The Plot

Mampoer: illicit home made brandy.

Mampoer

 

　

I was at the crossroads. The café was there and I was filling the motorbike with fuel. I think I was doing that just for something to do.

 

Jan stopped his backie next to me and talking through the open window he told me to get in. Jan was the shaft shift boss. He said he was going to his plot.

 

I pointed to the motorbike and he told me to leave it. I pushed it over to the big tree and sat it on its stand.

 

His plot was along a dirt road. I didn’t know he had a plot. He told me had a plot and that he kept goats on it. I never though to ask him why he kept goats.

 

There was a gate and a boy. The boy opened the gate and Jan drove onto the plot.

 

He gave the boy a bottle. I must have looked at Jan in a way that made him want to explain. “He’s got lice. That is paraffin”. I understood.

 

The boy spoke but I didn’t understand. I only understand men who work on the mine. Jan understood. He told me the boy had seen a leopard and that one of the goats was dead.

 

“Does he stay here?” I asked. Jan pointed to a wooden shed.

 

“Where is he from?”

 

“He comes here, who knows where from."

 

Jan gives him maize and he herds the goats and pumps the water. Sometimes Jan comes to his plot and the boy is gone and Jan has to pump the water.

 

Jan suggests that we walk his plot and look for the leopard. I wonder why. Who looks for a leopard in bush, and what if we find it? We walk.

 

When we have walked we sit on the stools that are close to the shed. Jan lifts a clear glass bottle from a wooden box that has been there all the time. He opens it and drinks a quick drink. As he passes it to me he tells me it is made from the peaches.

 

Now I understand why we have come to the plot.