Ma Smit always told us not to stick our spoons in someone else’s cooking pot.
Ma Smit was full of good advice. She shared it with everyone, whether or not they wanted to hear it. Often the other villagers would answer back with their own family wisdom, and a lively debate would follow. We drank in every word. In Africa, it takes a village to raise a child. And for those of us who the ancestors blessed with even a small measure of success, it takes hard work to repay that privilege. Long hours. Sacrifices.
That’s why I put up with Oom Paul’s repeated callouts. I hadn’t built his house. As far as I knew, he’d built it himself. He was that kind of guy. Always taking charge. Confident in his own abilities. Certainly in his younger days, when he had run a successful construction company and built most of the permanent structures in the area. Not much had changed. Except that he had sold the company a few years before, retiring to live quietly with his wife on the largest stand in town. In a multi-story monster where the electrical cables had been strung together like Xmas lights in an asylum.
“Two days,” he told me again.
He wasn’t that old. His long beard had turned white, earning him automatic respect as an elder of the community. But he hadn’t yet lost any muscle, or the ability to walk. In fact, apart from the beard, he was probably still bigger and stronger than most young men.
“Two days I’ve been waiting for this to be fixed, Thulani,” he went on. “Two days without a hot shower, in this damn freezing weather. It’s been hell.”
I looked away from the fuse box and met his gaze. I was seconds away from resolving the issue that had seen me crawling from one end of his dusty attic to the other in a futile attempt to find a break in the wiring that ran his geyser. He could wait a few seconds longer.
I let my dust stained clothing speak for me. The white golf shirt that had been fresh last week. Damp patches creating concentric circles under the arms. My best pair of jeans, now ripped at the knee but still salvageable with a borrowed needle and thread. And the sweat lines that cut through a thick layer of grime despite the single-digit temperatures outside.
“Two days?” I asked. “Eish. That’s a tragedy, boss.”
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