my parents to emigrate. I immediately ran into problems. My father, a doctor, said the tropics were out because he had no inclination to live in countries with mosquito borne diseases. My mother said Muslim countries were out because she could not abide their dress code. She had got herself arrested once before while on holiday in Spain, because she insisted on tanning in the nude. I was more for respecting other people’s cultures.

When I was 16, I discovered an article about ‘exchange students’ in my dad’s Rotary magazine. I went straight to the president of his club, who was a bit surprised, because I was the first and only applicant, who had ever walked into his office. After I had explained the procedure to him, he accepted me without further fuss as a candidate.

I didn’t know it then, but that trip was going to change my life.

*

Africa appeared at the first light of dawn. The Sahara stretched like a dark, frozen ocean 10.000 metres below. A million stars and the silver disc of the moon hung in the sky. The night faded and an orange glow hit the eastern horizon. The dunes, divided by black valleys, emerged in shades of purple. Suddenly a segment of sun set the earth on fire. The purple melted into reds and yellows and the blacks into shaded ochre. The desert gradually petered out, changing to sandy plains and barren grassland. At lunch time the DC 10 dodged between grey, equatorial Cumulonimbus clouds. I took a good schluck of red wine. Life was incredibly exciting.

Through the green jungle below little red paths criss crossed leading to forlorn villages. In Germany you can spit from one village to the next. As kids we used to play a game with my grandmother: you had to find a spot with a view where you could turn 360 degrees without seeing a house, a road or an electricity pole. It was just about impossible and she hardly ever had to hand out the first prize of a carob bar filled with nuts and honey, devoid of any preservatives. My gran believed in health food long before it became a national obsession.

I ate some pretzels enjoying the view. Looked like down there you could walk for weeks and turn in circles all the time without ever getting a glimpse of civilization.

Hours later there was grassland sprinkled with thorntrees and occasional signs of humanity appeared. A plume of red dust from a car on a dirt road. Remote farms in clusters of trees. The silvery ribbon of a dead straight highway. A tiny town in the middle of nowhere.

I didn’t really want to go to South Africa. What a rotten place – apartheid and all. I had nightmares right from the start. Whites killing blacks and vice versa. The committee of the Rotary Exchange Programme did not give me any choice. Victoria Bay in South Africa or nothing. My friends said: how can you go to a country where they’ve never heard of human rights? Hell, I felt guilty. In the end I just shut up. If they wanted to stay in old, sclerosed Europe where just about everything was predictable and cast in rigid laws, that was their problem. I was more for seeing the world for myself and for adventures in far off places.

At dusk, the lights of a town etched the coastline of the Indian Ocean. Victoria Bay! I could hardly believe I had arrived. A short while later I stepped onto African soil! The air was humid and filled with unknown scents of vegetation. I nearly exploded with the feeling of adventure. I saw real African blacks. They were unloading the luggage from the plane.

A small crowd was waiting at the arrivals in the tiny airport building.

Who has come to fetch me? Maybe that fat couple with the 3 kids over there. I hope not. They look terrible…

I only knew my future host family’s surname.

Could be anybody.

I grabbed my rucksack and my sea bag from the luggage carousel.

A thin elderly man with a lot of grey hair and a melancholic smile asked: Are you Mathilda Lindner?

Yes.

Hm, they sent the grandfather.

Welcome to V.B. My name is Hannes Wieffering. He pointed to a robust grey haired lady. Meet my wife Marieke. We’ll be your host parents for the next couple of weeks. Marieke planted a kiss on my lips.

Yuk, what the hell does that mean?

You must be tired and hungry, my girl. We’ll have some lekker boerekos when we get home.

I grinned at her, waiting for an opportunity to wipe my mouth without her seeing it.

At the car Hannes held the passenger door open for Marieke and one of the back doors for me. After he had made sure that ‘the ladies’ were comfortably seated, he loaded my luggage in the boot as if I couldn’t have done that myself. I was astounded. We were living in the 20th century after all. Hadn’t those old fashioned gentlemanly manners died out during the last century? I tried to keep an open mind about it.

