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After the abrupt disappearance of his father, young Mark finds solace in an unconventional upbringing within a close-knit South African community during the 1960s in this unique coming-of-age memoir.

Under the vast African sky, a young boy is forced to come to terms with a whole new reality. Abandoned by his father, his new playground is the open plains, and his new family, a deeply-rooted local community with some seemingly unorthodox ways—among them, Swazi warrior Mabuza, and stern, religious Afrikaner Meneer Gerber. But Mark soon finds that this unconventional upbringing might be exactly what he needs to fill the emptiness created by his life-altering loss. While he imagines his father fighting for his life in a distant hospital, the boy learns to find solace and hope through the wisdom and traditions of his new community—including important lessons about life, overcoming obstacles, and how to walk with bare feet. This inspirational memoir documents Mark Roper’s unique adolescence spent in 1960s South Africa, and his struggle to move toward a brighter future after the abrupt disappearance of his father. With equal parts insight, emotion, and humour, Two Feet takes a candid look at the realities of family life, while evoking the adventure and curiosity of childhood.

The link below takes you to AMAZON.COM -- audiobook.


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http://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Biographies-Memoirs/Two-Feet-Audiobook/B00PHD5KU0/

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Kindle Countdown -- low priced books

Mabuza once told me that if there are holes in the road you often travel, stop and fill them in, for this will help the man travelling behind you.

Was Mabuza my Madiba? Probably. This was South Africa, and we all needed guidance on what was a bumpy road. 


...the novella TWO FEET is on a Kindle Countdown for the next three days -- perfect stocking filler so I am told!!

 A compelling collection of stories reflecting an adolescent’s memories of an unconventional upbringing in Southern Africa during the 1960’s.

   Allowed to roam the veldt under the protective wing of the Swazi Warrior, Mabuza, the boy’s journey is merged with humour, witticisms, anecdotes and insights from having to navigate the potholes that are left behind by the abrupt disappearance of his father.   

   From learning how to walk with bare feet and how to deal with the unorthodox teaching methods of Meneer Gerber, the reader is transported into a boy’s world where dreams triumph over reality. Set beneath the bigness of the African sky, the stories are pivoted by the boy’s imagining of his father convalescing in a distant hospital, where a natural remedy might be the potion for us all.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Two-Feet-Mark-Roper-ebook/dp/B00D368NT8

A FREE chapter from the novella, TWO FEET -- enjoy.

A WORM UP YOUR BUM

 …I’d lie on my bed at night scratching and scratching at the thin, angry line that showed the worm’s path under my nine-year old skin. I knew it as a sand worm. The worm is microscopic, and it gets under your skin and begins a merry-munching - journey day and night. Yes, especially at night. (The Africans’ have a theory that it is heading for your brain so the best time to catch it, is when it makes its final dash across your eyeball). I’ve tried burning the wiggly-bastard with the fiery tip of a cigarette and even a candle flame. I attempted toasting it, but that didn’t work, so I tried sticking a heated pin in its squiggly path but all it did was squiggle to the left or right and keep going, heading for my ankle. It has two heads, so the German doctor in town mumbled through his nicotine stained beard. He gave me a salve, an ointment, to rub on, but this seemed to encourage the wiggly- bastard to double its rate of eating.

So in the end you, Feet, on the advice of Mabuza, took me across the swollen Matsapa River to visit the Sangoma, the witch doctor. He’s as wise as the combined occupants of a zoo and has a skin as gnarled as a sun dried Granadilla. He lived in one of three beehive huts surrounded by a sad maize crop and had the plume of the Sobhuza bird, as red as a plum, glued to his forehead with what looked like candle wax. He stank. He stank of cow shit and some crappy white man’s skin cream that the maidens recently started to apply to whiten their black skins. He had soft hands and the whites of his eyes were an ancient, scroll-like yellow.

