Day 87: Tannie Raais from Brandvlei

‘Jy moet by daai deur gaan klop. Daai tannie is taamlik gerieflik.’

I am not at all sure what that means. A massive question mark floats above my head as I walk up to the low fence. Brandvlei. A real little dorpie. In this RDP-home area there are no tarred roads, though I recall seeing a few in the town itself.

I open the little gate, walk up the short walkway to the front door and knock. No answer.

I knock again. No answer.

This gives me time to ponder the meaning of ‘taamlik gerieflik’. I scroll up and down my Afrikaans school-educated memory banks in search of a meaning for these exotic words. Fairly comfortable? Looking around at the garden, as I walk back to the little gate, it seems very well kept. Outside, back on the thick, orange-brown layer of Northern Cape sand, I scan the other houses around and realise that the fairly comfortable missing-in-action lady’s home and garden seem plush and, well . . . comfortable, in comparison.

When all else fails, knock on the next door, regardless how comfortable or not. The next door is wide open. There isn’t much of a garden. For some reason it is much more daunting to approach an open door. Perhaps it feels more like an imposition for a complete stranger like me to just stand there, in someone’s doorway, uninvited and unannounced. If the door is closed then the knock can at least be ignored by those inside.

Tannie Raais smiles when she sees me. And invites me into her home. I feel a strong tug from my navel. She hears me out. She hears beyond my words. ‘Ons het nie pyne nie. Daar is nie ’n probleem nie.’

Her next words cause me to swallow hard. ‘Ek is net ’n bietjie skaam . . . ons hettie juis kos innie huis ’ie. Ons hettie gjeld vi kos ’ie. En ons leen ok ’ie gjeld ’ie. Ma ons het ’n kooi vi jou.’

Lump in my throat, Lump in my throat
Fly away home
Your home is on fire and your children are all gone.

Tannie Raais lives here with her son Dosie. She gets a little emotional when she tells me that her husband passed away exactly a year ago today. There is a handsome photo of him. The photo of her handsome husband is the focal point of the lounge. He was the best sheep shearer in his day, she tells me. The larnies in the area all knew that, ‘Ga’t vra ma by die slaghuis.’ Tannie Raais invites her brother-in-law to tell me a little about sheep shearing. Instead he tells me of the day he was too drunk to attend the confirmation ceremony of his twins. He tells me about the kind of man he used to be. And how he stopped drinking when he realised that he hadn’t been part of his children’s lives.

That night we sit around the table for our dinner of home-made aartappel-suurdeeg bread. A slice each, with a fried egg perched on top. My sadness threatens to topple over. How is this even possible? The enormity of their poverty weighs down on me and I feel it crush me like a bag of lead.

Before the food is served we say a prayer of gratitude. The lump in my throat gets bigger and bigger. Gratitude 101. It make everything taste sweeter. Some people can say so much by saying almost nothing. A peace hangs in this home that feeds my soul the richest meal, wrapped in love. ‘So, is this bread made from potatoes?’ I ask to say something. Well, sort of, I find out. The potato is really only used to ‘manufacture’ the yeast.

When we have eaten all on our plates the meal ends with another prayer of gratitude. Gratitude 102. Then Tannie Raais reads from the Bible.

Before bed I have a basin wash. I am given a room of my own, together with as many mosquitoes as you can fit in. I douse myself with Citronella oil. If I could squeeze myself into the bottle, I would. It reminds me of an African saying: ‘If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a room with a mosquito.’

The next morning I follow my instinct to Voorsorg Slaghuis, the butchery, where I feel a story is waiting for me. Oom Alwyn and his wife, Tannie Lenie Burger, have owned the butchery for the longest time. They have been married for 52 years. They are legendary in the district and beyond. Heck, they even have a guest book, which I sign. I tell Oom Alwyn that I am staying with the widow of the legendary sheep shearer and he tells me of the days when shearing sheep was an art and confirms that Tannie Raais’s husband was, indeed, the champion of the kontrei.

They offer me a lift to Kenhardt the next morning and then I exit through the old-fashioned keep-the-bugs-out mesh door with a packet full of droëwors, sausages and bunches of grapes. I buy some flour and potatoes so that Tannie Raais can show me how to make the amazing bread.

When I get back to the house I announce that I am staying another night and proudly whack the food parcel on the kitchen counter.

Dosie shows me his five sheep that afternoon. Beautiful black-and-white creatures. He has never learnt the art of sheep shearing, but inherited a love for them, all the same. Later Tannie Raais invites me to accompany her to the neighbour, but she asks me to be patient with her as she walks slowly. She has bad rheumatism in both knees.

And so we waddle next door. She makes this arduous trip every day, because the neighbour needs help with her diabetes injection. Tannie Raais is not un-familiar with this procedure as she is a diabetic herself, but she counts herself lucky because she was taught to administer her own shots.

To my surprise it is Dosie who shows me how to make the potato bread that evening – he is a good son – and we feast on bread, sausages and fried egg.

That night I dream of a land where people have food every day.