Up Above The Woodpile: There's only one thing they cannot take.

By Mark Rait

Early one morning, twelve year-old Lifa, a kid from the townships near Cape Town, is taken against his will, to live and work on the prestigious Glen Cleaver wine estate, in the rural heartlands. He meets Victor, the only other working boy, who has a hidden past and a unique outlook on life. Despite the hatred and prejudice that surrounds him, V

• Language: English
• Publisher: Polygraph Publishing
• Release date: Jun 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781999738747

Mark Rait

Mark Rait was born in Glasgow, UK, in 1973. He is an independent author and an advisor (English Language) to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. His 30's were spent in the social enterprise sector, supporting ex-offenders and people with disabilities and mental health problems. In his 20's he was an adventure instructor, before undergoing military training, then becoming an executive headhunter in London. His first job after school was as an assistant teacher at a multi-racial school in Johannesburg - South Africa, during apartheid.

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A letter

Saturday, 2 January 2016

Dear Willem,

I have to own up. Without your knowing, I was in the University of the Western Cape's auditorium - when you made your statement from the stage. It was a strange coincidence. My daughter, Themula - a student of nursing at the University at the time - returned home one evening with a marketing pamphlet. She sat next to me as I read the information. 'Have you just seen a ghost?' she joked, blissfully unaware of my connection to Glen Cleaver. I felt compelled to attend.

On the night, I left early - right at the end of your testimony. Some memories are simply too painful to bear. The strangest thing happened afterwards; driving home with Themula, I opened up for the first time in my life. At home, she sat me down in front of Thembi, my wife. 'You've got to tell us everything, Dada," she said (and if you knew these two women, you would understand that I had little choice in the matter).

Five hours later, in the quietest hours of the night, I had drained myself of every chilling memory and emotion. I was too tired to sleep, but Thembi lay with me a while, then got up and fixed me a cup of Ubulawu, which we believe can help people reach their ancestors in their dreams. For the last part of the night, and long into the morning, I slept and I dreamt and I floated up above the woodpile with old friends. When I woke, a deep peace and tranquillity washed over me . . . my ghosts lay silent. I hope that your ghosts are silent also Willem; that you only dream in the bright light of day.

I will return to Glen Cleaver for one last time – to check on the fynbos I planted above the estate in the year before you returned. Perhaps I may drop in to say hello - if you are around? I will make the trip by bus, on the morning of Saturday 30th January, and aim to return sometime in the late afternoon.

If you want to run fast, go alone. If you want to run far, go together. I would not have got this far without you, my friend. Sorry it has taken me fifty-five years to be in touch.

Ubuntu,

Lifa (George)

1

The Township of Tolongo, 1960

I jolted upright, mistakenly thinking a thunder storm had unleashed, expecting drips of rainwater to fall from the corrugated roof onto my head. Shattering glass had awoken me, followed by a barrage of enraged, slurred expletives. In his stupor, my father blindly stumbled into my collection of glass bottles. Thankfully for me, he had not cut himself.

‘Get up, Lifa! You coming work with me, boy!’ he said, shaking my shoulder roughly then flicking a warning-slap that landed above my ear. It was so early and dark that I could not see him. He threw down a set of overalls and a wooly, moth-eaten hat onto the thin blanket covering my legs, continuing to kick away broken glass from his feet. It was the first time in many months that he had set foot in our shack and the picture of his heinous act against one of Mama Blues’ women - Coca - the previous evening, was still fresh in my mind. He was the last person I ever wanted to see.

Behind, my sisters pretended to sleep, lying silent and prostrate, like field mice in the presence of a boomslang. To the annoyance of my mother, my coloured bottles were arranged on a cardboard box near the entrance. I collected them with broken, angled mirrors, to beautify the interior of our dank, windowless, single-room. The bottles and mirrors alone did not provide the beautification, but together they formed the perfect device. On cloudless days, a mesh of razor-thin strips of sunlight pierced the myriad of gaps in the roof and plywood walls; light stretched towards my display as the sun arced across the sky. When it hit, the effect was magical. A vivid, mesmerising kaleidoscope of rainbow-coloured projections sparkled, like imagined fireworks, interrupting our endlessly mundane lives for a short moment.

