A Visit to Oom Brown

A Visit to Oom Brown

A Visit to Oom Brown

a visit to the squatter camp
takes months of preparation.
gathering of coins, courage and small heartily big gifts.

oom brown lives in cold broken-down hammanskraal
i climb and change old kombis from elim,
makhado, polokwane, mokopane, modimolle
squashed
to meet oom brown
before he kicks the bucket.

he lives in a corrugated iron house
with one cat that chases rats, two unfed dogs and three goats
he warms his feet and hands around the brazier
he and his old wife talk about life’s empty harvest.

we eat fried peanuts
fired in a small old three-legged pot
in a grass-thatched hut.
gogo tsatsawani brings a plate of pap and masonja,
i wash my hands in a bowl of warm water,
eat dinner with pleasure.

around the fire
oom brown tells tales of dispossession,
“i fought during the second world war
while the boers received tracts of fertile land
they gave me an old bicycle.”
he tells tales as he finishes a plastic carton of beer.
he advises me how to live life,
“do not plunge your electric tool
in deep treacherous holes of widows,
do not swim in liquor,
or colour your face with fumes of dagga smoke.”

he says i must chew muti to be a lion:
muti spread in my office
muti in bed for sex
muti against owls, hyenas and people flying on brooms and loaves of bread
muti for dignity when i talk to authority
muti to live beyond eighty years
muti every time i wake up, walk in the day, and when i sleep.

oom brown’s wife’s eyes close slowly.
she wraps herself in a rag,
whispers in my ears,
“oom brown is no good;
sometimes he transforms into a snake, lion, hyena.
the comrades cannot touch him.”
oom brown coughs strenuously,
he quivers,
twists his lips,
talks in tongues like a miracle man.
surely something in the blood reminds him
of the zombified children, boys, girls, men and women,
who toil day and night in his tobacco fields.

gogo tsatsawani speaks out loud:
“we warm ourselves like this every night;
around the fire
we watch the stars until morning.
the shack is cold,
zombies are crammed there.
we cannot fit,
do you want to see them
short, bearded and strong?”

a visit to oom brown
takes months of preparation.
one night vigil around the fire is enough.
four o’clock in the morning i catch a kombi to elim
before i battle with the bearded boys and reptiles.