Karoi, Zimbabwe
1985
It was the end of September. The transplanted tobacco seedlings’ first vital four weeks were up, and the daily wilt of the tobacco leaves that needed to be rehydrated at night in the cooler and moist air was over. Now the new plants would begin to drink deeply, and grow. Their roots sank far into the primed earth below.
‘Mvura,’ shouted Jamison Shilo Khumalo, signalling with a helicopter gesture above his head so that the huge overhead irrigation sprinklers were turned on by his co-worker Maidza. Jamison stood under the sprinkler as the water splashed down over his hat, and dripped onto his body, cooling him under the hot sun. For three years he’d learnt how to grow the tobacco. Now he’d taken over as bossboy of Malabar, one of the biggest commercial tobacco farms in the area, and he couldn’t have his first crop transfer fail.
He looked at the line of sprinklers pumping the water above. The distances were perfect, with the metal piping perfectly spaced in its six-metre lengths, the riser out the piping up to the sprinkler head jutted towards the blue African sky. His spacing was square, to ensure that his crop didn’t show watering circles. He knew that differences in the water pressures and winds blowing the water were just two of the factors he needed to compensate for to ensure there were no patterns in the crop.
The cool water splashed down on the rich soil, and into the channels dug between the rows of the plants. The water quickly disappeared into the sand, but was replaced by more, and as it fell on the seedlings, Jamison smiled.
This would be a good crop. The seedlings were strong, healthy and eager to grow. He knew that he wasn’t too late with the water. He’d been taught well by the old man Kitwelle before he retired to his kraal. The white manager of the farm had gone away within a few months of Jamison being employed on Malabar, threatening the farm workers, saying that without him the farm would fall into disrepair and their jobs would disappear. He’d left the old Widow Crosby with only her ‘black boys’ to help her.
Jamison remembered well that once the white manager had gone in his bakkie, and his dust had yet to settle, old Kitwelle had explained that he’d been caught stealing tobacco bales from Widow Crosby, and she’d sacked him.
The workers had remained on the farm.
They didn’t want to leave Widow Rose Crosby.
True, she was very colonial in her ways – the workers were still referred to as kaffirs, and her house servants wore gloves, but she was a fair baas and a strong farmer’s wife. She had inherited the farm when her husband was killed during the War of Independence.
She was still hands on, working her farm despite her advancing years. Jamison could see her riding her horse towards him now, mindful that she rode in the ditches between the tobacco plants, so as to not damage the young seedlings in any way.
‘Jamison,’ she called. ‘Huya pano!’
He jogged towards her to the end of the row, and out of the cool spray. Immediately his overalls began to dry as the hot sun sucked all the moisture from them.
‘Good morning, madam,’ he nodded in respect.
‘I listened to the wireless last night, and the weatherman is predicting the rain to be late again this year. More drought … but we have deep boreholes on Malabar and they can pump the water we need to grow both the tobacco and the wheat. The people on the farm will not go hungry, despite this drought.’
‘Madam,’ Jamison said and nodded.
‘Come,’ Widow Crosby said and turned her horse towards the tobacco barn nearest the field. Jamison walked slowly behind her horse, looking all the time at the tobacco, checking for insects, and checking for signs of stress that might indicate their crop was in danger of failure. He couldn’t see any.
Soon they came to the barn and Widow Crosby dismounted. She wrapped the reins into a knot and just left them on her horse.
‘I’ve seen those new seedlings, they look healthy. We’ll have a good crop this year,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Jamison agreed. ‘But the rest of the area are feeling the drought. In the TTL there are cattle dying from no water, and no food. It is too soon after the last one. The land, she’s not recovered fast enough. Already their reservoir is empty.’
‘Already?’ Widow Crosby asked as she waited while Jamison pushed the door open. She went inside.
‘Yes,’ Jamison said. ‘We could take a tanker of Malabar water to fill their reservoir again. The people would appreciate the help.’
‘You can do that. Take that new piccaninny with you and make him work. That one has shifty eyes, and if he wasn’t related to Jossie, I wouldn’t have hired him. He’s going to steal us blind.’
‘No, he’s a good boy, madam. He won’t steal. He’s a Matabele, and his eyes look shifty because he’s squinting all the time. Maybe we can get him to the hospital for some glasses. I saw when he was planting a few weeks back, he uses his hands to guide his plants to the holes already dug deep into the earth. He can’t see properly.’
‘You serious. I hired a blind boy to work? Why didn’t you tell me that when we hired him?’
‘He’ll be a good worker when he has glasses and can see, madam.’
‘Fine, take the tanker of water and take him with you, and then get him into the clinic and sort his eyes out. I don’t want anyone stealing, understood?’
‘Yes, madam,’ Jamison said.
‘Make sure you check this barn early, Jamison, I don’t want any trouble this year. A good crop means a good pay cheque for everyone. Understood.’
