Ouma Elizabeth Bodenstein Swanepoel

Ole man phones at 19.28pm

Listen, if you want to make it to supper you must come quickly but you’ll have to bring lots of money.

His nephew Jack who’s a helluva clever bugger, he’s on a lot of boards and chairman of this, chairman of that. Wonderful bugger, Jack. He still weighs 78kg same as he weighed when he was a fighter jet pilot (Jack must be 78yrs old in the shade).

He brought me some smoked snoek and chips, KILOGRAMS OF IT!

He’s on to food – a favourite subject.

Oupa worked on the railways.

Working men took a scoff box to work

Guys would take sarmies, meat, tea, etc.

Oupa had a billy can. A blue billy can, the lid was your cup. You know what he used to take in to work for his lunch?

No. What, Dad?

Sugar water

At night he’d drink a big mug of milk and eat bread.

Ouma would cook in the kitchen and dish up in the kitchen.

Six plates. Her and Oupa and four big kids.

You got your plate of food. Don’t ask for more, there was no more. But we didn’t need more, it was a great big plate; we never went hungry. We had to do without some stuff, like new clothes or shoes, but we never went hungry.

Oupa and Ouma in PMB

Chickens and muscovy ducks in the backyard.

Ouma made a little pond in the ‘sump,’ the lowest point in the yard in the far corner. She would fill it up with water, about one brick deep, then throw mielies in the water. The ducks like feeding underwater. They bred prolifically and there were always plenty. A big fat roast duck was a huge treat. Only trouble is there was duck shit all over the yard.

Chickens they had to slag. The kids. One would hold the beak and feet, stretch it and one would chop off the head with an axe.

A big game was to then stand it up and let it go and watch it run around, headless.

‘One day Oupa caught us doing it and beat the shit out of us.’

~~~oo0oo~~~

She actually did. My sister Barbara’s granma lived at 131 Boom Street Pietermaritzburg.

Right across the road was this school. Going to the Afrikaans school would have meant a bus ride, and Oupa was frugal.

And so started the ver-engels-ing of Dad. The rooinek-erisation. Pieter Gerhardus became ‘Peter’.

~~~oo0oo~~~

*ver-engels – Anglicisation

*rooinek – Boer word for Poms – anyone from ‘England’ – any of those islands left of France. Literally ‘red necks’ – but not American rednecks. NB: This excluded those Irishmen who fought for the Boers against the plundering, wicked, invading, looting Poms. Even though Irishmen can have very red necks.

~~~oo0oo~~~

From here (the way I understand it) they all went to Havelock Road Primary; Yanie the oldest went on to matriculate at Girls High; Lizzie the second child went on to Russell High School adjacent to the little school across the road, leaving in Std 8 to go and work; Boet finished Std 6 at Havelock Road and got his first job at Edel’s Shoe Factory, his second in Howick at Dunlop. On the way back one day he crashed his motorbike and injured himself badly. Lizzie arranged a bursary for Dad the youngest to go to Maritzburg College where he left in April in his matric year to join the post office as an apprentice electrician.