Two days after Christmas a woman and her recently matriculated son sat patiently in our small waiting room while I finished up my Saturday morning clinic.
The two had caught the daily minibus taxi from the Mqatsheni area, just to the north of the Sani Pass. Her mother’s oldest cow had been straining to calve for almost two days, and some men in their neighborhood had recommended the vet from Ondini (Underberg).
So, with the gangly kid in the cab to direct me, and my assistant Mbambo and the woman in the back, we set off in my Isuzu pick-up.
After about an hour on the rough corrugated potholed district roads, turning off where Caiphas Mjwara’s trading store had been before his opposition burnt it to the ground, up the long hill, past a mud cabin among the wattle trees and a Coke sign outside saying “Quiet − Rehearsal in Progress”, then branching off onto the roughest of tracks (which became a footpath that the wheels straddled for quite a bit further), we stopped at an abandoned kraal, quite close to the escarpment that towers up into the sky, and Lesotho.
“Where’s the cow?” I asked the lad.
“We walk a little bit,” he said.
So, gathering up most of my gear, we four set off in single file along the winding path, passing other kraals with their rough patches of maize and wattle and peach trees − many kraals with their abandoned huts falling down (signs of the sad scourge of AIDS) − across hillside streams, over rocks and boulders along the slopes overlooking the Mqatsheni River, which, after about forty-five minutes, brought us to the remotest kraal, with its three whitewashed thatched huts, and clean-swept forecourt. And there, under the ubiquitous peach trees (every Zulu kraal near the ‘berg has them growing at the edge of their yards), was the poor old brindled cow, dehydrated, totally fatigued.
From the middle hut, they brought two nice wooden dining-room chairs with colourful floral plastic seat coverings, on which I placed my black bag and silver surgical pot, having formally greeted and been greeted by Granny … “Inkosikasi”, I called her, the Matriarch, who was all of about five foot three.
Hard though it was to believe, I found the calf to still be alive, and he was an enormous blighter. So, with Mbambo helping, I drenched the cow with the tried-and-trusted electrolyte mixture that Peter Ardington had told me about, administered some injections, and performed a caesarian.
Throughout, a whip-poor-will (red-chested cuckoo) called non-stop from the wattle trees near the river. That and the Christmas beetles, I remember, were almost the only sounds that penetrated my concentration.
By the time I was inserting the final sutures, a crowd of about 50 had gathered.
There had been some shouting across the valley − no doubt everyone was being alerted to the arrival of the Dokotela wesilwane and the entertainment he was providing.
Watched by the men, some leaning on their sticks, senior women sitting on the dry baked ground, mfaans (grinning youngsters) in the two peach trees, the bull calf was trying to find his wobbly feet, shaking his damp head and snorting, getting rid of the slimy mucus from his nose and ears.
Then Granny took her seat on another of the colourfully covered chairs that someone had brought to the middle of the yard, and cleared her throat. Everyone fell silent.
“We must talk about money (i’biznees) now,” she sort of crowed or cackled, so everyone could hear. They all shuffled closer the better to follow the negotiations. Serious stuff!
“Well,” I said, “if I had not come out here and done my work you would have a dead cow and a dead calf. Not so?”
She agreed, as did about fifty others.
“And I drove from Ondini all the way here in my isigadhla which drinks diesel like a kéhle (old man) drinks millet beer on a Sunday at midday.”
Much mirthful chortling, especially when one mfaan in the peach tree nearly fell out when he acted drunk.
“And if you look after this calf and it grows into a sturdy yearling bullock, when he is over a year old, in April when the thunderstorms have stopped coming every afternoon, at the stock sale in Ondini they will pay you about one and a half thousand rand for it. Not so?”
The more senior grey beards agreed and nodded. So she did too.
“And if this cow survives now, although she is old and tired and the ticks are very plentiful this summer, next autumn when the frosts begin you can sell her for over two and a half thousand rands.”
A loud murmur of consent.
Caiphas Mjwara had sold five oxen for nearly four thousand five hundred rand, a bright fellow in a new emerald-and-yellow Sundowns tracksuit announced.
“So then, Inkosikasi, my work has given you about four thousand rand that you won’t have had. Just some tough meat, nyama.”
“Yes.” Ehe.
“So how about if we go halves − hlukanisa − and I take two thousand rands?” I suggested.
Loud murmuring, and the little matriarch looked around and whispered to her friends and family.
“That’s lots of money!” she said. “iMali imningi.”
“Yes indeed, but (kodwe),” I said, “seeing that we’ve just celebrated (eaten) Kissimus, and we’re about to eat Neeuyear, and the cow is so weak that she might not see Neeuyear herself, I find it in my heart not to be too greedy, Inkosikasi.”
Much appreciative murmuring and nodding of heads, and Jesu words.
“So I’ll only charge you half of that. My charge is (ngiya biza) …. Seven hundred and fifty rand!”
Louder chattering and nods of approval. Éééh! She conferred with her daughter (the one that had called me) and her inner circle of consultants, again.
“But!” piped up Matric standing behind his grandmother, no longer the painfully shy youngster who’d sat in my truck. “Half of two thousand is not seven fifty, it is one thousand!”
“Oh-ho!” I exclaimed. “You are indeed a learned young man (insizwe ihlakanphile), I made a mistake! However (kodwe), I am a man of my word and if I first said seven hundred and fifty then I shall stick to it.”
Well, you should have heard the roars of appreciation and thanks. And she promptly produced from her midriff somewhere a roll of two hundred rand notes that you could almost fill a bucket with, and peeled off four of them, which she handed to me with a sort of arthritic curtsey, one hand open, palm upward, alongside the giving hand, as is proper Zulu custom.
I dipped my knees a bit and took them from her with both hands open, and counted them and said, Nkosikasa, you have given me too much … but before I could finish explaining that I didn’t carry change in my old black medical bag, she drew back her shoulders, looked me squarely in the eye, and said: “Keep lo change … it is for your assistant, Mbambo!”
Another loud roar of appreciation.
Man, the season of goodwill, of Yesu, is amazing.
She and her daughter asked if Mbambo and I would like some tea, which we would have enjoyed, but Mbambo was anxious to go home for his week’s Kissimus leave, so we declined, and set off on our return journey, mostly uphill, the long team of volunteers – including the chap in the Sundowns tracksuit – carrying my kit, while behind us the big thunderclouds were starting to bank up over the ‘berg.
On the way, we stopped now and then to eat the ripe bramble jigijol berries that grow in vast profusion around most old kraals − in this part of Africa, in the festive season.
[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stormsignal/11442564354]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend