Desert Orange: From Cape Town to Windhoek
By Elizabeth Stamford
I stood on a two-lane black top, young and diamond-eyed, clueless in the workings of the world. It was nearly summer in Cape Town and hot enough to wear shorts. I had a day and a half to travel from the Southern Cape to the back of beyond: Northern Namibia, where I worked as a volunteer teacher. I didn't have enough money to take the bus back to Windhoek but soon landed a ride with a large white man who sported an impressive beard. He was a Boer - and proud of it. For the first hour or so, he refused to speak to me in English, mistaking me for a fellow South African - and all South Africans must speak Afrikaans, he insisted.
We had set out on our twenty-three hour journey in late afternoon, but still the greens of the grass and trees were the deepest I had ever seen, fading into an earthen rainbow of ochre, magenta and purple. My bare thighs stuck to the hot plastic seat, and the inside of the pick-up truck smelled of sour milk. Something in the back clanked and thunked, startling me at every bend in the road.
"You're American?" At last he understood and began to speak English. "Americans know nothing about South Africa."
Irritated, I watched names flash by on the signposts: Blanksdal, Somethingsdorp. I had lived in South Africa for almost a year now and felt that I knew at least a little. Evening was falling, and all at once it seemed, the tarmac turned from gray to chilly black, shadows rushing under the belly of the truck. Shivering, I put on a sweater, watching the Boer's profile darken against the silver window-glass.
"All alone, hey?" A queer half-light illuminated the steering wheel grip of his enormous hands, and his beard moved when he spoke, like some kind of animal.
"Yes." My voice was thin, breathless, and what he said next caused my heart to clank and thunk like the infernal thing behind me.
"How do you know I'm not going to rape you?"
Was he threatening me? Scolding me? Trying to teach me a lesson? Strangely, I felt not at his mercy but at Mother Africa's. I had put myself in her hands trusting that she wouldn't drop me. Again, I heard the ominous clank, and tension ran through me like a cold wire.
"I could just pull over," the Boer said, slowing the truck, "and rape you."
"But you won't." Could he detect the horror in my voice?
"Why not?"
"Because you're an honest church-going man-you said so yourself."
The Boer had ranted and raved about his firm belief in Jesus all the way from Blanksdal to Somethingsdorp, and I wasn't about to let him forget it.
"Besides," I went on, "What kind of husband would you be if you were to rape me? What kind of father?"
"And what kind of woman are you to be out here on your own in cars with strange men?"
How could I explain? I couldn't be afraid all the time. I needed my freedom.
"You're looking for trouble bokkie, and one of these days you'll find it." He sped up again, this time to an almost earsplitting speed.
"Ever been in an accident?" I asked, anxious to change the subject.
"Ja. Once. Ag, I don't remember nothing about it. I was in the hospital for two weeks-unconscious."
I asked him what it was like to be unconscious. Did he remember anything about it? Did he have dreams?
He confessed that his dreams were all he remembered, and that they were terrible: extended nightmares of bloodshed and pain.
"Were you afraid to drive again?"
"I can't live in fear," he growled.
"Neither can I."
"It's different. You're a woman. There are certain things you must not do."
The road snaked to the left and then to the right, and between the clanks and thumps, I prayed that Mother Africa wouldn't drop me. But the landscape seemed impossibly lonely, a wasteland of cruel indifference.
Sometime before midnight, we stopped at Citrusdal, a fertile valley soaked with shadow. By day, Citrusdal was all orange globes and lemon ovals bobbing in a leafy sea, but at this hour it was gloomy and inhospitable. While the Boer pumped gas, I went into a convenience store selling cigarettes, "cool drinks," and bag upon bag of Cape oranges, dirt cheap, smelling bitter-sweetly of a forgotten era-an age of innocence.
I bought some dusty cans of Coke and saw that my hand trembled when I handed the money to the cashier, a light-skinned black woman who wore a kerchief on her head and sniffed back a cold. Outside again, I wondered if I could escape, if perhaps I could find someone else who was going to Windhoek, but the road was empty and broken glass glittered like stolen gems in the street lamp's iron glow.
Back inside the truck, the tepid Coke tasted of aluminum and wasn't the slightest bit sweet. I drank it down only because I needed to stay awake, to guard against this manly bulk beside me, to plead with Mother Africa over and over. We passed Springbok and Steinkopf, and at last, in the wee hours of the morning, we reached Fish River Canyon, where turrets of coal-black rock slipped into burnt ambers and chimney reds. At night of course, none of this splendor was visible, but I heard the Orange River running deep and cold far, far below. We had reached the Namibian border, a clutter of cargo trucks and their bleary-eyed drivers.
The man who stamped my passport opened his mouth wide in a yawn. He scratched at his thick brown curls and cracked his brown knuckles twice before reaching for the pad of purple ink:
REPUBLIC OF NAMIBIA - IMMIGRATION CONTROL NOORDOEWER
When he looked at me, I saw that he was about my age, soft-faced, his breath reeking of alcohol. I tried to smile, but he didn't smile back. Instead he rubbed his sand-dry face and slugged from a bottle of cloudy water. I followed the faded signs to a bathroom the size of a closet. I locked myself in and looked up at the tiny window wondering if maybe I could climb out and escape the Boer once and for all, but then what?
Out on the border-bridge, the air smelled of gasoline and the mineral-crush of rock. The Boer waited impatiently, clicking his tongue against his teeth. He had wolfed down a sandwich, and in the glaring headlights of the cargo trucks, I saw bread crumbs in the coarse hair of his beard. As we drove on, the sky slowly paled and the desert shapes grew sharper around us. The landscape was the color of custard, tawny dunes and hills swelling the horizon. We were both exhausted by the time we reached the next gas station. It was in Mariental, a "Baster" town, inhabited by a community of people that did not fit neatly into apartheid's meticulous architecture. The Basters were mixed race: of Dutch and black heritage, beautiful and irreverent. They grinned wide, flashing teeth of gold and white, openly teasing the hairy Boer, making him splutter and blush.
And, in the glaring honey-light of day, in the bustling streets and the bursts of bougainvillea, I realized I was no longer afraid. The truck began to move again, and the sun was hot on the side of my face and my arm. Mariental faded into the vast reaches of the Namib Desert, and I began to nod off.
WHACK!
The Boer's hand came down across my legs, leaving stinging marks.
"Wake up girl! You must not sleep!"
Wincing, I sensed his fear. He depended on me to keep him awake. I was annoyed though.
"All right! Just don't hit me!"
He said nothing, and I looked down at the red handprint on my skin. Idly, I put my own hand on top of it, seeing how it fit, and another clank from the back reminded me of my prayer to Mother Africa: Don't drop me. Don't drop me -please.
This was the Boer's prayer too, and that of the brandy-stinking border man, the truck drivers, the woman selling flat Cokes in Citrusdal. An endless prayer that went on and on for as long as the desert was dry, as long as an orange was round.
Elizabeth Stamford has spent most of her life outside of the U.S. She has lived and worked in England, Namibia, Sri Lanka and, most recently, Ecuador. She received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, and will be attending New York University this fall to pursue an M.F.A. in creative writing. lizlo_99@yahoo.com