|
"Just pee in your wetsuit" resolves the problem for me. Me, ten years old, on my bodyboard, among the surfers. The waves are enormous (from a ten-year-old's perspective). However, any fear is kept at bay by the burning knot south of my bellybutton, until the moment that I mercifully let go on the advice of the surfer. A welcome warm sensation spreads between my legs, but as the one need disappears, the next makes its appearance. Suddenly the waves look like mountains of water rolling noiselessly in and I cannot recognise the family's umbrella on the beach.
A paralysis steals over my body, before the first tears. The same surfer as before takes pity on me. He says something (I don't remember what); I just know that I don't trust myself to reply to him in English. He gets me into a wave that takes me right up to the beach, where it drops me, minus one of the flippers I got for Christmas. As I sit here typing on my computer before work, I just want to go back. (December 1983)
*
The evening is windless and warm as our torches are lit. The Afrikaans Language Monument is etched against the twilight sky together with the Paarlberg. Two thousand Voortrekkers (a youth movement), between the ages of eight and eighteen, form a guard of honour for the state president, PW Botha. And he is late. And I need to pee. Urgently.
A "neef" (a male officer) walks past. I just cannot hold it in any longer and I ask him if I may quickly duck behind a bush. I don't remember his exact words now, but the gist of it is that greater sacrifices than that have been made for our country.
I nod. And squeeze. Remember the big man with the bald head who looks me right in the eyes as he passes me. Until we finally sing the national anthem at the top of our voices. It feels as if my heart is about to burst with pride. Something else does burst, though, and trickles warmly down my legs. "At thy will to live or perish, O South Africa, dear land." (1984)
*
Winds blow as a result of differences in pressure. That's why no single wind can exist on its own. The barometer falls and you know a west wind is on the way. As the barometer rises, the wind turns more easterly, until the cycle starts repeating itself.
In the Eastern Cape there are two winds that blow: the South-Westerly and the North-Easterly. In between there are a few bothersome dust-devils, and three calm days a year, but mostly it's those two. Year in and year out.
The South-Westerly is like Madiba. Everything good. It brings the waves for the surfers, warm water, fish and squid to the coast.
The North-Easterly is like … the Afrikaners? In the sense that Madiba needed someone like the Afrikaners to make him a legend in his own time (similar to Ali and Foreman). I don't know, I'm just asking. But, unlike the Afrikaners, the North-Easterly is good for very little. The water gets cold, the waves get blown flat, and bluebottles make their appearance. I, now thirteen years old, hate the North-Easterly.
I am out there among the (small) waves all the same, though. For hours. I can't feel my hands anymore. And the pee in my wetsuit has turned cold a long time ago.
A small wave rolls in. I scramble for it, and in my scrambling a bluebottle wraps itself four times around my hand. My hands may be numbed, but the pain penetrating through my skin I do feel. In a moment of lucidity I brush the bluebottle away with my other hand, which leaves me in even more pain.
Eventually I wash up on the beach, where a single old coloured fisherman is standing fishing. He (or perhaps his family?) must be hungry - no one fishes in the easterly for fun.
He smiles when I show him the red welts on my hands. "Pee on it, master, that's the only thing that helps."
I walk away. Halfway home I feel a stirring between my legs. I duck behind the first bush and pee on my hands. It works! (December 1985)
*
"Zero-three-Charlie" (or something like that) it must have gone. I am dug in in a cave, somewhere in the Western Cape. Outside, in the pitch-black night, it's war.
"A three-hundred-foot yellow flare, co-ordinates 23S, 22W, followed by two thunderflashes. At 01.30, please, Charlie."
"Charlie", or the SADF, is helping 300 standard seven Voortrekkers wage war. When I think back on it today it's easy to see how the whole exercise prepared us for what was waiting in Angola. And we wanted to go. Recces, the parachute battalion - we were ready for it. Only later you realise why one can only wage war with eighteen-year-olds.
