The Water Man's Daughter (23 page)

N
OMSULWA CAN’T BELIEVE THE LANDSCAPE FLYING
by the car window as they approach Victoria. This township was once a flagship, the most celebrated community project since Mandela’s victory. The roads were maintained, and sculpted flower beds greeted heads of state, even Bill Clinton himself, as they entered the compound.

But now, it looks like they could be back in Phiri.

The brick-lined beds are still there, but the flowering plants are all dried up. The houses, set back from the road, have peeling exteriors, and many of the impressive structures have disappeared altogether. It feels like a ghost town.

Nomsulwa told Claire about the compound during the hour drive. It was established by a group of women who refused to accept the government-issued houses. Instead of allowing a village of small boxes to be erected by government contractors, they demanded the money allotted for each structure, sourced the material from their own area, and gathered their neighbours to help with construction.

Their success was unprecedented. They replaced the tiny, one-room boxes other government-assisted townships survived in with full-sized houses, including living rooms
and dining rooms and enough bedrooms for a small family. They had front yards and fences, and everything was done for not a cent more than the government granted.

Kwanele was at the centre of that movement. He took the idea of the elders and made it into a reality. His lobbying in eGoli was the beginning of a project that put the municipal government to shame.

The last time Nomsulwa was here it was a vacation of sorts. They were meeting an organizing group from a township nearby, and Kwanele invited her back to the compound. It wasn’t a love affair. More like politics spilling into the bedroom. But when Nomsulwa finally extricated herself from the boy, he was fuming and she was on the first bus home.

It had taken a lot for him to call her. She recognized that. But then she had no idea things had become so bad.

The community centre is still the most beautiful building Nomsulwa has ever seen. Long, sloping lines frame stained-glass windows that, despite their lack of religious imagery, seem holy. Every wall is lined with dark wood panels, and the front door is framed by two tall, manicured trees forming a lush awning.

Claire is equally amazed by the scene – the building must seem even more impressive given the contrast with the now debilitated village.

“Is this a church?” Claire asks.

“No. The community centre. It’s where we’ll be staying.”

“Is this where my dad stayed?”

Nomsulwa thinks about lying, if only to get a broad smile, a sigh, from the girl next to her. But all she can manage is a half-truth. “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

It worries her, this inability to manipulate the water man’s daughter, but she is saved from dwelling on her weakness by a rap on the driver’s side window. Kwanele stands there, handsome, in white pants and a brown button-down shirt. His wide face, given by his San mother, and dark skin, from his father, work to create a truly unique-looking man. Nomsulwa had forgotten how attractive he is.

Kwanele wraps an arm around Nomsulwa and carries Claire’s bag in his other hand. He escorts them through the doorway and the front hall.

“You’ll be staying up there, in the dorm rooms.” He motions towards a lofted space on the left-hand side of the large inner room. “Yours is the room with the two twin beds, on the right when you get up the stairs.” Nomsulwa nods. “Would you like a second to settle in and put down your bags?”

Before either of them has a chance to respond, a voice chimes in from behind the trio. “Since when does she settle in anywhere?” Then, a big laugh.

“Neil!” Nomsulwa exclaims and folds the older man in a large hug. His guitar, strapped to his back at all times, bumps against them and lets out a note in protest. “I didn’t know you would be here.”

“Wouldn’t miss your return, my girl.”

Claire introduces herself to Neil without needing encouragement. “Hi, I’m Claire. Nomsulwa’s … friend.”

“I know. You’re the reason we get to see her again, I hear.” Neil winks at Nomsulwa, referencing her urgent call the night before to ensure that the boys at the centre would play along with the charade.

“Neil is one of my oldest comrades. And, if you’re lucky, he’ll sing you a song or two later.” Nomsulwa moves closer to Claire, talking to her as if it’s a secret, though she knows that Neil can hear.

“Yes, yes, all in good time. Now get upstairs and get out of those city clothes.” Neil is more forceful than Kwanele: he physically pushes Claire’s small frame towards the bedroom stairs. Nomsulwa hurries to catch up. She gives Kwanele a small eye roll as she leaves, as if to say,
Duty calls
.

