IT was an icy winter day and I walked through the park, my small hand held tightly by my father’s. The Midwestern wind bit at my cheeks, the only part of me not covered by layers of snowsuit or knitted hat and mittens. We’ve come to check the river. It’s been cold, “Cold enough to freeze it up” my father reckoned. It would be the first time in years and he wanted to see if his prophecy was correct. Already, near the swings, still not yet close enough to see the river, I could hear the water running and knew he was wrong.
As we came over the small hill and headed down to the water’s edge I spotted a group of people down river, bundled up in coats, hunkered down on small stools, fishing in the fast flowing river.
“Who’s that Daddy?”
“Them’s the black folks, from Lake Ivanhoe.”
I looked closer. I was shocked. I’d never seen black people before except on TV. I didn’t know that they lived anywhere near our small rural community. They seemed to be a group of men at first, but on second glance I realised two were boys, maybe my age or a bit older. They threw poles in and out of the river. The taller boy dipped a bucket in the water. I wondered where they went to school? How they’d hidden from me for so many years? I wanted to get closer, touch their dark skin, their curly hair. I stared without any pretense of manners. The boy at the water saw me and stood up, he turned his body towards me and stared back. I looked away, ashamed.
I gazed up at my father. “What they gonna do with the fish they catch?”
“Eat ‘em I guess.”
The summer before, at the park with my cousin, I’d caught a fish in the river myself. After bringing it home with pride, I ended up giving it to Snowball, our cat, after my father told me it would kill us dead from all the toxins if we ate it. “ I thought you said the fish in here are all polluted.”
“Ah, black folks don’t mind things like that. They’re different than us, “ my father said. He reached down and grabbed up my hand again. “Let’s go , we’ll catch the death of cold.”
I sit in the combi. It is scorchingly hot. A trickle of sweat slides down my back. I open the window and look out at the crystal clear, unbelievably blue sky and the hot breeze blows against my upturned face. I am in Botswana. For two years I will live here and teach science to junior secondary school students. I look around at the passing bush- thorny acacia trees and scraggly moretlwa bushes spread out among patches of dry grass. Cattle and goats roam freely finding whatever they can to survive. Tidy compounds of round, thatched, mud houses with swept yards bounded by decorated lolwapa walls fly past as the combi takes me to what will be my new home.
I’m happily surprised to find that I will be living in a modern teacher’s house inside the school compound. After unpacking, I decide to take a walk through the dusty lanes of the small village to look for a shop to buy a few things.
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