Still in shock and disquiet, I fed the overalls up my legs, still half-asleep. They were far too big, so I turned up the sleeves and legs, transforming into a comedy-like character from one of the silent movies Mr Mpendulo projected in church. Father stumbled outside, so I followed. Worried about slicing the soles of my feet, I stepped tentatively over mother’s body on the earthen floor. She lay quietly on her side, on lengths of well-used cardboard, also pretending to sleep. I crouched-down and sat on my heels, seeking a better view of her face. Her eyes flickered open, trying to focus as I whispered into her ear. 

‘I must leave for work, Mother.’ Her heavy, protruding lips thinned and tightened and her face radiated a vague sense of sadness. She propped herself up, onto her side, using her forearm and elbow, then wheezed.

‘Them bottles better for catching rain from the roof, boy.’ 

She had a point. Life was hard when it rained. Life was always hard, but it was especially hard when it rained. Thin cardboard insulation and shared body-heat is no remedy for a penetrating wet. The rickety door to the shack flung open, stopping hard when it hit my boney backside. I wanted to kick it back into my father’s face. 

‘Out, I said! Kafferkont!’ he shouted, in Afrikaans.

I walked barefoot into the lane, clutching my hat. My emaciated, pole-of-a-father was already on his way, so I burst into a jog to catch him up. He had the distinct advantage of old, leather boots. My bare, calloused soles bore the discomfort of the dusty, potholed lanes well enough, but they could not resist the cold. We moved silently through quiet, welded lanes and fifteen minutes later arrived at a main road intersecting the sprawling township. He joined a huddle of six men in similar overalls just as a white bakkie stopped beside them. Every man jumped on. I was the last to climb over the tailgate, squeezing into a small space against a jutting wheel-arch.

Nobody acknowledged me, so I avoided eye-contact and stared out over the tailgate. The men sat rakish and debauched, with cold, stiff legs, fighting their eyelids with bowed heads rested upon their knees. An intense, sticky, alcoholic stench emanated from a few mouths, suggesting some had forgone sleep altogether.

We rolled along the main road, venturing further from Tolongo, through agricultural land and undisturbed bush. At a crossroads below a mountain pass, we turned onto a twisting road and the engine revved as we ascended into the mountains. The shimmering haze of Cape Town’s street-lights faded and the smell of pine forests and fresh, thin, grassy air intensified. The mountains felt like an impenetrable boundary-wall, separating vegetation from concrete, green from grey, rural from city.

I suspected this day would present itself; it is a tradition that Xhosa boys must become Xhosa men when they are still boys. Mr Mpendulo’s school was never more than a temporary, futile endeavour. In Tolongo, education cannot put food in the stomach, and at some point every mouth must make its contribution.

Beginning my life as a man, at the age of twelve or thirteen, was not unique. Those without a father or mother to exploit them were forced to beg, or steal, or run petty errands for unscrupulous, empty souls. An unlucky, anonymous number were ensnared and subjugated into a life of crime and depravity. The less unlucky lived homeless and alone, in the undergrowth by the roads adjoining the township. I knew all of this. I didn’t like it or understand it, but I knew it.

Beyond and below the mountain pass, we drove along the deserted main street of a small, pristine town, then turned left onto a side-road, crossing a rickety bridge over a shallow river. After a mile or so, a pair of imposing, whitewashed pillars came into view, next to a high, white wall with a weathered, bronze sculpture bolted to its facade. This was Glen Cleaver, the lavish vineyard my father had worked on for the last five years, even though it took my mother to tell me so.

Beyond the pillars, the driveway was smooth and well-maintained even though it was not covered in asphalt. Whitewashed rocks stretched out in equal intervals, decorating neatly trimmed, grass verges hosting high, wide rhododendron bushes and mature oaks; a dramatic guard of honour. The driveway twisted and the vehicle’s headlamps unearthed a kaross of vineyards stretching across mild, expansive slopes. Nature’s tunnel disappeared and a grand, whitewashed, estate-house came into view, framed by the backdrop of the Hottentots Mountains.

I could never have imagined a house so big; in our rural, tribal homelands and in the township, almost every shack or hut consisted of one room. I looked up at the roof and doubted whether I could throw a stone as high. We continued past, over thick, crunching, marbled gravel onto a rough track traversing the hillside under the cover of a thick copse of bushy karee trees. For the last half-mile, the bakkie bounced and bruised, on ground laden with potholes and washed-out, gnarly tree-roots. We stopped abruptly at a small, brick hut in a clearing beside the track.