I sat on the ground in front of him and raised my barefoot off the hot, red earth so he could get a good look at the wiggly- bastard. The Sangoma, not in the least perturbed, looked at my foot and crawled back into his hut, his withered buttocks for all to see. Inside the murkiness of his abode, I could just see the shapes of an assortment of dried leaves, herbs and roots hanging from the rafters. I could smell through the usual aroma of wood smoke, the sweetness of marijuana. I glimpsed the pinkness of a child’s doll lying on the floor near the arched doorway. It was naked, and its limbs had been darkened by fire. Then the Sangoma appeared in the doorway, so I dropped my gaze, feeling guilty for looking into his world.

On his knees, he gestures for me to raise my foot. This I do, and he cradles it in his, alarmingly, soft hands. He then spits on my foot; a huge projectile of phlegm that splatters right on target right where the worm crawls. I wince as the liquid slides off my flesh like egg yolk and plops onto the dry soil. But I know he’s watching me so I try to keep eye contact as he rubs the phlegm into my skin, over the worm’s track, and while he is doing this, I’m wondering why that baby doll is in the hut and why its limbs are singed? Then the Sangoma pulls out the rusty needle he has between his teeth and aims it toward you, Feet, toward you, you wiggly- bastard worm. I tense and my toes curl, awaiting the stab of the needle. Nothing happens. I open my eyes as I sense further movement from the Sangoma in front of me. He is digging deep into a leather pouch that is around his waist, tied amongst the braided leather strips and beaded thongs. He removes a chipped, white shirt button tied to a piece of thread and in my nine year old brain I’m imagining that he is going to sew that button onto my flesh.

My stomach lurches but the Sangoma doesn’t sew button to flesh. Instead, he swings the button like a pendulum over the worm’s phlegm covered path. My stomach and feet relax whilst the button swings left and right. I think he’s hypnotising the squiggly bastard. Then the Sangoma sneezes. I can feel the twin, moist streams of his hot air on my foot. Suddenly, the button stops swinging as if frozen in midair by an invisible force. The thread it hangs from has gone as tight as a fishing line with a decent sized tiger fish on it. Then the wise old man, as quick as a flea can jump, stabs down with the needle, right beneath the poised button, right into the worm’s trail. I yelp like a puppy, not because of the pain but because of the abruptness of his action. He drops my foot unceremoniously and puts out his soft hand. I see there’s a speck of blood on my foot as I hand the Sangoma the coins. He stands and shuffles off between his huts, scattering the wretched, half plucked chickens as he goes and I understand this as being my cue to leave.

So we do, Feet, heading for the river’s bank where the muddy water slides between the stepping-stones that brought us here in the first place. I notice that the fluffy seed pods on the reeds by the water are bursting like snow-flakes in the breeze, and that the green and yellow Cape Weaver birds are in full harmony as the males make their upside down nests; a harmony that may falter to a frustrated twitter when their wives examine the nests and begin to tear them apart if dissatisfied with the construction or location.

That night, and every night since, there has been no worm, no itching, no wiggly movement. For a few nights, I was still wondering about that singed, child’s doll back in the Sangoma’s hut. I had pink flesh. I had singed my own flesh to be rid of the wiggly bastard.

Now you can understand Feet, why most Africans never sit with their bums on the soil; why most squat on the heels in what may be construed as a rocking motion. It’s so you don’t get a wiggly bastard up your bum, Feet.
THE HOME OF MABUZA

Two Feet - a free chapter

THE SOUND OF A HAGGIS??

...DOES A HAGGIS HAVE A SOUND?? READ FOR YOURSELF. 

This is what I imagine.

My father was dying from a diseased lung, liver or kidney.

Whichever the ailing organ was, it’s decaying state had been described to him as having the texture of a Haggis.

That is how the Indian doctor, from Calcutta, had described the infected appendage.

 “Spotted like a Haggis, “he had muttered as he stared at the ghostly image that was scorched on the grey and white sheet of X-ray in the room where only one fluorescent tube worked and the fly-strip, heavy with its catch, hung limp from the ceiling.

