School, School, School!

My sister, Daphne, and I had to go to school and there were no arguments about that.   She was clever and as far as I can remember, she liked school.   I felt it unnecessary and would much rather have stayed on the farm.   Les was a clever child and my sisters enjoyed teaching him; he was not yet six years old but could read, write, count and do sums, but he would have to wait another six months before he could go to school.   So in the mean time he had to keep himself busy by playing school.

Hopewell Farm House from a distance

            Farm number one in this area was called “Skietrug” and belonged to Eb and Emmie Long.   They had a shop and a petrol pump.   And they had a telephone, the only one on Skietrug.   There was also a bus stop on the farm for the busses running to and fro from Grahamstown and Alexandria.   As far as I can remember it was for goods only and not for passengers.   A short while after our arrival in the area the Long’s shop assistant went on leave, so they asked if Bertha could come and work in the shop for a few weeks.   She did so and also stayed with them during this period.

            Our goods arrived from the Free State at Alexandria station, but I can’t remember how my dad fetched the load and took it home.   Daddy found boarding for Daf and I in Alexandria with Alf Dickerson and his wife.   Desmond and Stanley Bradfield were also boarding with them at that time.   We were rather scared as this would be our first time away from home.   Alf’s father was the blacksmith in town and Alf was the barber (men’s hairdresser.)   I had to share a room with the young Bradfields and they found great delight in teaching me all the bad and dirty IsiXhosa words.   I can still remember those words to this day and isn’t it strange how such things stick in the mind.

Alexandria with the school on the right

            It was a dual-medium school although I would say that only about 5% of the pupils were English speaking.   There were three teachers for us; Mrs Colesky had the bigger children, then there was Miss Rudolph who had the middle ones, and her sister, Mrs le Roux, taught Sub A & B  and Std I.   We were now, at last, being taught in our own language.   I must have sounded like a little Dutchman as the Afrikaans speaking children often asked me, “Is jy dan nie Afrikaans nie?”…I did my school work, but I lived for the weekends when Daddy would fetch us on a Friday afternoon.   (I actually take pride in myself for being able to speak Afrikaans correctly to this day and cringe when I hear how the young Afrikaans people mix it with English and other words.)

            One weekend towards the end of that year, we were told that we would have to wait until about seven o’clock the evening as Daddy was going to meet the railcar at the station as a special man was coming to visit.   (The Railcar was a bus that ran on the rail tracks every day between Alexandria and Port Elizabeth.)   It left Alexandria every morning and arrived back in the evening.   Daddy came to fetch us and he had Thelma with him and they told us that Gordon Bradford was coming to spend some time on the farm with us.   He and Thelma were going to get better acquainted.   Unfortunately, on our way home, two horses jumped out from behind a bush and into our car.   We could go no further as the radiator was broken and it pushed back on to the engine.   A kind farmer took us home and the next day Gordon and my dad fetched the car and Gordon worked on the car for a few days to repair it.   He was a qualified diesel-loco mechanic on the railways.

Huts similar to the ones that our labourers lived in.  Nate their goat kraal in the foreground

            After Bertha’s time was up with helping Mr Eb Long in his shop, she found a job in Grahamstown with W Gowie Florist and Seed Shop.   She worked there for quite some time.   I have wanted to tell you that Hopewell was about fifteen kilometres from Alexandria, forty kilometres from Grahamstown, and one hundred and ten kilometres from Port Elizabeth.

* * * * * *