It's Life

By Luc Iver de Vil

Various short stories, humoristic, sometimes sad and controversial thoughts of the experiences of an old man that can now only live a life on his memories. This includes recollections of people he knew, things he has done and many of life's twists and turns.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Luc Iver de Vil
• Release date: Jun 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227377814

Luc Iver de Vil

Apparently I was born in a mining village in the old Western Transvaal, South Africa, but my memory does not want to stretch that far back. My dad got into some kind of political trouble, so he moved his family to South West Africa, now Namibia. I had a great childhood in that country, which then was still wild and uncivilized, doing an incredible amount of travelling. Although I did attend school from time to time, most my education I received from my dad while in a Land Rover, or on foot, in the Namib desert or in the bush. When we eventually moved back to South Africa, never staying in the same place very long, I had to attend school full time, What a bore, and if I add up correctly, I actually attended 8 different schools in my life. My dad did settle down and became a farmer, and I was sent to university to further my education, after I did a stint in the SA Navy for my National Service, I quickly learned that to make it in society you have to "Yes and Amen" all those in authority appointed over you, like "cut your hair", "wear a tie and jacket" and "Go to Church". This awoke the family trait of rebelliousness in me, and I got expelled. I started working, first for an international company that built Power Stations, and then one that made and sold computers. This was not for me, so I obtained my Professional Hunting license, and I was off on living my life. Done many things since then, news reporting, construction, smuggling, and even ran a pub among other forms of employment. Went through one marriage, a number of engagements and a list of girlfriends. Have now settled down, farming, like my dad, happily married to a delightful Indian girl, have a beautiful daughter, enjoy writing down my memories and taking my family to the far-off places I had been.

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FOREWORD

Every person's life is filled with experiences; some that lift you high, other's that throw you to the ground, hard. Then there are the people you meet along the way, some you love and take a stroll with, other you hate and show them your heels.

In this effort I try and relate some of those experiences, and to remember some of those people, a great thank you to them for coming into my existence.

Thank You to my friends for checking my spelling and use of the complicated English language, and to my wife and daughter, thank you for allowing me the time to remember.

And to those who bother to read this, much appreciated!

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Life Experience; Yesterdays lessons are what Tomorrow’s tests are based on.

STRIPES, THE KUDU BULL

We lived on a smallholding, just outside a town large enough to justify one junior magistrate and two traffic cops.

On the plot we kept a cow, with her calf, to provide milk for the house, two goats, to keep the roses and garden in the fashionable state of neglect, four dogs, to exercise the goats, three cats, for entertaining rats and keeping the dogs fit, as well as a few chickens to contribute to breakfast, and wake us up early enough to get to school on time.

Dad was a marketing agent for a number of farmers, visiting them often to explain the vagaries of the market and the resultant low prices they received for their produce. 

One day he came home earlier than normal, called us together and told us that he had brought us a present, and to look on the back of his pick-up truck.

There it was, a tiny kudu bull calf, hardly ten days old, to be named Stripes for the markings on his back.

The little bull had been found by a farmer, orphaned, its mother most properly been shot by a poacher. The farmer didn’t know what to do with this baby, and offered the little thing to dad. As my father had lots of trust in mom’s abilities, including to rear babies, as proof there are my sisters and me, he accepted this gift.

My mother, to justify dad’s faith, immediately went into cow mode, had the old man go and pull the last drop of milk out of Daisy’s udder, poured it into a bottle, fitted a teat she found in her For Animals only cupboard, and fed the orphan.  Old blankets were found and a cozy bed was made for Stripes in the kitchen, where he would spend every night for the next few months.

This sleeping in the kitchen might not have been the greatest of mom’s ideas. As Stripes grew bigger, he started claiming the kitchen as his territory. Once he was big enough to sleep with Daisy in her stable, he was banished from the house. Stripes did not take kindly to this arrangement, and every opportunity he got, or could create, he was in the kitchen. As he grew larger and larger, started developing horns that grew longer and longer, the kitchen represented a bombed out war zone after each of his visits.

