Leaving Tsalanang
RED streaked the burnt orange sky as Boikhutso walked Tsalanang. With the Acacia trees and waters of Tshweu River as a backdrop, the composition made for a picturesque glossy magazine cover. Perfect with which to peddle the land of diamonds, dance, beef and wild animals - the land where tranquillity and opportunity once beckoned.
But Tsalanang lacked touristy attractions. It boasted no leopards. No Cape buffalo, only a rumour of a human-eating lion. A baby elephant was once sighted close to Snyman’s game fence and a lonely hornless black rhino lived in captivity on his farm. Brought back from near dead, the poachers found with its horn had been killed. The people found on the other side of the river said when the moon was full, the ghosts of three fishermen stomped through the village in search of vengeance.
There were cows, though. Herds and herds. No one in the country could match Snyman’s Afrikander and Brahman numbers. And he bred the best - only the best - just like the other farmers in the chunks of prime land had cleaved for settlers: crown land. Census enumerators struggled to gather data in those places. From behind padlocked and Boerboelled gates, warnings sounded: ‘Voetsek!’ If they didn’t voetsek, a few bullets fired into the air ensured they retreat. Tsalanang people said Snyman bred crocodiles that used to guard the secret passage through which the South African Defence Force once carried out raids on Botswana.
Boikhutso walked. She turned off the tarred road and passed the settlement that could be donkey heaven. Everywhere, donkeys. Braying. Scraggly-furred, all of them, the same nondescript shade of dirt, they graze on stunted bush.
A cart piled high with firewood careened out of the bush. Driven by two boys, they bounced onto the tarmac. She watched as the donkeys wandered across the centre line sometimes, but there were few cars in Tsalanang so there was no immediate danger to the animals. Just then a
Landcruiser roared past as it ferried tourists past Tsalanang to Badimong Safari Camp.
Two more donkeys appeared from a gravel road. A man rode a bicycle alongside them. Then a van appeared, sputtering acrid smoke that remained in the air long after the noise of it disappeared. The cyclist removed his hat, swung it to the left with a flourish. It was a grand gesture, elegant in its execution. At the peak of the curve his arm made, the donkeys trotted off the tarmac. After the car overtook them, they returned to the road.
Boikhutso remembered a time when she used to speak about Tsalanang with pride. She still yearned to, but she had seen too much.
She missed her father. She would have asked him about the man and his donkeys, how they knew to follow his instructions. For her father, who had lived and breathed the ways of his people since he was born, there was nothing extraordinary in the way the man and his donkeys communicated.
Where more homesteads appear, she saw more donkeys with their front legs bound together, but they kept shuffling, as if they had to keep movingno matter what. Sometimes they reached the tarmac and just stood there. Drivers hooted and hurled obscenities, but the beasts did not budge - unfazed by the noisemakers. When they did move, it was in their own time.
Boikhutso felt for the animals. Their owners explain that they tethered them to prevent them from straying and getting lost, to keep them obedient. It was not to be cruel. They knew no other way to control them. Some even professed love for the creatures but this was how it had always been done. Why should they change?
The sound of children’s laughter reached her. She heard their voices calling out to the rising moon. “Moon, moon, make me grow.” They were dancing. Not the Polka-cum-tikkie
Draai dance that was once so popular. She watched them for a little while thinking, if they knew, they would ask the moon to keep them young forever. Maybe, she thought, change needed a child before they learnt greed, or someone with heart and soul and courage. She imagined that such a person would simply slice through the ropes that imprisoned those donkeys. And for a while, maybe they would continue move as if they were still shackled, but when they realised they were free, they would begin to trot, then gallop. They would race so fast their hooves would barely skim the earth as they began to rise and soar.
The sky had greyed as she walked. Purple patches stained it. It reminded her of the bruises on the body of the woman slain by the man who had professed to love her. He had hanged himself on a tree by the roadside. Boikhutso walked faster.
She had wanted to leave Tsalanang before, but something always u-turned her; the words, “gaabo motho thebephatswa” lived inside her. But when she opened the gate to her home and the cowbell clanged, she knew that when she packed her bags in the morning, it would be forever.
Tsalanang was a foreign place now.