Thoughts on South Africa

by Olive Schreiner

If our horses are worn, and we meditate travelling no further that evening, we shall sit still discussing at intervals, the weather, the rains of six months ago, and between times the master of the house will offer us his tobacco-bag made of a "dassie's"[50] skin or of a new-born kid's, and filled with powerful Colonial tobacco, from which he fills and refills his own pipe. At intervals cups of coffee are handed round again, the hot brazier keeps the urn boiling and fresh water is added from time to time. As the evening approaches the farmer rises to go and see his stock, and we accompany him to the kraals, where the squares of dung cut out for fuel are drying on the tops of the stone walls. As the sun begins to set the flocks come winding home, and pause at the dam to drink, though if there be a drought there may be little in it but a basin of baked mud, with a small pool of water in the centre. We stand beside him as he counts in the sheep and goats at the kraal gates, while the Kaffir herds milk in the cow kraal, if the drought be not so strong that the cows yield no milk. As the darkness settles down we go back to the house. A tallow candle is burning on the centre table in the front room, and the mother is sitting in her elbow-chair; presently the children troop in and take their seats on the high-backed chairs, their heads hanging sleepily, their feet dangling, the dim light of the single candle making the sombre darkness of the room more visible.

Presently a little Kaffir maid comes in with a small wooden tub such as in other lands are used about dairies, the tub often having ears to hold it by, and it is filled with hot water; beside it she brings in a piece of white, home-made soap, and a little cotton cloth. She kneels down before the feet of her master or mistress to take off their shoes, but is directed to go to the visitors first. If you decline she then proceeds round the room from chair to chair, washing the feet of each member of the family. When this is finished, the daughter announces that supper is ready, and, if there be a small back room to the house, all retire there; if not, they gather round the central table, where are spread some plates and knives and a few steel forks, and on which there is a large dish of hunks of mutton boiled in water, or more occasionally, fried in fat, and another dish with thick slices of bread; or, if meal be scarce or unobtainable, a dish of boiled mealies, crushed or uncrushed. Each one of the adults helps himself from the great dish, while the children are served, and the meal proceeds more or less in silence, and the elder daughter, who seldom sits down till the meal is half over, pours out cups or basins of coffee, and stands them at each one's elbow. The meal is concluded expeditiously in ten or fifteen minutes and then the whole family rise. It is now half-past eight or nine; the sleepy children troop off to their beds; and after sitting a few moments in the great front room, the farmer looking out once over the half-door to see what the weather is like, and having a final smoke, you are asked whether you do not wish to retire also, and the host, taking a tallow candle in a flat candle-stick, leads you into one of the small side rooms, and hopes you will sleep well. This room is generally a mud-floored apartment about one-fourth the size of the front room. In one corner stands a bed, made often like the sofa and tables of the front room, of home-turned wood, its lathes being formed of interlaced thongs of ox-hide, and sometimes consisting of a veritable "kartel" taken from the ox-wagon, and placed on four rough posts. On the bed is a wool or feather mattress and two quilts formed of blankets covered with carefully made patchwork, or chintz, and in the corner there may be a large wagon-chest, but generally the room contains nothing else, unless it is to be shared by some members of the family, who will occupy a second bed. The long wandering wagon journeys have destroyed the sensitive objection to the sharing of a common sleeping apartment by persons of different ages and sexes. In the wagon or tent, where each one, from the aged grandmother to the infant and growing-up youth, lay of necessity closely side by side for shelter and warmth, the habit of disrobing at night was also lost. As they did in the old ox-wagon, so still to-day on every primitive, unmodernized up-country farm, adults and children simply take off their shoes, and removing the jacket or outer skirt they have worn during the day, sleep without further dismantling. The grandmother, a young married daughter and her husband, and some of the younger children often occupy one room, while the parents, with perhaps a grown-up son and several children, occupy another. As the windows are not made so that they may be opened, but are built fast in the frames, even in cold weather the need for much covering is not felt, but in hot weather the chambers become leaden and heavy to an extent which drives all sleep from the eyes of one unaccustomed to the atmosphere; and the stranger sometimes tosses about, wrestling all night without attempting to disrobe or sleep, and is glad when about four, or a little earlier, there are sounds of stirring in the house, and all arise.[51]

In the front room, as we enter, we find the father already up, leaning over the half-door with the pipe in his mouth to scan the darkness; the Kaffir maid has come and made fire in the kitchen, you can hear the crackling of the wood in the large room, and the eldest daughter slips out of her chamber and takes the tallow candle from the table to go to the back and make coffee. Presently the house-mother and the younger children, the last still without their jackets and dresses, come in and sit about the room, some holding their vel-schoens sleepily in their hands. Through the top of the open door you can see a streak of grey dawnlight along the far-off horizon and by the time the coffee comes it is almost light in the room; the tallow candle is blown out, and, except in the dark corner, you can see all the faces. When you have drunk your coffee you go out; the Kaffir boy has brought your horses round from the kraal, where they have been all night; if there are mealies or forage your hospitable host may have had them fed, and when you have shaken hands with each member of the household, and thanked the master and mistress for their hospitality, for which they would be pained if you offered any recompense, you ride away. By the time the sun rises, you are half a mile across the plain, and the farm-house is beginning to grow small behind you as you look back from your saddle.[52]

