All The Kings Horse’s

There comes a time when you take a good hard look at your life and decide that you can do better. One such time was last Saturday before the braai that evening for my birthday. Nothing motivates me to get the house clean than the prospect of multiple visitors on their way to make a mess of your home with chicken left overs and disposable cups.

Not that I would otherwise be content in absolute squalor at this point in time, for I have to keep up with a fastidious girlfriend. Already that morning I had had to get hired help in the garden to keep up with my girlfriends cleaning at the crack of dawn. But apart from the pitch battles of house chores with the girlfriend (She says “Baby, did you take out the garbage” to which i reply “No, but I just washed the dishes” to which she says “Ja, but I cooked the dinner, did the shopping and replaced the light bulbs”) there is the need for me to assert my presence in this house.

For a start, I could not bear to have those bookish and socially progressive friends of mine from university find that I am living off the generosity of my girlfriend whose work ethic and property is the bounty of generations of underprivileged working mothers. No! They must instead think that we are instead partners, and that while I may come across as a dilettante at the university, I am actually a supportive and understanding partner to a genuine contributing member of the that very real dog-eat-dog world. They must not find my clothes stuffed in a travelling bag in the corner of the room, but instead  folded and stacked in cupboards and drawers alongside those of the one with gainful employment. They must not find my books sprawled across the bed in the spare room but instead stacked alphabetically in the living room alongside the girlfriend’s DVDs for all to admire. They should find a peaceful kingdom with two subjects living as equals with the paraphernalia to show it.

So then, my girlfriend and I took it upon ourselves to rearrange and organise the house. In this task I found within my self some resolve and a sense of wisdom. As an outsider I could claim great insights about the configurations of furniture and the distribution of light. “The bed should go here because when you wake up in the morning, what you want is to do this and see that” I commanded while pointing. “The dressing table should be here”, “Your mothers TV should go to the garage”,”Lets bring yours sister’s drawers into our room since she is in London all year anyway” and so on. But there was real work in this. It involved dusting, packing and re-packing, carrying, folding, tucking and quite a bit of arguing. Just as well Tobre had a visitor else I never would have been able to have things my way while she entertained the guest with chit-chat about the office over tea.

And you know, I think some good came out of it all. We were both so pleased with ourselves. There seemed more space in the two bedrooms. Bedside tables and a chest of drawers for each of us. My books stacked nicely in the display cabinet for all to see. They say a change is a holiday and we had all the excitement of the outward bound journey. Where were all the guests I wondered, they must see it. They must see the open plan kitchen, the french doors, the wooden floors and they must see that I am in the centre of all of this. Where were they all as it was six o-clock already, the scheduled time for those over educated friends to arrive. But just then, Tobre disappeared to neighbours to give thanks for a favor passed. Marooned in the neat and clean house, I soon followed her.

Out the front of the house I went, through the still quite messy garden (I must have a word with that Gift), through our as yet unfinished boundary fence and out onto the municipal grass by the roadside and then up to a large arch holding a black galvanised iron gate, complete with intercom. Buzzed in I went passed a very shiny black car and came to an imposing hardwood studded door as wide as a piano that swung open as I approached. And there on a sprawling leather sofa was my girlfriend in the throws of laughter with the neighbour, Shamima. This room, the Landing, with its large square tiles and cool pastel grey walls opened where a large window opened to brilliant green foliage from the yard.

“We were just talking about you” said Shamima, a little exhausted from the laugther.

“I am sure you were, you are laughing after all” I said.

“No man! We were just talking about you and that garden of yours in the front” she said.

“Oh that. Well…I am not finished” I replied.

“Oh don’t worry about it Jumani, I know. Our garden was terrible for a long time with all the builders causing such a mess” she said.

“Well it looks fine now” Tobre said.”The house I mean, not the garden, there is not much garden left now that your house goes right to the front gate” she continued. Then Tobre said to me “This house is huge, have you seen the rest of the house?”

“No” I replied.

“You haven’t seen it? Haven’t you been here before?” asked Shamima.

