1.
It is Saartjie Baartman that I’m thinking of when I arrive in the Eastern Cape. Saartjie, exhibited on a platform in Piccadilly Circus from one to five in the afternoon, a resounding success, the first specimen from the banks of the Gamtoos River. Her remains lie buried in the Gamtoos Valley, to the east of Port Elizabeth. Grahamstown, where I’m headed, lies north west of Port Elizabeth, in the Eastern Cape, between the Gamtoos and Great Fish Rivers. I’m thinking of Saartjie Baartman while I drive from Port Elizabeth to Grahamstown. Of her and of the coelacanth.
In the car Carl tells me of the two-thousand-year-old body of a Bushman that an archaeologist from the Albany Museum has discovered. The body had been preserved by being wrapped in the leaves of a poisonous plant, which had kept insects away. Carl, an expert on plants, points out this plant along the road. I would really love to see the body, I say. When I ask Anton about it later, he talks about how small the body is, indicating with his hands. It’s been wonderfully preserved; even the fingerprints are still visible, he says.
Saartjie Baartman’s grave; the well-preserved body of the Bushman man; the coelacanth; the stone quarry – these are the points according to which I initially orientate myself vis-à-vis Grahamstown.
The Eastern Cape is a dry place. I live in Durban, a coastal city in a subtropical zone, in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. The air there is a thick soup. The predominant colour is green.
2.
I got to know Johan Binneman many years ago in Stellenbosch. At the time he was attached to the Archaeology Department there. Now he is working in the natural sciences section of the Albany Museum. He is the one who did the excavation. He greets me warmly. He remembers me. I would recognise him anywhere, but I feel as if I have changed unrecognisably in the more than thirty years since we last saw one another. He takes me to the archaeology workshop. The smell of bones is overpowering. To avoid offending certain groups, a similarly preserved body, which had been exhibited in the museum for a long time, has been removed.
Behind a make-shift plastic curtain, under a black plastic bag, lies the body. The man lies on his side, his knees pulled up high, his arms between his legs. Dust to dust, I think. He is very small. Difficult to believe that this is the body of an adult. The beautiful, round shape of the head and the broad cheek bones are characteristic of the San people. Tiny little ears, well preserved, Johan points out. Small tufts of hair visible in places, and also beads around the neck. The most delicate feet and toes – like those of a child. The body is swaddled in the leaves of the poison bulb plant (Boophane disticha). It is the poison of this plant that prevented all sorts of insects and larvae from laying their eggs in the body. In places the leaves are still visible – so thin, and so similar in colour to the skin, that it is difficult to distinguish between the two. Because of this plant and due to the dry heat in the area where the man was buried, his body remained preserved for two thousand years.
Johan tells me that they’ve discovered hollowed-out areas in the ground in all sorts of places, lined with grass, in which the poison bulb has been found. Some archaeologists think that the poison bulb plant was stored by the San in this way. Others think that these hollows may have been spaces that provided access to the other world, because the poison bulb induces hallucinations when ingested.
‘How wonderful,’ I say to my daughter, ‘to have so much faith in another world – a world that can be accessed through trance. How it appeals to me! How beautiful, as well, to see death as another world; like the Bushmen did. How comforting.’ (The other world is leaky as a boat; Quignard.)
‘Therefore,’ Johan explains, ‘the body may not only have been covered in poison bulb leaves to preserve it, but to help the dead reach the other world by means of trance.’
I stay with Brink, my eldest daughter. During supper one evening, I say that I regret the fact that during my lifetime I will probably never know whether there’s life on other planets, and what form it takes. Anton tells that the spacecraft Pioneer 10 and 11 were each supplied with small metal disks that would indicate their time and place of origin to any astronauts who might discover these spacecraft in the distant future. Voyager 1 and 2 were both supplied with a more ambitious message – a type of time capsule that had to convey the story of our world to extra-terrestrial life forms: a 12-inch gold-plated copper disc containing sounds and images that had to document the diversity of life on earth. This included natural sounds (the wind, thunder, whales, birds and so on), music from different cultures, spoken greetings in 55 languages – starting with Accadian (spoken in Sumeria six thousand years ago) and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese dialect. With instructions on how to play the encoded images and audio discs. Forty thousand years before the spacecraft will reach the next planetary system, Carl Sagan - chairperson of the NASA committee at the time – had said. And obviously this disc can only be decoded by (other) advanced interstellar civilizations.
I clasp my hands together in amazement. Five billion years of the earth’s history, all historical epochs, all civilizations, all languages, everything that characterises our life on this earth – everything compressed into a tiny capsule and shot into the great, unknown Void. In the hope that somewhere there might be a recipient who can decode it. This is who we were and this is what our lives looked like. Deeply moving.
