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Here is a book to wrrite - for one of my family who might have the patience, and
understanding, and love, to write. I’d have done it long ago, if I only had
patience, and did not have such overwhelming reluctance to write seriously
about things that truly matter to me personally.
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JOHN MLILO,
resident
philosopher. | PIC TO COME |
Among my many failures has been a
failure to record at least a few of the conversations I have had with John over
the years. There are numerous delightful
stories, but they have faded from my leaky memory.
I do remember that when we first
all came to Hermanus, he took two days staring at the sea before he told me:
“Y’know, the sea is like television. You can watch it for a long, long time
without thinking of anything.”
He has told me many memorable,
yes unforgettable, tales about his observation of farm animals and animals in
the wild. All of which float enticingly
just out of reach of my memory.
Today, I actually recorded this
chat as he was about to go out and enjoy his day off.
“Are you going to the library?” I
asked. “Or would you like to start a project?. . . Make something?… We can
clear a desk and find some space somewhere if you want to do that.”
[After this piece was
penned, John took apart an old chandelier lying in the garage and, with some
advice from Arlene, created two bedside table lamps. No part of them bore
resemblance to the great chandelier – but the new copper creations might have
sold for a very good price in the best antique shop in Cape Town. He would not
hear of it. He took them proudly to Zimbabwe as a gift for Betty, his
wife]
“Me, I like my day-off to be mine by myself. I like not to think of it before. Yes, I may
go to the library. There is nothing so good as to read a book by the beach. You
taught me that. But I may just walk and think. Or do something else that just
happens. I feel happy today.”
He ended up going to the
optometrist (despatched there by Arlene, in the way she despatches me to the
skin specialist for cancer checks) because he was rubbing his bad eye. He needs new glasses – which he never seems
to use, anyway. Before he went we chatted. Usually, though - and quite
understandably because of his nature and his loneliness – it is a monologue
delivered enthusiastically by him.
Today, Friday 6 February 2004, he told me:
“My father was poor. We often went to sleep without food and woke
up hungry in our house. With no food for the coming day.
“My father had no brothers and
sisters. He was the only one in his
family. And I was his only son. Moses, my ‘brother’” (Moses - old friend of
the Mlilo family in Plumtree District, Zimbabwe. Moses, with the patriarchal
beard, introduced us to John about 30 years ago) “Moses he say to me once,
‘you are an orphan, with no real family. To live, you must think, and use your
head, because you are on your own’.
”When I went home for my holiday – y’know, in all my working life so far I have
never spent longer than three months at home at one time – my father would say:
‘John, these other boys, when they come home from working, they bring with them
a bed. Don’t you have enough money to buy a bed?’
“I told him: I don’t want a bed.
I sleep comfortably on the floor. I prefer to save my money.’ My father did not understand. We did not
know each other very well. Mathew (John’s eldest son) was only three when my
father died. Mathew was the only grandson my father saw. . . (Mathew, the
successful businessman and his adorably laughing bride, Literature, are with
John almost daily now, working here in Hermanus).
John continued: “One year when I came home to my father
again he told me again: ‘John, you should have brought a bed with you.’
“‘No’, I said, and I went and
bought two cows. My father did not know
what to say, he was so surprised. “I know you will look after these cows,” I
told him, ‘but no-one would have looked after the bed.’
“My mother and my father never
slept hungry again. They could choose
what to eat. Every day. I sent them R25 every month.
“Everything I have, I built up
myself. I worked out how much I will earn over a year, and how much I will spend;
for my family; for my parents, and some for me to buy something I needed for
myself. Then I divided it into 12 and
saved the difference each month.
“People laughed at me when I was
young, and said ‘Your father is poor’. I said, “No. He is rich. . . because he
owes nobody nothing.’. Now, the people
at home say ‘John you are rich. Why don’t you give me something. You must give
to all of us, John.’
“But I do not understand such people. They never
think. They never work properly. They
wait all the time to be given something.
They say, ‘Yes, I do think – but what can I do?’ I watch that begging man thinking, and I know what he
thinks. He thinks: When can I go to the bottle-store.
“And the people here in South
Africa! They are given a house – free.
They do not have to save or to build it. They are given a piece of land and
a house on it. And what do they say? ‘This house is too small. This is no good.