The goats resented Stripes; as he grew bigger he took possession of the rose garden, and would not allow a goat near his tasty snacks - he seemed to like the yellow and red buds best. Mom gave up on gardening altogether, saying that dad, the animals and we kids gave her enough work, and she was not going to run a delicatessen for the benefit of Stripes, and the goats, too.

Stripes was a very sociable animal, just loved the attention of people, and hung around the family, and any visiting friends, in the evenings for sundowners on the lawn. He developed a taste for beer, and joined the grownups in downing his evening cap too. I am sure his hanging head some mornings was due to too many beers the evening before.

Early in the mornings, and late in the afternoons, he joined mom on her more or less one mile trot down the road, for the benefit of mom's scale in the bathroom, so she said.

When we came home from school Stripes used to stand by the gate and wait for us to get off the bus. Once the bus had moved on, he would jump the fence, run in small circles around us, shake his horns and wag his tail. Mom used to stand by the kitchen door to watch this welcoming celebration, and soon started packing a carrot into each of our bags, so we can give them to Stripes as presents when he welcomed us home.

After us having done our homework, it was playtime. We ran with Stripes, and the dogs, all over our property, and that of the neighbours too. To supplement Stripes diet of leaves and roses, we fed him apples, tomatoes and carrots. We tried our best to teach him to show appreciation by bending his forelegs, and nodding his head. We could not have been the best of teachers, or Stripes not a good student, for he seemed to forget his lessons within a day.

During the rutting season, in his third year on the plot, Stripes started disappearing. At first it was just for the day, with him being back early evening for his bottle of beer. Then it became two days, even three, on a few occasions. To calm us kid’s worries; dad explained that Stripes was visiting Kudu pubs to pick up a bit of fluff. Totally clueless, we nodded knowingly.

Then Stripes did not come home, not after the third day, fourth or fifth day. Stripes just never came home again, not to wreck the kitchen, not to drink a beer, or to chase the goats around the remains of the rose bushes. Our home became a place of sorrow, with tears putting us to sleep every night. Mom no longer had to wake us up in the mornings when the roosters failed in their only duty; we were out by Daisy's stable early to check if Stripes might have come home during the night.

Dad tried to ease our minds by telling us that Stripes had found a wife, and was now married with children that he had to take care of. On the question as to why he did not bring his family home to live on the plot, Dad explained that the wife did not know people, and was afraid. The explanation did sooth a bit, but was not totally believed.

One Saturday, early evening, the town's magistrate, his overdressed wife and spoiled children came over for drinks and a braai. The magistrate had the cheek to pull his chair into the space where Stripes usually stood to have his beer.

We children were playing touches on the lawn, but I kept half an ear on the conversation between the magistrate and my dad. They were discussing hunting, as to who had killed the biggest, the longest horned, the heaviest and the most dangerous, the one trying to outdo the other with their imagined experiences.

Then the magistrate said: A strange thing happened to me the other day, a short distance from here I came across the fattest kudu bull I had ever seen. What was weird was that it did not run away, it actually approached me. I got a clean head shot. It made the most beautiful biltong ever. You must come around to our place and get some.

Dad never went to fetch some of that biltong, and I knew: It was Stripes hanging in strips on the magistrate’s stoep.

CHARGE OF THE HOBO BRIGADE

My Swiss friend, Peppy Eshbach, and I worked for the same company with its offices in the city center of Johannesburg. We both lived in the suburb of high-rise apartment blocks, Hillbrow, about 4 kilometers away.

If you traveled to work by car the trip could take anything from 30 minutes to an hour, depending on traffic conditions. On top of that you had to pay for parking in a public parking garage, which was rather expensive. Alternatively you could catch a bus, which was overcrowded, and it also took 30 minutes to an hour to get to town, leaving you with a five block walk to the office from the bus terminus.

So we sauntered the four kilometers to work every morning, and home again in the afternoon, taking a shortcut through Johannesburg Central Railway Station. We enjoyed the stroll, as there were many young girls also walking, covered in tight jeans or miniskirts. This gave us lots of pleasure comparing, and appreciating, the shape and forms of girl's backsides and legs. When the wind blew, the miniskirts gave us much more to feast our eyes upon, and rain made a lot of dress materials transparent. Then there were four watering holes on our route too, the journey home in the afternoon could become a pub crawl. This was fun in itself. On occasion we convinced some of the mini-skirted girls to join us for a drink, preferring wine to our beer.