Then Brink says that this conversation is not good for her existential angst. ‘Why not?’ I ask. Seeing our position in the universe doesn’t help her, she says. ‘That being?’ I ask. ‘Insignificant,’ she says, gets up, takes her plate and goes to the kitchen.
3.
The coelacanth is a big fish – much, much bigger than I had expected it to be. Almost five feet in length (about as long as the body of the Bushman?). Pale yellow it hangs there, exhibited in formalin. On the one side the skin has been removed so that the fish’s internal organs are visible. All the organs, the skin, everything is the same pale yellow colour, while the fish in its natural state is a beautiful purplish blue, with iridescent markings. I look at the flippers, which look more like rudimentary limbs than fins. The coelacanth is a lobe-finned fish, but not from the group of lobe-finned fish out of which the tetrapods developed. In humans and other tetrapods the lobe-fins have adapted to form arms, legs, wings. The coelacanth is seen as a living fossil, because before the discovery of the first live specimen it was assumed that it became extinct during the Cretaceous period, eighty million years ago. Look at it and visualise the evolutionary process! How unimaginably protracted this process is, in which a fin, a flipper, is transformed into a limb, with which the first amphibians could move on land (I imagine) with great difficulty.
After twenty years in Durban I still struggle with the vegetation, the climate, the narrow sky, the humidity, the rack and ruin, the dampness that seeps into everything. I like the Eastern Cape because it is dry. I like the colours of the rock formations and the vegetation here. The weather is unpredictable, but the seasons – unlike in Durban – are clearly distinguishable. Brink has a small patio in front of her granny flat. A high wall, painted yellow, separates it from the street. Two rose bushes grow here, there are two pots with vygies, a geranium (pioneer plant) on the garden table. A large stone. A garden like this appeals to me – small and dry. So different to my obscenely abundant garden in Durban. The surrounding hills are visible from different places in the town. I like that. The eye can travel distances. Cypresses do well here, and aloes, and olive trees, and poinsettias, and vygies; all the plants that become mouldy in Durban, all those that would be plagued by black rust and eaten by insects.
But the water from the town’s dams is toxic – full of E. coli and heavy metals, so toxic that many fish in the Ichthyology Department died. Mismanagement at municipal level. And in town you are undeniably confronted with poverty. Unlike in Durban, where those who can afford it hang out in malls, so that the odds of encountering poverty are considerably lower.
4.
I ask Anton to take me to the quarry one afternoon. Anton is my ex-husband, the father of my eldest daughter, Brink. The quarry is on the edge of the town, past the last university residences. On the way we walk past a large building site on the hill – probably another residence being built. Anton walks in front, I follow. We talk unceasingly. Along the way we come across a few piles of human excrement. We reach the quarry along a different route to the one the audience followed on foot here in 2007 for Brett Bailey’s dramatic production based on the story of Orpheus.
Now the area is deserted. It is very quiet. The voices of the workers on the building site are no longer audible. A large, level area is surrounded on both sides by the steep gouged walls of the quarry. Above our heads is the great, wide sky. A few empty water bottles are rolled about by small gusts of wind from time to time. Other than a few khaki bushes there are not many plants; only the fine gravel beneath our feet. Someone has made a fire here, perhaps one of the workers. On the left the quarry walls are a pale yellow ochre; small trees grow on the narrow ledges. On the right, the part that is still actively excavated, the steep rock face is more granite-like, striated in lighter and darker shades of grey. Anton explains the geology of the rock formations to me. I ask him what the great pile of rocks to our right would be used for. For building roads, he thinks. Dassies bask in the sun on some of these rocks. A little further on there is a heap of tyres; I wonder whether they are the same ones that were used during the Orpheus production.
Why this space appeals to me so much, I do not know. I came to watch this play with Brink during the 2007 Grahamstown festival. The performance started at dusk. The audience had to walk here in silence, escorted by a crippled dwarf who constantly urged them to walk faster. As twilight deepened, the quarry walls were shades of pale ochre and sandy white, clearly etched against the darkening sky. Birds and rock pigeons started returning to their nests in the rock face, and the fluttering shadows of bats became visible. The moon rose. The little band of spectators, the audience, followed the players on foot to different places, where different scenes were performed. We moved in deathly silence, only the sound of the gravel beneath our feet audible, with the truculent, short-tempered dwarf as escort. A strange wire structure formed the gateway to the Underworld. Burning tyres lit the way along the length of the path. Between some rocks, a man wearing only his underpants stood waist-deep in a pool of water. In a wire enclosure some distance away black children were silently doing factory work – running shoes were displayed on shoe-boxes. A man was tied to an old metal bedstead, the lighting cast his enormously enlarged shadow against the one face of the stone quarry. Magnificent. Eurydice was one of a group of women whose faces had been painted white with clay, their faces as expressionless as masks. In the myth Orpheus turns around and says a single word, thereby losing Eurydice forever. Brink had considerable reservations about the piece, but I found it moving. I had been captivated by the setting, by the mood, the gradual darkening, the shadows against the high quarry walls.
