Mikoh sweeps sawdust off the brick parking lot at Bamboo as I pick up lug nuts. Their core of treads are lined with dark blue plastic and they are easy to spot: silver and blue on red brick and gold wood shavings. Gordon wears a pencil behind his ear, a blue tank top and a concentrated pose. Brother Ben has hands on his basketball shorts and hips, waiting for orders. We all are.
Gordon delivers fast and clear: item or action. I screw the lug nuts and washers onto the two ends of U-bolts, tightening with a spanner. The bolt is firm now; the plywood won’t shake on top of our cruiser’s roof rack. Today’s goal is to secure two plywood foundations of comfortable sleep. A large board on top of the car and a fitted piece inside to keep the floor flat. Gordon does the drilling and then the sawing as we finish the twelve U-bolts. Thus the roof rack will not budge or squeak as we plow over gravel and potholes. Firmness is structural integrity and safety, yes, but ultimately, sanity.
“It will drive you mad,” Gordon said, pointing to a loose U-bolt.
The job took us three hours in a drizzle that came and went like a house cat. I was grateful for the coolnes. The sun is dangerous in southern Africa. About two weeks ago, I pedalled for three hours on a cross-lagoon bicycle ride. It was muscle-tearing madness, but the wind cut the heat. The next four days saw me hobbling like a man whipped (and gave me a morbid, awesome appreciation of that cruetly). I couldn’t lie on my back, shrug my shoulders or take off a shirt for the shocks of pain across my back. I reddened, blistered, bubbled and then shed. When I laced up and ran after the pain had left, the old, empty blisters inflated with sweat and looked to my brother like giant raindrops frozen on me. They felt like reptilian scales. I have gone shirtless in the Sahara plenty, and never have I experienced such complete damage.
So the rain felt good. Mikoh, Ben and I held the plywood as Gordon wielded a circular saw and a jigsaw to whittle it to the exact dimensions of our cruiser’s trunk. Ben and I had taken out the back seats and wanted a flat bed to stretch out, fill with our equipment, and use without the hassle of lopsided arrangements. Now one of us can sleep in the back and another on the roof. Or, both of us can snuggle inside when the lions come.
Which they will, according to our friends Desrae and Mark. She is Gordon’s sister, and they have a love for the open desert, game and the wild. They’ve been stalked by lions and showed Ben and I the video to prove it.
“I am really glad you didn’t meet Mom,” Ben said over dinner, after the first lion story. We ate as us McNeils gathered more advice from their tales. Later, we were shown their extensive - and I must say meticulous - garage full of expedition materials. I felt a little like Bruce Wayne or James Bond, getting the details from Alfred or Q, respectively. Compact refrigerators sat next to stacks of black plastic boxes, air pumps, rucksacks, pots and pans, folding chairs, fishing poles, lamps and saws.
“I don’t know why we have a house,” Deserae said. “I just love it there more.”
Desrae and then Mark offered us whatever they could spare from their garage. I wasn’t expecting such kindness, such immediate and intense generosity. We thanked them deeply, profusely, as we left, promising to return on our way out of Knysna and South Africa. From Tunis to Johannesburg to Knysna to Cape Town, people have been good to me, and it has me wondering as I recount the providence of strangers.
Gordon’s mom Liz, whom we call Gran, believes we are given life to love. Which sounds basic, even biologic, but I can’t explain what I’ve seen any other way. Mark and Desrae’s generosity is indicative of how we’ve been blessed. But wait, there’s more.
I was in the final pages of Allan Folsom’s The Day After Tomorrow, greedily churning the Fourth Reich thriller, when my name was called. I was in a medical clinic in Knysna and the secretary was telling me something in Afrikaans. I thought she meant I had to approach her, so I did, until she circled her finger, wrist down. Turning around, I found the door to the doctor’s office open and a bespectacled man waiting for me.
Dr. James Norval injected a cytotoxin underneath the skin of my right thumb. I have a large, old wart on the inside of the joint, and the toxin acts like a snitch for the immune system. Inside its cocoon of dead, dry skin, the wart camoflauges itself. That is, until the cytotoxin starts shooting up the neighborhood and the body’s FBI is called. In the process of rooting out the cytotoxin, the immune stumbles upon the squatters and evicts them. Or hopefully. To help the process along, Dr. Norval reached for an aerosol bottle of lquid nitrogen and screwed on a long applicator resembling a large cotton swab. Chemical and climatic warfare should be enough, insha’Allah.