‘Get off!’ said my father. I climbed over the tailgate and he followed to the front door and knocked. It took a while to open. An old man stood hunched in the doorway with short, grey curls accentuated by the light behind. His eyes were cloudy and blueish and his skin was dark, cracked and loose, like it belonged to an old black mamba struggling to shed it.

‘This my boy, Mister Ringidd,’ said my father.

‘Come in,’ he replied, seemingly debating whether he could be bothered with the interruption. My father jumped back onto the vehicle, it crunched into gear then continued up the track. I walked inside and the old man closed the door. He shuffled over to a small table by a wood-burning stove.

‘Wait there while I finished eating. You calls me Mister Ringidd . . . or sir . . . or Mister Ringidd, sir. Unnerstan’?’

His disagreeable eyes moved to the seat under his table, which he pulled out with one hand, stroking the prickly, grey stubble on his chin with the other.

‘Yes, sir, Mister Ringidd, sir.’

‘What your name?’ he asked from his seat before pushing a spoonful of steaming porridge into his mouth.

‘Lifa, Mister Ringidd, sir.’

‘It’s not Lifa anymore. You is called George from now on.’

2

Glen Cleaver

My mother told me once about Kalahari bushmen crossing vast salt pans in feats of superhuman endurance, to reach seasonal watering holes overflowing with prey. With so much concrete expanding out in front of me in the press shed, I thought I was at the edge of my own remote salt pan . . . but suspected there would not be any glory for my efforts in crossing it with a mop.

At the far end, rose a dozen tall cylindrical tanks surrounded by frameworks of welded metal - raised platforms, walkways, steps and stabilising beams. At the opposite end, piled against the wall, were hundreds of oak barrels - stacked in long lines on their sides - eight high and deep. I filled a bucket, dribbled in a capful of bleach, then dragged it sloshing to the side wall.

After more than seven hours of mind-numbing, back-breaking drudgery, I slumped down in the shade of the lights, behind a wine tank. I had intended to sit and rest, but sleep’s seductive melody overpowered me.

‘George!’ shouted a man. I bolted upright, startled and fearful that he had been calling my name for a while. My father stood, unimpressed, in the doorway as I jogged out from behind the tanks with the mop, pretending to have been working.

We crossed the empty courtyard and entered the woods in a treacle dark. Hurry up . . . hurry up . . . were the only two words he uttered all the way up. I followed as best I could, surrounded by an enthusiastic choir of crickets and grasshoppers . . . a sound I rarely heard in Tolongo, but which offered a fond reminder of my earliest years on our homestead in the bush.

We passed Ringidd’s hut and continued to a clearing and an imposing, rickety, wooden shed, capped with a dark, bitumen-soaked roof. I followed reluctantly as my father creaked up four wooden steps onto a thin stoep and pushed open the door.

‘This your new home,’ he said, walking into the middle. 

It feels strange to call a place home when it’s not home. That’s how I felt about the bunkhouse for every moment I lived there. The dilapidated construction was the estate workers’ accommodation from Monday to Saturday and comprised one, long, open space, barely catering for the rudiments of fourteen men - twelve men and two children to be exact. The eating area encompassed two stained, scratched, oak tables with bench seating on the sides and wooden chairs at either end. A rusty, wood-burning stove sat to the side of two crooked antique dressers containing an assortment of old, cracked, chipped crockery, pots and worn, sticky utensils. The other half of the room was set up like an abandoned military barracks from the Great War, with six bunk-beds lined up symmetrically down each side.

‘Eat, then go to the bottom bunk, second-last on the left,’ said my father, pointing to a pot on the stove.

Men lay on their bunks or sat at the tables drinking umqombothi, smoking and playing cards. Some were dressed in dirty white vests with their overalls half-off and hanging from their waists towards the floor. Behind the smell of cigarette smoke was the smell of the bunkhouse – a smell I never got used to, like a busy, low-grade car-mechanics’ garage; never quite losing that greasy, sticky, sweaty stench of a hard day’s work, even though it might be tidy.

A lonely paraffin lamp flickered on each table, not offering enough light to protect the end of the room from darkness. I sat quietly and nervously on the end of a half-empty table eating thin, tasteless vegetable stew with pap as my father gambled. After the first game, a youngish worker held open his hand in front of an older man. He kept it out, smirking, until his palm was begrudgingly greased with three unsmoked cigarettes. He took the cigarettes to his nose and sniffed hard.