After a while Anton and I walk back. We still talk unceasingly. We talk about Brink’s birth, about her current situation. We talk about the man and woman from whom Anton is renting a room, about what it means to him to be living with these people, about the way his interaction with the man sheds light on the limitations of his relationship with his own father. Their idea of emotional closeness, says Anton, is to allow you into their interior monologue. Regardless of where you find yourself.
5.
In 2003 I watched Saartjie Baartman’s funeral on video. The funeral had occurred two years earlier, in 2001. In Paris, Saartjie’s remains had been packed in a crate so that they could be shipped back to South Africa – the plaster cast of her body (covered with a leopard skin sarong out of respect), her skeleton, and the bottled brain and genitalia, removed by Cuvier in 1815 during an autopsy shortly after her death. Once these remains arrived in Cape Town, they were placed in a coffin. For the official welcome ceremony the coffin, covered with the South African flag, was escorted by little girls (hair plaited in tight little braids) as it was wheeled into the room, while a small naval band played. On this occasion various choirs sang, groups of Griqua women delivered stirring orations, a politician made a speech, an old and eminent scientist spoke, and also a Khoisan leader – decked out in beads, with a leopard-skin kaross draped over his shoulders and head.
A select group of women had already blessed and consecrated the brain and genitalia in a private ceremony before these had been sealed in the coffin with the skeleton.
Various groups each laid claim to her remains, and eventually the Gamtoos was selected as a suitable burial place. The groups were satisfied. A large tract of land had been cordoned off along the bank of the Gamtoos River, where the Inqua, Gonaqua and Damaqua Hottentot tribes lived and roamed during the eighteenth century.
The funeral was a long drawn-out affair, broadcast on national television, like all state funerals. Among the speakers and dignitaries were royal members of the Khoisan; ministers; mayors; religious, traditional and community leaders; delegates from the National Khoi Council; representatives of the Sara Bartmann Reference Group; historians; poets.
Shortly after dawn people from the surrounding area and other parts of the country begin arriving by bus: from the Western and Northern Cape, from the Free State, from Gauteng. Loudspeakers and sound systems are installed. A bit later the dignitaries and guests of honour begin to arrive in official vehicles and helicopters. Upon their arrival, they are interviewed on television. The milling of the crowd causes dust clouds to rise up from the dry earth. The ground is a pale raw sienna; the Gamtoos a dull ochre as it flows wide and languid; low hills are visible in the distance. But the sky is as clear, as bereft of comet and portent as on the first day of creation.
At last the official proceedings can begin. On a long, narrow stage one item follows another. Young girls in short, animal print skirts perform an energetic dance to a contemporary beat. A small group of Khoisan children, in period costume, do a little dance. Older women sing and clap, the solid flesh of their breasts and arms shaking enthusiastically. The Inqua Mighty Angels, a group of young men, make exceptional shaking movements with their upper bodies while they dance. One of them blows a kudu horn – a mournful sound – some of the others play on gorras that vibrate softly and harmoniously; the drummers work themselves up to a frenzy. The stage barely supports the weight of the dancers. The crowd gets carried away; they cheer and wave their flags; the press photographers surge forward to get better shots.
Then comes wave upon wave of tributes and speeches. Female Khoisan chieftains talk, delegates from all sorts of committees talk, politicians and historians talk. The crowd’s enthusiasm begins to wane, slowly they become more and more restive. Gradually it becomes hotter, the sun burns down mercilessly on everyone’s heads. At a distance stands the coffin with the national flag draped over it, guarded by four men in uniform; every now and then the breeze lifts the flag ever so slightly.
Saartjie is addressed as ‘our grandmother, our ancient mammie of the Inqua tribe, a descendant of the first nation.’ ‘Mamma Sarah, they say, you are an international icon, a symbol of our heritage. Mamma Sarah, our ouma, you have come home and call to us, the Khoisan nation. Now your bones are with us.’ The wind whistles softly through the loudspeakers. The president addresses the nation, everyone gathered before him here today, ,and everyone at home, in front of the television. Sarah has overcome the forces of evil, she is a victory for our democracy, a powerful impetus to nation building, he says. The crowd’s attention drifts away even further. Young girls plait one another’s hair. Babies and grannies sleep in the meagre shade of umbrellas.