Our camp is divided into two - Kilo against Tango. I was elected general of Kilo and as such I am responsible for our overall strategy for taking over Tango's HQ (headquarters). At my disposal I have 150 troops (my fellow standard seven Voortrekkers) and the SADF, which supplies 1 000-foot and 300-foot flares, thunderflashes, smoke grenades and blank ammunition.
And of course I need to pee.
With me in the cave is my female counterpart, sharing the same fate as me. She absolutely refuses to leave the cave - it's too great a risk. I think of my buddies out there in the night. I know they've long given up on our war and are having a great time getting off with the girls. No such chance for me with Ms General, of course.
I share my sentiments (about my buddies getting off with the girls) with her, but she shakes her head. Our people will fight to the "bitter end". What's the use of an end that's bitter? (September 1987)
*
So London isn't quite as easy as I'd imagined it would be. Two months without a job already, outside it's pissing rain from the grey November sky that would eventually drive me to writing. When I do get an interview, the pay is nowhere near what I was hoping for, but I have something like forty pounds in my wallet.
The interview goes well and I get the job. On my first day all the newbies are introduced to the bank and its activities. And then politely, but without any chance of refusal, invited to produce a urine sample for a drug test.
That's the one time I didn't want to pee but didn't have a choice. I still don't know how they tested that urine sample, but I got the job. Like today, I also didn't know who to thank then. (October 1999)
*
Four months after I was last there Al-Qaeda converted 200+ young people to pulp.In the Sari Club, Kuta, Bali. Easily half were surfers. (In Future Shock Alvin Toffler describes surfers as a new order in sociology. Not bound by language, religion, politics or geography, but by their love of the sea.)
"The horror, the horror."
I was spared that.
And my immediate problem is that with every fibre in my body I want to pee, but I can't. I'm with a French guy and two French girls in the Sari Club. Met him among the waves, and the two girls through him. They came and moved into my accommodation. (On Bingin beach I have a shower; they have to wash in the sea.)
Olivier and I surf every day; the girls lie on the beach. Until they decide that it's time to go and visit Kuta one evening. The two of them also make us promise that it will be a big night, no excuses at midnight that we want to go to bed so we can surf the next day. We agree in order to keep them happy. It's clear they don't trust us - they take it upon themselves to make sure that we take it way over to the other side.
We warn them to be careful: if you're caught with drugs on you in the East, it's no joke. The two of them drive to Kuta and buy (as far as I can remember) something like Slims (a diet pill). If you take five, it's supposed to have the same effect as one ecstasy pill. The two girls arrive at the Backpackers with 80 (eighty).
We swallow, crush and sniff pills … As I sit here now, it feels like a dream. But what didn't feel like a dream then was my bladder, which wanted to burst about an hour later in the Sari Club. And when I went to the toilet, nothing came out. Perhaps a few drops. It continued like that for hours, the exact physical manifestation of that within me that wanted to write, but the words wouldn't come. (June 2002)
*
And today?
Again I'm sitting typing before work. The Cape has been through the second flood of 2004, yesterday's rain also now a memory. There is a lot to write about, and to think about, in this country. Especially if words have the healing effect of urine on the sting of a bluebottle. AIDS and corruption and the things we avoid around the braai to keep our sanity.
There is more to say to enkosi for. It has taken me, as I think most South Africans, some time to sort everything out in my mind and my heart. What was, what is and what is to come. I am no longer filled with questions, blame, anger and shame. In fact, I am no longer totally caught up in the present.
It's like being a child again. A tempered state of childhood where you still want to save the world. Day by day, in the small things, together with everyone else around you.
|
Manie de Waal is a partner in XPLANE, a company that
visually communicates complex business. He grew up in the
Cape and studied at Stellenbosch University and UNISA. After
qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1998 he worked in
the investment banks of London and Switzerland. It was during
this time that he wrote his debut novel, trips, which
was nominated for the Rapport/Jan Rabie Prize. He returned
to Africa in 2002, spending time in Mozambique before settling
in Cape Town.
Click here to receive our newsletter - your weekly cultural fix!