72) South of The Boarder

Cecilia and Derrick had very kindly offered to put us up until our furniture arrived but we could not take our dogs to their home as they had dogs of their own and besides that our dogs were not farm animals and I am sure would have chased the young cattle and made an awful noise. We unloaded Cindy and Rocky at our new home 5 Rosemary St Jackeroo Park Witbank. It was then that we got the first viewing of it. If anyone ever asks me what was the worst place I had ever lived I would have to say ‘5 Rosemary St’. It was a three bed roomed semi detached house right on the railway line. It was in a very bad state of repair, the boys used to say that there were three ways into the house, through the front door, through the back door and through the cracks in the wall.

5 Rosemary Street

When I think of the mess that the house was in I can’t help wondering how the owner had the cheek to ask for rent for it, but there was a huge shortage of rented accommodation in Witbank at the time and whereas a tidy house would have cost about R500 a month we were only paying R150 so what else could one expect. The walls inside were mostly covered with very old wallpaper. It might have been very fashionable in it’s time but that would have been very long ago. There was a fitted carpet in the lounge but someone had obviously knocked over a heater at one time and so there was a big burn mark on the carpet and a large black mark half way up the wall in the corner of the lounge. The roof leaked so badly that we could not keep our books on the shelves in the lounge, as they got wet every time it rained. There were virtually no cupboards in the kitchen but it did have a pantry (the roof leaked there too.) The railway line at the bottom of the garden was a pretty busy line and when the trains ran passed the whole house rattled. I think it was the proximity of the railway line that had caused the house to crack so badly.

The owner of the house was an old man called Mr. Cross. He had inherited the house from his parents and his sister had inherited the other half of the semi and she lived there with her husband. They had kept their side of the semi in a much better condition. Mr. Cross had built himself a little cottage in the back yard of our house and he lived there. He was not in very good health and spent most of his days at home. He had a young African working for him in his garden and when ever Mr. Cross wanted to get something from the shops he would go in his very elderly car and take his gardener with him. Jonathan and Dominic swore that he took the gardener to tell him which way to go, as his sight was too bad for him to see the road. I am not sure that that is completely true but I must admit that old Mr. Cross’s sight was not good and I don’t think he should have been driving.

One day I was doing some work in the front garden and stoped to have a look at the work that was going on in the other side of the semi. Mr. Cross’s sister and her husband were having their side painted with one of those very expensive protective paints that were supposed to last 20 years. As I was watching Mr. Cross walked down from his cottage at the back and joined me in looking at the workers next door. He said “I believe that that painting has cost them R2500, what a waste of money” I said that I had heard that it was guaranteed for twenty years though “At least they wont have to paint for another twenty years” I said. Mr. Cross answered “I haven’t painted for 20 years and it did not cost me R2500” He was not in the habit of making jokes, so I looked hard at him to see if he was serious and he really was dead serious. He could not see that his half of the house looked as if it had not been painted for twenty years.

Jonathan and Dominic were going to sleep in the new house so that they could feed the dogs at night and make sure they did not make a noise during the night and wake all our new neighbours. We unloaded their luggage and their sleeping bags and then all went off to Cecilia’s house, which was not very far away. Her house was large and light and very comfortable, even though Derrick had still not finished the restoration work that he had been doing it was still a lovely place. He still had some work to do on the en suite bathroom.

Cecilia had a Maltese poodle called Binksie. He was very spoilt and always slept with them in their bed. If Derrick was late coming home Cecilia would get Binksie all wound up by saying “Where’s your Daddy, why is your Daddy late Binksie, bight your Daddy Binksie” By the time Derrick got home Binksie would be furious with his daddy and as soon as Derrick touched the front door knob the dog would rush at him, barking and carrying on. Derrick would pick him up and say “What”. There was something about the word “What” that would send Binksie into a rage and he would get even more upset. When Derrick went to bed earlier than Cecilia he would pick up Binksie and carry him off to the bedroom. Binksie would stay in the bed until Derrick fell asleep then he would hop off the bed and run back to the lounge were Cecilia would be watching television and he would just hop on her lap and spend the rest of the evening with her. We would ask him “Have you put your Daddy to bed Binksie?” because that was what it looked like.

I think it was about two weeks before our furniture arrived so while we were staying with Cecilia we helped her when we could to feed her baby calves.

Jonathan and I helping Cecilia to feed her “babies”

Jonny was not keen to go back to working with the engineering company so he looked around for a job in car sales and got a job with a company called Eastvaal Ford. He was in the new car section. Car sales in South Africa were very different to car sales in Zimbabwe so he had a lot to learn. Also he did not know many people in the town so had very few contacts. Witbank was a very Afrikaans speaking town and most people in sales were expected to be bilingual. Although Jonny’s parents were both Afrikaans he had never really learnt the language as he had been born and brought up in Northern Rhodesia, which was an English speaking British colony. He learnt it as a second language at school and living with Afrikaans parents one could expect him to know a word or two but he could not speak it well. Because of his English sounding name and the fact that he was prepared to try to speak Afrikaans he was given a chance and of course it was a big help to his learning the language.

As Jonathan had finished his “O” levels he was ready to leave school and so we thought he should attend the Technical Collage for at least a year. We had thought that Dominic should go back to school for a year or two but when we went to see the local headmaster of the high school he thought that as Dominic had not studied Afrikaans he would not manage to get his school leaving certificate, as Afrikaans was a compulsory subject and if you failed Afrikaans you failed your school leaving certificate. The headmaster advised us to enrol Dominic in the Technical Collage along with Jonathan. He felt that it would be better for Dominic to start learning technical subjects that would be of use to him in his working life.

We were assured that the Collage was bilingual and that the boys would be taught in English as I was concerned how they would manage with a new language and brand new subjects. It turned out that there was very little English spoken at the collage so studying was even harder for the two of them but I must say it did wonders for their Afrikaans. Before they had been there a full year they were able to hold a conversation in Afrikaans. To help the whole family become bilingual we bought rather expensive Afrikaans lessons on cassette tapes with the idea that we would all listen to them and so learn to speak it well. I think I was the only one who did any work with the tapes but I never managed to get any further than making a friendly greeting and asking after a person’s health. I must admit it impressed my father-in-law, from then on I always greeted him in his mother tongue and he would say nice things about how well I was doing and never seemed to notice that I did not progress. If I had, like Jonny and the boys, been forced to be with Afrikaans people and had to speak it I would have done much better. I worked very hard at it and did widen my vocabulary so I could usually understand what people were talking about, but mostly did not understand what they were actually saying.