“Why no, you have never invited me”.

“Oh don’t talk crap man. Come, come see…..oh get up and come see you silly boy”

“I was just enjoying the feel of this wonderful couch. I’m coming” I said and joined them through the next door into the centre of the house.

There we saw such magnificent splendor like I had never seen. As Shamima marched up and down pointing at this and that we saw the resplendent and shiny ochre orange varnished and waxed wood floor (the same wood our house next door but incomparable) More leather furniture. A huge flat screen TV. A large dark wood dinning table. A row of bedrooms each with a TV and built-in cupboards. And through one of the doors in the cupboard in each room is a concealed bathroom with toilet and shower (which compares well with out single bathroom). Large french doors opening to a swimming pool past a stoep with a built in braai unit. In the largest room was a dark wood sleigh bed with two beside tables to match. Shamima described it all in a matter of fact way but the wind in my chest was gone. There was not a hint space wastage with over sized rooms and neither was there cluttered furniture. All was neat, colour coordinated and well lit. “It is like going from a [informal settlement] khayelitsha to the 12 Apostles [hotel]” Tobre remarked.

“Come visit anytime” Shamima beamed with a smile as she let us out through the archway with a click on the intercom. “Your always welcome”

“Careful what you offer” I said in response.

We got back to our door before Tobre said “Well baby, at least our clothes are folded”.

A Gift Horse

Morning came. I was alone in bed. Where could she be I wondered? I heard the sound of crockery scrapping and water splashing. She is doing dishes, already! This will mean that I have to tidy up the house then, else it will seem as if she has done all the chores and I will just be the lazy boyfriend who lies in bed until way after the sun has come up just a week after I have moved in only. So then I pull myself out the bed only to find that the computer has been tidied away and so have my clothes, books and shoes. Damn!

But alas, the front yard is a right mess. The weeds have taken over from the last half hearted attempt at gardening 6 months ago, the herbs are parched and there is paper and plastic lying about, blown in from the street. It could take all day to sort out the front yard. But that is exactly what I need. An insurmountable task to which I can martar myself. Just a few months ago, however, me simply squating to remove a weed would earn me heaps of praise, for then I could be the boyfriend who sometimes helps out in the yard (wow!). But now that I live here, simply pulling out a weed will not do. More is expected. I need to make an impact. In fact, what is needed is systematic garden reform, if not a whole horticultural revolution.

And so, right then and there, in my boxers and t-shirt, to the background sound of crockery splashing in soapy water, I began to pull weeds out the soil. A most satisfactory task, I must say. I simply hold the leaves and stalk of the weed at the base and tug whence the plant gives and out comes a length of root as long as the weed was tall. Not the same in my home country. There, you can’t pull a weed out for beer or money. I would sooner yank out copper ore, as some people continue to do to this day. But still, with all this pulling of weeds out my girlfriends front yard, I was not making much of an impression as a whole. You see, I was want to pull out the most outlandishly brazen and haughty of weeds first. By this I mean my eye would catch the sight of a coterie of tall and well  formed weeds and I’ll be determined to yank them all out. But before I would be halfway through with that patch would I see another insurrection of weeds over my shoulder and proceed to them to yank them out. And so on I went, in circles about the garden, without actually getting much done. This besides the raking, sweeping and watering to be done.

An hour later, as I began to flounder at the enormity of the task came Gift. A small man with the body of a boy except for his beard. “Boss, have you got any small job for me”. In my boxers and t-shirt, I quickly put on my I-am-sorry-I-have-no-money-or-job-for-you face. But then his gaze turned to take in the spectacle around me. A sparcle came to his eye. “I can do this garden for you nice boss. I remove the leaves and weeds, move the flowers, put the grass, make the whole thing nice for you boss”. Sweat streaming down my face and the garden faring no better after an hours work I relented. “How much do you want for it?” I replied.

And so it was then that the girlfriend returned from some errand in her shiny car to find that I had hired a man to do my chores for me. She was kind and said “I was just thinking the same thing”. I still had a card to play, however. I made a full English breakfast, with frieds eggs, bacon and all. But then as we ate there was Gift sweating in the sun in full view to us through the window. So I had to make breakfast for him too.