The bedroom is tiny, one window, two beds only a few inches apart, and a few shelves to lay out clothes on. Claire sits on the bed nearest to the window and Nomsulwa stands watching her for a moment. Her hands are placed oddly in her lap and she is looking at the ceiling with a slack face. Nomsulwa sits next to her and flops backwards, resting against the wall.

“This place isn’t how I imagined it.”

“It isn’t how I described it,” Nomsulwa answers quickly. “When I was here last, the place was amazing, beautiful houses, front yards with vegetable gardens, they were even thinking of redoing the school. Now it’s like an empty shell.”

“You said the water system was failing. Is all this because the access was cut off?”

“I guess we’ll find out. But I’ve seen it happen before. These communities are isolated, they have no neighbours to borrow water from; if the central source is contaminated, the whole town suffers.”

“And the company has a plant here.”

“Yes, but the price of water is too high.”

“Higher than in the city?”

Nomsulwa wants to explain that the company doesn’t care if people in the country rot away the way they do when it happens in their own backyard, but Claire has such a look of concentration, as if water is a problem she can figure out. It is the calmest Nomsulwa has seen her since she arrived. “Yes. The rate is higher, and the people poorer.”

“But this is an example of what could happen in the townships?”

“Yes. Exactly.” For a second, Nomsulwa lets herself hope that Claire is getting it.

“This is the problem my father always talked about – what happens to places with no access to anything.” Nomsulwa can’t say anything. “He was out here to develop the infrastructure. It was going to make things better.” Claire finishes with a firm tone.

Nomsulwa takes a deep breath. “I know.”

“The pipes cost money and so the company had to charge. He was always battling it out with the government, frustrated because they wouldn’t follow through on their funding promises. This was their only option.”

“If we don’t get downstairs soon, the food will be cold.”
Nomsulwa moves to leave; she needs to get out of the bedroom and back downstairs with Kwanele before she says something she regrets.

“I feel closer to him out here, like I might finally find what he left behind. Thank you for bringing me.” Claire takes the lead out the door. Nomsulwa doesn’t ask what she’s talking about. She’s too scared of the answer and certainly hopes that the ghost of the water man, if there is a ghost, is very far away from her.

The room is full of people. Steaming curry fills two bowls on the far end of a large table. There is creamed spinach and sausages from the braai and cornbread, and someone put some lettuce in a bowl, no doubt a nod to their white guest.

Before they can sit down, Kwanele is up and next to them.

“Hey, Claire, you want a little tour of the area after we eat?”

“Sure.”

“You’re lucky,” Nomsulwa says. “Since Kwanele retired from the resistance, he’s become the best tour guide in the country.”

“I haven’t retired, Nomsulwa. I’ve joined a different team.”

“One that won’t sell us out?” Nomsulwa looks over to Claire as if she’s in on the dig, but she has a blank expression.

“We’re confusing her.” Kwanele smiles. He’s about to make another remark when Nomsulwa interrupts him.

“Kwanele was part of
MK
.”

“
MK
?” Claire asks.

“Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the
ANC
during the struggle against Apartheid. A bunch of boys, kids from
the townships, escaped South Africa to train in foreign army camps and then returned to fight a guerrilla war against the white government. We disbanded years ago. Now I lead tours, talk to groups about my life in
MK
and the state of things today.” Kwanele pauses. “Most tourists have explanations of this stuff in their guides. Which one are you using?”

“She doesn’t need some book. She has us,” Nomsulwa interrupts.

“Yeah, sure.” Kwanele laughs while shaking his head. “Well, go get some food quickly. Then we’ll take off.”

“Stick to the salad and the sausage,” Nomsulwa warns Claire quietly. Claire walks over, scoops huge piles of steamed curry and creamed spinach on her plate, ignoring the salad. Nomsulwa could tell her that the lettuce will just go to waste if she doesn’t eat it, but she follows suit and digs into the curry.

W
HEN THEY FINISH EATING
, K
WANELE MOTIONS
for them to head outside. Once on the road, evidence of the surrounding village creeps in. Soon they are passing groups of people. Nomsulwa greets the men and women as they walk by. They stare openly at Claire and ignore the white girl’s guide and companion. Small children run up to them.

