“Gerrit, I think we’re in danger.”
“Why?” he mumbles, without looking up.
“We’re surrounded.”
The man is already beside Cruiser.
“Hello,” I say to him. My God, I’m about to be a statistic, and I can see the headlines now:
Remains tossed in with the other garbage. Aloof and stupid ranger never even noticed volunteer was murdered!
The man doesn’t answer, he doesn’t even look at me. Instead, he’s fixated on our garbage. He stands at the end of the trailer, eyeballing the shiny black bags, but doesn’t touch them. Then, with a nod from the Drill Sergeant, he snatches a bag and scurries away, hunched over it with arms tightly grasped around it. Just as fast as he leaves, another man comes forth out of the shadows. He doesn’t speak either. The Drill Sergeant nods and he takes a bag, too. The first man is in front of Cruiser, crouches over his bag, carefully pulling apart its contents.
“What are they doing?”
“Some are pig farmers. They collect garbage to feed their livestock. But most are looking for food to feed their families.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. Haven’t you seen this before?”
I shake my head. “Never.”
I’ve seen people fish for bottles in dumpsters before, but I had no idea an entire subsystem existed at the dump.
“It’s very competitive. They’re all looking for the lekker load, something ayoba.”
“Lekker? Ayoba?” Are these some type of African vegetables?
“Yeah, ayoba.”
The Drill Sergeant frequently speaks in Afrikaans dialect, forgetting I don’t understand it. Or more likely he just doesn’t care that I don’t understand.
“That’s why they wait here all day. They want to have first pick.”
More and more people appear. The Drill Sergeant lights a smoke and walks away from the trailer. I follow him and watch as the trailer is emptied for us. The garbage bags are flying off the trailer in every direction.
A virtual litter market has opened in front of the truck, and there are people everywhere. Two men argue over the contents of a bag and it rips, scattering potato scraps all over the ground. Several men drop to the ground, stuffing this hot commodity into their pockets and down their shirts. Another man barters melon scraps for rib bones. One man stuffs used tissue paper into his pockets—nothing goes to waste.
It’s an incredible scene; an entire economy exists in the dump with multiple transactions taking place, the only currency being garbage.
The men at the gate are still engrossed in their card game, not paying any attention to the events taking place behind them. The Drill Sergeant pays no attention, either. Instead, he meticulously ties each little tiny wire back together and rebuilds the walls and gate of the truck, taking him nearly twenty minutes. I don’t understand how he has great patience for monotonous tasks, but no patience for eager volunteers from the city.
We leave the dump that’s still buzzing with activity. The trailer shudders, threatening to rip apart when Cruiser passes over some old railroad tracks. A well-aged and rusty rimmed sign bearing the name Tinia is posted beside the tracks—some of the letters are missing, but its purpose is served.
Small, picturesque, quaint houses begin to speckle the landscape. They’re constructed of wood, and most of them are painted bright white with black-shingled rooftops. They’re from the colonial era, many a few hundred years old. Even this tiny sampling of civilization is a sharp contrast to the game reserve.
The lone road leads us to the town square where there are a number of small specialty shops—a butcher, a produce store, a shoemaker—and the bright-pink liquor store or Doepke in Afrikaans. The Doepke is tempting, it would make dealing with the Drill Sergeant a little more palpable, but his propensity to work me past exhaustion defeats the enjoyment that would come from a bottle of Merlot.
In the center of town is a huge wooden church. The white paint that covers its timbers is gleaming in the afternoon sun, like a welcoming beacon that beckons weary followers to its doors; we speed past.
As Cruiser and his accompanying trailer rattle through town, pedestrians turn to look at us, and as they do, I wave at them.
“Stop waving at people,” the Drill Sergeant barks.
“Why?”
“They’ll think we’re weird, and I know most of these people.”
“You know most of these people?” It’s hard to imagine the Drill Sergeant actually knowing anyone. Surely he doesn’t socialize with people, does he?
“I grew up here.”
“You did? In this little town?” Interesting, he has a past.
“My family’s been farming here for a few hundred years.”
“Really? Where is your family’s farm? Can we go see it?”
“No.”
He says it so firmly, that I mutter a quiet ‘okay.’
The air grows thick in the cab with a long, awkward silence. The Drill Sergeant is unaffected by the silence, but it’s getting to me. We always work and drive in silence. At night, I’m alone, in silence. My only neighbors are Bonty and the wildebeest, and no matter how much I talk, they answer in silence. I need some human interaction here.
“Well, farming sounds interesting. Tell me about it.”
“There’s not much to tell. If your farm is doing well they take it away from you.”
“What? Who takes your farm away?”
“The government, that’s who. It’s no good to have a farm anymore.”
“Well surely you can just say no—no one can force you to leave.”
“It happens all the time.”
“How can anyone make you leave?”
“They show up at your door and give you twenty-four hours to pack up your shit and leave. If you’re still there when they come back, they will murder you and your family on the spot.”
“My God. I can’t imagine…”
“You don’t want to imagine it.”
“Did that happen to your family’s farm?”
The Drill Sergeant goes quiet again. The deeper I dig, the darker he gets, the more questions I ask, and the more I need to keep digging.
“You must be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Well maybe you’re not afraid, but it must be difficult…”
He shuts me down with a dismissive huff. Is this why he’s so jaded? It would make a little more sense, but either way he’s not going to let me in to find out.
I follow his cue of silence and focus instead on the little town.
We continue down the long, straight road and abruptly stop at the first stop sign I’ve seen in a few weeks. It’s quickly apparent that the intersection is some type of boundary line.
The neighborhood across the street is exactly opposite to the one we just drove through. The beautiful, quaint homes have disappeared and have been replaced by clapboard shacks, the kind Melanie and I saw in the townships during our first week in South Africa. The dwellings are built of mismatched pieces of plywood, sheet metal, even flattened cardboard boxes are used as siding.
Occasionally, there is a tiny house, perfectly rectangular, in between these dwellings. These houses are Government Issue, but built so poorly that they usually fall apart within a couple of years. Each one is about ten feet wide by fifteen feet long, but what’s even more surprising is that, on average, ten people live in one of these ill-constructed boxes. My little tent seems like a luxury when compared to this.
Even though the houses are tattered and run-down, their gardens are filled with bright hand-painted pots, blooming flowers, and handmade artwork that adorn the spaces, taking the focus off the fatigued structures they surround.