One day, while walking home, at the entrance to the railway station, we were confronted by two homeless beggars, asking for money to buy bread. In those days the unemployment rate in South Africa was nonexistent, any person who did not have a job actually did not want to work! We pointed this fact out to the hobo’s, and questioned why we should give our hard earned cash to them, without them earning it. It was then agreed that they would earn our contribution to their methylated spirits, which they referred to as milk, or their little bag of pot, called bread, by piggy-backing us to the nearest saloon, one block away.

This bar was in the President Hotel, the only Five Star hotel in Johannesburg then. So Peppi and I set off on our quest, The President Hotel Ladies Bar, not too firmly mounted on our Hobo steeds.

This landed us in some serious trouble.

We were unaware that Dr. Hastings Banda, president of the Republic of Malawi, was in the city on an official visit to John Vorster, prime minister of the Republic of South Africa. What we also did not know was that Dr. Banda and his entourage was residing in the President Hotel for the duration of his visit. As our luck would have it, Dr. Banda and his group of guards and assistants were about to leave the hotel, for an official dinner with Mr. Vorster. When our, by then exhausted, ponies galloped into the hotel foyer, with us more hanging on than seated in the saddles, we ran into a crowd of pressmen, photographers and, unfortunately, a brigade of South African policemen there to protect Dr. Banda from any potential assassin.

While the photographers were knocking each other over to get pictures of our cavalry charge, the police made haste in arresting us. All four of us spent the night sleeping in a cell at the notorious Johannesburg police station, John Vorster Square, named after the Prime Minister in the days when he was the minister of police. It was not a very pleasant night of rest, our fellow inmates were noisy, snoring and farting, and our noses confirmed our chargers hadn’t had a bath or seen a currycomb for a considerable period of time.

The next morning we appeared in front of a magistrate, charged with ‘Disturbing the Peace’ and ‘Disorderly Conduct’. We obviously pleaded not guilty, pointing out to the court that there was no peace in the hotel lobby at the time, not with all the policemen, picture takers and journalists stampeding and crushing each other. To this the magistrate agreed, apparently he had also witnessed a crowd of pressmen together at some stage in his life, and confirmed that such a gathering could not be described as peaceful. On the second charge of being disorderly the magistrate was not in agreement that our mounted approach to the Ladies Bar was normal behavior, and found us guilty as charged.

Then the magistrate questioned the prosecutor, with a huge smile on his face, as to why Peppi and I were not also charged with being cruel to animals? From the evidence heard and from what he could see in the offenders box, he, the magistrate, had gathered that our ‘horses’ were ‘exhausted to death’, and had not seen a currycomb in ages when they came gallop-stumbling into the foyer of the President hotel.

The prosecutor still had a dumbfounded expression on his face when the magistrate fined us a token amount for our transgression of the laws on orderliness. Our stallions were found not guilty, as they were under the control of their riders, the judgment read, and thus had no choice on being 'orderly' or not. We all were then permitted to go.

After paying the Hobos for services rendered, and being thanked for providing them with a warm stable and some free food for the night, Peppy and I had to walk back to work.

Our explanation as to why we were rather late for work and still in the previous day's clothes, now crumbled and dirty, was met with hoots of laughter. Stupid people!

GOING ON HONEYMOON

My first father-in-law was a generous man, and he showed his appreciation for me taking his daughter out of his beard, and out of his home, in a very tangible manner: he fully paid for a ten day honeymoon on the island of Mauritius; luxury hotel, car rental, pocket money and flights included.

It was 1976, when South Africans of a lighter skin tone were considered non-gratia on planet Earth.

This marriage thing didn’t start off well. Firstly, I had to replace my best friend with my strongest, to keep me upright in front of the pulpit due to an overindulging bachelor's party the night before, and to stem my argumentative nature when canned, while yes-sing and I do-ing for the preacher.

