In the middle of the desert, in a nursery school full of goats.
The sun has risen behind the Rooiberg and I am hopping up and down with fear – joy, biting on my lip and hoping that the Weetbix and coffee with Cremora (it’s not inside it’s on top!) creamer won’t take too long. African mornings are busy, especially on the farm, and we have work to do. I practice a few positions from karate class in front of the only mirror in the house in the bathroom, before Dad starts making noises about four people in a family. They are sitting in the kitchen with bowls of porridge and marmite, where the floors and walls are already breathing heat. I fill the two red bottles with lemon lemos and water. And I wait for her. The little blonde shadow. The furry dreams and tonsillitis reach my throat from where she stands. And we are off!
Synchronized determined breathing and steps as we stride with purpose down the hill. To the goat kraal. Our little world, where we in are in charge. Where no one says how much and too much and we can talk about mousetraps and the moon and memory and muchness. We teach them courtesyandkindness and judgementandintiative.
We are the teachers. We tell the baby goats tales of laughter and grief. Story time lasts all day, and our desert nursery school runs for hours in the heat. We hold the smaller babies against our chests to comfort them when their mothers leave, and hear their tiny teeth grinding and their hearts beating through the hairy skin. Some babies try to run after the slowly moving group of white bodies across the hills, but I am faster. I sprint. I am a fast runner. At Sports Day the loudspeaker echoes my name through the air just like the boy in ‘Give it to Zico’ from the Storyteller tapes.
When all the babies have calmed down we have a singing session, and today we tell them about ‘Lizzie Dripping and the Champion Leeks’. Then the sun becomes so strong that all our pale glassy eyes become scrunched up and we feel scorched. We all retreat to have a nap in the corrugated shade with sand and goat droppings sweeping into out eyes and ears. The babies bleat. We make a vow, never to let this happy-in-the-heart feeling disappear.
In the evening when the sun has fallen into its own fiery pool of light, and the parents are pushing into the kraal. There sudden mad confusion as mothers kick at illegitimate mouths trying to suck from their teats. We make our small hands into fists and try hard not to get involved. Cannot interfere with the natural process. Survival of the Fittest. So we watch in silence and then run back to the house where we have to be sprayed with the hose for ages, wasting precious water, before we are allowed into the shower. The music spills over the hills, into the nothing darkness of the desert, and the two of us wait for tomorrow.