Through the rusty mosquito netted window, the earth was red, and the sky a brilliant blue, as it always is in Africa.

The Indian doctor, from Calcutta, had recently received a letter from his brother in Birmingham, England. In the letter, his brother had told him that he’d travelled to Scotland. In the letter, he had written down the ingredients for haggis.

These are the ingredients that were listed for the Indian doctor, from Calcutta by his brother from Birmingham, England:

1 sheep’s stomach bag

1 sheep’s pluck – liver, lungs and heart

3 onions

250g beef suet

150g oatmeal

Salt and black pepper

A pinch of cayenne

150mls of stock/gravy

My father would only have “humph-ed” in reply to the description because it was an accurate one and not one for debate. The Indian doctor, from Calcutta – who also owned the general Dealer Store and drove, occasionally, the only imported car – had no need to pull punches or dance the verbal tango with his words. He had seen worse. He would have, as the entire African continent, in his eyes, was ill and looking like a Haggis: dark and spotted and congealed. It was diseased. That is what he often told his wife when he helped serve the pot-bellied  runny nose children from behind the counter in their store. Occasionally he would add the word damn to this description, but that was when he was angry because the Leghorn chickens from the street had fouled in the shop or had stepped onto the bonnet of his imported car.

“Damn dark, spotted and congealed damn continent,” is what he said out loud, now more frequently than usual.

The hospital in which my father was dying was of Government design. That implied it had a corrugated iron roof and was built in the shape of a square with a courtyard and a broad porch. It had a tree in the centre of the courtyard and a concrete bench. The outside walls of the hospital were painted yellow with a green skirt. The hem of the skirt was now stained with the red of the earth, and the yellow had lost its yellow. The roof, that popped and whispered in the heat, was silver in colour and in the evening the branches of the tree would attract the hens to roost.

There was one tap of running water (attached to the borehole pump alongside the dirt road) in the courtyard. A not-so-ill patient would have been nominated to guard over this precious commodity. The tap leaked, and the pool of water attracted many worker bees during the day. On the porch, waiting patients would sit with their backs against the wall, and wait. Their babies would offer a chorus of sounds and the waiting men would spit lumps of phlegm from TB infested lungs into dirty rags.

 And they would wait, and wait for the doctor from India who was an extremely busy man.

My father would have been able to see these waiting, patient people from his bed in his private room. He would have been able to see them through the only door as he lay on his back on the rough, grey blankets and the over-starched linen. Perhaps he admired their patience, the occasional gesturing of mothers as they waved off insistent flies or pushed away the noses of ever-hungry, stray dogs. Perhaps he didn't.  He was, after all, an African himself – white skinned, but African, so these sights and sounds, were not foreign to him. Or then perhaps, he was looking and listening elsewhere by now; had reached that mental space where he was looking and hearing far beyond his present whereabouts. A little soul searching, I wonder, but also doubt.

My father’s room was painted the standard, government-issue of puke green: the colour of a growing lemon on a sick tree. The floor would be red and polished, and there would be a framed photograph of the country’s present dictator on the wall. The mosquito mesh over the window would be rusted. The ceiling would be sagging a little, shaped like a pregnant woman’s belly and there was a water stain in the shape of the island of Madagascar in the corner. He would have a small, white metal table beside him with a jug of water and a glass. That is all.

In my mind, this is the place where he was to die.

In his reverie, my father would listen to the popping and the sighing of the corrugated iron roof above him. He would listen to the chorus of babies and the occasional tap-tap of a nurse’s heel as she walked along the porch. At sunset, he would hear the waiting patients leave the hospital quietly and without dissent. They would return the following day as the sun rose. The smell of distant cooking fires would intrude into the room, flavoured with the taste of maize meal and curry. If and when it rained, my father would listen to the raindrops hammering onto the sheet- iron roof and perhaps as I did as a child, think of machine guns and advancing armies. He would smell and sense the air chill when it rained.