‘Ummhhh . . . smells best when you don’t pay, Duke,’ he said, grinning.

‘You is paying for them later, Bostock, don’t worry ‘bout that,’ replied his irate senior.

‘Gonna take some money off you old bulls as well,’ said Bostock, looking at the group on the neighbouring table.

‘Got my eyes on them pickings Franklin hiding up him bunk,’ said one of the older men. It was Franklin, I assumed, that stood up and scurried off to his bunk, returning just as quickly with a small package in his hand. Four, thick, half-smoked cigar-butts rolled onto the table as he unwrapped the rag.

‘Big baboon’s fingers,’ said old Duke. Laughter was followed by the licking of lips at the sight of this discarded, tobacco royalty. Franklin was the only one brave, dumb or desperate enough to pick up the remnants of Mister Vorster’s treasure during the working day.

I rinsed my bowl and quietly walked barefoot to the far end of the room, arriving at the end of my bunk in partial darkness.

‘What’s your name?’ said a quiet voice. I noticed the silhouette of a boy on the top bunk next to mine, up against the back wall.

‘Lifa,’ I answered.

‘No . . . your English name? Always use your English name. What’s your English name?’

‘George.’

‘I’m Victor.’

‘Is that your English name?’

‘What do you think?’

‘What is your real name?’

Victor paused, wondering if he should bother telling me.

‘Best you don’t know . . . keep you out of trouble.’

‘Do you work on the wine estate, Victor?’ I asked, hoping to receive some information about my new life. He sighed quietly before answering.

‘Everyone in here works on the estate. Anyone else is on the household staff.’

‘How long have you been here?’ I whispered.

‘Six months . . . and I’m glad you’ve arrived. I’ve been stuck here doing two people’s work with no help.’

‘Does that mean I will be working with you, Victor?’

‘I hope so.’

‘What work do you do?’

‘You sure ask lots of questions, George. Cleaning, mostly always cleaning,’ he replied with a raised voice.

‘What sort of cleaning?’

‘It doesn’t matter what sort of cleaning. Cleaning is cleaning . . . but now you’re here, we’ll finish work in the bunkhouse by lunch and Masta Baas will get us onto the estate in the afternoons . . . that’s what Ringidd said.’

‘Who is Masta Baas?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

A hoarse voice interrupted us from two bunks along, although in the dark I could not see a face. ‘Shut up, go sleep.’ Victor turned away from me and rested his head on a spare set of overalls, which he had rolled up as a substitute for a pillow.

3

The Bunkhouse

There was not one morning in the last twelve years that I had not awoken in the same room as my mother. A blanket of dark covered the bunkhouse and I wished I was back in Tolongo, feeling increasingly aggrieved to be near my father. He had barely acknowledged me since surprising me the morning before. In the last two days, he had turned my life upside down.

I searched blindly for my oversized overalls and dressed, then my small, bare feet tentatively shuffled past the passive, brooding bodies lying asleep on their bunks. The gambling table was covered with empty umqombothi bottles and stained, chipped cups full of cigarette butts, not cigars, from the previous evening. Victor filled a pot with water and showed me the log pile. He scrunched up paper and lit kindling in the wood burner with a match. We prepared a breakfast of pap, tea and coffee. Without any meat or vegetables to accompany the bland, cheap, white-maize staple of all poor people across Southern Africa, pap is little more than flavourless starch. But to eat a bowl of it every day is a luxury I can hardly describe.

Instructional is the most objective way to have described my first impression of Victor. He avoided play and small talk, relaying directions and information about each task like a parent mentoring a struggling child.

‘Johnson’s always up first,’ he whispered. ‘He gets angry if anyone reaches the pits before him. He’s been here longest, apart from old Duke. Then there’s your father, Kenneth . . .’

‘Kenneth?’

‘Kenneth, your father,’ he said again. I could not believe my ears. My father had worked at Glen Cleaver for all those years and never once mentioned they had called him Kenneth.

‘And there’s Charlie - a big, friendly Zulu - Herbert, Robert and Gilbert . . . they keep by themselves; quiet and out of trouble.’ Victor continued. ‘Bostock, Peter, Franklin, Barclay, and Eugene are the younger guys . . . they’re ok.’

‘What if I can’t remember their names, Victor?’ I replied, concerned everyone would instantly dislike me. He shrugged his shoulders.

