CHILDHOODMEMORIES

Why should anyone be interested in my childhood memories?Everyone has his or her own which are far more relevant to himor to her. Yet I feel that I should record mine before they become vaguer inmy mind, before they are lost forever. They say that as you get older yourmemory begins to fade. Let me put them down before they disappear.This way my memories will out-live me!

The sounds and the smells and the visual remembrances when I wasa child remain clear in my brain, yet I cannot remember what I had forbreakfast this morning or the name of my partner at tennis yesterdaymorning. Memories sometimes lie. If you were told something a longtime ago by someone else you sometimes remember it as though youexperienced it yourself—just a slight error caused by those complicatedbrain chemicals. I also know that when my children tell stories about theirgrowing up their memories are somewhat different from what I rememberto have occurred. I always feel that their interpretation is incorrect, thatthey have embellished fact and fancy—and they think that I have it allwrong. I think that children have a tendency to color their memorieswhile being unaware that they are doing so. However, this is what Iremember—and let us see if you can prove me wrong!

For the first ten years of my life we lived in a house next to a railwaystation on a busy line that ran from Randfontein to Springs. It was theextent of the Witwatersrand (White Waters Ridge), the largest gold reefin the world which since then has been found to be even longer, takinga swing to the south from the Transvaal in to the Orange Free State.The Durban train also sped past my house every day, there and back.During rush hours this train station was a hive of activity with English,Afrikaans and Bantu languages from every corner of Southern Africafilling the air. It was like a melting pot. The gold mines employed workersfrom as far afield as Central Africa. There were odors emanating fromtheir food containers and the weeds that they smoked and the potionsthat they drank. Some of them drank an illegal brew called `skokiaan'which had a distinctive odor to it, once smelled, never to be forgotten.Their blankets and bodies emitted waves of foreign smells that tested theolfactory nerves. The sounds of crying children added to the cacophonywhile hordes of people were running past our front door in an effort toget on to the train before it departed. There was always a clash of thosetrying to get on to the train with those disembarking. There seemed to bea shortage of good manners. After the train left we witnessed the slowerambling gait of the arrivals.

These sounds from the station, and sometimes the odors too, wouldpenetrate the windows of our home on the days that we left themopen—remember, we had no air conditioning in those days, so we hadto leave them open to get a breeze; somehow, the odors would insinuatethemselves into the house even if the doors and windows were shut!Above all the tumult one could still hear the belching noises of theengines, the multi-lingual announcements by the conductors and thepiercing whistles notifying their departures. It sometimes felt that wewere living right on the train station. All this time I was supposed to bedoing my homework or studying for an examination. However, you caneven get used to this! Yes, on a Sunday or public holiday there were fewertrains and smaller crowds. All was quiet and empty—there seemed to besomething missing.

Those coal-powered trains continued running all day and night,rattling and screeching with high-pitched whistles blowing, and all thetime emitting huge wafts of unhealthy smoke from their coal-drivenengines. Our window sills would be covered in soot—our furniture,too—when we did not shut the windows. Our lungs were probably filledwith coal dust. Today health authorities would more than likely declarethat residing under those circumstances would be a health hazard. Eventhough ours was not a malaria-endemic area my brother, who had neverleft our neighborhood, developed malaria, supposedly from mosquitoesbrought in by the trains. We learnt to sleep through the loud sounds ofthe night, although any guests who spent the night in our home had greatdifficulties in falling asleep. They always questioned us as to how we wereable to sleep but, apparently, we learnt the art through adversity.

Johannesburg is a large city, but it is unlike most cities in the world.Usually cities are developed because there is a river or a sea-port nearby,or they may be close to some beautiful scenery or are situated on animportant route or at a cross-road. Johannesburg was built in the middleof nowhere, in the midst of an uninteresting terrain. In 1886 gold wasaccidentally discovered on this boring landscape. Until then nobodylived there; there was nothing to see, no rivers, no mountains, no sea (it isabout fourhundred miles fromthe ocean)—only dry veld(grasscoveredfields) where the grass is straw-colored in winter. With the finding of goldand the gold rush that followed it suddenly sprung to life, developed acharacter of its own and expanded. People came from all four corners ofthe world to seek their fortune. The gold industry grew and spread andboomed. There was no stopping it! Subsidiary industries developed inorder to serve the needs of the mines and miners. This brought in morepeople, and before long Johannesburg became the largest city in the land.It developed into the second most populous city (after Cairo) on theAfrican continent, and the most cosmopolitan and industrialized.

Johannesburg possesses a feature that no other city can display. Sinceit lies on the gold reef numerous mine shafts were constructed all alongthe reef. Once the gold in that area was depleted the mining companiesmoved on to a different location, leaving behind dirty-white coloreddumps of sand, the size of small hills. These are dotted all around thecity giving it a distinctive appearance, not replicated elsewhere.

Interestingly, a man by the name of Boschoff hit upon a plan of siftingthrough these mine dumps for any gold that might have escaped thebig machines of the large gold-mining industry. Apparently he was verysuccessful as there was still enough gold left in them after having beendiscarded as trash by the mining giants for him to become a billionaire!In fact, a word was created from his name—to rummage through garbagefor financial gain is to `boschoff'.

Because the railway line impacted on our street the road came to anend into a cul-de-sac. This gave us our own `park', enabling us to use ourstreet as a playing field where we could entertain ourselves with soccer,cricket or rugby depending on the season of the year. It was safe as therewere no cars passing through. Of course, during rush hours our gameshad to be suspended. Careless passers-by often interfered with our gameand were apt to get a soccer ball in their faces whether they stayed on thesidewalks or not.

As a matter...