"Inside of him a boy looks up to his father
For a sign or an approvin' eye
Oh, it's funny how those once so close and now gone
Still so affect our lives"
The Crossing - Johnny Clegg
He was smiling at me with fiery eyes. I was trying to catch my breath and I was looking at his shiny, muscular body. His boxing gloves were old and torn and his teeth were shiny like diamonds. He was dancing around urging me to keep my hands up. We were warriors, hidden away in our own world of childlike innocence and imaginary landscapes. Son of a Tswana father and Sesotho mother he had a dark complexion and tall, muscular build. He could run for miles and was as strong as an Ox. Ten years older than me, Pule was my babysitter. I grew up next to the cornfields and cattle pens and he had to keep me away from tractors, trucks, combine harvesters and angry cattle while our dad's were working for my grandfather. Those were hard days and getting in the way of the old timers had serious consequences. I can not remember this as I was still very young but one day I was crawling around in the shed stuffing bright pink kernels of corn into my mouth. I guess it felt like a good idea at the time. Unbeknownst to me the pink dusting on the corn was a highly poisonous treatment that protects the crop against pests and other biological enemies once in the ground. It is deadly and I can only imagine what went through Pule's mind when he saw my face, pink with poison crawling towards him. He ran up, started digging the corn out of mouth, called for help and together with my folks they managed to rinse out the poison and save my life. Boy, did we catch a beating. Lesson learnt. We didn't grow up in the baby-proofed, cotton wool encased, over protection of today. You learned the hard way and you had to deal with the consequences.
Our relationship evolved from Pule looking after me to becoming fast friends and eventually inseparable brothers from different mothers. We boxed, hunted, trapped, fought and listened to music on the radio. We would lay there, flat on our backs beside our favourite stream and stare at the beautiful African sky. He got this old boom box radio as a gift one year and brought a tape cassette of Johnny Clegg and Savuka for me to listen to. I remember hearing the unique music, the beautiful lyrics that I couldn't even understand back then and Pule, grooving to the beat with his eyes closed. My favourite memory of him.
We got older, he got married and like so many of the young men of his generation he wanted to escape the chains of a hard drinking, abusive father and the restrictions of a disenfranchised, forgotten community where even though there were changes happening and Apartheid was something of the past, there still wasn't any opportunity to prosper and dig himself out of the hole yet. Unfortunately Pule also fell into the habit of drinking excessively. He left the farm one summer looking for work and a better life for him and his young wife. I went to The Midwest to work on a dairy farm and we never saw each other again. I got word of his passing one day when my dad called me in Wisconsin. They had found him on a Monday morning. He was trapped underneath a tractor on its side. Apparently after another drunken argument with his wife he stormed off and got on a tractor. He must have lost control and he ended up being pinned down by the tractor for a whole freezing night, coughing up blood in the Northwest dust. No one will ever know what went through his mind. What madness consumed him and what demons he faced in his last moments. He was a tortured soul but I'm sure somewhere in those last moments he thought of us, jumping into the river or hunting porcupines with our flashlights. Wild and free.
To this day thinking about Pule make the tears run freely down my face. It's impossible to control and therefore I keep myself from going there in my mind too often. It is overwhelming to know that I owe my life to him. That I owe every dream, every day on this earth, every adventure, every memory to him. I try to live a good life, to be good, empathetic and kind. I am grateful for this life I'm living. A life he never had an opportunity to experience. A life he deserved more than me. Therefore I live it the best I can. I know I escaped death at a really early age and I know it will eventually come knocking at my door again. And I hope when that day comes that I might catch a glimpse of him, bashful and young again, stomping his feet in the red dust of Tygerfontein, dancing to his favourite song.
"O siyeza, o siyeza
Sizofika webaba noma
O siyeza, o siyeza
Siyagudle lomhlaba
Siyawela lapheshaya
Lulezontaba ezimnyama
Lapha sobheka phansi
Konke ukhulupheka"
JB