Just as Victor had predicted, Johnson was up and out in his underwear before anyone else had stirred. Duke shuffled distinctively over to the table with small steps, in dwindled bones that held his skin. His dark eye sockets were overgrown, either that or his skull had shrunk around them.

Men trickled slowly, in ones and twos, over to the pot with their bowls. I ladled in generous helpings. Some half-nodded, but nobody spoke. When my father joined the queue he looked at me like I was an inanimate object. 

When the big head, a foot taller than most, with shoulders wider still, reached the front, a single eye gazed into mine, followed by a deep, wide grin showing an assortment of yellow teeth in differing shapes, sizes and states of repair. The man stretched out his hand, inviting me to shake. It was bigger than I remembered; a great earthen clod that first introduced its vice-like grip as I trampled on his plastic sheeting during that windy night in Tolongo. They belonged to the banished Zulu my mother called Jama; the man that had provided my father with maize beer in Mama Blues’ shebeen three nights earlier. He now stood unexpectedly before me, towering above me. My hand outstretched and was swamped like a newborn child’s.

‘Welcome to them bunkhouse, boy. You Kenneth’s boy, no?’

‘That’s right, sir,’ I said, fearful and polite, as if meeting the chief of an old Zulu tribe for the first time. This overgrown, one-eyed man with the two deep, white scars running across one side of his face was no Zulu chief. He broke into an unforgettable, deep laughter, that even now I could not impersonate with any accuracy, lest my vocal chords are lowered by two whole octaves. He shook my hand vigorously until his laughter subsided.

‘Good Goad, boy. You’ll meet them mastez an’ them baases an’ them surz in all good times. Me is Charlie. No baas and no surz . . . Charlie, boy.’

‘Sorry, Charlie. I’m George. I met you once before,’ I said nervously, expecting him to remember and finish the scolding he had started.

‘No. I’m not think so, George. Where we meet?’ Charlie looked down at me with a vacant expression on his face.

‘In Tolongo . . . when your plastic sheeting was flying away in the wind.’

Charlie paused for a moment. ‘I’m not remember,’ he said, looking like he was trying to requisition information from a small pocket of air inside his head.

‘My mother told me who you are. Jama . . . you’re called Jama.’ I said.

‘Not calling me Jama. Never calling me that, see? I’m is always Charlie, boy . . . at Glen Cleaver, see?’

‘Sorry, Charlie,’ I replied, my eyes fearful of looking up into those of the giant before me.

‘Victor told you how it works here in them bunkhouse, George?’  Charlie continued.

I remained silent, concerned that whatever I said would get me into trouble.

‘Come on, Charlie man, you tell the boy how it work in the bunkhouse,’ interrupted Franklin. Charlie was quick to oblige. He stepped back and opened up towards the tables. 

‘Them two times in them bunkhouse. Them morning times . . . them early, dark morning times is sad times . . . them very serious times. All mens is unhappy in them mornings. Them never smile and them never happy. Them never joke . . . even them good joke . . . joke is very bad. Don’t speak to nobody in them morning times. Eat and drink and do them work like them mouse or them grass snake – hidden and quiet.’

Charlie paused for breath, and the men tuned in, pausing the filling of their stomachs momentarily and replacing expressions of fatigue with growing amusement.

‘Now . . . them dinner times, that is them time of different times. That is them time of good times. Them good times for umqombothi and smoking and eating and joking and dancing and gambling. Understand them different type of times, George? Victor will tell you, boy.’ Charlie gave me a smile after his conspectus.

‘I think so,’ I replied, still unsure if he was playing with me or not.

‘Good. Very good, George.’ He gave a friendly pat on the side of my shoulder, almost knocking me over. ‘Remember, them morning times is like them burial ceremony - them beginning of them funeral. But night times - dinner times - is them party after them funeral. Them all good party times, George.’

Eugene spoke next. He was in his early thirties, with a mischievous grin and a lisping whistle - born of a lost front tooth.

‘No, Sarlie, man. Mornings not all bad. Sarlie doing gumboot dance in mornings. True – no, Sarlie?’ he said, looking around the room and raising his arms, willing on agreement. ‘Show the new boy your gumboot, Sarlie. No more funerals in the morning, eh?’ Charlie looked back at Eugene like he had just been set up for a fall.

‘How can I show them boy, man? I’m got no gumboots, man,’ replied Charlie.

