*
“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 through the matric entrance – ho ho ho Brian! We walked down a long corridor with wooden floorboards. On the right were science and biology rooms and on the left big cottage frame windows with white frames. The walls were painted in an eggshell colour and the place smelled of floor polish. We arrived in a rectangular courtyard enclosed by double storey dark red brick. A sort of roofed stoep with pillars went all the way around. One of the short sides of the stoep was a bit elevated, like a stage, and that was where the teachers sat. In the courtyard the pupils lined up according to standards. The prefects took their positions on the sides. The head boy and girl and I stood closest to the teachers. It looked like some military drill to me especially with all these uniforms. In Germany you just walked into your classroom in the morning and that was that. The teachers on the ‘stage’ were dressed in quite conservative dresses and ties and suits. 10:1, here you would never see one of them in jeans like Herr Apfelschmid, my arts and sex education teacher at home.
Assembly turned out to be just a school meeting. The headmaster started it with a prayer. Apparently nothing in this country could be done without making contact with the Almighty first. Quite amazing for a society that denied all basic human rights to the majority of its citizens. I glanced over the lines of pupils and spotted Coral and her twin brother Julian in the standard 7 group and Kim in the standard 9 row. Kim grinned and waved at me. Lynn punched me in the ribs.
Hells bells, is one not even allowed to smile at somebody?
Lynn stroked her cheek with one hand and gave me one of those looks that try to convey a message in times when it is forbidden to talk.
What on earth does she mean? I just don’t get it. Seems to be quite important, judging by that streak of panic in her face.
Suddenly it dawned on me. The chewing gum! I was standing there like Jenny cow herself, publicly breaking a school rule within the first 10 minutes in my career at Protea High. While Mr Martin made some announcements, I cautiously removed the wad from my mouth. I couldn’t throw it anywhere, so I stuck it in the palm of my right hand. I hadn’t finished a second too early because Mr Martin called me up to the ‘stage’.
“This is Mathilda our new exchange student from Germany,” he told the assembly.
“I hope you’ll all do your best to help her acclimatize.” He turned to me, stuck out his hand and said with a friendly smile: “Welcome to our school, Mathilda.”
I raised my arm – and stopped in mid air.
Ayayay, the chewing gum – and 500 pairs of eyes on me!
I moved the wad as fast and as discretely as possible from my right into my left hand.
Is that a trace of a grin on the headmaster’s face? He must have seen my manoeuvre.
Mr Martin didn’t betray his thoughts and gave me a hearty handshake. He seemed to be quite a nice guy… for a headmaster.
Kim took me to the standard 9 classroom, which looked a lot like every other classroom I had seen in my life, except that the teacher’s desk was standing on a platform. During the first 2 periods we had maths and geography. I didn’t understand much but that didn’t bother me. I wasn’t expected to write exams. The German and South African syllabi were too different.
My seat was next to Niko, who had emigrated with his family from Cyprus the previous week. I pondered for quite a while about the logic of different entrances for boys and girls when they sat next to each other on the same school bench and came to the conclusion that South Africa had developed a logic of its own. My conclusion was reinforced by the fact that during break girls had to keep to the one side of the hockey field and boys to the other. The prefects’ job was to make sure that nobody broke that rule.
Crazy place. One must have been born and reared here to understand what it is all about.
During the lunch break us girls were sitting in the shade of some tall eucalyptus trees. A family of hadedas – the purple green birds with long, curved beaks – was busy on the hockey field. On the far side, behind pink hibiscus bushes and more trees, extended other sports fields to a fence that surrounded the premises. The red tin roof of the caretaker’s cottage peeped out between fluffy, yellow acacia blossoms. Far down, at the bottom of the hill, the sea stretched blue
and misty with dark shapes of cargo ships moving like silent fabled creatures.
Jenny explained to me, that Protea High was a progressive school because of coeducation. I nearly replied that it wasn’t progressive enough to admit kids of all races, but I kept my mouth shut. I was a guest after all, and one doesn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, not on the first day, I thought.
Peggy, the only girl besides myself who hadn’t shaved her legs, asked me if it was true that we didn’t have school uniforms in Germany.
I swallowed the last bit of the peanut butter sandwich that Paulina had prepared for me. “No, we don’t wear school uniforms in Germany.”
A freckled blonde called Norma said: “It’s good to have a school uniform. It makes everybody look alike. There is no difference between rich and poor kids.”
Bullshit!
”That’s not true,” I replied.” Some of you have got brand new school uniforms and sassy bags and stuff and others wear skirts with the seams let 5 times out and blazers that are too big or too small for them and worn out shoes.”
“I guess you are right,” said Liza, who sat in front of me in class. “But the good thing about school uniforms is that in the morning you don’t have to think about what to put on.”
Heiliger Strohsack! A minute of reflection is too big an effort to keep your individuality.
After lunch Miss Pembleton entered the classroom like a ship in full sail. Everything on her middle-aged body was round. A potato nose protruded between her ball shaped cheeks and her monumental bosom rested on a Rembrandt belly. Her backside stuck out like a giant pumpkin and her feisty legs contradicted all laws of locomotion. She collapsed on the chair behind the desk on her platform and fished a couple of fat books out of her bag. “Today we are going to analyse Shakespeare. Polonius’ speech to Hamlet.” She grabbed the biggest volume and all of a sudden seemed to change her mind. “Does anybody in this class not believe in God?”
