The eucalyptus tree, the blue-gum from Australia, makes beautiful furniture and its oil heals, but it doesn’t make a good walking-stick. Although the tree is long-lived, ants and worms love the soft wood. It’s a thirsty tree, drinking over two hundred liters of water a day. I believe that’s what causes the wood to break so easily.
But I will never throw away my silly blue-gum stick. It has a place of honour in the shiny old milk jug where my sticks live.
In the seventies, while I’m still working as a journalist, someone new enters my life. He is Bertrand Retief, director of Afrikaans film hits such as Seun van die wildtemmer, Ses soldate, Boland, etc. Bertrand, officer in the volunteer commandos, born on a mission station in Malawi, walks in the light of his faith, looks like he plays squash all day, and smiles like a mischievous schoolboy.
“Come on, man, write me a television series,” he grins. “Let’s do stories about every facet of the army, navy, air force, everything. I have the contacts, we fly you from base to base, you do the heavy research for a few months and Bob’s your uncle, you write us a hit series. Nice and simple, no frills, Bob’s your uncle.”
Nice and simple? I am taken up in a Mirage fighter jet and somewhere over a lake in mountains the pilot decides I am going to enjoy flying upside down through the sound barrier. I throw up in his neck. It’s not Bob’s your uncle.
No frills? I am taken out of a West Coast harbour on a sea exercise with a powerful torpedo boat the navy calls a crash boat. Obviously because it doesn’t sail the ocean, it crashes into it. When we hit the wild water outside the harbour, huge waves start playing with us, tossing us up and down, drowning us while we’re still standing upright with a slippery deck under our rubber boots. My stomach is not enjoying this. The officer driving the thundering boat, gloved hands firmly on the wheel, feels it’s the right time to tell me the following joke: A hungry and cold tramp smells soup, peeks into a quiet eatery, sees a drunk apparently passed out at a table with his face in a bowl of hot soup. Tramp slips in, sits across from the drunk, grabs the soup and starts wolfing it down with a spoon. At the bottom of the bowl he discovers something so disgusting he vomits the soup back into the bowl. The drunk raises his head: “You got to the dead frog too, right?” I throw up all over the officer’s heavy coat and he’s no longer in a joke-telling mood. It’s not Bob’s your uncle at all.
Bertrand, my director, visits me at the largest helicopter base the South African Air Force has, but I’m not allowed to say where. A cowboy picks us up in their fastest chopper. Must be a cowboy because he thinks this is a rodeo. Bertrand’s smile gets bigger and bigger, otherwise he’s fine. The cowboy takes us under a bridge I wouldn’t have the nerve to attempt with my car. I throw up every now and then, but after the crash boat trip I only do it in my heart, because there it can’t make such a mess.
During the time I’m writing about, I live with my first wife and four daughters in the historical town of Heidelberg on the lovely Sugarbush Ridge, an hour’s drive south of Johannesburg. After my nationwide suffering on research trips for Bertrand’s television series, it is a great relief to visit the base of the army’s Signal Corps in my own home town. This will be easy. Signal Corps must mean it’s just troops who sit and talk with headphones. What can possibly go wrong?
A Signal Sergeant is assigned to guide me through the base. Everyone calls him Dumela. It means hello in Sotho. Dumela shows me how he talks on his radio: “HQ to all bases, HQ to all bases. Good day, goeie dag…and dumela.”
Dumela does it in English, Afrikaans and Sotho every time: “Good day, goeie dag…and dumela.” His nickname is no longer a mystery. Morning radio star Fanus Rautenbach hears about this – not from me, I strongly deny it – and for a week the whole country hears it on his radio show: “Good morning, greetings from Fanus…and dumela.”
You have to remember it was strange at the time to hear any black language on English or Afrikaans radio.
Dumela turns out to be a great tour guide, but I soon realize that it will be a struggle to write a dramatic and action-packed episode about the world of signals. It’s not just troops sitting and talking with headphones, not at all, but it’s not exactly action-packed either. Dumela must have noticed my uneasiness, because he helpfully remarks one afternoon: “At least we don’t just signal. We row too.”
He has my undivided attention.
Heidelberg sits like a tick on Blesbok River, and its water is made for canoeing. There are deep quiet pools through which a canoe can dart safely, and there is turbulent white water with rocks where a canoeist must know his story with a paddle. The canoe club of the Signal Corps know their story.
I now have my subject for the episode: signalmen doing signal work and then embarking on an adventurous canoe trip. Of course I know nothing about paddling a canoe, Dumela and the other club members have to teach me. They are quite willing, but there’s a catch: I have to buy my own canoe and join the club.
My wife fears I’m going to see my backside attempting this. I disagree. I am only thirty years old, I jog in the Sugarbush Ridge three times a week, I daily play squash against our young pastor who pretends to go blind when his ball is out, how am I going to see my ass?