The town sprawled out on several hills around a huge bay. Hannes said there were some uninhabited islands in the bay, but one couldn’t see them in the dark. The lights of a big ship blinked far out in the ocean and more and more stars appeared in the sky. Tall palm trees lined the street we took along the beach. White foamy waves washed up on the sand. Across the road, blocks of flats sat like a row of fossilized dinosaurs.

Weird to drive on the ‘wrong’ side of the road.

They drove on the left hand side in this country like in Britain. Had something to do with the early days and the way you mount a horse when you have to haul a sword around. That’s what I’d read somewhere. It’s also got something to do with using your dominant hand for making signs or for steering. That’s what I’d read somewhere else.

A bank of clouds reflected the bright lights of the harbour. The CBD was deserted. I felt like in a dream. In my mind I had visited Victoria Bay lots of times already. A place made up of some photos I’d seen in brochures and a short paragraph in an encyclopaedia. V.B. wasn’t famous for anything, except that in the 1920s man had finally managed to build a harbour in the bay, a project that ‘was greatly hampered by the turbulence of the sea’. There was a bit of tourism and some industry and a hinterland of bush, dairy and chicory farms and mountains.

We went up a hill with houses in big gardens, came past a golf course and finally turned into a cobbled driveway. It was all quite different to what I had imagined. When I got out of the car gusts of wind made the trees rattle and a big Labrador licked my hand. In my mind travels I had never been aware of my body but now I was glad to arrive. I badly needed a toilet.

That night I slept in a white room with garlands of pink flowers on the wallpaper and a matching bedspread. On the dressing table were some southern hemisphere flowers in a blue vase. On one wall hung a painting of a herd of elephants in front of some orangey mountains. On the night table was a jug of water covered with a beaded cloth to keep the insects out, an upturned glass and a bible. I exploded in a burst of giggles. I was lying in a real young lady’s bed! In Germany I had painted my room in the flashy colours of the disc cover of Hair, and I slept on a mattress on the floor, like most people, who aren’t completely brainwashed by the advertising Mafiosos. I snuggled up under the young lady’s blanket and loved the idea to wake up in this foreign room the next morning. To plunge into a different universe was part of the adventure. It was August 1975 and I had a whole year of discovery ahead of me. Judging by this first day, it would be colossally exciting.

*

In the morning there was the twittering of strange birds, the rustling of palm leaves, scissor cutting noises, the clattering of dishes, muffled voices and the barking of dogs. There was the smell of the sea and sweet and spicy exotic plants. Outside little tortoises crawled across the lawn and iridescent, green-purple birds as big as ducks were poking the ground with long, curved beaks. The scissor noises came from the gardener cutting the hedge by hand.

I better make my bed and a good impression on my hosts.

Somebody knocked at the door. In came Marieke in blue slippers and a salmon coloured dressing gown. I was a bit surprised. One doesn’t see dignified old ladies one hardly knows in a state of dishabille every morning of one’s life. Marieke cheerily put a tray with coffee and rusks on the night table and asked how I had slept. Fortunately she didn’t kiss me on the lips again.

Breakfast is in about half an hour…and don’t make the bed, Paulina, our maid, will do the rooms later. She checked a curler on her head and said: If you need anything don’t hesitate to ask. Just feel completely at home.

At the breakfast table Hannes said grace. The only ceremony opening a meal in my family was practiced once a year, when the whole clan met for my grandfather’s birthday. We all lifted the huge oak table a couple of centimetres off the floor and everybody yelled 3 times on top of their voice:"Gesegnete Mahlzeit." Then we let the table go and listened to the clattering of the dishes. We never broke any plates or glasses, but on my granddad’s 61st my uncle Matthias fractured two metatarsals when he accidentally got his foot under a table leg.