When the night came a nurse would have given him a paraffin lamp with a spluttering wick. In its light, he would have watched the dancing shadows on the walls and listened to the barking of stray dogs. My father did sleep, or at least, he tested sleep, but sleep, when you are dying, offers up darkness, and I think, if I were my father, I would have avoided that. Dozed, but not slept for fear of never awakening.

The Indian doctor, from Calcutta, would do his rounds three times a day. He wore a white jacket and had a stethoscope around his neck. He wore dark shoes that had hard heels so he could be heard approaching from a distance. Clipped onto his breast pocket were three biro pens (blue, black and red) and a little torch for looking into a person’s eyes. On his wrist, he had a fake Rolex watch that was sent to him by a cousin from Bombay along with three cans of sugared litchi and a photograph of a Bollywood starlet.

The Indian doctor, from Calcutta, also wore a woman’s perfume. It was Chanel number five from Paris, France. A salesman had left the sample bottle at the shop months ago. The Indian doctor, from Calcutta, had told his wife that there was never a chance in Hell that they would ever sell such stuff in this “ Damn dark, spotted and congealed damn continent “ and that the salesman responsible would be in need of a new job shortly.

Always following the Indian doctor, from Calcutta, was a nurse from Abuja, Nigeria who was as thin as a bird and as dark as ebony. She was new and she did not like being in my father’s ward. He could sense that in her because she always looked away from him and found interest in her bare feet or in the map of Madagascar on the ceiling. What my father did not know was that this nurse, from Abuja, Nigeria, was feeling ashamed to see such a large, broad shouldered white man lying on a thin metal bed waiting to die. She was ashamed because she knew there was nothing to be done for this man. She was ashamed for him and others like him. That is why she looked at her bare feet on the red polished floor. She was ashamed to look death in the face. The little silver watch she wore over her heart (awarded to her at nursing school in Abuja, Nigeria) was to be used to count a man’s pulse, not to record its fluttering and ultimate demise.

The Indian doctor, from Calcutta, would use his stethoscope and listen to my father’s chest. “Breathe in, breathe out,” he would say. “And again, please." Amplified in his ears, the Doctor, from Calcutta, would hear the gurgling and dying of the Haggis. He would close his eyes to this sound as he listened and he would imagine himself driving on the long road to the city with the Bollywood starlet sitting beside him in his American car.

“Not good,” he would finally say. He would use the red biro pen to write on my father’s chart. “I will prescribe more pain killer. Understand, nurse?”

“Yes, Doctor,” the nurse from Nigeria would chirp in response as she studied the southern tip of Madagascar and wondered who lived and died on that part of the island.

“Are you sleeping better?” My father would be asked.

His response was in the negative.

“Eating?”

He responds with a shrug.

“This I can appreciate. The skoff (food) here is minimal, and the cook, if I may loosely describe him as that, is ignorant, but we do our best as I am most certain you can understand. Perhaps I must put you on a vitamin drip. That will offer you some nutrition. Yes, that is what I will do. I will order it, and it will come by the truck.”

And then the doctor, from Calcutta, would leave followed by the nurse from Nigeria and my father would remain in his bed, listening to a child crying somewhere in the hospital and his nose inhaling the ghostly scent of Chanel number 5 from Paris, France.

Two Feet -- How to save your money.

IS IT WORTH THE READ?

...with the advent of self-published novels via Amazon you pretty much can lay your hands on a novella for less than $3.00 -- +Kindle Fire and +Amazon.com -- competition is rife and from what I read, self-published authors are now topping the one million mark, plus. Like all things in life, we are all out there looking for the angle, the market, the means, to get our books read, to get recognised and chase the dream. Dare I add, a glimpse of the dream as I'm not that naive.
So I was thinking -- what do you get for $3.00 nowadays? Not much -- just on a litre of gasoline here in the UK and not even a pint of beer. Ten cigarettes if you are lucky and half-hour parking spot in an over-crowded parking lot where some idiot will bend your fender without leaving an apology so consequently that half hour will cost you a few hundred pounds.
I'm no mathematician, +The Economist, but analysing TWO FEET, the novella, I'm suggesting your $3.00 is pretty good value for your time:

Here's how I roughly figured it out:

A WORM UP YOUR BUM:
...an entire chapter dedicated on how to eradicate the little bastard worm common to people in Africa, with thanks to the medical advice of a now deceased Sangoma. (Ask your local GP for this advice and you will be re-mortgaging your house).

