my bakkie

Robert Berold

1984 was a big year for me. Wally and I started the Power Station, I went to fetch Max as a puppy from Bennie Strydom’s farm, my first book was published, and I bought my bakkie. My own brand new Toyota Hilux 2.0 long wheelbase smooth-running bakkie. R10 000 with its strange canopy with square bumps like a medieval castle.

I drove it every day from Cross Street to the Power Station, drove it to Joburg on our first sales trip selling wooden toys, drove it to Cape Town, to Durban, to the Kruger Park to sell crafts to the buyer in Skukuza, to Joburg again many times, to the township hundreds of times. It was driven by too many people because of my suspect generosity. I lent it to people I trusted and people I didn’t trust, people with and without driver’s licences.

I drove with tears in my eyes, Max by my side, camping in the bakkie with Patricia at Dwesa, watching the eland on the beach, knowing glumly that this was the end of us together. My bakkie was crashed into by a police van in George Street while Patricia was moving her stuff. The passenger door was stoved in almost up to the gear lever. I had to drive it with no windscreen to Pretoria to have its body straightened out at the Toyota factory in Silverton.

I let the guys on the farm drive it. One day they dared Nceba, the youngest, to drive it while it was loaded full of stones, and he overturned it. The roof had to be pushed back into shape by Alfredo the panelbeater with a hydraulic jack. Max died, I got my VW beetle, my bakkie was losing power on the hills. I demoted it to farm work only.

A few years later I was far away overseas, Nceba convinced Johann that Ntomboxolo, his pregnant wife, was unable to walk up the hill, and Johann lent him my bakkie. Nceba crashed into a cow or a tree, depending on whose story you believe. The bonnet was completely buckled. I had to decide whether to scrap the bakkie or to repair it properly, and I had it repaired, using the money from the UN job. The bakkie was promoted back to being my own, and I didn’t lend it to anyone anymore.

One summer evening I came back with the groceries and parked on the slope outside my house. As I switched on the kettle I saw my bakkie rolling down the hill. I shouted to it “hey! where the fuck you going?” but it didn’t listen, just carried on rolling over the veld, demolishing a fence post, crashing slowly into one of the big logs anchoring the nursery.

On the fourth day of the Grahamstown Festival, July 2003, on the way home to the farm, the clock turned over 300 000 km. I stopped right there. It was just me, my bakkie, the sunset, and the dust road.

Previously published in New Coin

LitNet: 20 December 2005

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