I was presented to Paulina when she served bacon and eggs. Paulina was a Xhosa of amazing dimensions. She wore a pink uniform and old takkies without laces, and her head was covered by a sort of scarf. She greeted me with a mixture of shyness – covering her face with her hands – and total enthusiasm, culminating in an outburst of laughter that made her fat rolls wobble. I shook her hand, something she obviously wasn’t used to. For 30 seconds she looked embarrassed; then she exploded in another mighty outburst of giggles.

As we munched our way through bacon and eggs and sausages and fried tomatoes and scones with cream, my host parents jumped from English to a weird sounding guttural language and back to English again, sometimes changing lingo in mid-sentence.

Jy verstaan Afrikaans, Mathilda? Marieke asked with her high voice. Of course you understand Afrikaans, all Germans do.

I had to admit that I could only make out a small percentage of what they were saying.

You’ll pick it up fast, all Germans do, Hannes stated as a matter of fact, because Afrikaans is a Germanic language. He explained that it was one of South Africa’s 2 official languages together with English, and that it was derived from the Dutch of the first white settlers at the Cape of Good Hope.

Afrikaans is the most beautiful taal in the world, Marieke sighed rolling her Rs.

I personally thought that it would never win the first prize for elegance but I kept that to myself.

After breakfast Marieke gave me a guided tour of the house. It turned out to be quite a grandiose affair in the Cape Dutch style, with sweeping gables, sash-windows and a big stoep, which is the same as a veranda. There were several lounges, 6 bedrooms, a couple of bathrooms, a study, a huge dining room and a big kitchen. The floors were Oregon pine and the ceilings enormously high. I quite liked the place; it had a pleasant, old fashioned, lived in feel to it.

One of the passages was plastered with family photos: daughter Mieke, a tall blonde, in all stages from her first tooth to graduation at medical school; her wedding to a Humphrey Bogart type attorney called Marthinus Bezuidenhout, and their 3 little girls .An old shot of Hannes working on a construction site of some South African bridge. Marieke on a horse on the family farm in the Karoo. A grandfather with a hunting party and an elephant they shot. The tusks were hanging in my host parents’ lounge now. Auntie Hermien with her marlin that won the first prize in the Bazaruto fishing competition. The Dominee uncle, who got bitten by a snake in Matabeleland.

I explored the garden accompanied by the Wieffering’s 2 dogs. In the front I found a mighty lot of rose bushes and a garage. It had 2 cars inside and space for some more. In the back behind the washing line stood a building that looked like a garage, but it was Paulina’s room. I discovered a swimming pool with a rockery surrounded by palms and hibiscus and some kitschy statues. A lawn edged by flowerbeds stretched to the hedge forming the border with the next door neighbours. Some small tortoises were lying under a huge tree. I didn’t know what kind of tree. Later I found out that it was a kind of fig and that one could get a glimpse of the sea from one of the big branches quite high up. What impressed me most was the tennis court, not because I had never known anybody who had their own tennis court, but because it had been converted into an enormous aviary.

Hannes believed in regular exercise for people approaching their 70s and asked me if I’d like to accompany him on his daily morning round. Marieke had her own ideas about exercising and rather stayed at home, supervising the gardener and knitting booties for poor Afrikaaner babies.

The dogs, Shaka and Hintsa, pissed with great dedication on every blue gum and palm tree on the wide, grassy sidewalk. Shaka, a Labrador, was named after the Zulu king who had united the different Zulu clans into one nation in the early 1800s, he had also invented a kind of stabbing spear. Hintsa, a Bouvier, got his name from a Xhosa chief.

The blacks pronounce Xhosa like this, Hannes produced a click sound at the beginning of the word.

I tried it.

Nearly Mathilda, just suck with your tongue quite far back at the side of your mouth. I practiced while Hannes gave me a lecture on the different population groups in the country: The Zulus and the Xhosas are the biggest black tribes in South Africa but then you get also the Venda, Ndebele, Sothos, Tswanas, Swazi and a couple of others as well.

