The Witches Of Qwaqwa

Letsatsi - The Day

When the Sun is out, up high in the sky, he lies awake on his bed, lonely, angry and jealous. He gets up and sits in the doorway of his kitchen, sometimes outside the door, staring at the house next door. Longing to be part of the family, and in the same breath wishing them all the worst the world has to offer.
The sweet but heavy smell of herbs lingers on his skin, on his clothes, on his furniture. It follows him as he walks up and down the hill to and from his home. You can smell it from meters away. Before you see him, you smell it. And when you smell it, you know it's him.
When the Sun is up high, he walks like an old broken man always complaining about pains in his feet, his legs, his knees. He hobbles along slowly, and takes cautious steps. In the night, when the Sun goes to sleep, he awakens with renewed energy. He runs around the neighbourhood like an Olympic athlete, jumping over hurdles, fresh like a spring chicken. But it's day time now and the Sun is out, so his fingers are crooked and his knees hurt and he takes slow cautious steps. Quite exaggerated if you've seen him in the night time.
He watches the house, unable to go over. In the night, he saw in his dream a bad fall he would have if he stepped foot next door today.
They must have done something in the evening to protect the yard. He thinks to himself.
He knows that they know about his nocturnal behavior, but that won't stop him from doing what he can to ease the terrible feelings he gets when he thinks of them. To ease the loneliness he feels. Having never raised any of his 16 children, he now lives alone in his old age. His children have no interest in him, just as he had no interest in them. The longing for a family while living right next door to a happy family. The mother has no husband, but she also has no interest in him.
How could she have no interest in me? He often wonders to himself.
The old man considers himself quite the catch and dresses in the finest clothes he can find, opting to eat Pap and Royco soup mix in order to keep up with the latest trends in old man attire. He sits on a chair, at the doorway of his kitchen watching the house next door, hours go by as he plots, as he convinces himself that he has to do something to the neighbors to bring them back to reality. In his mind, they live up in the clouds and think they're better than him.
I'll show them. He repeats to himself over and over again until the grumbling in his belly brings him back to his kitchen. He gets up, pushes the chair in its place under the table and prepares a cold meal of leftover Pap and brown onion soup.

Behind closed doors, the family living in the house next door refer to him as "Our old wreck" and by his last name, Mahlangu, when talking to him, or about him to others. In the early days when the children where young and the mother still considered friends to be people who were close to you like family, our old wreck had been working in the big city of Johannesburg. He bought his small house in Qwaqwa, in the early 90s. He invested all he could into the house, painting, adding gutters, a veranda, electrical cables, lights, plugs and over the years worked to furnish it for his retirement years. It's in the those early days that he took pity on a young boy and let him live in the house, all the boy had to do in return, was to take good care of the house. The boy, Avela, was only 15 years old when he moved into Mr. Mahlangu's house. His family lived in a remote village in the Eastern Cape. Avela had come to Qwaqwa to get away from the remoteness and poverty of his village, and to realize his dreams of being a rich man one day. He later realized that he had left his remote village, for a remote town in the mountains, a stone's throw from Lesotho. He took care of Mr. Mahlangu's house as promised, the garden was always well kept and the house always clean and tidy. He did odd jobs to make money, and tried selling potatoes with a friend. But you need more than potato money to impress girls. So he started hustling at the local watering whole. There aren't many ways to make money in a secluded ghetto on a mountain top, so most of his deals were of the illicit kind. He often had different phones, not necessarily new, just a different brand or model. He also gambled in a popular Dice game called Ma'Dice. The money started rolling in, it was actually a trickle but it was better than he'd ever had before. A young girl became smitten with him on one of his watering hole escapades. The neighborhood didn't think they'd make it. Avela and his woman were toxic in their early days, drinking too much and fighting when drunk. The police intervened on so many occasions, they refused to come anymore. Avela and his woman would fight, he would overpower her and beat her senseless. She would call the police to arrest him. He never got arrested, and she never left.