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT:
...how to survive six lashes of the best by a devout, +Marvel Comics reading, religious schoolteacher -- as corporal punishment is now "banned" this chapter may not offer much other than for you to remind your children as to how it was in "those days"! Parental advice is costly, but here you can gather it for less than $3.00. Not bad, me thinks.

WHERE ARE YOU FATHER?
...numerous chapters and thoughts on the disappearance of your father. Without the gloom but, admittedly, with a touch of salt and tears. What you learn by reading this is solely up to you -- but I cannot put a price on sharing such a loss, such a journey, so I will leave this open to your own interpretation: hoping, in our little way, that it has saved you the cost of a therapist simply by realising that you are not alone. Worth the $3.00 spend so I feel.

DEALING WITH A WARRIOR:
...this may read as foolish, but we ALL, daily, deal with our warrior -- be he within, be he on the outside. He's your creation, your light, your escape. Dealing with your warrior will inspire and often deflate, but his guidance is imperative. Take heed of his words and his hand. Travel his road for less than $3.00 and, hopefully, you smile at the end of the road (...if there is one!)

THE INDIAN DOCTOR FROM CALCUTTA:
...how to arrive in a small town with your dreams and have them dashed, until you learn the way of the people. If you are in business, are a manager, take heed of our Doctor in Two Feet -- there are always parallels, comparisons. Be it now, be it then -- he may have a problem with chickens shitting on his car, but don't we all ? So here's some business advice...for less than $3.00.

...saying more will give it away -- which is almost what it is now, a GIVE-AWAY -- but no matter what the price, there's always something worthwhile between the covers.  Spend it, but spend it wisely --

...As always I look forward to your comments (there's a box that can be ticked at the end of this Blog -- it's easy to do...use your wrist...and enjoy the spend...enjoy the read -- for $3.00 you get to read eleven years of my life -- that can't be so bad, can it??

$3.00 well spent here!!

Two Feet -- A Free Chapter from the Novella

Home of Two Feet

...here's a FREE chapter from the novella, Two Feet :- recent family discussions have questioned this incident as having put a "curse" on the family...in a light hearted way. Well...that's for you to decide, but interfering with the Sangoma folk and the spirits may, perhaps, have repercussions. Who knows? Hope you enjoy and, as always, please, please comment on the Blog Site. It only takes a second or two.

Many thanks. Mark. The Author. 

TOSSING A PEBBLE

Feet have taken me to a boulder near Executioner’s rock. Mabuza sits alongside me, his thick fingers searching in his snuff box.

As always, the midday sun has cast a blanket of silence over the veldt. The sun’s heat has sapped energy and wrapped all life in a blanket of lethargy.

A bullfinch clings to a stem of elephant grass. Its beak is wide open as it pants like an ageing marathon runner.

A sun soaked Tok -Toki beetle squats lifelessly near my feet, unable to resume its normal antics of hurrying to and fro like a lunatic in a padded cell. Its black hide reflects the sun above. Bored, I want to push the beetle toward a hint of shade with my toes, but I don’t because it will probably spray me in its defence and my feet will stink for hours of something that smells like cat’s piss. It will think my toe is a mouse or maybe the head of a snake and lift its backside and squirt.

I leave the Tok -Toki in its lethargy and pick up a few stones.

Mabuza sneezes beside me, and I get a whiff of his snuff.

My older brother has traipsed off into the still elephant grass, toward the scarecrow shape tree further up the hill, to shoot pigeons. The tree was struck by lightning last year and the consequent fire ravaged the hill for hours. All the tortoises were fried. Their blackened shells dotted the hillside like the aftermath of some medieval battle. The crows came in their hundreds and fed all day.