‘Yes, madam,’ Jamison replied. He’d heard the lecture from her before, but he didn’t mind hearing it all again. Twice a week she’d come out onto the property and discuss the running of it with him. The rest of the time, if he needed anything, he’d go up to the farmhouse to speak with her.
They had finished checking the flumes in the barn. He held the door open for her as Widow Crosby walked out. Her horse was near where she had left him, too well trained to try to nibble on the tobacco crop. She walked him to where Jamison had placed an upturned sawn in half 44-gallon drum. Stepping onto it, she mounted her horse.
Jamison smiled that she always used the drums, but had never commented that he had noticed she needed them as the years passed. He stood quietly by her side.
‘Right, to the house now, I have some old clothes that you can distribute when you go into the TTL.’
Jamison nodded, and walked alongside her towards the farmhouse.
The farmhouse was a sprawling brick structure. It still had impact shields about a metre and a half away from the windows, protecting the glass from any mortar or grenade attacks. Even though the war was over, Widow Crosby had never wanted them removed. They had seen her through the Rhodesian Bush War, and were extra security for her now, making sure no one could see into her home. She said that one day the fighting would come back to Mashonaland, and the dissident wars that were happening in Matabeleland would spread all over Zimbabwe again. But she had Felix, the garden boy, cover them with creepers. She called them wisterias. The vines trailed across the shields creating a green screen for most of the year, but when it was their time to flower in the spring, the blooms gave off a heavy perfume that he could breathe in forever. In lilac and white, the flowers intertwined on the screens looking like bunches of flower grapes, and softened the hard red brick of the house behind.
Madam Crosby had modernised the house, and although she still had a wood stove in the kitchen and a donkey boiler outside, just in case, she also had an electric hot water geyser and an electric stove for her cook to prepare meals on.
When he visited with her they would sit on the veranda at the back of the kitchen, she’d have her tea in tiny bone china cups decorated with pink roses, and he’d have his in a big enamel cup. Sometimes, she’d give him a biscuit on an enamel plate, or share some sandwiches with him while hers were white and had the crusts removed, his were thick brown bread spread thickly with butter and peanut butter with syrup dripping from the sides.
Shilo – now Jamison – thought on how he’d been able so far to avoid Buffel finding out where he was. He had a warning system in place. His cousin Gibson had gone to Buffel’s farm and taken a job as a builder and tracker. If Buffel was gone from his farm for longer than a day or two, he would let Shilo know. In the past, Gibson would leave a phone message with Widow Crosby’s maid for him, in case Buffel was coming for him. But now that he was head boy, he had his own house and his own phone that Gibson could call him on. Gibson had been a policeman, but had been retired when he was shot. He had no immediate family, and Shilo had warned him about the children, that he must keep them away or else they would be ‘taken’ at that farm.
No one on Malabar knew him by his true name. He was bossboy and earning decent money, and the Widow Crosby had all her workers working for her on a profit-share basis so that they worked harder, and their bonus was directly related to their crop. If their yield was big, so was their bonsella, their chipo, and if they didn’t look after the crop, then they got no gift. He liked the system that rewarded the people as well as the tough old white farmer.
And best of all, he had met Ebony.
He had never intended to have a relationship with anyone. Despite telling Kwazi he wanted a family, he knew that actually having one was always going to be out of his reach. No woman could love a man who kept such dark secrets as he did. No woman would want a life that she couldn’t publicise with pictures of their wedding in the paper, because he would always need to stay inconspicuous, laying low in case Buffel was still looking for him.
But then he’d met Ebony, and all the reasoning in the world went flying away like Egyptian geese migrating north in winter.
Although it was in the past, he remembered the time, as if it was a video playing in his head. Just the year before he had been attending a tobacco auction with old man Kitwelle, before he retired, making sure that no one stole any of their bales, and also to ensure that Kitwelle didn’t do any of the heavy lifting which he shouldn’t do anymore. They had driven to the loading area of the tobacco warehouse and had helped the staff there to unload the truck. One by one the bales were weighed and marked, then reloaded onto a collection of wheelbarrows and hand trolleys, and taken to the sales floor where they were put in neat lines. Jamison began loosening the twine on the bales so they could be inspected by the officer from the Tobacco Industry Marketing Board for undesirable foreign matter. The buyers would walk the same steps as the officer, offering a price on the bales. As the farm’s head boy, it was Kitwelle’s job to listen to Widow Crosby, and remove the bales from sale for the time being, if the price given was too low.
