Chapter 21

The happy beat of imaginary music filled my head as I leapt out of bed that morning, excited about the prospect of spending alone time with Riaan- sure it was only a drive into town for supplies, but think kid in a candy store. And I was about to unwrap the biggest chocolate.

I glided my way through the day. I was the amazing toast expert-who was even allowed to butter it. Dorcus and Precious seemed to be warming up to me, that is to say that they didn’t kick me out of the kitchen or suggest I wasn't suited to the institution of marriage.

I was a cleaning Goddess delux-- mopping, sweeping and even tooth brushing the toilet. I worked out that if I tied the brush to the mop I was able to maintain a non-gag distance from the porcelain bowel.

In fact, I surprised myself when I actually started enjoying it- there was something satisfying about the physicality of it all, I even felt the presence of a sweat bead, and I didn’t care. By the time I looked at my watch though it was already late afternoon and I was almost running late for Riaan.

“Hey” I got to the car and the usual Cheshire cat smiling routine began, you would have sworn I was a Miss Universe contestant strolling up and down the stage with that permanent grin carved into her face.  Luckily the silly smiles were reciprocated, “Hey, babe.’ He kissed me on the cheek.

Babe? He was calling me babe. The fact that he’d given me a little pet name already made my heart swell to a disproportionate size. I felt so much closer to him, and it was that final nugget of confirmation that I was more to him that just Zara. I tried to think of what I could call him, I didn’t want to reciprocate with a ‘babe’, but I wanted to try something too, anything, so I spat out the first word that popped into my head….(God only knows why it was that specific word)

“How was your day bunny?’ I asked, but as the word was out of my mouth it tanked like a lead ball being dropped off a roof. You could almost hear it crash and burn and explode into a million little pieces.

Riaan looked over at me with a slightly amused, slightly puzzled look.

“That didn’t really work, did it?” I said, slightly embarrassed, “You said babe and I thought I should too-“

“It was cute. Maybe just lay off it in public though,” he flashed me a mischievous smile and climbed into the car.

“I’ll try something else,” I was already thinking about the possibilities as we pulled off.

The culture shock I experienced when I arrived at the small town though, was unlike anything I’d experienced before. On the way in, we drove past small houses (I’m actually not sure you could call them houses) made of scrap metal and planks of wood. Riaan called it an informal settlement; they were apparently very common in Africa. This settlement consisted entirely of tiny shack homes, some looked more like glorified dog kennels.  The ground around them was dry and dusty and laughing children ran barefoot kicking something that looked like a ball around, but on closer inspection, it was merely made of rolled up plastic packets that had been tired tightly with string.  Some people seemed to have taken pride in their small homes, with the odd flower box or tin bucket with flowers growing out of it propped up here and there.

“What are the tires on the roof for?” I’d wondered that when I’d flown over.

“It’s to stop the roofs blowing off,”

“But why can’t they just build houses with roofs don’t come off?” I asked.

Riaan turned and looked at me quite seriously, “The people here are very poor. Most don’t have toilets and running water and few have electricity.”

I was shocked. There were actually people that slept in homes where their roof could potentially blow off. The idea of it all left me feeling very unsettled. When I thought about how I lived back home, or even now in the dormitory that I’d bitterly complained about, I felt quit ashamed. My heart then proceeded to break a little when six or so smiling children came running up to the side of the road and waved at us happily as we drove past, one of the children who couldn’t have been more more than six years old had a baby strapped to her back.

I sat in silence for the rest of the way, not thinking about Riaan for once, but trying to wrap my head around what it would mean to live here. What daily life would be like without running water and electricity? Suddenly I felt like a real bitch for complaining about the two channels on my TV. And then if I wasn’t feeling bad enough Riaan added, “You probably spend more on one hand bag than all the families here see in a year.”

His words cut me to the quick, I knew he wasn’t trying to be nasty, but pointing out that glaring disparity did hurt.

I suddenly felt compelled to do something. But what?

The town too was small and clearly poor. There was a small clothing store, one of those Chinese ones that sell Louis Buiton bags and Shannel sunglasses. There was a small post office, and a store that seemed to sell everything from coffins, to wheelbarrows and tea. That was where we were headed. Riaan loaded up on liters and liters of milk, as well as flour, sugar and other essentials from the list that Dorcus and Precious had given him.

The sky seemed me to be clouding over and changing to a deep purple color. Riaan looked up as he loaded the last of the stuff into the car.

“There’s a storm coming, we better hurry.”

The day was already starting to come to a close, added to that the massive storm clouds that where starting to billow in and fil the sky,  it was almost dark outside.

The first drops of rain fell and felt like they were the size of golf balls. There were very few of them and  long gaps between them, but when they came, they were enormous. The pace of them soon started to pick up and they fell faster and harder with more intensity. The sky had changed color again and looked angry. Deep purple merged into dark blue, the clouds were no longer white, instead they were a steely black grey. They writhed and thrashed together in the sky, and then the rumbling started. It was a deep low rumble at first, but it soon escalated until…..

“HOLY SHIT!” I almost fell off my chair as several huge bolts of lighting severed the sky and sounded like they they’d hit the ground only a few meters away. The noise was deafening and the air felt electrically charged. In a matter of minutes it had gone from looking like it would rain, to the heavens ripping open violently. The rain pelted down so hard that at times is felt like shards of glass cutting into your skin. The lightening continued to lash out and whip the sky in to an electrical frenzy.

“We get very heavy electrical storms here in Africa,” Riaan shouted over the sound of the water.

“We need to take shelter,” He shouted again. “ There is an animal hide just up the road,”

Riaan drove faster now, but the rain was wining. The lightening continued to slice through the rumbling purple sky, it was positively terrifying. I had never seen lightening like this before. It didn’t just come down towards the ground, but it clawed and twisted and reached out horizontally across the sky in every direction.

We pulled up to a large thatch room that was built on stilts. We both jumped out of the car, into the mud and ran. We climbed up the ladder and pushed open the heavy wooden room, emerging into a large room. A thin narrow window almost ran around the entire length of the room. Its shape ensured that the rain was not able to penetrate, as well as wild animals, as Riaan pointed out, that was the primary reason for it’s design. Besides a few chairs and benches inside, there was not much else.

Riaan and I were absolutely drenched by now. I was also shaken up from the terror of the storm outside. It was still raging and I was reminded of being inside a nightclub with strobe lights- one second the sky outside was lit up like a florescent light, and the next second it was dark again, the lightening was that severe.

“Now what?” I asked nervously through chattering teeth, it was also getting cold, fast.

Riaan located a box that seemed to have some essentials in; some matches, a medical aid kit and some blankets.

“We wait out the storm.” he said.

And then he stopped and looked at me with a devilishly naughty smile,

“But first I’m going to light a fire and then we’re going to have to get out of these wet clothes.”