Dying of Embarrassment
RSA July 1984
This is perhaps the closest I have come to spending a night in hell. The story is written from memory (my mother never got to know about it) so my recall of the exact locations, names and even the memory of malaria are hazy, but that night is one I won’t forget in a hurry.
I was in a ratty mood. Feeling weak made me cranky. After three quarters of an hour by the side of a hot, dusty road somewhere in Gaborone, I had barely enough strengh left to hold out my thumb. I admitted to myself that I was in a pickle. My thirst for freedom and adventure had been quenched for the moment.
Again, the kindness of strangers came to the rescue. A man who had been watching from across the street brought me a cold coke and gave me a lift to a better spot at the outskirts of town. Soon a bus stopped. I was the only passenger so I chatted with the driver and conductor all the way to Lobatse. When we arrived, the driver waved away my money and gave me the address of his sister in Mafeking for a place to stay.
I waited for a while by the empty road. Eventually, the very same bus pulled up next to me. It was now on its way to Ramatlabama. The driver and conductor laughed and waved me on board.
Thus I reached the border eventually. But before I could decide whether to cross or find a place to stay for the night, I was picked up by a beautiful woman driving a new car. She was on her way back from a “shopping trip to Gaborone” and was looking for a bit of company to talk to over a coffee: “I’m in no hurry to go home yet!”
I thanked her for the lift and told her a little about my journey. She invited me to spend the night at her house. I accepted gratefully because I was exhausted and looked forward to a quiet afternoon. I really wasn’t up to this travelling game any more. Warily, I closed my eyes and leaned back in the seat.
Not far from her home, the woman suddenly beseeched me with some urgency:
“Say that we have been to a funeral, OK? I met you at a funeral — my husband is very jealous!”
I blinked and tried to make sense of her animated talk infiltrating my befuddled brain. I had only school-level English and French on this trip and not much at that, having dropped out of school at 16. The word “funeral” did not mean anything to me. I tried to figure it out but could not follow what she was saying, and we had already pulled up in front of her house.
Perhaps I could get out of this situation somehow. It had nothing to do with me; this was all wrong.
I briefly shook hands with her husband, a white guy who must have been pushing 80. It was clear that his wife spent as little time as possible with him. After barely giving me a glance, he accosted her and she sneered back.
“Funeral?” he glared at me and my eyes widened in total incomprehension.
“I…eh…”
He waved me to be silent then started shouting accusations at her. Somehow we had reached the lounge and the woman offered me a seat, urging her husband to leave me out of this. Once he glanced across to me. I smiled a sheepish little lopsided smile and wished the ground would open up and swallow me.
“Oh, so you think this is funny, do you?!”
“I…eh…”
It seemed to go on forever, but eventually the woman hussled me to the bedroom. There I lay down and squirmed. I did not notice that I had started to shake with fever. Or rather I did not know what was fever and what was embarrassment.
After an eternity, the woman joined me. There was no spare bed. She climbed between the sheets subdued, perhaps snivelling a little. She made no accusations, did not say a word — just lay absolutely still and I lay next to her, not daring to breathe, utterly unable to find the right words to say, alternately burning hot and cold with fever and embarrassment.
As the night wore on it was clear that I was seriously ill. I tossed and turned, trying to keep as far away from the woman as possible. Of all things I was worried that I would give her a dose of my ‘flu’ — I was still not prepared to admit that this was something else. She did not react, just lay completely still. If I had had the strength to gather my things and flee into the night, I would have done.
Before long it became apparent that if I could not get any water, I might die. I screamed for help inside while trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible on the outside. After a long, agonising time I summoned the strength to move. I flopped out of the bed and crawled to the bathroom. I remember it being across the corridor but it felt like crawling up a slithery slope of sucking mud. I do not know how I made it or how long I stayed there, but after I had cooled down and rested, I made it back to bed and fell into a deep sleep.
The next morning was as if the fever had never happened. The woman wasn’t in the room when I woke up. I hastily got dressed and gathered my stuff. Before I had reached the door, she appeared from the kitchen and smiled sadly.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered: “Good luck on your journey.”
The border crossing was easy. I had picked this location because it did not lead directly into South Africa but Mmabatho, the capital of the ‘homeland’ of Bophuthatswana which had nominal independence. The soldier at the border kept me back with well-meaning intent until he stopped a car on its way to Mafeking and urged the driver to give me a lift. I was deposited in front of a gym where a group of people trained karate. Their ki-ais echoed from the hall to the outside. I asked around the bystanders for someone who knew the address of the friendly Gaborone busdriver’s sister. She lived somewhere in the outskirts but one of the guys offered me a lift if I would wait until the session had ended. I flopped to the ground against a treetrunk, feeling exhaustion envelop me once more. Eventually, I went in to watch the session but was not impressed. After what my instructor back home had put me through, I figured I could do better even with my ‘flu’. However, a young white guy who was watching offered me to stay with them. This was better than imposing on somebody I had never met, particularly after the experienes of last night.
‘They’ were a group of three young teachers, two white one black, who worked in a school in Bophuthatswana. The following day they took me to their office, but it wasn’t a school day and we hardly met anybody. They told me a little about their project. It was a labour of love; nearly all qualified teachers went to South Africa because their salary in Bophuthatswana was less than the minimum wage there. It was hardly in the interest of the South African government to have pupils in the homelands properly educated. I wish I could have taken more of this in, made proper notes (which was after all my ‘justification’ for entering apartheid South Africa), but my condition deteriorated. It laid me flat for two days before the shaking and fever subsided sufficiently for me to continue.
My hosts were gracious about it and even arranged a lift to Jo’burg with a woman from the American embassy with whom they had met to get aid for their community project. The poor lady drove me half-way aross town to a hotel where I looked up the number for the youth hostel in Rosettenville, then deposited me at the right bus-station which wasn’t easy to find.
The following day I went to the hospital. One of the other guests assured me it was free for those with no income. A friendly lady picked me up from the roadside where I had sat looking helpless and dropped me at the entrance.
Treatment may have been free, but there were no black people in the A&E at the South Rand Hospital. Even here there was apartheid, although people had assured me that seggregation was easing.
I was pushed to the doc’s in a wheelchair which infuriated me but I had to concede that I was too weak to walk. However, it was one of the fever-free days and the doc, none the wiser, figured I had a lung infection. She sent me to X-ray then handed me a course of antibiotics, a bottle of coughsirup and a few painkillers, telling me that I should return if it got any worse, she would take a blood sample then. She arranged a lift back and I was grateful for her concern.
In the hostel, I rested for six days, taking the pills and watching ants crawl in little rivulets up the windowsill to the bottle of coughsirup. It benefitted them more than me. By then I guessed that I might have malaria rather than the flu, but I was not fully convinced because of the doctor’s uncertainty, so I never took any of the Fansidar I carried for emergencies, just four of which would have cured it (at the time; now there is widespread resistance). — I wasn’t going to use the ‘magic-bullet’ antimalarial irresponsibly or lightly, but in hindsight I really do not know why I didn’t.
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Denni