The Two Ringed Hotplate by Michael Shawyer

“Everyone is going to stare. Don’t make eye contact or speak to anyone. They’ll ask for money.”

“What about family?”

They’re even worse. Just look mean.”

Michael never fully understood Zulu ways where the wrong kind of look could bring a world of misunderstanding. Especially when you were the only white person amongst 13,000 Zulus.

Thobisile sometimes called her husband Mr. Too-damn-friendly. He waved to the kids, smiled at anyone who caught his eye and within days of arriving, regularly exchanged greetings and early morning conversations with the bemused witches. His tangled attempts at the simplest of Zulu words met with giggles and encouragement.

Six-year old Okuh saw them first, struggling down the slope with suitcases. His soulful eyes unblinking before a smile crept across his gap-toothed face. Thobisile’s husband always made a fuss of him, got him kicking a football made of rags. Okuh fell asleep most nights with Michael’s words, Unyawo lwaka right, nolwaka left, sending him to sleep.

Okuh was the only child in Q section who could kick the ball with either foot.

Nomvelo, his mother, watched from the doorway. Her second child, 12-month old Paris, dangled from her hand.

“Lalala,” Paris whispered and excited chatter broke out. Thobisile had brought her whitey husband to the township. Michael looked around, smiled and waved, recalling the day of their traditional wedding.

It had been boiling hot and he sat for hours in a plastic patio chair. Sakhile, husband of Thobisile’s cousin, stood alongside and sheltered him from the sun with an umbrella. Girls with painted faces and brightly coloured traditional outfits danced to the constant rhythm of an upturned plastic bucket beaten with sticks from a nearby tree.

Michael flinched when they raised a foot above their head and stamped flat-footed on the dry earth. Nomvelo outdid them all, taking off and landing on her fortunately well-padded backside.

Row upon row of mothers seated in plastic chairs hired for the occasion, stared at Thobisile’s husband.

What was the world coming to?

A whitey in the township!

Where did she get him from?

And then another thought, has he got any brothers? Their giggles stopped abruptly.

Maybe he was there to colonise them.

The toddlers weren’t fussed about colonising but it still took an hour before Khethelo, three years old and the bravest, touched the whitey’s arm.

Michael kept still and smiled. Khethelo rubbed, examined her finger. Puzzled and tried again. More vigorously this time. The seated mothers, suddenly uncomfortable, whispered to each other.

Michael caught the eye of Thobisile’s aunt Makaluh, winked, wet a finger-tip and rubbed Khethelo’s arm. He held his finger up and Khethelo frowned. A smile curled from one side of Makaluh’s mouth and led the way for a wave of belly shaking, hand-slapping laughter.

The same memory played in Thobisile’s mind and she touched Michael’s arm. A look or a touch all that was needed to convey something between these two.

Phindile smiled and waved from behind a lop-sided fence, “Sawubona Michael.”

Akhona, her ten-year old daughter, squirmed with embarrassment. Michael had smiled at her!

. . . So that’s a UK whitey.

“Sawubona Michael.”

Thobisile’s brother welcomed his brother-in-law with complicated hand-shaking until Michael brushed the hands aside and hugged him. Philisane hoped his sister and her husband would help with his CV. He dreamed of animating, writing a book. Making music. At seventeen he didn’t really know which direction to take but the clock was ticking.

Michael and Thobisile couldn’t support him any longer.

“What happened with the water?”

They were sliding a chest of drawers down the slope to the house and needed an excuse to stop.

 “Someone stole the copper pipes on the outside of the house. Ripped them from the wall and left water shooting up in the sky. No water in the house for a long time now.”

Which explained why the taps weren’t running and the sink full of dirty dishes. It also explained the saucepans and buckets of water covering most of the kitchen floor. Replenished each day from a daily fill-up at Phindile’s outside tap.

Nomvelo was the only one who could carry a pot of water on her head whilst singing Rhianna’s chart-topping Umbrella.

Go to the loo? Take a bucket of water with you. Wash? Dip your head in the same bucket.

As dusk arrived cockroaches, almost two inches long, emerged from the cracks.

Nomvelo and Philisane took turns cooking on a two-ringed hot plate. One element bent upwards like a half-spent catherine-wheel. The hot plate on the floor powered from an extension-lead that trailed between the pots of water. Babies crawled through the obstacle course while older kids charged barefoot in and out of the kitchen.

Mice joined in like it was sports day, across the floor, up the wall and tight-roping along the electric cables. The cockroaches ignored everyone as they scuttled about their business.

Hidden in the hollow walls brown house snakes patrolled, never having to move far before latching onto a fat gecko or mouse. These 20 inch constrictors were harmless to humans but suffered a charmed existence. Zulus believe the only type of snake is a dead one. Stomped in a frenzied attack and left unrecognisable.

The broken four-hotplate stove was forgotten in the corner. A layer of filth obscured the top. Grease trails ran down the sides. The fridge/freezer jammed closed with a broken chair. Frost oozed around the doors like zombie slime.

Michael rolled his eyes at Thobisile and she beckoned him to her deceased mother’s room.

“We’re in here.”

They dragged the bed and wardrobe out, unsettling more mice. Philisane jumped and stamped like a ninja. Thobisile horrified, not believing how her siblings had let the family home go and thinking her husband could never live here.

Not sure she could either.

Michael smiled and kissed her face, “We’re here Boo, we’ll make it work.”

18^th December 2021 – a date they would never forget and in the background a snake silently squeezed the life from a careless mouse.

Michael Shawyer

Images of the authors family. Left to right. Andiswa Kowa
second image Lungelwa Khowa,  Nokuphila Shezi,  Snenhlanhla Zulu and Zinhle Khuzwayo. and third Nomvelo Khowa and Nolwazi Mthembu.

Image: JMK, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Farm worker houses near Lüneburg in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The foreground is a clearcut of a pine plantation, and the background is natural grassland.