Hunger Eats a Man (2 page)

Priest strides proudly as he leaves Bambanani High School. He always feels important in his priestly garb, although his importance has receded before him like a dream. What concerns him most is that his children are now going through the pain he himself went through as he was growing up. For four years now his family has been struggling, living on the little money he got when he was retrenched from the bacon factory.

He started a spaza shop soon after the retrenchment, but within seven months he became aware that he was losing. Many people had no money to buy from him. When they bought on credit, they did not pay him back. Now his spaza shop has completely closed down. For the Gumede family, just getting something to eat is a struggle. This pains Priest very much. He swore to himself and others that, when he became a man, his children would not suffer like he had. This seemed to be true at the beginning, but now things have changed for the worse. His children are suffering and he does not know what they are thinking. They still respect him as a father, but the happiness with which they used to welcome him home is fading slowly.

As soon as his wife opens the door for him he starts talking, “Yes, that devil knows who I am now. I told him all I wanted to tell him.”

“But you shouldn't have bullied the principal, Father. It's not his fault things are like this,” MaDuma's voice is kind. This disturbs Priest, who knows his wife well.

“His fault or not his fault, I told him. Why does he want money from us when he knows we are starving?” Priest has taken off his trousers. Now he smiles as he removes the collar from his neck. “Besides, it's better to find a place to pour out your anger. I feel better now.”

“I think you worry yourself too much about things you cannot change.” MaDuma seats herself on the bed, getting even more serious and polite. “Everybody knows there is unemployment in this country.”

The happiness that Priest felt when he came in diminishes. He feels a tinge of unease as he becomes aware that something serious is on his wife's mind.

“We need to be creative and find ways to make ends meet,” MaDuma continues.

The troubled Priest looks back at his wife and asks in a voice of sadness and anger, “Like what?”

“They say Johnson is going to need people to work on the trees. It's not a great deal of money, but it can help.”

“What?” Priest shouts. “No ways! I can't let my wife work on those trees. Like a slave on a farm? Tell me you are joking.”

MaDuma's countenance changes as her husband utterly misunderstands her. “I was thinking that you should go,” MaDuma's voice is stern, having decided to forsake her former politeness. “Other men work on the farms if they cannot find better jobs.”

MaDuma has now stood up. She is pacing up and down the room. Priest feels like his head is going to explode. His wife continues, “It's better than staying at home and watching your children suffer.”

“Work for nothing?” Priest is aghast. “It's better to work for nothing than to watch your children suffer? Is that what you are telling me?”

MaDuma decides to ignore the question. Instead, she heads for the door and says, “Think about what I said.”

The door bangs.

Priest cannot help but think about what his wife has said, which is a pain in itself. He pledged to himself when he was a boy that he would never work on a farm again. He worked on one once and his
experiences made him vow never to do it again, no matter what happened. Now his wife says he should break his vow? No. It is not the question of the vow. It's the reason he took that vow that matters.

Now that an old wound has been opened, Priest resolves to narrate his childhood story to his son. This may help the boy understand that the world has teeth with which it bites whomever it wants, whenever it wants. He seeks out the boy who is watching Oprah Winfrey's talk show. They are talking about a boy who died for forty-five hours and was resurrected. The boy in question started writing poems when he was about eight years old, just as old as Sandile was when he started.

Priest begins to narrate his story, even though his son's attention is not on him. “I'm telling you this so you will know that if you are suffering today, your suffering cannot compare with what we experienced. And since you are an aspiring writer, perhaps in my story you will find an idea for a novel, or a short story if your creative juices do not serve you well.

“But, as for me, I am telling you this so that I may come to terms with my past and feel better, if that is possible under the present circumstances. I hope to reduce, or even end my anger by this telling. They say that voicing your troubles is therapeutic. If that is true, then we both are going to benefit from this. My telling will heal my wounds of the past, and you will listen so that you can retell it and the story will then be yours and everybody's.”

Priest spends an hour engaging with his past. Though it seems that Sandile is not listening, three days later he approaches his father with a short story he has written.

It is an ordinary day in December, and you are on holiday from school when you go out and see an unfamiliar tractor parked at the Ring. The Ring is the main stop at Skopo, where you live. It is where buses turn and it has therefore become circular, hence the Ring. When you see this tractor, you dash back to the rondavel, which functions as kitchen, dining room and bedroom. As you stand in front of your
home, speechless, watching and wondering where this handsome tractor could have come from, news starts to circulate around the homesteads that the tractor is hunting for people to work at the farm. It is Mbaqa's tractor, people say, some eighty kilometres east of your place. School children who are on holiday are more than welcome to go.

You are uncertain whether you should join or not. The prospect of earning your own money is inviting, but you have a hunch that working there will not be a good idea. But when you hear that your friends, including your elder brother – who is two years your senior and looks as if he is your twin – are going, you decide to give it a try. You know you will be jealous if your friends have their money and you don't. Also, staying alone at home during the day would be worse than any hardship you may encounter at the farm. Only, you are wrong. Very wrong.

Thus, at about eight that morning, you find yourself at the back of the tractor – it carries a wagon that has steel walls but nothing on top – ready to be transported to the place you only know as Mbaqa. Mbaqa is a name black workers have given to the white farmer, and it has become his and his farm's name. Mbaqa! Even today that name causes memories of hardship: toiling, rain, sun, thunder, lightning. And fear. The fear of what you might be made to do. The fear of being entirely at the mercy of your employer. Baas.