And what about the whites?

Well, if you look at the history of this country the first settlement at the Cape of Good Hope was Dutch because the Dutch East India Company decided it would be a good thing to have a supply station for their ships halfway between Europe and Asia. Jan van Riebeeck and his men arrived in 1652.

Did the Dutch meet any indigenous people?

Ja, the Hottentots, who stole all their cattle, and the Bushmen, who tried to kill everybody with their poisoned arrows. These people just weren’t interested in making friends with anybody, so a lot of them were hunted down.

Does he really believe that? Sounds like government propaganda to me.

I crushed some eucalyptus leaves in my hands and inhaled their spicy scent.

Phhh, I’m supposed to be an ambassador of my country and not to stir up any shit. I’m supposed to behave like a neutral observer.

I decided not to start any heavy political discussion – anyway, not yet.

The British came to settle a bit later, Hannes carried on. There has been a lot of fighting between the British and the Dutch or Afrikaaners, as they called themselves later. In the Transvaal and in the Orange Freestate they still don’t get on so well together. And then we’ve also got coloureds, Indians, Chinese and Cape Malays…

I always thought there were only blacks and whites and a couple of coloureds.

Oh no Mathilda. It is much more complex than that.

We walked past a Portuguese green grocer called Madeira Gardens and a Greek shop, the Mykonos Café. There weren’t many people in the street. Some white dog walkers and joggers and a few blacks on errands for their bosses. On the golf course there wasn’t much movement either. From hole number 8 one could see the sea. It spread smooth and silvery to the horizon, melting into a light blue sky. In the industrial area trucks and cars looking like small ants bustled under a cloud of smoke. On the hills around us V.B.’s suburbs sprawled, roofs of various colours peeping through the shades of green of the vegetation. I got the knack of the Xhosa click by the time we got to the post office.

The post office was a small, red brick building surrounded by blue gums and hibiscus bushes. Peacocks paraded next to lush flowerbeds and roosted on the branches of two pines. The post office had 2 entrances. One for blacks and one for whites. Although I had seen photos of apartheid signs, I wasn’t prepared for this. This was real life with real people using the different entrances and everybody behaved as if it was totally normal

Hell. Maybe my friends in Germany are right. Maybe I shouldn’t have come in the first place.

Why do you have…things …like that? I asked Hannes.

My host father said: Mathilda, it’s always difficult to explain South Africa to foreigners, especially when they come from a first world country and think the only difference between blacks and whites is the colour of their skin. We’ll talk about this when you’ve been here a little bit longer.

Bloody coward! He chooses the easy way out.

Hannes threw a letter in the letter box and we headed back to the house. By the time we reached the Madeira Gardens greengrocer, 3 of the Wieffering’s neighbours had invited me to give a talk to the youth groups of their churches. I said yes sure and hoped they would forget about it. Public speeches were the one minus point of being an exchange student.

Hannes bought a bunch of flowers at the greengrocer and a packet of candy bars at a Chinese shop.

Ja, every Friday I buy flowers for Marieke and sweets for Paulina, he said. Would you like a candy bar?

I took one wrapped in gold and pink. It was so sweet that it hurt my teeth.

In the afternoon I asked Paulina if I could have a look at her room. She giggled and hid her face behind her apron.

Oyoyoy. I’ve broken some behavioural code. Maybe it means bad luck in her culture…or maybe white people in this country are not supposed to be interested in black people’s living conditions.

After a couple of minutes Paulina stopped giggling and seemed quite eager to show me her place. She had a room and a toilet in the building behind the washing line. The most amazing thing was her bed. It stood elevated on bricks more than a metre above the ground.

Like that the tokolosh can’t get to you, she explained.

What’s the tokolosh?

Hau, the tokolosh, he is small but he is evil and he comes in the night while you are sleeping.

Here we go, African superstition!

