Trainsurfer: Adventures of Jabu & Friends, #1

By Kate S Richards

A salty, gritty, exciting, heartbreaking and hopeful page-turner that leaves readers wishing for a sequel...

The day his mother dies, Jabu's instinct is to run. He runs away from the Johannesburg hospital and soon finds himself amongst a gang of train surfers on top of a hurtling train. 

After witnessing the dark side of train surfing, he continues to flee from his hopeless life, all the while searching for a place to call home. He stows away with an unexpected creature companion as he travels from Soweto to Durban, hoping to find his aunt. 

Through a series of fortuitous events, Jabu makes unexpected interracial friendships, learns to surf the waves and connects deeply with the street children called Father's boys. 

Being an orphan in apartheid South Africa in the 1980s is perilous. The police are a constant threat. 

It takes courage, loyalty and friendship to overcome the societal dangers.

On the other side of apartheid society is Billie, a gutsy tomboy. It's not that she wants to be a boy, but she yearns to be with the boys in the surf, living daringly. 

One surfer, in particular, has her attention, but their lives are all about to change as they become a part of a bigger South African story that goes beyond surfing, 80's music and escapism.

Originally conceptualised as a screenplay, Trainsurfer is bursting with cinematic-style action.

The story is one of injustice, betrayal, forgiveness, self-sacrifice and ultimately, hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kate S Richards
• Release date: Sep 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386988557

Book preview

1

A dangerous game

Jabu was furious with the world the day his Mama died. His reaction to pain was always to flee. He ran away from the weary physician, down the corridor lined with outpatients who like his mother had probably been there since daybreak. The Forgotten. His legs carried him to the taxi rank where labourers with stooped shoulders jostled to leave the city and return to the black townships before dark. He squirmed his way into a minibus, ignoring the tuts of disapproval from the queue. In the corner, sandwiched between women and men with vacant eyes, he whimpered, his shoulders shuddering.

Where am I going? he thought.

To the train station that will take me home? But it will be an empty shell without Mama. I have no place to call home and nobody left in the world. Such was his new reality. He glanced at a baby, swaddled to her rotund mother who was holding on tightly as the minibus taxi veered around a corner. She did not hold his gaze. I belong to nobody. I have nowhere to go.

---

Once the taxi stopped, Jabu wriggled his way out and ran from the driver without paying, as he didn’t have a cent to his name. He sprinted his way into the train station. He ducked under placards and dodged around protesters as they sang and did a toyi-toyi dance at yet another train workers’ strike. A commuter train was about to depart, and Jabu entered the carriage, wiping his wet cheeks with the back of his sleeve. It was bustling with boys from his township. Not friends, but familiar faces. They were chattering amongst themselves, hatching a plan. He had seen them before—the trainsurfers. No doubt they hadn’t bothered with school. Who could blame them? Nobody learned anything at Bantu schools anyway, except how to be a worker.

Quickly, she’s coming, a teenager in a red, fake leather jacket called out.

Who’s coming? asked Jabu.

The conductor you idiot. Have you got fare? Jabu’s wide eyes were the answer.

Come this way if you want a ride, he said grinning as he hoisted himself out of the window.

The boy scrambled upwards and out of sight, followed by his friends who scurried after him, whistling as they climbed. The toes of bare feet curled over windowsills, and skinny legs obscured Jabu’s view, rather like prison bars. The train pulled out of the station.

Hey, you! shouted the conductor, running down the passage of the next carriage towards them, waving her stubby arms and sweating with exertion. Without thinking, Jabu climbed on the window sill and gripped on tightly.

Quickly, climb up, hollered the boy in the red jacket, looking distressed and pointing to a mass of people on the platform. He could either climb back in to face arrest, collide with the crowd who were standing precariously close to the train, or hoist himself up. The last option seemed to choose itself, and with a surge of adrenalin he reached up and grabbed the boy’s outstretched hand. Jabu was hauled to the top of the train in one swift movement.

---

He lay on his stomach, his arms and legs spread out like a planking squirrel. The steel train was cooking in the African sun. Jabu’s nails scratched on metal as he attempted to grip the surface, the wind whistling past his ears. Above the roar of the train, he could hear whooping. Peering upwards from his inelegant position, he saw a row of boys doing what looked like a mesmerising dance across the carriages. The figures were silhouetted against the sky. They stood in line, moving in sync, first leaning to the left, then to the right, dodging current collectors and electrical paraphernalia. Then in unison, following the leader, they ducked backwards as if doing the limbo, bending from the waist down. The gang went low, then lower still, bending their knees as the deadly overhead lines sparked, inches above their heads.

They were mirroring the movements of their leader, the teenager who had lured Jabu to follow him out the window. He wore black leather pants and a once-shiny jacket. He moved like a dancer, his legs elastic as if he had no knee joints. The other boys wore their school uniforms untidily, with shirts hanging out underneath sweaters or faded blazers. The leader whistled. As if in a formation, as birds react to the flock on instinct, they jumped sideways and took a stance like wave surfers, knees bent and arms out for balance.