One can say that going to the farm is some kind of an adventure for the four of you: you, your brother and your two friends. You have heeded Mbaqa's call for manpower, knowing that much may happen in that place. It is not hunger or poverty that has forced you to board the wagon. No. You go there because you fear jealousy when your friends get paid. You don't want to be left behind.

The tractor swings its way past Wonela and Entabeni farms, moving at high speed. It is moving too swiftly for a tractor. You have only known the old, sluggish tractors that some people in your village own, so you are fascinated by the speed of Mbaqa's tractor. It sounds
like it has an engine as smooth as a car's. As the tractor speeds along, the wind hitting your faces and ears, you think about your past and your future. Who are you? A twelve-year-old boy on a tractor ready to offer himself to work for a white farmer.
Umlungu
. You are travelling on the tractor of someone you do not know, to a place you do not know. When you pass the huge dam belonging to Jesus's farm, you begin to have second thoughts. A voice inside you says, “You have made a grave mistake, you should not have come here.” But there is no going back. The wind blowing past your faces is stronger as you reach Jesus's farm. It feels as though you have been kidnapped. You think that if you had the chance, you would escape, jump off. But there is none.

Even though part of you has been wishing that you won't be employed at the farm, you are. All of you. It is harvest time and the farmer needs as much cheap labour as he can possibly get. There are loads of potatoes to be picked and expanded fields to be cleared of potato plants. In no time a smaller tractor transports you to the fields where you are to work. There are people who have been consigned to other sections of the farm. The lucky ones are those who work in the shed. Working in the shed is the best thing that can happen to a Mbaqa farmworker; the work is not so bad there.

The first job you do in the fields is to remove potato plants so that the reaping machine does not get damaged. Can you believe that? You have to have your hands blistered in order to protect those lifeless machines. But a voice inside you says, “They are not really lifeless because they can move and make a good deal of noise. The machines do a great job digging those potatoes. Had they not been here to dig them, you would have to dig them with hoes that would also blister your hands.” That voice inside you carries on talking. It tells you that you would have earned more money hoeing out potatoes in the vast fields. But that is not true. You do not even know how much you are to be paid for the work you are doing now.

Yes, it was foolish of you to rush to the fields without knowing how much you are going to be paid, but there is one important thing
you know about the South Africa of the 1960s – it is not easy to talk to a white person. You are growing up with your fathers telling you a white man is your God, and nothing happens to disprove that. They have everything and you have nothing. There you are on such a big piece of land owned by one man. You live with thousands of people on land not even half as big. You are there to reap God-knows-how-many hectares of potato fields for the benefit of the white man. So it is easy to believe the white man is some form of a god. He is the owner of land and money and everything. The owner of lives. Your lives.

But it is the size of the fields that affects you most. Seeing all those rows of maize and potatoes, it feels as though you have arrived at some place beyond this planet. They stretch without end. The maize plants stand tall and green as you pass them on the way to the potato field, looking as though they are the ones that are moving while you stand motionless. So much food and you are hungry all the time!

This makes you think about the hunger you have left at home. Hunger is one thing you find yourself unable to deal with. As you are growing up, it seems to you that you are the weakest child when it comes to bearing with hunger. You are fascinated by the way your brothers and sisters are able to tolerate it. You remember a day when you were crying for food and your mother shouted at you.

“Why are you crying?” she demanded in a strangely harsh voice.

“I'm hungry,” you told her.

Then she said something … You don't know if you should say it was strange or surprising or horrible. She said: “Now what do you want me to do? Do you think because I gave birth to you I can give birth to the food as well?”

You did not stop crying. You cannot tell what you felt about this. But you still remember those words clearly. All you know is that it hurt her very much to see you cry like you were doing, knowing she could do nothing to help you.

Your mother sometimes tells you to save your tears for when your father comes home from where he is working. It is in a factory in town
where he lives in a hostel. He cannot afford the bus fare every day and they work shifts, sometimes starting work at two in the afternoon to ten at night. You hear they earn what is called
upondo nofishi
(pound and a fish). It is actually R2.50, and that R2.50 is not enough to support you. There are many of you. Too many even for someone who earns a better salary. That is why you vowed never to have more than five children, and you are glad that you have only two.

As a boy continuously haunted by hunger, it feels like a fair thing to blame your father. Your mother makes you believe it is your father's fault that you are starving. And your father, for his part, wants you to believe it is not his fault. That you are all victims. But you are not at your home now. You are at the fields of Mbaqa's farm. The fields have made you bitter and envious because of the hunger back home. Hunger! What a word if one really knows what it means!

On your first day of working you encounter another setback. As you know nothing about farms and farm labour, you forget that there will come a time for you to eat. You have nothing to put your food in. You spend most of your lunch time looking at people eating their food. The food is provided by the farmer, so it is not delicious at all. But you still want it because you are hungry. The cook sees that you have not eaten and serves you your food on the plastic bag she has with her. It is dry pap and sugar. Your hands are not just dirty, they are filthy. You have no spoon to eat with so you have to use those filthy hands, yet you do not hesitate. You devour your food as if nothing is wrong. One can say you have become like a pig. That's what farm work does to you sometimes, it makes you look and think like a pig.