operator. I connect them, except instead of using a dialling tone I instigate an argument to do so. The ‘Belinda and I are no longer friends’ line always works well, because they both feel extremely muscular about it, and because it is not directly related to either of their own lives. It keeps things from being personal and hurtful. These conversations they think they are having with me are really arguments that they are having between themselves. Aside from them, Mama and Daddy do not speak very much at all. It is good to speak right?
So I reckon I am doing them a favour by inciting quarrels. I suppose I benefit, too. Sitting here silently at the back, listening to them ask me questions they answer for me, I use their debates to collect words for my Sepedi vocabulary list. Although their arguments follow the same pattern each time they have them, sometimes they use a word they did not use the last time, a word I mouth repeatedly so as to master the pronunciation. I fix the words in my brain so that they can be added to my vocabulary list when I get home. I figure, if all else fails, if I achieve nothing else, at least someday I will be able to argue in Sepedi.
Residents of Little Valley Country Estate use a hand sensor to enter through the booms at the main gatehouse. Guests use a separate entrance. Guests are only allowed in after their visit has been telephonically verified by the guards, with those whom they are there to see. Daddy greets the security guard who is writing down the number plates of the vehicles lined up at the Visitors to the Estate Admissions Gate with his left hand while his right hand commands the striped red-and-white poles to rise.
When Daddy’s company , IT Instantly, won the Post Office tender in which Daddy had invested numerous golf balls, a thousand glasses of JC, endless swipes on the Diner’s Club card and a professionally gift-wrapped ten diamonds and steel limited-edition Mitchell bracelet in, Koko advised that a thanksgiving ceremony would be fitting. That was the same year Mama cashed in her nursing retirement package and suggested we celebrate Christmas Day in Disneyland, Florida.
The day of the thanksgiving ceremony is the last memory I have of Daddy’s family, the Tlous, and Mama’s family, the Ledwabas, all being in the same space at the same time. Grandmother Tlou, her partner Pat and Aunty Sophia arrived first in Grandmother Tlou’s 380SE gold Mercedes-Benz. Koko had spent the night at our house helping Mama and Tshepo prepare the traditional beer that Koko reminded Daddy needed to be offered, together with the blood of an animal and motsoko, to our ancestors as a token of our appreciation for the good fortune that had fallen on our family. The rest of the Ledwabas arrived in dribs and drabs, some of them having to change taxis thrice to get to the cumbersomely located Little Valley Country Estate.
Despite Koko’s counsel that it was wiser to organise the cow a day before the ceremony at the very latest, Daddy was still out, apparently having difficulty finding a suitable cow, when the last of the Ledwabas arrived. Mama’s older brother, Malome Arthur, and his son Benjamin, sensing the tension in the house, laid out a towel on the lawn and explored the copious amount of alcohol Daddy had bought the day before. Ous Desire, Malome Arthur’s girlfriend, and cousin Dukie quickly busied themselves with pots and spices in the kitchen, escaping the interrogation that Malome Arthur’s daughters from a previous marriage, Kagiso and Portia, were being subjected to by Grandmother Tlou and Aunty Sophia over Romany Creams and Rooibos tea.
It was already 4pm when Daddy arrived with Bra Alex and Uncle Max, Daddy’s business partners, and a young white man, probably no older than twenty, whom I had never seen before. At the end of the driveway stood a bakkie that held a subdued chicken in an unnecessary cage. Daddy carried in his hand a large blue refuse bag
So I reckon I am doing them a favour by inciting quarrels. I suppose I benefit, too. Sitting here silently at the back, listening to them ask me questions they answer for me, I use their debates to collect words for my Sepedi vocabulary list. Although their arguments follow the same pattern each time they have them, sometimes they use a word they did not use the last time, a word I mouth repeatedly so as to master the pronunciation. I fix the words in my brain so that they can be added to my vocabulary list when I get home. I figure, if all else fails, if I achieve nothing else, at least someday I will be able to argue in Sepedi.
Residents of Little Valley Country Estate use a hand sensor to enter through the booms at the main gatehouse. Guests use a separate entrance. Guests are only allowed in after their visit has been telephonically verified by the guards, with those whom they are there to see. Daddy greets the security guard who is writing down the number plates of the vehicles lined up at the Visitors to the Estate Admissions Gate with his left hand while his right hand commands the striped red-and-white poles to rise.
When Daddy’s company , IT Instantly, won the Post Office tender in which Daddy had invested numerous golf balls, a thousand glasses of JC, endless swipes on the Diner’s Club card and a professionally gift-wrapped ten diamonds and steel limited-edition Mitchell bracelet in, Koko advised that a thanksgiving ceremony would be fitting. That was the same year Mama cashed in her nursing retirement package and suggested we celebrate Christmas Day in Disneyland, Florida.
The day of the thanksgiving ceremony is the last memory I have of Daddy’s family, the Tlous, and Mama’s family, the Ledwabas, all being in the same space at the same time. Grandmother Tlou, her partner Pat and Aunty Sophia arrived first in Grandmother Tlou’s 380SE gold Mercedes-Benz. Koko had spent the night at our house helping Mama and Tshepo prepare the traditional beer that Koko reminded Daddy needed to be offered, together with the blood of an animal and motsoko, to our ancestors as a token of our appreciation for the good fortune that had fallen on our family. The rest of the Ledwabas arrived in dribs and drabs, some of them having to change taxis thrice to get to the cumbersomely located Little Valley Country Estate.
Despite Koko’s counsel that it was wiser to organise the cow a day before the ceremony at the very latest, Daddy was still out, apparently having difficulty finding a suitable cow, when the last of the Ledwabas arrived. Mama’s older brother, Malome Arthur, and his son Benjamin, sensing the tension in the house, laid out a towel on the lawn and explored the copious amount of alcohol Daddy had bought the day before. Ous Desire, Malome Arthur’s girlfriend, and cousin Dukie quickly busied themselves with pots and spices in the kitchen, escaping the interrogation that Malome Arthur’s daughters from a previous marriage, Kagiso and Portia, were being subjected to by Grandmother Tlou and Aunty Sophia over Romany Creams and Rooibos tea.
It was already 4pm when Daddy arrived with Bra Alex and Uncle Max, Daddy’s business partners, and a young white man, probably no older than twenty, whom I had never seen before. At the end of the driveway stood a bakkie that held a subdued chicken in an unnecessary cage. Daddy carried in his hand a large blue refuse bag
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