At the after-the-fact party we all got tanked up even more! Somehow my new mother-in-law got her daughter and me into the hotel near the airport, from where we would catch a taxi to the Airline terminal the next morning for our flight to Mauritius. After battling to remove the tight wedding dress over my new wife’s compressed bulges, we decided to delay the traditional first night's experimentations till we had reached Mauritius, and we both passed out.

Getting to the airport, through customs and checked onto the aircraft, was not too much trouble, maybe we just didn’t notice as both our minds were hanging over a bit.

At that stage of my life I had had very little experience of aircraft and flying, but despite this virginity of flight I became apprehensive once we started walking across the tarmac to the plane which was going to take us into bliss. Firstly, we were supposed to be flying ‘Air Mauritius’, but the faded and peeling lettering on the plane indistinctly read ‘Air Madagascar’. An airhostess later explained in Creolic English that it was a former ‘Air Madagascar’ craft, on lease to ‘Air Mauritius’. I was also convinced that I had noticed huge puddles of oil under the engines, from leaks I presumed, and the patches on the tyres would have made any traffic cop look forward to a huge Xmas bonus.

We were pointed to our seats, roped in, and waited for departure.

With clouds of white smoke, seven coughs and a grunt the tired motors started pushing us down the runway. I am sure if I was fit enough to run the same distance I would also have taken off at the end of the runway. We scraped the trees on the perimeter of the airport, just missed a couple of high-rise office blocks and were on our way.

The aircraft hopped, skipped and jumped from cloud to cloud, and I needed a drink. On ordering from the hostess I was firmly told that no alcohol will be served on the flight, but we could have coffee if we wished.

So we duly ordered two cups, and mine I received with ease. But as my new wife was about to take her cup, the plane jumped from a high cloud to a lower one, and the hot coffee was spilled over her chest. Except for her discomfort and pain, the resultant red breast delayed my exploration of that part of her body, while on honeymoon, for at least a week.

Then an announcement in an unknown version of English, but I deciphered the words refuel and Maputo. Shocking, why would a plane of that size need to refuel so soon after takeoff, and then tackle the long journey across the Indian Ocean to Mauritius? Maybe the fuel price in Maputo was lower than in Johannesburg, and judging by the condition of the aircraft Air Mauritius had to save money in any way possible?

Not to worry, I knew Maputo from the days it was Lorenzo Marques, not a bad place for a stopover, remembering the bikini girls on the white sanded beeches.

I was in for a shock. As we approached the Maputo Airport the announcement came: All passengers with passports other than South African may alight for the refueling, all South African passport holders are to remain on the aircraft.

As we hit the runway in balls of smoke from the tyres, I noticed through the porthole that the plane was being escorted on the ground by a large number of dilapidated military vehicles, jeeps and armored cars, with machine guns and cannons pointed at the aircraft. Once the aircraft had come to a halt it was surrounded by the military whose vehicles had not broken down during the drive down the runway, obviously ready for any eventuality. This made us very apprehensive: Did we land in the middle of another African coup-de-tat? Apparently not, it was normal procedure when any South Africans were aboard an aircraft, we were told by the few passengers that had experience in stop-overs at Maputo. Did the Mozambicans really think that a score or so of hung-over honeymooners and a few ‘let's-find-our-youth-again' middle-agers would attempt to invade their country for the bananas smuggled across the border from Natal? Be that as it may.

When an aircraft is refueling no engines are allowed to run, so, we had no lights and no air conditioning! There we sat on knobby seats for four hours, two dozen or so South Africans in a dark, and hot, aircraft while the ground crew was siphoning fuel from 200 liter drums into the aircraft's tanks. Stolen fuel sold on the cheap? Nor could we get anything to drink, the airhostesses did not have South African passports, and spent their time sightseeing the ruins of Maputo.

The toilets were also out of bounds, the Mozambicans did not want anything originating in South Africa lying on the runway of their airport to dry, for it could cause an international stink.