What does he look like?

The tokolosh? Like a little man. He is tiny…like that, she gestured with one hand below her knees. And he has got a lot of hair on his body. And that thing between his legs – aish – it’s double, treble long. He is a very bad man. He makes the women pregnant when their husbands are not at home. You need a strong muti to fight him.

What’s a muti?

Herbs, bones, roots, things…medicine.

I was just beginning to think that it was quite amazing that Africans still believed in tokoloshes while the western world sent guys up to the moon, when I remembered Opa Huberschmidt, a farmer at the edge of Riedberg, the village in Bavaria where I came from. Opa Huberschmidt had a vast knowledge about how to influence fate, people, the weather and all sorts of things. Last year his favourite cow died of some infection and in the same week his dog got run over by a car. Opa Huberschmidt worked out that his worst enemy, Herr Kleinhans from the bakery, had cast a spell on him. Opa Huberschmidt got into action. On a full moon night he cut a branch from a 200 year old oak tree and repeated a secret sentence while walking backwards towards the east. He soaked the branch for 10 days in the brook behind his house and at the next full moon he attached the branch to Kleinhans’ house wall between 2 roof trusses, so that nobody would find it. I knew that it all really happened, because Opa Huberschmidt’s granddaughter Friederieke was my best friend in the swimming club, and we even watched Opa, and I heard with my own ears that he mumbled something about bad fortune and 13 snakes. Some time later the health authorities closed down Kleinhans’ bakery. I reckoned they would’ve anyway. His place wasn’t exactly known as an example of hygiene. Frau Maier at the post office said it happened because Frau Kleinhans smashed a mirror and everybody knows that that brings 7 years of bad luck. Other people talked about black cats crossing the street from left to right.

The only other furniture in Paulina’s room was an old cupboard with a plastic basin on top and a table on which stood a tin mug and a tin plate. There wasn’t much space left to move around. As decoration Paulina had arranged a row of coloured glass bottles on the windowsill. I found most of those, she explained, but the Madam gave me that yellow one and this red one. Ja, the Master and the Madam are very good to me. I’ve been working here for 25 years.

A ray of afternoon sun crept over the green carpet in the lounge. Marieke was busy counting stitches on a jersey for a poor black baby in Lesotho.

I asked her: Where does Paulina wash? I didn’t see a tap or anything at her place.

She has a basin and she uses the tap in the garden. Marieke’s knitting needles rattled. Paulina is a good, hardworking maid, but if she had a tap in her room the water would run all day. When she uses the garden tap we can see if she has turned it off. I don’t know what it is with these blacks, but they just don’t seem to be able to turn a tap off.

Hintsa caught a lazy fly and Marieke started a new ball of wool. By the way, she said, Mrs Jameson phoned. She invited you to go with her family to Dolphin Hoek tomorrow. Some of the Jameson children are in the same school you’ll be going to. It will be nice for you to meet somebody of your own age."

*

The Jamesons were all tall, thin and blond. I climbed in the back of the bakkie together with 2 Labradors and the 4 older kids. There was Kim, who was 16 like me, the 14 year old twins Coral and Julian and 9 year old Jamie. Mother Jameson, her friend Bridget and Hunter, the youngest boy, sat in the front.

It was the first time ever I travelled in the open like that. The German weather is not conducive to bakkies. Here under the African sun, it was great fun. The dogs also enjoyed it. They barked at every oncoming car. We crossed some suburbs, not all of them as affluent as the one where I was staying. In one area ramshackle houses with rusty roofs stood in tiny, weedy gardens and the people there looked a lot like the crowd living between the railway line and the cheese factory in Waldsee, the town where I went to school in Germany.

So even here being white doesn’t automatically mean to be wealthy.

We left the town on an avenue tunnelled by big blue gums and entered hills covered in dense bush. Monkeys ran through the trees and Ma Jameson nearly flattened a snake.

