‘My need for connection has been completely answered’
Confluence is the story of the Dusi Canoe Marathon partnership of Piers Cruickshanks, a veteran paddler who had won multiple gold medals, and Siseko Ntondini, a paddler who had come up through the ranks of the Soweto Canoe Club, and whose dream was to win
I LIE back on my towel, allowing the aftermath of eight hours of paddling and running to settle into my bones. The non-stop Dusi is a different type of challenge. The race takes all day. The sun can be pitiless, the heat relentless. God, it’s a tough race. I’ve had some hard days out there some years. I’ve finished second twice and third twice. But this time I lie under the marquee in the knowledge that this – this is my day.
‘Mfowethu, where are you going now?’
It’s a source of great pride that Thulani Mbanjwa, the first black winner of the Dusi, still calls me ‘mfowethu’. We’ve spent our toughest day together and this time we’ve come out on top – at last.
‘I’m not too sure. It feels like a long way back home tonight.’
The road back to Johannesburg seems preposterous right now. I can think of nothing worse than getting into my car and driving for six hours. I’ve been ignoring the issue and savouring the win while we wait for the prize-giving. ‘What are you doing?’ I ask. ‘I’m going home.’ He pauses. ‘Why don’t you just stay at my place?’
The thought intrigues me. The magnificent valley dotted with little white huts. I’ve paddled through the valley and run through it hundreds of times in races and in training. It would certainly be a different experience. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Of course, mfowethu. I’d love you to stay at my house.’
I reckon ‘Bungy’, as he’s called, has the biggest grin in the country. He’s a home-grown talent in every sense. He’s from the valley and still lives in the valley. Tall and strongly built, I reckon Shaka would be proud – Thulani’s a warrior of note.
‘Okay, cool.’ I can’t hide the excitement in my face.
I relax again and think about the day that’s been. The start at Camps Drift at first light this morning seems years ago. This is going to go down as a day of memories, for sure. A while later a familiar hand wraps around mine. I open my eyes and look up: Shelley. ‘Hey!’ ‘Surprise!’ I’m in shock. I can’t quite believe she’s here. ‘Well done, my love.’ Shelley explains how, when she heard we were leading the race, she bought herself a plane ticket and got herself to the prize-giving.
Later that evening, Shelley and I are greeted like old friends outside a small brick building by Thulani’s family. At that time, he lives on a hill overlooking ‘Table Mountain’ above the Umsindusi and Umgeni valleys.
It’s the sort of view that makes you want to just sit and watch the passing of rural life on the slopes below. In 30 seconds, I’ve exhausted my entire isiZulu vocabulary. His mother has exhausted her only English word – ‘Hello’. We sit at the table eating chicken and pap. My body is desperate – it seems to crave the protein… and the fat. Tim Noakes would nod, knowingly. Thulani and I laugh about the race. We recount how we ‘broke’ our nearest competitors mentally when we matched them on the Guinea Fowl portage.
‘Masihambe, mfowethu!’ – ‘Let’s go, brother,’ he’d shouted. Using one of the few isiZulu phrases I understood to inspire me at the critical moment. They would have expected to be the stronger runners, we the stronger paddlers. When we stayed with them on the run, their spirits must have sunk. That day, I paddled the Dusi as well as I’d ever paddled a river. I don’t think I made a single mistake. Thulani’s extraordinary power had pushed me along on the running sections and we’d combined beautifully in the paddling. Now we joked about running over Burma Road portage, though it had been no joke at the time, that’s for sure. The river had been low – the kind where the warm, stagnant pools seem to offer little encouragement – and we’d been sitting on a four-minute cushion for a lead, so we’d had nothing to gain by taking the risk in paddling around. We also knew what the win would mean to each of us – and so we’d run.
We’d taken the boat out and thrown it on our shoulders for the toughest portage of the day in the midday heat and the full humidity of the valley.
‘Okay, should we grab a mattress?’ I ask Thulani. He smiles and stands. ‘I’ll show you and Shelley to your room.’
‘Siyabonga,’ we say to his mother. She just smiles. Then, to our surprise, Thulani takes us out of the house and to the door of a small traditional hut a few metres away.
‘You’ll be staying in my room tonight,’ he laughs.
‘Really? You’re sure?’ is all we can manage.
He opens the door and sets a paraffin lamp on the floor, turns and walks back to the house. We look inside. The room is perfectly round and dominated by a queen-size bed directly opposite us. It’s backed by a magnificent, ornate headboard and adorned with a silky maroon bedspread. We’re completely taken aback and astonished by Thulani’s generosity. We lie back on the bed and marvel at it all. Here, in the middle of rural KwaZulu-Natal, we lie in a white-washed hut with a corrugated iron roof – but it’s not all rural, not by a long shot. There’s an enormous flatscreen TV and a sound system with surround sound. I reckon it’d be a muso’s dream. For now, it’s our dream.
We wake the next morning, looking up at a corrugated-iron roof with tiny shards of light poking through tiny rows of holes. Thulani assures me later that it doesn’t leak. How the light bounces through then, I’m not too sure. We lie there, listening to cocks crowing and the odd shout down the valley – and sometimes the bark of a dog. My body aches. Everywhere. Yet I have never felt so satisfied. Eventually, there’s a knock at the door. Thulani’s mother brings in a large plastic basin of water collected by her and warmed on the primus stove. There’s also a bar of soap, still covered in its pinkand-white wrapping. ‘Siyabonga, Mama.’ She lays the basin and soap down on the floor in front of us, nods, smiles and leaves the room. This is room service of a different kind. An unexpected gesture that might not be the luxury of a five-star establishment but one that leaves us feeling deeply privileged and grateful. My need for connection and meaning in South Africa has been completely answered. It’s a memory Shelley and I will treasure for the rest of our lives.
This is an extract from Confluence: Beyond the River
with Siseko Ntondini by Piers Cruickshanks, published by Macmillan at a recommended retail price of R275.