I buy a canoe, Dumela and his mates teach me. There is one problem with learning to paddle a canoe: You drown often. Trying to save my life, Dumela teaches me how to do the Eskimo: if your canoe capsizes with you to one side, you paddle strongly under water to bring the canoe upright on the other side. In other words, you complete a circle with your canoe – under water mostly – and Bob’s your uncle, you just paddle on.
I’m sorry, but to me it’s not Bob’s your uncle at all. I suspect I know why the Eskimos don’t wash as much as they’d like to: It’s not just freezing cold up north, the poor things must get water-logged a lot.
Nevertheless, Dumela and company soon decide I’m ready for my first club cruise down the river. My wife almost prays out loud, she and the girls come to see me off on the bank of the Blesbok: I think my daughters primarily want to see where Papa is going to see his ass.
Dumela gives a subdued “Let’s row!” order and off we go. At first I’m not making bad progress at all. Canoe does not capsize, warm day on the water, heart at peace, you can touch yellow-finch nests hanging over the river. I didn’t know this, but there must be more mud-crabs than people in Heidelberg.
The Blesbok winds and meanders west through green cattle farms, all the way to the enormous Vaal Dam, water supply for the Greater Johannesburg area. We’re not going that far. Somewhere on this side of the dam, on a farm called Something-or-other Fontein, army troops with lorries and food will be waiting for us and our canoes.
I keep at the centre of the group of rowers whenever possible, it feels safer there. In a few rocky places the current accelerates, but not frighteningly fast. I find the experience breath-taking. I’m really enjoying this, it’s easy.
And then, around a long narrow bend, the current suddenly speeds up. Loudly. I hear it speeding up. The Blesbok River is angry with us.
Dumela and the other club members reduce speed with their paddles, drift to the river bank. I try to do the same, but the current grabs my canoe and refuses to let go. It feels as if my urgent paddling makes the canoe shoot faster downstream. In passing, I heard Dumela shout in distress: “Potash! Potash!”
What the hell does he mean by potash? I’m sure I’m hearing wrong, because what does my current situation have to do with the white powder my farmer father uses for fertilizing?
The river stops winding, becomes a long, straight and totally insane water slide. I don’t know for how far exactly, my brain is shutting down. When I see sharp rocks foaming white up ahead and heard the ominous roar of a waterfall, my brain kicks on again: Not potash, monkey. Portage, the French pronunciation. Portage which means pick up your fucking canoe and carry it around the white water or you’re going to see your ass.
I’m here to tell you I did see it.
No matter how easy someone like Indiana Jones makes it look, going over any waterfall is not Bob’s your uncle. Not only does my canoe break in half, my left ankle goes too and it hurts.
The wreckage of the canoe sinks into the brown river, and the paddle happily bobs away, probably all the way to the Vaal Dam.
I crawl through mud, frogs and crabs to a bank full of beautiful white flowering plants and from which Hadada birds leap into the air when they see me, calling me all kinds of names as they fly away. I curse Dumela and his canoe club, and myself. The way my ankle feels at this moment, I’m probably going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.
Beyond the white flowers, if you’re crawling, it takes at least fifteen minutes to get to a blue-gum wood. In the shade of the wood it looks the way it always looks under blue-gums: a scrapyard of dead branches, brown leaves, strips of bark. I am aware crawling things, like myself, but it’s cool in the shade. Should I just lie here and wait? Are they going to come looking for me? I’m not sure about a mission to rescue my stupid behind. I basically flew downriver after I last saw Dumela and company, and for a flying canoe the distance could be several kays.
The air reeks of eucalyptus. At least I won’t get the sniffles here.
My ankle is swelling before my eyes, and I’m starting to itch. Too many crawlers around me and under me, some of them are spiders, hairy worms and scorpions. It’s time I tried to to rescue myself. There must be a farmhouse somewhere around here, hopefully the farmer has a telephone. I am, of course, writing about a time before the cell phone came into being.
I need support for my ankle. I start looking in the eucalyptus scrapyard. God give me a branch, a stick, anything. Finally I discover a tree branch slender yet sturdy, and not too long. Small twigs grow from it, I break them off easily and Bob’s your uncle, with my silly-looking stick I can get on with it as a hobbler.
It takes me about an hour of hobbling to reach the farmhouse. I’m drenched with sweat now, not river water anymore, my ankle and the hot sun make my head hurt. The farmer’s out, the farmer’s wife is sweet. She lets me use their telephone.
End of story, basically. My wife came to get me. Cornelia, a lovely and kind brunette, my first wife. At least she did not refer to the canoe adventure in the divorce court.
I wrote the television series over a period of six months and Bertrand Retief made it beautifully. The title was Opdrag in Afrikaans, Assignment in English, don’t ask me what it was in Sotho. It turned two of the main actors and one supporting player into bona fide stars.
The supporting player, Gavin van den Bergh, was the young actor who played the canoeist in the Signal Corps episode.
I still have the blue-gum stick. I won’t call it pretty, the wood is knobbly and split in places, but I will never get rid my silly stick. It was there, sleeping under dead leaves in a blue-gum scrapyard, when my throbbing ankle needed it.