‘Go on, Sarlie, man. You don’t need ‘em gumboots. Be a good Zulu?’ he said.

‘Okay, one small time them gumboot, special for them new boy, George.’

Drummed cutlery sprang from metal bowls and metal cups were banged on the tables, accompanied by loud whoops and jeers. This was followed by much bending over at the stomach from laughter in anticipation of what was coming.

To see a grown man - a bulky, ungainly man - jump and bounce with difficulty from foot to foot, extending and twisting his legs uncomfortably in different directions, was about the funniest thing I ever saw in the bunkhouse. Charlie’s broad grin was dominated as much by gums as teeth and his half-closed, white eyeball belied an unplaced confidence in his failed attempt at delicate, rhythmic gumboot dancing. He gambolled on regardless, like a gargantuan izimu - that fabled, cannibal Zulu giant.

Charlie was in full flow, dancing his mocking, cumbersome routine with his hands flailing and slapping and his knees and ankles searching helplessly for a rhythm his audience could follow. The circle of enraptured, bating manikins continued to jeer, shout, whistle and clap. It was partly his unruly size, partly his rusty routine and partly the fact that he was proud of it that made it funny and ridiculous. Not even the most stoic or repressed or burdened person could have contained their laughter.

Charlie raised his body a whole two-feet off the ground as he jumped, preparing to land with legs and arms outstretched for his finale. Without adequate flexibility and coordination, his bulky, muscular chassis was not equipped to deal with such exuberance. He landed on the back edge of his heels, slipped and fell hard onto his backside. This sent the men into a more virulent epidemic of laughter and bewilderment at the giant Zulu in their midst. Charlie sat on the stained floorboards, staring up at his audience, strangely pleased with himself, unaware that every last man was delighting in his ridicule.

4

Masta Baas

‘I was slow like you when I started,’ said Victor.

‘I’m not used to this,’ I admitted.

‘Don’t worry, you’ll speed up. Doesn’t matter much anyway, soon we’ll be working on the estate with the men.’

‘What sort of work?’

‘Producing the famous wines of Glen Cleaver . . . anything to avoid the cockroaches and maggots in the pits. I hate those damned crawlers.’

‘Maggots? You serious?’ I thought he was playing with me.

‘We’ll be out there shortly, see for yourself. I saw old Duke pick up a handful of maggots once and inspect them. He said they healed cuts and you can eat them . . .’

‘I ate a live grub one time in the bush. My father made me. It was wriggling around in my mouth and I thought it would choke me. I’ll never forget the slimy stench in my mouth for as long as I live,’ I lied.

‘You should have washed it down with some wine, that would have taken the taste away,’ said Victor.

‘I never tasted wine before. My father said it’s a white man’s drink.’

‘Really? I’ve seen your father drink plenty of dop in the bunkhouse . . . and take it away with him at the weekends,’ disputed Victor.

‘What’s dop?’ I asked.

‘Sometimes they give the workers wine they don’t want, instead of money . . . Anyway, white men drink beer and so do black men. So why can’t we drink wine if we want to?’ he said.

‘I never seen a black man drinking anything but umqombothi,’ I answered. ‘But I’ve never been near a wine estate, until this week.’

‘One day you will drink wine, George,’ Victor confidently replied.

Two boxed pits stood behind a thicket, fifty yards from the back of the bunkhouse. Victor led the way, and with each footstep the thickening smell usurped his role as guide. He climbed two wooden steps, stopped, pulled a rag and a small bottle of eucalyptus-oil from his pocket. He doused the rag with the oil then tied it around his head, covering his nose and mouth. After opening the door to the first pit, he flicked a latch on top of the box, lifting it up on its hinges. As it swivelled, a hole in the board used for pissing and shitting came into view. I was still out in the open, a few feet behind, but the stench of fermented gases and a plague of well-fed flies flew out at me like a puff adder striking a lame impala calf. I flinched unconsciously, ducked and ran to the side as quickly as I could.

‘Pass me the bucket,’ called Victor urgently, with a rusted tin in one of his hands. I stepped up and passed in the metal bucket with my free arm, covering my nostrils. Victor’s head and half of his body disappeared into the box and he began scraping hard and fast with the tin.

‘I tell the men to piss in the bush. Insects love the moisture. It’s not so bad when the shit is dry.’ He climbed back out to empty his tin into the bucket then plunged back into hell. When the bucket was full he stepped away and untied