This was my second visit to the good doctor and it was free. After the quick jab, squirt and freeze, we opened up a good map of southern Africa and then Namibia. Dr. Norval is a 4x4 enthusiast, he has driven all over the region and was keen to advise me on the desert nation to the north of South Africa. Specifically, he told of the wondrous wilds of northwest Namibia: the dry riverbeds, the prides of lions, the desolation of the Skeleton Coast and the rumbling adventure of fording grim, lonely paths. I took notes as he marked up my map in pencil. Then, I asked him about assembling a medical kit. Did I need syringes? He nodded, then wrote me a prescription for antibiotics.
“I will fax this to Clicks, they’re the cheapest pharmacy in town,” he said as he scrawled the scientific names for the respiratory, epidmeral and gastric medicines Ben and I need to survive our four month odyssey. Dr. Norval also recommended testing the week-malaria medicine: it can cause depression in some but is easier than the daily pills.I left grateful, promising to return with stories.
I then pulled into CX Steel. The two ‘okes there Ben and Lionel had built our cruiser’s roof rack and were familar with and friendly towards the trip. Our broken window, shattered on their premises, need to be replaced, but Ben and I had been unable to find a cheap glass option. So I arrived wanting a metal plate over the window, aesthetic be damned (well, honestly, I thought the steel would give my stenciling career an African canvas). They both shook their heads, Lionel’s white beard on his pointed chin, Ben’s slick comb-over and relaxed, almost sleepy eyes. What I needed, they decided, was perspect.
”You don’t want to go Africa-style,” Lionel said, referring to patch work jobs, I assume, less than symmetrical. My father would call it “cracker.” Three millimeters thick and slightly flexible, we could get our surviving rear window copied in this polymer from next door, said Lionel as Ben offered to add bolts to our new roof rack. Just in case.
He returned with good news: a shop down the street had the polymer and could cut it to size for R488 in an hour. Not a bad price, seeing as a new window would cost close to R2000 and take a month. I left them, again very grateful, and made my way to the local PC Glass, a franchise glass shop. They took out the back left window and loaded it into my trunk.
I walked into Acetone Signs almost giddy, excited from found providence in strangers. The store was almost an empty warehouse with wood, glass and plastic signs scattered universally. At the reception desk sat a woman in the middle of a telephone call mostly in Afrikaans. We exchaned smiles, I sat down to discover from Folsom where the Nazis that survived the Nuremberg trials had started their secret laboratory in the Swiss Alps. When she hung up, I looked up and noticed her beauty. Thus, a little flummoxed, I told her my tale, the story of the window and what we needed done. She knew all about me from CX Steel, and began dialing the perpect cutter.
I grabbed the window from the car and brought it into the front room of the warehouse. Katris began talking, and she decided to test her skills at tracking down a 1984 Toyota Land cruiser rear window. The cutter came in, we talked, and she continued to search, in English and Afrikaans, over the phone, and all over South Africa by the sound of it. As he finished the work, she hung up for the last time and smiled again, taking off her glasses and rubbing the top of her nose. She had laugh and smile lines only on her face, tight curly hair in shades of brown and full, unadorned lips. Those parted and offered the polymer for free.
“It’s a gift,” she said. “Good luck.”
I probably mumbled something about being incredibly thankful, but I was so shocked and happy, I don’t think it was as poetic. as I had hoped. I promised to return with a good story. Hold me to it, someone.
The cruiser hit the pavement then just about road worthy. New tyres, a custom roof rack, and wood panelling custom made by Gordon and Mikoh. We packed its gills with the gifts from our friends and work: the next four months of shelter, sustenance and transportation. The entire backseat reminds me now of their generosity, kindness and friendship.
Our toolbox reminds me of its previous owner, our South African Gran. The yellow and blue jerry cans on our roof brings grateful memories of Mark and Desrae to the fore, along with two black storage boxes and our speciality cooking equipment: a South African staple of cast-iron called a poijte and a giant disc of a frying pan named skottel. We use the techniques Mikoh showed us when we light our stove and we secure our valuables with a lock riveted by our Zimbabwean friend Vincent. When we sleep on our cots, sit on our chairs and eat on our table, the parental and selflessness of Gordon and Jaynie rings strong.
We pulled away Sunday morning chock full, nothing sufficiently tied down. I hummed Old ‘55 by Tom Waits as we waved goodbye to our South African family and shifted into fourth gear. The throttle grumbled as we leapt over the speed bumps, across the tarmac, turning right at the lagoon, and headed west towards the southernmost tip of Africa.