Tonight, after work, I drove to Letsitele Valley with MmaDiapo and Charlie to pick up MmaDiapo's brother, Daniel. Daniel comes home on the weekends when MmaDiapo has enough money for petrol... and his weekends aren't full of a lot of downtime. This weekend he's going to a funeral on Saturday morning and one on Sunday as well. All that time in between funerals? He's still working on the house he's building in MmaDiapo's yard.. brick by brick. We were quite the roadtrip crew I tell ya. We drove to one petrol station near Metz to have someone check out the right front tire that has a slow puncture. They sent us on to a tyre place just down the road. Those guys filled the tire with air and said to come back when it got low again. We stopped at the next petrol station for petrol and while sitting at the pump SMOKE started curling all around the interior of the car. "Uh MmaDiapo, I think the car is smoking." "No no... that must be the dust reflecting in the light." "Uh, no no, I really think it's smoke, it's not going away." There was no smell and after some investigating by the station workers under the hood, it was summed up that the smoke was coming from somewhere around the tire. Yeaaaaahhhhhhhh. They said it would be fine, so we drove. I silently prayed for us to make it back to Metz in one piece. Prayed for the car to stay on the road and for us to NOT have some sort of blow out. After all the pit stops, we were running late to pick up Daniel. When we turned at the cross near Nkowankowa the sun was starting to set. Letsitele Valley is gorgeous. Orange groves on either side of the road. Papaya orchards full of row after row after row of sweet fruit. The sides of mountains have been cleared for banana plantations. This is the area of Limpopo where the Letsoalo and Phokungwane families of Metz used to live. They lived there right before the government forced them to move to the Metz area and, basically, start their lives over. It was 1958 and MmaDiapo was a young girl. She remembers the move and how long they had to live in tents while they built new homes in the area.
We drove to the end of the tar road and kept going straight on a gravel road full of potholes (please, please no blow outs!!!). We found Daniel at the farm he works on... full of orange trees and packing warehouses and headed back home a little after 6. On the way home I noticed how many funeral processions we were passing... a total of 6 when driving TO Metz... I can't report how many we saw when we were heading in the opposite direction. It's clearly Friday. It's that day of the week where you're done with the everyday work and you're ready for a rest, except a rest won't come because you have two funerals to attend over the course of the weekend.
Tomorrow a cousin in the Phokungwane family is being buried. She was 28 when she died just last week. She was HIV positive. She had gone to a sangoma (traditional healer) when she started feeling sick and he had told her that she was too sick for his help. She went to the hospital, they told her she should start on some medication, she never took the meds, and they're burying her tomorrow. Some people in Metz believe she was bewitched by her in-laws... some believe that she died because she didn't get on medication.
We discuss everything as we're heading home... the headlights just don't seem to be bright enough for how dark the night is....how many funerals are going on, Eish! Too many people dying, it's going to be a packed weekend, and Hey! We should find bananas to make bread tomorrow! Such is life in the village.
No comments:
Post a Comment