Dolphin Hoek was a stretch of coast not far away from V.B. A dozen cottages half hidden in the bush lined a narrow road. Huge waves thundered on big rocks and washed up little sandy beaches. Some fishermen’s silhouettes cut dark shapes into the greenish sea, white spray jumped into the deep blue sky.

Ma Jameson and Bridget put up a sun umbrella, surrounded themselves with picnic baskets and settled down on big towels.

This is a fantastic spot, I said. Feels like being in one of those American movies where everything is perfect.

I’m glad you like it, Ma Jameson said, rubbing sunscreen on her nose.

Wait until the sand fleas bite you, Jamie grinned.

The boys got their fishing gear organized. Kim, Coral and I set out for a walk on the wet, hard sand along the water.

I hear you’ll be in my class, Kim said. When are you going to start?

Don’t know, sometimes next week I guess. I first have to get a school uniform and everything.

The whole school is already taking bets about how long you’ll last, Coral announced.

Gee, why is that?

One of the exchange students we had before was only here for 6 weeks.

What happened?

He spent one whole day calling all his friends back in Atlanta, Kim said. His host parents nearly had a heart attack when they saw the telephone bill. He was sent back on the next plane.

Heidewitzka. That won’t happen to me.

Except for the fishermen there weren’t any other people around. I could hardly believe it. This was a week-end after all. In Germany the place would be packed.

Is it true that the French guys are the world’s best lovers? Coral asked out of the blue.

That’s what they say but I can’t vouch for it.

You’ll see the guys at our school, Kim said. Some of them are quite nice but most of them are still little boys.

There is Johnny Bartlett, Coral’s face melted into a dreamy smile. He is the captain of the hockey team. Do you play hockey, Mathilda?

Sometimes ice hockey in winter, when the lake is frozen.

Wow, on the ice! Kim said. Isn’t that dangerous? What happens if somebody breaks through the ice?

You try to get them out with a plank.

I wish I could go to your place, Kim said.

Me too, Carol said, cause in Germany you’ve got TV.

Why? Haven’t you got TV here? I asked totally astounded. I haven’t seen a TV set at Hannes and Mariekes’ but I thought it was because they didn’t want one. It had never crossed my mind that a country with modern airports, the latest car models and the know-how of doing the first successful human heart transplant wouldn’t have an ordinary thing like TV.

We’ll only get it next year, Kim said. I’ve already told my parents that all I want for my birthday and for Christmas is a TV set.

There were yellow dunes in the distance, looking like the edge of a desert. The rock pools were populated by spongy, immobile ovals and green and red creatures with long tentacles.

Let’s go for a swim, I suggested wading into the waves.

Are you crazy? Kim frowned. The water is freezing.

Where I come from it hardly ever gets warmer than this.

No, you can’t swim here, Kim picked up a shell from underneath her foot. The waves would smash you right into the rocks.

Ja, and there are sharks, Coral said. A couple of people get eaten up along the coast every year.

Have you ever seen one? A shark I mean?

Nope, Kim threw the shell into the water. But you can sometimes see dolphins right from here.

And whales, Coral said.

Yes, and then there is the sardine run. There are so many of them that they jump right onto the beach in Durban. You just go and pick them up. Don’t you shave your legs in Germany?

No.

Why not? Kim sounded astonished.

Why should we?

Well, it feels nice and smooth, and it looks more feminine…and the guys like it better, Coral said.

I don’t know, I think we just like to keep our bodies as natural as possible. Anyway, if a guy is really fond of you a couple of hairs shouldn’t make any difference to him.

At our school Peggy Atkins is the only girl who doesn’t shave her legs, remarked Kim. Her mom won’t let her. Peggy says the first thing she is going to do on her 18th birthday is to get rid of that bloody hair.

I lifted one foot out of the water and looked at the tiny hairs clinging to my skin.

Nothing wrong with that.

I guess that whole smooth leg business was started by some razor producer with a good marketing strategy.

