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Authors: Gaile Parkin
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Rachel and gave her a cheeky smile, and the girls in the Hi-Ace giggled.
‘ Ja ,’ said Auntie Rachel. ‘Take me home to meet all the wives you have already, hey.’
Then a man at the side of the road tried to flag down the Hi-Ace, and Benedict joined all the others in shouting, ‘We’re not a bloody taxi!’ and then laughing. Bloody wasn’t a nice word and the Tungarazas weren’t supposed to say it. But still.
After homework that afternoon, while the girls took turns doing each other’s hair in their bedroom, and the younger boys watched cartoons on TV, Benedict lay flat on his
stomach on the grass near the flower bed, watching a creature as long as one of Baba’s hands basking in the late-afternoon warmth of one of the steps down to the garage. It was either a
lizard or a skink; he wasn’t sure. He observed it carefully, trying to remember all its details so he wouldn’t be confused when he looked it up in the book later.
Lizards could sometimes be a bit flat, but this one had a rather thick body that was striped along its length: dark brown on top, then a lighter brown on its side, then a black stripe just above
its white belly. He was trying to decide whether to remember its throat as yellow or orange, when it shot off the step and disappeared amongst the banana trees, frightened by the sudden noise of a
vehicle heading up towards the garage.
It was the Ubuntu Funerals van! Eh! For a moment Benedict was unsure what to do. Was he in some kind of trouble? Was somebody at the other house late? Should he go down and greet the
people?
Or maybe he should stay exactly where he was, flat on the grass behind the flowers, unmoving and unseen, like Petros.
The van disappeared into the garage, and then the lady and the tall man he had spoken to before emerged and walked towards the other house. The man was carrying something that looked a bit like
the box Benedict’s new pair of shoes had come in. Eh , of course! Auntie Rachel and Uncle Enock were having a birthday party for the dairy manager after the milking that evening. The
Ubuntu Funerals people were simply coming early for the party and bringing a gift.
Benedict dusted himself down and went inside to look up the lizard. Mama was just finishing off the cake for the party. She had suggested a cake shaped like a silver-grey milking bucket lying on
its side with white milk spilling out of it, but Auntie Rachel had said no, that made her think of kicking a bucket, which was a way of saying becoming late, and that wasn’t right for a man
who was turning forty, which was old in Swaziland.
Mama had told her about old Mrs Gama who was much older than the dairy manager, and Auntie Rachel had said that the people who were already old before, those people had been able to get older
like old Mrs Gama had, but nowadays most people were young on account of the average person not managing to have a thirtieth birthday.
It was a big celebration for the dairy manager because nobody in his family was as old as he was, so the cake had to be happy and not about kicking a bucket. So Mama had made the side view of
the underbelly of a cow with a fat pink udder with four teats. On the cake-board she had used her plastic icing syringe to make forty stars of white icing in four rows of ten, looking like drops of
milk from each of the teats. Now she was busy fixing a white birthday-candle into each drop of milk.
As Benedict looked for the section on reptiles in the book, he thought about the Ubuntu Funerals van. It wasn’t very nice to bring a funeral van to a party, especially a party for somebody
who shouldn’t have a cake about kicking a bucket. He knew from Baba what ubuntu was. It was a word there wasn’t a word for in English or Swahili, it just had to be called ubuntu
otherwise you had to use lots of other words instead: words that talked about how human beings were all connected, and about how people needed other people in order to become the best people
‘ Ja ,’ said Auntie Rachel. ‘Take me home to meet all the wives you have already, hey.’
Then a man at the side of the road tried to flag down the Hi-Ace, and Benedict joined all the others in shouting, ‘We’re not a bloody taxi!’ and then laughing. Bloody wasn’t a nice word and the Tungarazas weren’t supposed to say it. But still.
After homework that afternoon, while the girls took turns doing each other’s hair in their bedroom, and the younger boys watched cartoons on TV, Benedict lay flat on his
stomach on the grass near the flower bed, watching a creature as long as one of Baba’s hands basking in the late-afternoon warmth of one of the steps down to the garage. It was either a
lizard or a skink; he wasn’t sure. He observed it carefully, trying to remember all its details so he wouldn’t be confused when he looked it up in the book later.
Lizards could sometimes be a bit flat, but this one had a rather thick body that was striped along its length: dark brown on top, then a lighter brown on its side, then a black stripe just above
its white belly. He was trying to decide whether to remember its throat as yellow or orange, when it shot off the step and disappeared amongst the banana trees, frightened by the sudden noise of a
vehicle heading up towards the garage.
It was the Ubuntu Funerals van! Eh! For a moment Benedict was unsure what to do. Was he in some kind of trouble? Was somebody at the other house late? Should he go down and greet the
people?
Or maybe he should stay exactly where he was, flat on the grass behind the flowers, unmoving and unseen, like Petros.
The van disappeared into the garage, and then the lady and the tall man he had spoken to before emerged and walked towards the other house. The man was carrying something that looked a bit like
the box Benedict’s new pair of shoes had come in. Eh , of course! Auntie Rachel and Uncle Enock were having a birthday party for the dairy manager after the milking that evening. The
Ubuntu Funerals people were simply coming early for the party and bringing a gift.
Benedict dusted himself down and went inside to look up the lizard. Mama was just finishing off the cake for the party. She had suggested a cake shaped like a silver-grey milking bucket lying on
its side with white milk spilling out of it, but Auntie Rachel had said no, that made her think of kicking a bucket, which was a way of saying becoming late, and that wasn’t right for a man
who was turning forty, which was old in Swaziland.
Mama had told her about old Mrs Gama who was much older than the dairy manager, and Auntie Rachel had said that the people who were already old before, those people had been able to get older
like old Mrs Gama had, but nowadays most people were young on account of the average person not managing to have a thirtieth birthday.
It was a big celebration for the dairy manager because nobody in his family was as old as he was, so the cake had to be happy and not about kicking a bucket. So Mama had made the side view of
the underbelly of a cow with a fat pink udder with four teats. On the cake-board she had used her plastic icing syringe to make forty stars of white icing in four rows of ten, looking like drops of
milk from each of the teats. Now she was busy fixing a white birthday-candle into each drop of milk.
As Benedict looked for the section on reptiles in the book, he thought about the Ubuntu Funerals van. It wasn’t very nice to bring a funeral van to a party, especially a party for somebody
who shouldn’t have a cake about kicking a bucket. He knew from Baba what ubuntu was. It was a word there wasn’t a word for in English or Swahili, it just had to be called ubuntu
otherwise you had to use lots of other words instead: words that talked about how human beings were all connected, and about how people needed other people in order to become the best people
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