All day the same peaceful life will run on there. When he has drunk his coffee, the farmer, with his sons, will proceed to the kraals to count out the sheep and goats; as he stands at the gate watching them the early sunbeams will glint on their damp fleeces as they walk down the sandy road, on their way to the veld, with the Kaffir herd behind them. When the men return to the house it will be near eight o'clock, the sun already growing hot; the house-mother, from her elbow-chair beside the little table, calls out to bring the breakfast, and the children, who have been playing about before the door and on the kraal walls, troop in. If a sheep or a goat has been killed, there will be fried liver and lights, and if there is no bread there will be roasted cakes, made of unleavened flour and water and baked on the coals, or if there be neither, each person will be given a cup of coffee and a biscuit, without gathering at the table. By nine or ten, if the day be hot, the girl children are called inside, or told to play in the shade of the house, for fear of browning or freckling their skins; the shutters of the windows will all be closed, the front door alone letting in what light and air enters; the house-mother will sit suckling her baby, or making a little garment, and calling now and then to one of the daughters to make more coffee. If there are no cattle to be rounded up, or any small farm duties to be performed, the grown or half-grown sons go and sit in the wagon-house, and smoke and talk, or make yokes or vel-schoens; or if there be cattle to see to, or out-kraals to visit, they or the father mount their horses and ride away into the veld, often taking their guns with them. If there be no work, then the father sits on the sofa in the front room, opposite the house-mother in her elbow-chair, and folds his arms, smokes, and sighs, "Oh—ja"! and stretches himself, and drinks his ninth cup of coffee, and smokes again, till at half-past eleven he goes into the bedroom to lie down for half an hour, having been up since half-past three. At twelve the dinner is on the table: there are seldom vegetables, and often not bread, but there is always a great dish of mutton, and generally some boiled grain, and when the meal is over the Kaffir maids clean the pots, and the house-mother goes to the back door to see that they are not scratching in them with a spoon.[53] When the maids have ended they go back to their huts, and every one goes to lie down, and the house is closed; and only the flies, and some recalcitrant little boys or girls who will not go to sleep, but creep out silently to play in the empty front room, or in the shadow of the house, are left awake. The cocks and hens strut before the doors, the bull-dogs lie in the shade of the wagon-house, the little hand-lamb looks for a few blades of green among the bushes, and the story of yesterday repeats itself.

But, quiet as is the every-day life of the unmodernized, primitive, up-country Boer homestead, it is not without its great events. At intervals of months or years the "smous"[54] arrives, often a small Polish or German Jew, with his wagon or a couple of horses heavily laden with goods—tapes, needles, men's clothing, brass jewellery, cotton goods, and hardware—all that the farmer's household requires. He asks leave to outspan, which is generally given him, though the farmer and his good wife declare they have need of nothing. He then begs leave simply to unpack and display his wares, and, permission being given, the rolls are brought into the great front room, and soon tables, chairs, and sofa are covered with piles of clothing and trinkets, which the "smous" exhibits one by one, expatiating as he does so on the heavy loss he is bound to undergo, having given more for the articles than he fears he can ever receive for them. In the end he succeeds in disposing of several items, clothing, groceries, and perhaps a brass watch or a German clock (such as one buys in Tottenham Court Road for three-and-six, but marked in large figures "Ten pounds ten," which after much haggling is reduced to seven!) in exchange for a pile of sheepskins that have been accumulating in the wagon-house, or a horse, or even some of the treasured money from the old green wagon-chest.

But there are even greater events: sometimes an uncle or aunt from a distance comes on a visit; and there are the regular, recurrent excitements of shearing times, when the farm wakes up for a few days, there is a noise of bleating sheep, and Kaffirs are talking in the wagon-house, and there are extra rations to be given out, and the wool has to be trodden down into the bales; and at the end the great wagon has to be laden with the bags, which are carried away to the nearest town or village, if there be one within thirty or a hundred miles, or to a little country shop.

And there is the great excitement of the year, when the wagon returns with the stores and clothing for which some of the wool has been exchanged. Then there are visits to the nearest church to take the Lord's Supper, coming once in two or three months, or once in two or three years, as the church may be thirty or three hundred miles distant: but above all, on the up-country farm as elsewhere, come the three momentous events common to all human existence—birth, death, and marriage.

Every year or two the good house-mother contributes a baby to the household, and her married daughter or daughter-in-law who may live with her, does so also. And these events serve as a sort of chronological tablet, by appeal to which the exact date of past occurrences can be ascertained and are kept in the family memory. The year of great drought was the year in which Pietje was born; the cows lost so many calves and had foot-and-mouth disease the year that Anna Maria came; Henrik Jacobus was born in the year of the great rain at the end of the long drought; the year when the still-born child arrived was the very year when the great dam was cleaned out and a new wall was put round the cattle kraal; and Willem Johannes Jacobus was born the same year that the patchwork quilt was finished, and Aunt Magdalena came for a visit.

And Death comes here. The old grandmother goes from her chair in the corner, and her favourite great-granddaughter inherits her stove; and the stories she used to tell of the old trekking days, and her faint childish memories of the Bovenland where she was born, become matters of tradition; and the little children are carried out often enough from the close rooms of the house, few surviving who were not born very vigorous; and sometimes the great elbow-chair by the coffee-table itself becomes vacant, and the house-mother is carried away by an untoward child-birth, or a "hart-kwaal,"[55] which is generally dropsy as well; her chair is not long left empty; but when the time comes for her husband to be carried out feet foremost, he often asks to be buried beside his first wife; and they sleep peacefully together under the piles of rough iron-stones behind the kopjes.

But the great and exciting event, which takes place once at least in the life of every Boer man and woman, and not infrequently more than once, is marriage.