I toss a stone over the cliff’s edge and wait to hear it land. I count to three before I hear the stone clattering away down there. I wait for Mabuza’s rebuke, and it comes in less than a second.

“For what you do this?”

“There are only bones down there Mabuza, old and dead bones.”

Mabuza scoffs at me and shakes his head. This is a good sign. He is ready to talk.

“I do not throw a stone on your head when you are sleeping.”

“No. But I’m not dead.”

“They are sleeping!”

“But dead.”

“Sleeping!”

“Dead!”

I waited for the deep sigh, and it came as I expected it to; rattling up from his stomach and up through his chest, like the sound a grumpy bear makes that has recently been chased out of hibernation by a snake seeking hibernation.

“The First King could not sleep because of those bones.”

I now gave my full attention to Mabuza. My plan of edging him on for a story had been a success. I shifted my feet around on the ground and dug them in a little deeper in search of cooler soil, making sure I did not disturb the Tok -Toki beetle, of course.

“Is this before you were born?”

“Is the young master going to throw stones while I speak?”

“No.” I get the message and shut up.

“The First King was unhappy because he was hearing from all the kraals all over about the Sangoma. The voices he was hearing were telling him sad things. The Sangoma was using his magic with the Indunas all over. For the Induna to be strong, he must listen and do what the Sangoma say. For this, the Induna was frightened because quick, quick the Sangoma can make the Induna die.”

Mabuza shifted on his rock and he leant forward, getting closer to me. He dropped his voice and tucked in his loin cloth, so the heated surface of the rock did not scorch his testicles.

“Quick, quick the Sangoma can tell any sick people that to get better, they must be  killing the Induna and bring to the Sangoma maybe the Induna’s heart or his ear for to make medicine, to make muti. Sick people will do this thing because maybe the sick is in their head and they do not see that the Sangoma is playing tricks.”

“The First King is hearing this all over. All the Indunas are scared because of being made into the muti. The First King, he does not sleep. He chases his many wives away from his bed because of this Sangoma nonsense. The First King does not want trouble with all the Sangomas. One is okay, two, maybe four but all together is not good.”

“Maybe after two weeks, the First King is taking scoff with Ma-Swazi. Ma-Swazi is a white man who makes cotton there at Big Bend and the First King is telling him about the Sangoma and the Induna trouble. It is good scoff I think because Ma-Swazi tells the First King he can help.”

I let Mabuza have his moment, not interrupting, even though I am certain he is dreaming of what delicacies the King had offered this Ma-Swazi person on that day.

“Ma-Swazi tells the First King to bring all…ALL the Sangoma to here. Here, where we sit now. Yes, to bring them here in maybe two weeks. The First King – he put his voice in the wind and soon all the Induna hear that the King is wanting scoff with the Sangoma. Aye – all the people are talking with this problem and the Sangoma are happy for this. When people are talking, the power is strong.”

“The First King came here. Maybe here to this rock. Maybe to sit there with that tree I do not know. Also, Ma-Swazi and also all…ALL the Sangoma came to here. Ma-Swazi he has a gun. He shows the First King a bullet. He says to the First King to say to all the Sangoma, is the Sangoma magic stronger than the magic of this thing, this bullet made by the First King?”

A trickle of sweat navigates a course down Mabuza’s eyebrow and he swats at it carelessly as if it were a circling fly.

“All… ALL the Sangoma laugh at this thing Ma-Swazi asks. (They do not laugh at the First King because even the Sangomas do not laugh at the First King.) Aye, Ma-Swazi laughs, too; but I think maybe his laugh is not like the laugh of the Sangoma because, as you know, the Sangoma laugh is like that Jackal which is eating your mother’s birds. The First King laughs also, right here, maybe on this rock. Ma-Swazi, he says okay to the Sangoma. He will use the King’s magic with the bullet and the Sangoma must use their magic to fight this bullet. The First King is happy for this.”

