Just Another Friday Night in South Africa

On Friday evening, I’d just got in from taking my neighbour shopping at Jasmyn at Hartbeespoort Dam when I had a surprise call from an Facebook friend, Charmaine, wondering why I’ve been so scarce on Fb.

The fact is that my Vodacom connection to the Internet is so bad, that trying to connect is a mission. It takes forever to connect, and then the connection lasts only a minute or two. Posts have to be written first and then copied and pasted FAST before that tenuous connection is lost. It is absolutely maddening.

Complaining about the service gets me nowhere at all – I’ve been doing so for over a year – although it has never been this bad before. Don’t get me wrong: they have a host of charming people ready to listen to your complaint. Someone actually even gets back to you! But nothing ever improves. They just keep smiling, taking your money, and you keep paying for a service you aren’t able to use…

ADSL is unavailable here in the Bundu, alas – even though the aforesaid Bundu is only 27km from Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa. Even worse is that prepaid airtime (at a monstrous R319 for 1,5 gigs or  R369 for 2 gigs) runs out after 30 days, whether you’ve actually been able to use it or not! And if you don’t buy in bulk it works out at about a rand per megabyte. I think they should change their name to VODA-CON, the non-service provider. But I digress.

Charmaine breeds Yorkies and has two charming Bostons called Maggie and Parker, and a tea-cup Yorkie who nearly didn’t make it, and whose name escapes me. Her Fb posts are always full of interesting stories about them, and the challenges of helping with her Grandson’s homework.  We had a long chat catching up on doggie anecdotes (everyone who knows me knows I’m quite silly about dogs) and so we went on for over an hour. When my neighbour phoned on my other phone, I cut our chat short, because I always worry about her lack of security, so close to the road without even a fence worthy of the name, and no gate at all.

So I took her call and was relieved to hear that that the only problem was that she thought she might have forgotten her two new DVD’s in my car.

I offered to go out and check for her. The car was parked just on the other side of the pond, I hadn’t locked it up (there is a sheep in my garage just now, refugee from a wild dog attack) so it was no effort. I knew she’d be anxious to watch them. No, no, she said, she could wait until Saturday: better not to go outside.

Not having any security, and not being able to walk very far (or fast) due to undiagnosed childhood Polio, she feels differently about going out at night than I do. I have seven dogs and an electric fence, and my house is invisible form the road in a home-made forest. In fact, when it rains heavily, it is inaccessible to anything bar a hovercraft.

So we were laughing and chatting on the mobile as I did chores in the kitchen when the aforesaid seven dogs started going mad in the lounge and charged out onto the verandah barking their “Intruder!” bark. I wasn’t worried – I figured it was my tenant popping in as he sometimes does in the evenings. I expected to see his dogs run in any minute, heralding his arrival.

But they didn’t.

I went outside to see if Wagner’s lights were on in the cottage. They weren’t.

I interrupted my neighbour in mid-anecdote.

“Do you know, I think I’ve actually had an intruder!” I said to her “I think I’d better get off the phone and put it out on the radio.”

“Yes, I heard the dogs barking.. that might be a good idea. Now don’t forget to watch that DVD I lent you with Meryl Streep. It really is hilarious.. I’ll make that cake for Morgwyn very early tomorrow morning. Will you drop by with the DVD’s to fetch it?”

“Elitia, I really think I should get onto the radio to warn the others”

“OK, then see you tomorrow. Hope everything is OK down there!”

She rang off.

I got onto the radio. Everyone in Sector Four is notoriously absent on a Friday night but not that Friday. Attie was on the ball, and answered at once. I explained the situation.

“Do you need assistance”, he asked.

“No, thanks, Attie – the dogs saw them off. They’re long gone now.. probably still running! I’m just worried about the next people they’re headed for.”

“I’ll get someone to run by your place just in case”

“OK, maybe that’s a good idea. You never know”

I went and hung out the last two sheets on the back verandah. Then Scooby, Wagner’s little Dachshund came running up with his tail wagging and I saw his German Gundog, Sniper, running south along my neighbour-to-the-West’s border. Then I heard Sniper bark.

Had I made all this fuss for nothing? I went out the front of the house to check for the cottage light. It was on. I phoned Wagner. No reply. I was feeling really foolish, and was nearly back at the house, when he loomed out of the dark.

“I sensed an urgency in that missed call..?” he said.

“Hi Wagner! Was that you on my verandah just now?”

“No. I’ve just arrived” he said frowning. “Why?”

I told him.

“You were lucky.” he said. “You saw Sniper running down and then he barked? He only barks at the target. That is his job. That is where your intruders were.”

Wagner is a professional tracker and registered guard dog-trainer.

I was starting to realise how lucky I had been. They hadn’t run away. They had just retreated, waiting.

“Their scout (they always have one) probably saw me coming down the road”

“..and the dogs chased them!” I added.

“Yes. But not far enough.”

“I was really lucky. I nearly went out to check the car for those DVD’s! I’d have run right into them! And if I hadn’t been out this afternoon, the whole house would still have been open!” I had been airing the place for Morgwyn’s visit.

“In fact, there IS still one window open, at the other end of the house” I went to close it. Wagner was right behind me. He is normally very reticent about going into the private end of the house.

“They sometimes come in and hide” he explained. “Then they wait for you..”

I shuddered. I closed that window very firmly and checked the others.

I was feeling a bit shaky, suddenly.

I realised that they had probably been watching me hang out the washing..

Now seemed a good time for a glass of wine. Wagner kept me company – although declined the wine.

“They often come back,” he explained. “I was tracking a bit further up the mountain for some people who had just had an attempted robbery. They were interested in the whole tracking thing, and followed me as I tracked the robbers. They were amazed when, after going up the mountain, the track turned back in a semi-circle, and they found themselves back at their house. The thieves had returned and were just waiting for everyone to go to bed again.”

He was sitting on the arm of an armchair strategically placed to observe all the doors and the passage, rhythmically swinging a stick with a lethal looking sharpened metal prod at the end of it, gazing moodily into the darkness through the open French Doors. He looked as if that stick was a weapon he was very comfortable with, and knew how to use.

 “People don’t realise that the crime is so bad here, that it is as if we are at war. It is a war, this fight against crime. We are fighting for our very lives, and people don’t realise it. They don’t want to see it. The criminals we are fighting are war hardened veterans, many of them, from central Africa. These are not ordinary thieves. They are vicious”

I had another glass of wine.

After an hour, Wagner departed. He had an early day ahead of him. But it was a long time before I went to sleep!