They must give me a bigger house.’ They
don’t even clean the new house given to them. It rots, or they add cardboard or
tin shacks . . . instead of thinking about how to build a bigger house.
“These people are like
bird-chicks. Chicks who sit in the nest with their mouths wi-ide open, waiting
to be fed. They just sit there, mouth
open, shouting for food to be brought. Nothing else. And the owl comes along
and reaches down to the waiting open-mouthed chicks, and eats them up.
“I say to my people:
Remember when a cow falls down? You pick it up. And if it can stand, you leave
it, for it will look after itself again.
But if the cow falls down again when you help it up – what do you
do? You say: ‘Fetch the axe. Let’s kill
this cow for meat, before it just dies.”
John and I went back in our
reminiscences, and I said to him: “Yes, I remember well the very first day we
met. You were a young man, not even 21, and Moses brought you and introduced
you to us. You were standing in the doorway of the kitchen . .”
But it seemed I didn’t remember
well. I didn’t remember that Moses had employed him on our behalf, and he was
left to look after our empty house, purchased by the Argus Company for
its editor, while we were overseas for several weeks.
John reminded me: “The Company came
with a hose and a broom, and left me alone all that time, to look after a great
big empty house. I did not know who was going to live in this house I had to
take care of, all alone.”
So it was he who greeted us at
our new home – not the other way round.
Then he repeated something he has
said often: “You and madam” – he will never say ‘Arlene’, as I do in talking to
him – “you two are my mother and father. Each day I learn something from one of
you. I have never stopped learning!”
I could confirm that.
“That is
true, and very special John. You keep on learning. But what could I teach you?
You long ago knew more than I ever will about plumbing, and woodwork, and
machinery. . . how to fix things. . .”
“You gave me the best lesson of
my life, long ago, when I was young, and just starting to work for you. We were
walking around the big garden at Balmoral (Avenue, Hurlingham) and you asked:
‘Who planted this tree, John?’ It was a
fast-growing tree, already taller than you.
‘I did’, I said.
“And then you said: ‘A tree is
important in life, John. More than money. You can buy clothes, but they do not
last. You can save five cents, and it
will soon be worth four cents. But if you plant a tree, something that grows,
it will grow for you all your life’.”
God what a stupid thing to say, I
thought. Why would I say a thing like that? What was it supposed to mean? I
remembered a better analogy I’d given him, years later when I set up his
pension. “This money will grow John, and look after you in your old age. It is like a cow. If you eat it, you will
end up with nothing. If you leave it alone, the cow will have calves.” Damn
good, I thought. And all this time, he was using a bad tree-metaphor . . and
also using his own philosophy of life, which is superior to mine.
“John, I don’t remember that
story about the tree. Did you really learn from it?
“And why do you think I have a
motor van, and money in the bank, and no debts – and a pension which grows like
a cow having calves?”
Every time I get caught in a long
semi-monologue with John, I learn something.
* *
*
If Readers Digest were
still carrying those contributions on “The Most Interesting Character I have
ever Met,” I ‘d write one and earn real dollars for him.
John knows more people in
Hermanus than Arlene and I do. All our neighbours, all the regular visitors to
Hermanus, even tourists, tell of meeting John, usually on the Cliff Path,
walking Arlene’s hand-high Toy Poms – both on leads – and warning passers by, “Watch
out for my lions!” That’s a story I remember. I get told it by people in
Hermanus once a week.
But what I remember always about
John are not his stories, but his loyalty and his caring. Those qualities in
him are total and uncomplicated. He worries, almost as much as Arlene does,
about the possibility of burglars, or accidents, or waste around the home. He
loves the dogs at least as much as we do – and worries about them also.
He worries about me being late for golf, or forgetting to do
something I’ve promised Arlene I will do. I worry about John worrying so
much. I worry about him not having his
family around him, and never being at his own home, even if it is war-ravaged
and economically crippled Zimbabwe. But
he says that we are also his family, and our home is also his.
My hope is that he will one day enjoy his retirement in
relative prosperity and peace on the parcel of land he is transforming into a
modern homestead, with independent electricity and water supply, and a
flourishing farm. . . and hope that neighbours do not try to usurp or damage what he
is growing. My other hope is that he will be here to look after
his white surrogate mother when I’m gone.
John is not only my adopted son, he is a priceless friend.
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