Naked Determination

It is a new year. A lot of new things for me in this new year. A new office at work (same size, same view but more cluttered). A new global emperor. And a new house! Well…I have moved into my girlfriends house, so also a whole new world of things to fight about. In fact, the very act of moving in prompted a little fight. I say little because I expect bigger things in life, fights included.

So I move in, and by this I mean I take all my clothes, books and electronic gadgets out of her car and dump them on her kitchen floor, just through the front door. And there it all sat for days, festering a wound in my dear baby’s patience. I was too overcome by triumph to move it any further at all since it took such conviction and fortitude of mind to get it as far as that. It is like when you do the shopping for the month – which is a small palace coup in my world – and you can’t find the strength in you to pack it away into all the cupboards because you think you have come far enough anyway because the food is – at the end of the day (as they say on South African talk radio) – in the kitchen after all.

But then came Happy, who spelt trouble for me and my intransigence. Due on the Monday morning, this qualified engineer from Zimbabwe is Mr handyman-cheap-labour and was asked to rip apart the kitchen floor and put down new tiles. But there lay my belongings in the way, in all their cluttered glory. Before my darling girlfriend went to bed on the Sunday night before she cooed every so seductively into my ear “Don’t forget to pack your stuff into the spare room to make room for Happy”. At that moment I had every intention of lugging my mesh of shirts, USB cables and books into the spare room. But then I realized that I had a stack of music cd’s to rip to my computer and all that concomitant ‘Find Album Info’ to download. That kept me busy until the small hours of the morning and left me in no condition to begin menial labours.

Monday morning came crashing into the bedroom with blinding rays of light through the curtain slits and howling alarm clocks to the background din of automobile traffic marching in file to the cities belly. We both woke up with a start and struggled to find our screaming phones on alarm. Out we jumped, quite or completely naked, and traced the source of the squealing machines. Mine was in a hidden pocket of a pair of shorts under a heap of like-coloured clothing. The effort to find it left me with such a sense of injustice I was obliged to get back into bed. And so back into bed I went. But not for the girlfriend. No. She, I could see by peeping from behind the duvet, was charging up and down the house without any clothes on (her alarm phone was certainly off at this point). I imagined at first that she had suddenly remembered to file her tax returns on-line (I don’t earn enough money to suffer such a burden). Only then I realized what the cause of her labour was. She was carrying my mesh of computer equipment and clothes to the spare room. She was making way for Happy, as I should have done the night before!

This was bad. This was really bad. That she had not even reprimanded me for my sloven behaviour of the night before was testament to how upset she was with me. I saw her again, just then, darting through the corridor with a computer monitor heavy in her embrace, a scowl on her face and not a garment on her body. What was I to do? I thought I had better redeem myself preemptively, else her retribution would be exact and long lasting. Maybe a whole week of disinterest in me and sulking or worse still an extensive day visit to the garden shop warehouse as punishment. I had to brain-storm, early in the day as it was. And brain storm I did. I had an I idea. If I too, I thought, should take as quickly and as thoughtlessly to a labour in the house as she had just done, and show myself to be equal to it, whatever errands the house threw up and be resigned to complete it, I might escape my fate. So I took off my remaining underwear and began to make the bed and make it with alacrity. I threw pillows about the room and flapped the bed sheets until they snapped. I spread the duvet, opened the curtains, packed away the soiled clothes and filed her bounty of shoes into the cupboard neatly. The bedroom was transformed into a leaf from House & Home magazine. I then went on to the offensive and put out the towels for the morning shower and turned on the kettle.

“Oh baby!” she chirped to me as she came into the room. As she did a smile washed away her short lived affliction of the face. I had escaped. But only just. There will be other tests. There will be dishes to wash before bedtime (for instance, NOW) and a car to park in the garage before sunset. My friends the road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one breakup. But, my friends, I had never been more hopeful than I was that morning that WE WILL GET THERE.