Eventually our fellow passengers, and some of the crew, returned to the craft, and we wing-flapped back into the air, heading more or less east over the blue-green white crested Indian Ocean. After a few hours another announcement; we will be landing at Tenerife, Madagascar, for refueling. Didn’t the black-marketers in Maputo have enough drums?  All South Africans then had tears in their eyes when again told to remain behind while all others would be allowed to walk down the gangway.

It wasn’t all that bad, once our fellow travelers were on terra firma, we were allowed to follow. Only thing was we had to report to two tables which had been set up by officials at the bottom of the steps. Strange, how all government officials across the world, regardless the country, are on a go-slow, look and sound the same, and engage in the labour practice of Go-slow.

At the tables we had to hand over our passports, and Five dollars American each, about R2 at the then rate of exchange. There were two exceptions, young Indian honeymooners from Durban who were allowed to pass, without having to pay Five dollars American.

In return for our Five dollars American we each received an official Madagascar dog license, to be pinned on our shirts for the duration of our short visit. After purchasing our licenses, we were allowed to enter the in-transit lounge where we were not subjected to any further degrading. Our passports were returned on re-boarding.

Refueling did not take too long, here a motorized tanker with a pump was used, and after two or three downed whiskeys we were back flapping our way towards our honeymoon, without any further incident.

I seemed to be the only one shaken by the landing as flying too close to the waves in the ocean was nerve wrecking, in my opinion, but even my wife seemed totally relaxed about it. It must have been my limited experience of flying.

Getting to the hotel from the airport was another education as the driver of the mini-bus had to weave between heaps of sand, piles of bricks and the builders themselves at a rate that would have made Stirling Moss proud. Because of lack of space the roads were used as mixing surfaces and storage locations for building materials.

Never in my life have I appreciated a glass of champagne as much as the one handed to us by a young lady, with a welcoming smile, as we stepped through the doors of the beautiful hotel.

GHOST TOWN GHOSTS

As inspector of mines I worked for the government, and thus had plenty of time on my hands, with a state owned Land Rover thrown in. My time was occupied by fishing in the Atlantic, hunting in Koakoland, in the northern parts of the then South West Africa, now Namibia, prospecting in the desert and the occasional inspection of a small mine.

The instruction came from Windhoek; some important businessman was coming from a Johannesburg Mining House to look around with his eye on the possibility of investing in mining ventures in the country.

I thought I did the job well, I showed him how to fish in the sea with confiscated dynamite, how to poach Springbok on the reserve and how to find semiprecious stones in the desert. But ‘The Man’ was not happy; he wanted to see what could be mined in the pristine desert, the oldest on earth with its unique self-evolved fauna and flora.

There and then I decided to show him what mining in the desert was really like; I would show him Kolmanskop, and pointed the Land Rover south.

Kolmanskop is an old diamond mining town, I explained, which had been reclaimed by the desert. On his question as to why the town had become deserted, I replied: It was the ghosts! He laughed at me, and said there are no such things as ghosts.

That is when the plan was hatched in my head, and I slowed down to ensure we got to our destination in the late afternoon, aiming the wheels of the vehicle at potholes and stones on the road, to shake him up and to tire him out.

After walking around the hardly damaged buildings, though the wind had half-filled all the rooms with sand, I threw out the bait: Normally I would say we camp in one of those rooms, but the ghosts, you know, let us pitch our tent a distance away.

He fell for it: There are no such things as ghosts; we shall sleep in one of those rooms!

Not showing my excitement, I had the man grill us a steak on the gas cooker while I prepared our bedroom, smoothing the sand as much as I could with a small spade and putting out the stretchers.

On the Land Rover was my fishing rod. Without being observed I pulled off a length of nylon line, which I cut in two. The end of the one I tied to three empty beer cans, each with a few pebbles in it, and hung them from a rafter in an adjoining room, ran the nylon over the wall and attached the loose end to the side of my stretcher. The second line I hooked to ‘The Man’s’ blankets and tied it to the other side of my bed. I covered both lines with sand so that they could not be seen.

We then had our meal, gas grilled steak and canned beans, with a few beers for me and a couple of whiskeys for him. We chatted for a while