Niko glanced big question marks at me. He had only started to learn English 3 months ago and was never sure if he understood correctly or not. My command of the language was a bit better but this time I wasn’t quite sure either. The rest of the class had put their gypsum faces on – absolutely expressionless – 11 years of South African schooling had taught them this art to an extraordinary degree.
Miss Pembleton heaved her bulk out of the chair and stepped to the edge of the platform. “If there is anybody who doesn’t believe in God, here is the proof of His existence.” Niko and I leaned forward like one person to get every nuance of her theory. With a voice to fit her size Miss Pembleton proceeded. “If you were a bushman out there in the Kalahari who never knew any civilization and one day you found a watch – what would you think?” Niko and I stopped breathing. “You would think,” she said, “that somebody greater and cleverer than yourself exists who made this watch, because this watch is so perfect that it could not just have grown all by itself on a thorn tree. And what is a watch compared to our planet, which is so cleverly designed that the air around us is just what human beings need to keep alive? It’s too perfect to be a coincidence. And that is where God comes in. He created it all in His great wisdom.” Miss Pembleton raised a sausagy finger. “Is there anybody in this class who doesn’t believe in God now?”
Nobody stirred. Niko and I were stunned.
After school I walked to the bus stop Hannes had shown me in the morning when he had dropped me off. Brian, the prefect, and another guy from my class called Peter were waiting there. The bus and I arrived at the same time. It was one of those gorgeous double-decker busses. The first one of my life. I bought my ticket, raced upstairs and yelled to Brian and Peter: “Let’s sit in the front row on top here.”
“The driver, a coloured, shouted: “Please come downstairs, Miss.”
Peter screamed: “You can’t go upstairs.”
An elderly dark skinned man with a wreath of grey hair got up from his seat and said: “Please Miss, you don’t want to get into trouble. The upper deck is only for non-whites. You go and sit downstairs Miss. It’s the law.”
I was totally perplexed.
“You haven’t been long in this country, have you?” asked the man. He smiled. “I lived abroad myself for many years. In London. Studied medicine. Now I am helping my people. God bless you Miss, that you find conditions here confusing.”
I looked around and realized that there was not one white person amongst the passengers on this level. There were only faces in all the shades of ebony and everyone of them smiled at me. I felt like a traitor on my way downstairs.
Brian said: “You have a lot to learn Mathilda, but don’t worry we’ll help you.” He grabbed my schoolbag and carried it to an empty seat.
The downstairs passengers all had gypsum faces and behaved as if nothing had happened. The only person who looked at me was a middle-aged lady with the most amazing violet eyes. As I walked past her she closed the book she was reading and thrust it into my hands. She gave me one of those looks that go right down to your soul and said with a gentle but determined voice: “This will help you to understand South Africa.”
Marieke was feeling so lousy that evening that she didn’t come to supper. I waited until Hannes had said grace and then I asked him if he could organize a bike for me. He looked at me in total amazement. I somehow sensed that it wouldn’t be a good idea to tell him my plan was to boycott the bus. Hannes just said: “But young ladies don’t ride bicycles.” And that was the end of it.
The next couple of days Marieke stayed in bed. She looked like a ghost and even stopped trying to convert me to Calvinism. Paulina cooked special broth all the time and Hannes bought a box full of Lennon’s Dutch Medicines; little bottles with red tops and yellow labels. They had names like Duiwelsdrekdruppels, Rooilavental and Jamaika Gemmer and were mostly for the relief of winds and other digestion related complaints. Most of these mixtures contained a goodly part of alcohol and Marieke, who never touched any booze because “it comes straight from the devil”, consumed druppels fit to make an elephant drunk. On Friday the doctor came and said that her blood pressure was a bit high but otherwise he couldn’t find anything wrong with her. On Saturday the Dominee visited her and on Sunday at lunch time she had miraculously recovered without even having gone to the kerk. Marieke gave all the credit to the Dominee, but Paulina maintained that the Madam was well again because of a muti she had secretly mixed into the Madam’s druppels.
“You must never tell her, Mathilda,” Paulina implored. “The Madam thinks it’s all bad witchcraft but I swear by our little Jesus that it is good and it works.” She arranged some biscuits and a cake for afternoon tea and poured boiling water on a teabag in her enamel mug. “You know what happened in my family. The second brother of my youngest sister’s husband is an inyanga – a healer. His kraal is in the Transkei and I get all my muti from him.” She took plates out of the cupboard and added 4 sugars to her tea. “The older sister of the third wife in my older brother’s kraal was barren. She went to the inyanga. He threw the bones and gave her muti. The muti burnt like a fire in her belly. That is how she knew it was a powerful muti. Now she has got 5 children. 3 boys and 2 girls. The older ones are big and strong and the younger ones nice and fat.”
She cast a critical eye on me. “You are much too thin. You’ll never find a husband.” She sloshed a heap of cream on an enormous slice of cake. “Eat that Mathilda, that will give your body a softer shape.”
“But I am going to have tea with Marieke and Hannes in 10 minutes.”
“You must eat as much as you can. The ancestors and men prefer women who are nice and fat.”
“I’ll eat something with the tea.”
“So you don’t want this?”
“No thanks, Paulina.”
“One mustn’t let it go to waste.” She lowered herself into a chair and started to munch with great dedication. “If you ever have a problem, any problem, come to me and I’ll organize muti for you and I swear by our little Jesus that
it works.”