Transvaal Blue Skies is a story is based on true events, as documented in photos, letters and family oral history, of how, early last century, Suzanne moved to Africa and built her laager. This is a series of loose dots weaved in a chronological thread, wrapped into a story to be plucked and observed, heard and remembered, recognised and judged. Suzanne Dulière was my grandmother.
Camp 6, Doroko on the Mari river.
Zanne was now discarded, irrelevant, a memory of someone now gone. Suzanne remained. And happened to Life. Oh, she believed scrupulously in God, in Country, State, Polite Society, School, Medicine, Cuisine and commonly held rules. Else, what would society become? Packs of feral…
Cameroon, Mari River. It is drier than Katanga, more primal, rawer. The monkey crawls up to nestle in the crook of her elbow. Both hands tucked in her apron, Suzanne looks at the view. Their view. Later tonight, an exhausted François and his team will emerge from the treeline, after…
She will forever be, for any of them, the one that abandoned her child. She could never fix that, why even try?
“Life is a sh*t sandwich you bite every day.” ~ Suzanne Dulière, 1982, verbatim.
The first time, it is a bucket list of hopes, dreams and plans that shatter into a million wonders, surprises and threats. The second time, it is anticipation, excitement and anxiety. Drink in that trepidation.
For the third time, it just is.
“It is no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” ∼ Lewis Carroll
It is all already here, in the small viewfinder. Click.
Caudéran looked somehow more dangerous than Congo. Well, wielding a 16 gauge shotgun, as she had done there, was not what the Polite Society expected. So, in with the glistening fence. She chides herself at the remark, dismissing any criticism. However amusing it sounded, you did not Want to Get…
They were back on the SS Njassa, 2 years later, this time back home. Everything felt as if it had just stood still all these months waiting for them.
She keeps smoothening the small crease. Disappointing. The conversations around her drone on, so she drifts for a moment; the countdown…
Starboard cabin of the SS Baron Dhanis. She puts the suitcase and the hatbox on the ground. And with that, they are off.
Oh, sure, Africa has tried to tie them down: the broken tipoye, the tropical rain, the missing trails and delayed supplies. That had been the “pleasant hike…
Albertville. A flow of humanity, trucks and animals all running to or from the water in a cloud of diesel smokes and dust. She starts retreating towards the hotel. The humidity is cloying. Rising from the Lake, it mixes with laterite dust to pulverise into an airborne mist, and dissolves…
Last day. He shuts down the notebook, satisfied. She dutifully nods and give an appreciative grunt to the effort. Most of these villages are only recorded in this notebook, she has no idea where they are. But Albertville? Hell yes, that one means the boat back to France. He looks…
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