A small women’s choir comes on. Joy and gladness, they sing, the voice of me-lo-dy, the voice in the wil-der-ness. Various preachers come on. The main preacher wears sunglasses and a hide cloak over his suit. His text is Genesis 4:10 – Abel’s voice that cries out after Cain has slain him. This man is skilled in rhetoric. He builds his case systematically. He hears the voice of Sarah Baartman crying out. He hears the voice of Sarah Baartman crying out to the babies, the children, the daughters, the mothers, the grandmothers. He hears the voice of Sarah Baartman crying out to the abused, the wronged, the oppressed. It becomes even hotter. The earth behind the preacher becomes a harsh burnt sienna, a fitting backdrop for Mamma Sarah’s rallying cries. They echo across the flat, ochre earth, over the heads of the passive, distracted crowds, across the barren hills of the Hankey Valley. Then come prayers in Afrikaans and in Griqua (soft, explosive click sounds). The Voices of Hope sing, accompanied by a keyboard. They sway mournfully, in time with the music, clad in black skirts and white T-shirts with a picture of Mamma Sarah.
Finally the coffin is carried to the hearse. People crowd around it, singing. Incense is burnt. The hearse (Goodall & Williams) leaves, followed on foot by dignitaries. Slowly the funeral procession moves to the small hill, Sarah’s last resting place, henceforth a National Heritage Site. The crowd of onlookers stays behind. Food parcels are handed out. Everyone tucks into oranges, bread rolls and pieces of chicken while the last rites are performed on the hill – prayers and incantations; women singing shrilly in Sarah’s mother tongue. It grows cooler, large clouds begin to gather. The coffin is lowered. The air becomes a dark indigo and cobalt blue, with swathes of copper, ochre, magenta, viridian green and burnt umber. The massive clouds build up ever more threateningly. Large indigenous aloes (aloe bainesii), the bloody red-hot poker (Kniphofia) and small thorn trees are silhouetted against the dramatically darkening sky. At a distance the lamentation and wailing of women is audible. A small choir sings one more time and here Mamma Sarah’s wretched journey ends at last in triumph and exultation.
6.
I am visiting my two daughters for ten days here in Grahamstown. I attend rehearsals. (Noziswe wears a wig the colour of tarnished gold.) I buy groceries. I cook: Greek vegetable stew, bobotie, vegetable curry. One morning I drink tea with Anton, on the day of our marriage thirty four years earlier. Now we are both grey and worn, more than just frayed around the edges. I bake. One morning Brink’s eye is blood red, must be stress and worry. Feelings of desolation lie just below the surface of my consciousness; it does not take much to lay them bare. Sixty years’ worth of impressions, I think, crammed into my weary head. The little dead Bushman was different to how I had imagined he would be. I had expected him more life-like, less transformed. Transformed to dust, to stone - hardly human anymore, his skin almost indistinguishable from the leaves of the poison bulb in which he had been wrapped. I buy a second-hand copy of Waiting for Godot. ‘All the dead voices,’ says Estragon. ‘What do they say?’ asks Vladimir. ‘They talk about their lives,’ says Estragon. ‘To have lived is not enough for them,’ says Vladimir. ‘They have to talk about it,’ says Estragon. ‘To be dead is not enough for them,’ says Vladimir. Always I am busy with the dead in my work. What else is there? One morning Brink takes me to the monument to buy tickets for the festival. From the top of the hill at the monument the quarry is visible. I ask her to take a photo. I look at the ground at my feet. Grass and pebbles. The grass sways a little in the breeze. A familiar landscape, evoking countless memories.
In the town I cannot evade the poor. Each one demands my attention. Give something to one and thousands of others still remain needy. The townspeople, I notice, have learnt to avert their gaze, so as not to feel too responsible for the fate of the beggar children on the street. While I walk, I watch everyone’s faces carefully, looking for the descendents of Mamma Sarah’s people – the Inqua, the Gonaqua and the Damaqua – the first people. I am looking for the beautiful, childlike, rounded heads, broad across the cheek bone, that hint at San ancestry. I see the softer shades of brown of the local Xhosa people, the darker shades of people from other parts of Africa. I see finely bred English faces, robust Afrikaner faces, pioneer faces.
I like Grahamstown. Would I be able to live here, give up my life in sub-tropical Durban? Let my husband know that he should sell all my things, distribute them to the poor, donate them to the Salvation Army? Only my shells could be sent to me, my shells, skulls and stones – all the remains of what was once living, inhabited, had consciousness, however limited. I can make a last new beginning here. Scale down my life considerably. Keep my eye trained on the tufts of grass at my feet, the pebbles, and then allow my gaze to travel over the soft ochre geological formations of the hills in the distance, and the grasslands, winter and summer, stirred gently by the wind.
Translated by Lenelle Foster
Lenelle Foster was born in Stellenbosch in 1980. She studied languages and political science at Stellenbosch University, obtaining an MA in Afrikaans and Dutch. After a brief spell in teaching, she has been working as a language practitioner (mostly as interpreter and translator).
Podcast read by Ingrid Winterbach