“Ma-Swazi put the bullet in the gun. Clack!”

Mabuza stares off over the cliff as his fingers slowly open his snuff box. The sky is a pale blue and cloudless. I am tense. My toes are curled deep in the soil. Mabuza knows this. He is well aware that he has my audience and that he can manipulate me like a puppet.

Like a hungry dog watching a man eat a bone, I watch Mabuza dip a little finger in his snuff box and feed it into a broad nostril.

“Just ‘clack’?” I finally ask, my voice rasping.

When Meneer Gerber told us Rooineks the story of David and Goliath and the Philistines and how David took up a pebble and put it in his sling, and began twirling the sling around and around, he would pause at that moment to light his pipe, and even though we Rooineks had heard the story umpteen times, there would always be an impatient but muted “Agggg nooo” from the children, and a shuffling in our seats as we waited to hear how the pebble flew as straight as a winged dove and smote Goliath right in a place where he would have a third eye forever. Meneer Gerber took a long, long time to light that pipe I can tell you.

“Clack,” Mabuza finally says. “The bullet is in the gun and the Sangoma are waiting like people in the shop who want sugar. Ma-Swazi points the gun at number one Sangoma and he shoots here.”

Mabuza jabs his own finger viciously into the middle of his forehead.

My bones shiver with the thought of the sound of that long ago gun shot.

“Number two. Here.”

Clank!

“Three.”

Clank!

“Ma-Swazi shot all of them!?” I yelp.

“No.”

No!? O! Shit. My young bowels will soon not be able to take anymore of this; my toes are as tense as the talons of a hovering hawk that has just spotted its prey.

Suddenly Mabuza stands and with a warrior-type yell he charges toward the edge of the cliff, his loin cloth flapping against his lean limbs like linen on a washing line in a sea breeze.

I stand up. (I think this is where I stood on the Tok -Toki beetle). I shout Mabuza’s name out aloud I think. I don’t know.

After David had slain Goliath and had announced himself as being God’s servant sent to revenge any injustices caused by the Rooinek race, Meneer Gerber would tell the class to all ‘…bloody shut up and wait for the bell.’ He then would put his feet up on the desk and begin leafing through his Marvel comic, and we were left to ponder our English navels.

Mabuza reached the edge of the cliff.

He stopped. He teetered there. He flailed his arms like a newborn chick about to fly for the first time.

“What are you doing, man!?” I shout.

Mabuza falters and spins on his feet, arms akimbo, and he smiles a Mabuza grin at me.

“I was a Sangoma for you! They jumped. Here, to down there. Pffttt!”

With relief, I put my skinny bottom back down on my rock, my legs weak.

“The First King’s power was too strong. The First King was very happy. All the Sangoma were dead. He was happy to sleep that night. I think very happy.”

“You could have slipped and fallen,” I mumbled. A little embarrassed over my childish outburst, I pretended to scrape the soles of my Tok-Toki sprayed feet in the dust to rid them of the smell.

Mabuza left the edge of the cliff and came to stand in front of me. “I did not want to scare you,” he said. “I am sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I mumbled. I looked up at him, the sun hot behind him."Did the First King really come here? And Ma-Swazi and the Sangoma and everything you said?”

“Better next time you ask questions before you throw the stones I think. I will go find your brother.”

Then I was left alone on my rock with my Tok -Toki sprayed feet.

I stayed there for a while I remember. Then I ventured to the cliff’s edge and I looked down to where the grass and the bush converged like a large city’s traffic at the foot of the cliff. The bushes were dense down there. I could barely see the ground. The stone that I had thrown was down there, resting on foreign soil.

I realised then that I had tossed a stone into a moment of history. I realised then that no matter where you are going, or coming from, someone else has already been there.

Like the stone that had flown as straight as a dove’s flight from David’s sling.

I wonder what Meneer Gerber would have thought.

Bloody good riddance is probably what.

The Tok Tokkie beetle