As he was getting the bales ready for their inspection, Jamison couldn’t help but notice the woman in the next aisle. She was tall with a traditional figure, and she wore a long white and blue dress, with a matching ‘doek’ as Widow Crosby like to call it, or head scarf, as the ladies on the farm referred to it. Her smart fitted dress, that showed a hint of bosom when she bent over, would have been better in an office job, because it wouldn’t stay very clean working with the tobacco. He could see her muscles flex in her shoulders as she moved because the neckline was low and wide on her shoulders that glowed like rich Jamaican chocolate. She wore no jewellery that could be dislodged and fall into a bale, contaminating it.
Jamison was impressed by her as she seemed unaware of the magnificent sight she made as she worked. She was performing the same duty that he was, and obviously was proud of the product she displayed. Her face captivated him.
An older man, dressed in blue overalls, hobbled in her area using a carved knobkerrie as a walking stick. He ambled behind where she’d worked, as if checking up on her. At one stage she stopped, and it seemed as though she was checking on the older man, as she motioned to the back of the warehouse where other workers were taking a break. He shook his head, and gestured with his stick, to look at the whole tobacco sales floor. She nodded, reached out and rubbed his shoulder in the affectionate way a child would to her father, before continuing her work.
After a while, she looked up, and smiled at him.
Jamison looked back over his shoulder to ensure that no one stood behind him who she was greeting, but there was no one, just bale upon bale of brown tobacco.
Her smile was for him, and his heart was stolen forever.
Jamison had asked Ebony to marry him the first day he met her at the auction warehouse in Harare. After speaking with her for most of the day while they worked and watched the buyers, then watched the auction take place. They had talked until both Kitwelle and her father had fallen asleep while they waited for the younger ones in the small market place outside, sitting at a table made from an electrical power wire spindle, on seats that were upturned milk crates.
He had blurted it out. ‘Marry me. Stay with me always.’
Ebony’s face hadn’t shown horror at his frankness, or at his unromantic proposal. ‘I will keep that proposal in my heart, and when I know you better I will let you know when the answer turns to a yes.’
He had seen her every Sunday after that for a month before Kitwelle had suggested that she come for an interview with the Widow Crosby to come and work at Malabar farm. Ebony was well educated, and she knew tobacco.
When he had told her about the interview, her brown eyes had shone with unshed tears.
‘Now I can see more of you. We can be together,’ she said. A month after that, she had moved to Malabar Farm, and into the quarters for single females.
Sometimes he saw her during the day when his path and hers crossed over at the farm.
But at night time, they got to spend more time together, before returning to their single quarters to start the next day with another early morning.
When he was told by Kitwelle what they were doing, he had smiled knowing he would definitely see her in the sorting shed.
He followed behind at a respectful distance as Widow Crosby crossed to the next building. Once inside, she made a beeline for their new worker.
‘Ebony, how are you finding it here? After a month working in a new shed, a new farm, away from your father?’ Widow Crosby asked.
Ebony nodded her head in respect, then looked at her employer. ‘It is a little different, but it is good. It is honest work.’
‘I like this one,’ Widow Crosby said to Kitwelle who walked alongside her. ‘Jamison, make sure that you never give her cause to leave. Marry her and keep her here.’
Jamison looked down, trying to hide the heat that entered his face, but he couldn’t help smiling. ‘Yes, madam. I hope that she will not be leaving any time.’
‘Good, we could do with a party for a wedding,’ Widow Crosby said as he turned away. ‘We haven’t had a wedding on Malabar for a few years now …’
Kitwelle and Madam Crosby continued on their rounds, and Jamison caught a moment with Ebony before catching up with them.
‘She likes you,’ Jamison said.
‘That’s why she hired me?’ Ebony said. ‘I thought it was because she knew that you were hopelessly in love with me?’
‘I don’t have that much power with the Widow Crosby. She has her own mind and thinks her own way, does her own thing.’
‘No. She listens to Kitwelle, and to you. She relies on you both to help her to run this farm, and to make it work. I had spoken with many people about her before I came to work here. She treats people well. That was why my father supported my moving here.’
Jamison smiled as he reached out his hand to her. ‘Eb, I like that you moved here too,’ he said.
‘I hope it’s more like love that I moved here, because now that you have me, I’m staying.’
‘You’re right, I love having you here,’ he said softly.
‘I’m happy to have a party, and invite her,’ Ebony said. ‘I can wear white and you can pay roora to my father, because you respect me enough.’
Jamison looked at her. His heart raced.
Every day since she had moved to the farm, they would walk together, talk after work. Eat supper together. Ebony was a good cook. She made traditional foods like sadza neNyama. But also white man’s foods, like spaghetti bolognese and shepherd’s pie, two of his favourite meals. And never during their time had she ever brought up his marriage proposal. He had feared she had forgotten it.
Apparently not.
Hesitantly, he asked, ‘So is that a yes, you will marry me?’
‘Yes, I’ll marry you!’ Ebony said.
He threw his arms around her, and the other women in the tobacco shed clapped and began to sing for them, dancing where they worked.