adminKok’s Tales with Robert Mshengu Kavanagh
IT was in the rolling hills of Griqualand East that our Adam, Adam Kok, grew up until he was sent off to boarding school – but not too soon to pre-empt the fateful and life-changing coming together of Adam and his Eve.
Her name was Nonnie – and a more enticing and irresistible damsel was nowhere to be found – hard-muscled, fresh and full-bodied, with a healthy appetite born of the fresh country air and the embrace of nature.
When he was still a boy Adam tended his father’s sheep. Out in the hills or in the yard at home among the animals, in the long grass outside the village, all contrived to educate our little Adam about the birds and the bees – a euphemism sometimes used for sex.
He witnessed the rams mounting the ewes, the bulls the cows, the boars the sows, the roosters the hens, the dogs the bitches and every now and again the local young men their lusty ladies whenever he stumbled on them in the bushes.
One day he got the fright of his life when he entered his own parents’ bedroom without knocking, only to behold what appeared to be a wrestling match between his father and mother. His father, the headmaster of the local high school, and his mother, a respected member of the church, were like gods to Adam.
His father and his mother belonged to another world. Surely they could not do what the animals and the village boys and girls did. Like the angels, he just could not associate them with what he saw going on around him.
Then he came to puberty. His body changed. When this happened to him, no one seemed to take any notice. When a girl had her first menstruation, she went early in the morning to the cattle kraal and took the cows with her out into the veld. Then everyone would know that she was now a woman. But only Adam knew that he had become a man.
Adam now found he had new and strange urges. The countryside is not a place where a young boy has long to wait for a congenial outlet for his natural desires. Just as it was Nanetta and Maria, who kindled in Casanova the love of women, so it was Nonnie who did the same in Adam.
It happened at a village party. The lovely hills of Griqualand had long since been grabbed by the British and the Boers and were now lush dairy farms while the former owners of the land were squatters who did all the work on the farms.
They led such a tiring and endlessly oppressed and humiliated life that from time to time they just had to let their hair down. Obviously “letting down your hair” is an expression invented by people whose hair can and sometimes is let down. But never did any of those with hair to let down, let down their hair more lustily than Adam’s short-haired countrymen who worked on the dairy farms of the white farmers.
All the local folks were there – young and old, boys and girls, men and women, grannies and granddads. The twin ingredients of a “letting down hair” party were wine and music. For those who wished to return more rapidly to mother earth as the best way to erase their bitter memories, there was a local “kill-me-quick” akin to the notorious skokiaan.
The music emerged raggedly but irresistibly from a great tin drum, a guitar made from a cooking oil container, a plank and some wires, and a krostina or squash-box. Wielding these ferocious instruments were two thin old men with not more than two or three teeth between them and surprisingly, a younger but sensationally larger woman.
She was a woman who, if ever asked to do it, looked quite capable of single-handedly compressing old cars, like they do in US scrapyards, into something resembling flattened sardine tins. It seemed incredible that the drum she pounded would be able to survive the all-night battering.
Now, Adam was not meant to be there. His father would have beaten the hide off him and his mother would have dissolved into a shower of bitter tears if they had known that their darling Adam was having a night out with the farm workers.
His parents spoke English, were Anglicans and did not approve of skokiaan, the krostina and the wild version of the country dance called tikkie-draai, with which Adam’s debauched countrymen stirred up passions and had a great time.
Tikkie-draai literally means turning on a tickey – a little silver coin last seen in Southern Africa over 60 years ago. The dance consists of couples hooking arms, spinning round (hence the name) and then changing partners.
All this is done with lots of loud cries, peals of laughter and many varieties of secretive musikanzwa, like pinching bottoms, brushing breasts or stealing kisses.
Adam heard his father’s workers talking about the party. Something in the pit of his stomach – definitely related to his strange new feelings – made him determined to attend. The lights went out early in his house.
After dinner, the family and their workers said their prayers. His father listened to the English news on the wireless (the old name for radio) and then retired with his wife to bed. When all was quiet, Adam slipped out through the sash window in his bedroom and joined the party.
Adam had never been exposed to ordinary people having a good time before so it took him some time to warm up. But eventually, what with the music and the general gaiety, he was doing the tikkie-draai.
He soon began to experience at first hand the little bits of musikanzwa I mentioned above.
A rather toothless but well-endowed tannie (auntie) squeezed his right buttock, a much younger one with a lot more teeth even had the temerity to check him up front – which he found very embarrassing as all the excitement had made something happen there which he didn’t want anyone to find out about.
All the woman did when she found out his secret was to laugh in his face and give him a big and very wet kiss.
Then suddenly the dance and the music stopped. It was drinking time – for the band and the dancers. And there in front of him was Nonnie. She was a young girl, more or less his age but seemingly much more of a woman already than he was a man.
She wore a rather old and slightly torn black and white polka-dot dress, which showed her young but full figure to perfection. He gazed at her in astonishment. His eyes spun out of control at the wonders before them – the pretty gap between her two top teeth, the pointed nipples thrusting through the tautness of her dress, the plunge of her young breasts – they didn’t dare go any lower than that. It was like discovering a new continent or a whole new planet.
Then Nonnie spoke. She addressed him in Afrikaans and although her voice to him was like honey, her words were biting. “What the f*** are you staring at, baby boy?” she said.
Adam stammered: “You.”
She burst into peals of laughter. “Me! Have you never seen a girl before?”
“Not like you,” said Adam.
At that moment the music struck up again and to his surprise Nonnie took him by the arm and in a moment they were whirling round to the sound of drum, guitar and krostina, their bodies spinning and holding in an increasingly wild tikkie-draai.
Then Nonnie yanked him off to get full cups of wine. And they danced and drank and laughed and span until in perfect though unspoken unison – as if the desires of their two young bodies were one – they ran, hand in hand, jumping and stumbling into the darkness.
He didn’t need Nonnie to show him what to do. He had seen it all. But when he had done it the way he knew, Nonnie gently taught him how to do it better. It was Nonnie who introduced Adam to the glories of a woman and the great joy of giving and getting pleasure together. Many times after that he and Nonnie met.
She knew he was the headmaster’s son. He came to know about Nonnie’s mother and how she fed and educated her three children. Though she herself was forced to sell her body, she brought up her own daughters as strictly and as morally as Adam’s brought him up.
For both of them this was their first love. Nonnie loved Adam and Adam loved Nonnie and the sweetness of their love lit a fire in the young Adam, the fire of love for a woman – which is why, after he had fought for the freedom of his country, the passion of his life forever after was – women.
To access previous Kok Tales, go to https://rmshengukavanagh.wordpress.com
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