Coral crinkled her nose. I like smooth legs, nice hair styles and pretty dresses.

I thought of my bio sandals and said: I’d always go for comfort.

The rocks were getting hot. A huge tanker glided across the horizon. The Labradors fought over a stinky, dead fish.

Here comes dad, Coral announced.

Kim stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled for the dogs.

Father Jameson, also tall, tanned and blond unloaded a bag of charcoal and some packets from his car. He started to make a fire on the sand.

Why don’t you use driftwood, Mr Jameson? I asked.

It doesn’t burn so well, salt somehow puts the fire out…and please call me Gordon.

Smoke curled into the air. Gordon cracked beers for the adults. Kim poured us minors coke into plastic mugs. Mother Jameson, whose first name was Allison, said: Boys, get that sand off yourselves and I don’t want any crabs in your pockets. Julian, you can help your father with the braaing.

Coral’s twin brother put a long sausage on a barbecue rack.

This is really great. In Germany they’d probably throw you into jail if you made a fire on the beach.

I asked if I could do the grilling.

Coral giggled. Braaing is a job for men – not that Julian is a man. You can help us girls to butter the rolls.

Gordon grinned: Mathilda, you must know that we South Africans are the world’s number one barbecuers. We call a barbecue a braaivleis. It’s an art that has to be learnt. Today you better watch how it is done.

During supper, back at the Wiefferings, Marieke said: My child, don’t forget to get your stockings and your hat out for tomorrow. Church starts at 9.30.

Heidewitzka, they have not only got school uniforms in this country, you even need a uniform to go to church.

I don’t have a hat and I don’t have stockings.

Oh yes of course my dear, you belong to a different church.

Uh…I don’t have a church either.

Oh…ag?!… Marieke’s eyes nearly popped out of her head.

Hannes sprinkled some salt over his potatoes. Do your parents belong to any faith?

"Mmh, my mom was brought up as a Rosicrucian. They believe in reincarnation and don’t eat meat. When she met my dad my mom learned how to fry sausages and became a Christian like him. One day my parents found out that the church tax went to some liberation army, which used the money to buy guns. They decided not to pay the tax anymore. The next thing that happened was that the bailiff walked through our house to confiscate the furniture. Yoa, my parents were angry. They went to the Pfarrer the same day and told him, that they didn’t wish to be associated in any way with an organisation that preached love and peace and at the same time organized weapons for terrorists and was prepared to pull out chairs right underneath innocent little children’s bums. And that was the end of the church in our lives."

Marieke hadn’t moved a millimetre since the beginning of the conversation. Her fork, loaded with beans and a piece of meat, hung suspended in mid air.

But you were baptized as a baby, weren’t you?

Oh no, my parents always maintained that one’s religion is a very personal choice and that everyone must make it for themselves, once they are old enough.

Marieke lowered her fork gently onto her plate and said with a voice full of pity: My dear child, I’ll lend you some stockings and a hat and then you can come to church with us tomorrow.

The church, an orange brick building, towered gloomily into the sky. Everybody was dressed in darkish colours, and the ladies and the girls wore hats. The children looked bored and nobody smiled. There weren’t any blacks, which was not surprising, because this branch of Christianity had discovered that the Almighty himself had invented apartheid, and that it was all written down in the bible.

We sat down somewhere in the middle. The whole place was barren and somehow crushing, even more so when the Dominee walked in and started to growl from the height of his pulpit. It was all in Afrikaans and I only understood the words sonde - sin, and hel - hell, at the sound of which everybody shrunk a couple of centimetres each time. Within 15 minutes the congregation was reduced to guilt ridden little heaps. After that the service went on for another 2 hours. Maybe they subscribed to the theory, that God’s bounty is proportional to the time you spend in the kerk, although it didn’t take much to figure out that the tiniest little babies were already considered to be filled with sin up to their nostrils, and that even a life time of prayer and repentance wouldn’t get them out of their misery. The stockings on my legs felt like icy spider webs. The air was thick with guilt, fear and suppressed anger. Even the flies were paralysed. I swore to myself never to put a foot into a kerk again. If this was religion they could have it.