The horn tooted as the train slowed down at the next station. The trainsurfers lay on their stomachs to avoid being seen. They needn’t have worried as the railway was running at a threadbare staff due to the strike. A crowd of boys on the platform took advantage of this, and as the train pulled off again, they ran alongside it, whistling as they leapt on the side—hanging on perilously to any handhold they could grasp. Some of them held on with both hands as their legs continued to run along the platform, leaping on at the last minute. Then they pulled themselves up on the windowsills and gyrated to an imaginary beat.

---

Jabu was still lying on his stomach on top of the train. He hadn’t moved. He felt a ripple of excitement surging through him as he watched their antics. He heard the leader calling to him, coaxing him up.

Come on Zulu boy, show us what you’ve got, he taunted.

Hearing a Xhosa boy throw down the gauntlet was enough to raise Jabu to his feet. He emulated the surfing stance he had seen: legs wide apart, knees bent, arms stretched out for balance. At that moment the world went quiet, and he couldn’t hear the boys cheering, nor did he remember that he was an orphan, utterly alone in the world. He felt fearless, as if he could be whoever he wanted to be. His tears were dry on his cheeks, and his mind empty of sorrow.

In this mental tunnel, Jabu felt indestructible. He was jolted back to reality by the sight of a catenary mast roaring into view, and he ducked down, narrowly missing decapitation. In an instant, he was flat on his stomach, back in his planking squirrel position, aware of everything, from his pounding heart to the sight of the gang leader crouching and sidestepping across the train to reach him.

2

A cautionary tale

Y ou’ve got natural skills bro, said the leader of the trainsurfers as he clambered over to Jabu.

"Come join us for a beer at my brother’s shebeen," he said, lowering himself into the window. He gestured to Jabu who lay frozen, clinging as if glued on, as the train slowed down for the next station.

---

Half an hour later the boys stood around a pool table, drinking beer.

I’m Dumile, he said, passing Jabu a lager, but the boys call me Ice.

Jabu accepted the bottle, although he would have preferred something to eat. His stomach was gnawing a hole in his torso. He hadn’t eaten since morning. His eyes stung as he thought about his mother unwrapping the sandwiches she had packed for him as they waited in the crowded hospital passageway. She had looked like a tree in winter, wiry and dry. He was twelve years old and had never tasted beer before, but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself by declining. Sipping the bitter beer slowly, he watched the older boys as they showed off in front of the local girls.

Ice was the only one in the group who was affable. The other boys probably snubbed him because he was a Zulu and they were Xhosa. But Ice seemed to want to train him up as a sidekick. It seemed to Jabu that Ice was overlooking their tribal differences.

You’ve got radical balance. I’ve never seen a kid stand up on the train the first time and balance for so long. Usually, it’s crouching, or knees first, but you were up on your feet like a little ninja, he prattled on, laughing.

Ice had charisma. The girls and boys around him were gathered close, listening in. They were drawn to him because of his flamboyance. No-one seemed to judge him for wearing a jacket that was three sizes too big for him. If anything, the way he wore it without a care made him more approachable.

Why do you play this dangerous game? Jabu finally asked, finding his voice after a few gulps of beer.

We live to train-surf Zulu-boy, said Ice. We learn nothing at school. Let me tell you; there aren’t any jobs for us after we finish. Township life is hell, right little buddy? But when we surf, we feel alive. And the girls love us, he added, draping his arm over a winsome girl who was standing by his side.

The girl looked mournful and said she wished they wouldn’t risk their lives like this, but some of the other girls were giggling and seemed to have been taken in by the boys’ daring stunts. After their lunch money was spent on beer and the bottles drained, Ice said it was time for one last ride. It turned out that their train stop was the same as Jabu’s, so he followed them like a lost puppy to the station. His head was spinning, and while he suspected that train surfing again was not going to be a good idea, he walked beside Ice, carried forward by a strangely warm feeling at being the centre of his attention.

Ice flung his arm over Jabu’s shoulder and leaned in so close that Jabu could smell his beery breath.

You wanna be my wingman? he asked. I need someone by my side because none of these other chickens can go where I go.

He picked up a stone and threw it at a rooster, perched on a rusty shopping trolley. The fowl attempted to take off, squawking indignantly and landing clumsily in the dust.

I wanna fly, said Ice. I reckon you’ve got the skills to be my sidekick and take risks with me. You in?

Jabu felt uncomfortable with this idea. He hadn’t even figured out how he would fend for himself since becoming an orphan, but he was reluctant to risk everything for a thrill. The words of refusal wouldn’t come so he walked alongside Ice numbly, pulled along as if caught in a riptide.

One of the gang kicked sand at a hen, and the brood flew off, squawking. Another called out flirtatiously to a group of schoolgirls, who tutted in mock disapproval. A woman with swollen ankles walked with a bag of groceries on her head, looking disapprovingly at the renegades, who should have been at school. Still, no-one reprimanded them. They walked down the dusty road, past the patchwork houses. Women knelt over buckets of soapy water, scrubbing clothes which they hung on lines between the tin shacks.