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udder into our open mouths.)
As soon as she d finished with her cow Ma got up.  Now that
you re here I m going home to keep an eye, she said.  I see Louis
is also coming down to help. Don t bother about separating this
morning, the calves can drink their milk full-cream for a change.
 You look like an old stable hand! said Louis as he came into
the shed.  Molo, Mdoko.
The boy greeted him and they started talking. I was surprised by
Louis s easy way of speaking Xhosa. But of course, he was still young,
he hadn t forgotten what he d picked up during holidays.
 How come you know his name? I asked as he sat down on Ma s
stool beside me.
 Don t you remember him then? We used to play together when
I was small. Then he went away.
 And you recognized him just like that?
 He came round to the outhouse while I was working on the
generator yesterday. It was good to see him again after all these years.
He said he d left because his father had died and so he d gone to live
with his mother s family.
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It really didn t interest me, but I made no attempt to interrupt.
He still seemed in the expansive mood induced by his long confession
about Angola.
 He became a man last year, said Louis. As the milk rose in his
pail the sound became more subtle.  It s quite a business. Did you
know about all their initiation ceremonies and things?
 You mean circumcision and so on? Yes, I know. I remembered
the light fear with which, in my youth, we d used to watch the groups
of wandering amakweta on the farm, covered in white clay from head
to foot and without a shred of clothing, except for a loincloth or a
small penis sheath. Usually they d fled into the bushes at the first sight
of us. And what happened there we could only guess. At night we
heard the singing and dancing from the kraals, but in the daytime life
went its customary way as if nothing had happened.
 Did Mdoko tell you about it? I asked after a while.
 Yes. He said he d really wanted to wait until this year, but it was
just as well he went through with it last year when the incibi came,
because that was before the drought. He says they re not allowed to
be circumcised in times of drought.
 Who s the incibi?
 The old man who comes from the bush to do the job. At new
moon, I believe. It s got to be new moon for some reason.
I sat listening like a few hours earlier, amazed at rediscovering
in him all the enthusiasm of his boyhood which had been absent for
such a long time. Even though there was hardly anything new in what
he told me, I made no effort to stop him but sat listening passively
as he eagerly spoke on. About the amakweta hut built by the men in
a lonely place where no one had lived before, and furnished with soft
grass inside by the women, like birds preparing a nest. And about
the first goat sacrificed in the kraal; the shaving of the amakweta,
leaving their heads and bodies as smooth as those of babies, and
burying the hair in the veld. Afterwards, one had to submit to the
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mockery and vituperation of the old men: and if you so much as
blinked, you weren t allowed to continue. Once you d passed the first
test, you received the ritualistic belt for your waist and an ubulunga
for your neck, made from the tail hairs of a pregnant cow. And then
you were taken to the secret hut in the bush where the old men sat
waiting in a circle of silence.
Next would come the going down to the water, to be cleansed of
all your wrongs; returning, washed and smooth and naked, with a
kaross over your shoulders, to sit down on the ground with knees wide
apart, for the incibi to perform his duties. Holding the prepuce between
the fingers of his left hand the assegai in his right hand would move
very swiftly to and fro; and if your face revealed the slightest expres-
sion of pain you were dismissed. Wiping his assegai on your kaross,
the incibi would hand you the severed skin to be exposed on an antheap;
and once it had been consumed, you would be required to drink water
in which the soil of the antheap had been dissolved. The wound would
be bandaged with leaves, and the following day your body would be
covered in the white ifuta clay. Now you were ready to go out hunt-
ing and looking for food in the veld, far away from all human beings.
It might last for weeks, until the next goat had been slaughtered in
the kraal. It was then the nightly singing would begin, as the amak-
weta trekked on from kraal to kraal. And when finally everything was
ready, they returned to the water to be washed anew; and each boy
received from his father the penis sheath confirming his manhood.
The secret hut would be burnt with all the earlier possessions of
the amakweta, so that they could start like newly born, even with new
names. In the cattle kraal a great celebration would be held, the
Dance of the Big Bull. And covered in red clay the young men would
make merry with the girls till dawn for now they were initiated; now
they were men. And round them sat their elders clapping their hands
rhythmically and shouting like peals of thunder in the night: Siya
vuma! So be it!
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Listening to Louis s eager narrative, it occurred to me that there
was something reassuring about this form of initiation leaving nothing
to the initiative or the uncertainties of the individual. It was so much
easier than Louis s, or my own. What had he known about what was
in store for him upon entering Angola?
Aided by Mdoko, he chased the cows through the bottom gate
down to the veld, even though there wouldn t be anything for them
to graze there. Late in the afternoon they would come home again
to be fed.
Remaining behind at the trough of the calves I watched them push
and ram each other taking their turns. But my thoughts were still
wrestling with what Louis had told me earlier that morning.
We crossed the border at Oshikango in a large convoy after a week at
Grootfontein. Jesus, you should have seen the mud up there. We were grey
from head to feet. Anyway, then we crossed the border. Strange feeling, you
know. Suddenly everything is different. We d crossed the Kunene a few
times during that last week, and that was strange enough, that wretched
little concrete bridge over the enormous river: a sudden feeling of really being
in Africa now. Still, it hadn t been all that different. At Ruacana and
Calueque one still had the feeling of being among our own people, that sort
of thing. But the day at Oshikango it was different. On our side of the border
everything was normal. The petrol pumps, the ugly little buildings, the
police station protected by sandbags. But on the other side, at Santa Clara,
hell! There was almost nothing left, you know. Buildings with roofs torn
down, doors missing or hanging on one hinge only, empty holes for windows.
Even the petrol pumps in front of the garage were uprooted and burnt. The
streets were littered with bottles and tins and paper and junk. And then the
slogans: ABAIXO MPLA! Or POVO UNITA! Or POVO SAVIMBI!
All over the walls and right down to the tarred road with its potholes.
We pushed on. No one felt like talking. The veld opened up again, but [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]