In the car back home nobody said a word. We sat down to a big meal Paulina had cooked. After that there was nothing much to do. On the 7th day you had to rest like Him. I went to my room and wrote a letter to Friederieke. It was a shit letter because I was thinking of all the beaches and exciting places to explore only a couple of minutes away. Why did these people hate life so much? This wasn’t exactly like I had imagined a year of adventures in Africa to be. Even the dogs were miserable because they didn’t get their walk. On the radio they only played hymns and sombre classical music. Hannes explained to me that South Africa rested to the extent that there were no sports competitions, no movies, no concerts, no theatre shows. The gold mines were about the only places that worked. They probably had a special deal with Him.

*

Hey, you can’t use that entrance, a tall blond boy in school uniform shouted at me.

Bloody hell.

Why not? Doors are made to get into a place. What’s different with this one?

It’s for the teachers.

What? Teachers have their own entrance and pupils are not allowed to use it?

Yes.

Good heavens. Back to the Middle Ages. What would the headmaster of Summerhill say to that?

You are new here, hey? The boy smiled at me. I’m Brian, standard 9. One of the prefects.

What on earth is a prefect? Probably some kind of school cop. Right out of the ranks of the pupils. 1000 stinking barnacles! Kids should stick together. Especially at school.

There were 2 other entrances on this side of the brick building and crowds of pupils in uniforms all over the show. Boys wore long grey, pants, a blue blazer, a white shirt and a blue and yellow tie, girls wore the same kind of blazer, tie and shirt, a khaki skirt and long, grey socks. I had never dreamt of being caught alive in this kind of outfit, but life is full of surprises especially when you are an exchange student.

So where do I go in? I asked Brian.

Shit, if it’s already complicated to enter, what’s it going to be like inside?

"See that first door there? That’s for the girls. The next one is for the boys. And then there is another door round the corner for boys and girls, but only the ones who are in matric."

I was speechless.

At the girls’ entrance a pigtailed fatty stopped me. You can’t go in there like that.

Another bloody school cop. The whole place is infiltrated with them.

I thought this is the entrance for the girls.

Ja, that’s correct. But your hair isn’t right.

What?

Come on. It’s the same in all the schools in the country.

Well, this is the first one in this country I’m trying to get into.

Oh, where do you come from?

Germany.

Ja, you’ve got the accent. Don’t you have to tie up your hair in Germany?

Huh?

She looked at me as if I had just crawled out of a rat hole and explained with a tone of superiority: Well here, girls once their hair is hanging over their ears must tie it into pigtails or a ponytail or plait it. If you have got a fringe it mustn’t touch your eyebrows, and boys’ hair mustn’t touch their shirt collar.

Marieke had forgotten to tell me all that.

Why?

Fatty stared at me cow like. Don’t know… It’s a rule… it looks tidy. It has always been like that.

Heiliger Strohsack! Don’t they ever question things here?

What standard are you in? The cow asked me.

Standard 9.

Well, you are new so you better go with Lynn. She is the head girl.

Good Lord. The chief cop!

The cow’s face broke into a smile. By the way, I’m Jenny. Welcome to South Africa and the Protea High School. Would you like one of these? She pulled a packet of chewing gum out of her blazer pocket, unwrapped 2 for herself and gave me one. Just be careful. Chewing gum isn’t allowed in the school.

I went over to Lynn, a tall brunette with pigtails. Lynn produced a blue spare elastic, matching the blue of the school tie. I put my hair up into a ponytail.

The headmaster, Mr Martin, told me you were coming, Lynn said in a business-like manner. You are to go to assembly with me and he’ll introduce you to the school.

Assembly! What’s that?

Another thing I hadn’t the faintest idea about. I finally entered the building