“Sicela imali, sicela?” they ask Kwanele. He bends down to each one, ruffles their hair or throws a ball for them. He answers, “Anginayo bantwana.”

“Do you understand them?” Kwanele asks Claire.

“No. Are they asking for food?”

“Money.”

“Oh.”

“If you are asked, just say
an-gi-na-yo
. It means, ‘I don’t have it.’ ”

Claire tries the word under her breath. Nomsulwa wonders why these children don’t flock directly to Claire, the white woman in the crowd. But it seems they know Kwanele, expect him to answer yes now and again. They trust him, and their eyes, when he bends down, are hopeful.

Within a few blocks, Nomsulwa’s pant legs are rimmed in the deep red sand that covers the area north of Johannes-burg. Its presence changes the palette of the township. It seems to make everything more desperate, more desolate. The children, begging, are new here, like they peeled off the walls of the houses with the paint. Where are the school uniforms? Nomsulwa thinks. Why are they not at the playground or the church?

There is an order to small-town life. Without the transience of a big city, children, men, and women have places. They belong to someone, have a schedule others understand and expect. People are not better by nature in this township, but the ways they are destructive are known by their neighbours, are tracked and mitigated. So the drunk is still a drunk. But someone might stop by and take away his gun before things get out of hand.

That order, those checks and balances, mean that daytime is calm and nighttime is quiet.

But not today. The children are part of the problem, their constant clamouring for attention as the group wanders
through the streets of Victoria. But the adults around them do nothing to shoo them inside or to their proper destination. They don’t call to the younger children and have them feed the chickens rather than run around causing trouble. The adults sit on their stoops and watch the scene and half-wave to Kwanele as he passes.

The township is dying. Nomsulwa can see its people disappearing in front of her.

“This is the main church. It’s the first building we built here.” Kwanele stops them in front of a broad building with white walls and a black roof. Claire moves towards the door, but Kwanele waits outside and keeps talking. “Across the street you can see the field of government-subsidized houses.” He points to where a crop of brightly painted boxes pepper a sparse field.

“That’s what Victoria used to look like. Each house is the same inside. The size of a bathroom with no running water and two windows. We are the first community that rejected that planned assistance. Instead, we bought this land from the government.” Kwanele stamps his feet at the edge of the churchyard. “It was part of a pilot project of sorts, an experiment. We were going to take the raw cash used to build a township and create better structures using volunteers rather than city contractors.”

Claire turns around. “Like a barn-raising. Nomsulwa explained it to me. It sounds like a brilliant idea.”

“It was,” Nomsulwa says.

“We started with the houses first. Built twenty of them in the first year. The few families that opted for government houses were furious when they compared their bathroom-sized buildings with the palaces some women put together. More came, and we built them houses, too. We built a school and the community centre and, with grant money from America, we put a playground just off the main street.”

“Will we visit those places, too?” Claire asks.

Kwanele ignores the question, too engrossed in his own storytelling. “But the water infrastructure. Well, we shouldn’t have trusted the government with that one, either.”

Kwanele walks towards a house just down from the church. It’s one of the nicer ones on the street, though all the houses in this part of town have gardens and fences and front doors made of solid wood. Kwanele knocks on the door and a young woman, no older than Nomsulwa, answers. She looks tired, but when Kwanele introduces Nomsulwa, her face brightens.

“Ah, the woman who has come to save us!” she says in Zulu, and she walks out of the doorway to give Nomsulwa a huge embrace.

“Who is the white girl?” the woman asks when they finish their hug.

“A friend of mine, from Canada. This is Claire.” This last part in English clues Claire in and she reaches to shake hands.

“Hello, I’m Claire Matthews.”

“Thembi. Good to see you.” Thembi answers in English, but her accent is thick. She quickly switches back to Zulu. “What’s she doing here?”

“Nomsulwa has to take care of her – some favour for the police back in Phiri. But don’t worry yourself. She’s no trouble.” Kwanele soothes the woman with the pinched look on her face.