There are no baobabs on the Vaal River, but there are midges in Glen Rosa
A talk delivered to the Honolulu Branch of The National League of American Pen Women
Honolulu
Wednesday, January 9th 2019
INTRODUCTION
Good afternoon everyone. Thanks very much for being here. Just to make sure we’re on the same page regarding this talk, here is a baobab tree I photographed in South Africa and here is Glen Rosa, which is on the Isle of Arran.
I need to explain the title of this talk.
Some years ago, when I first started writing fiction, I had a conversation with the wife of one of my oldest school friends. Jenny is a second-generation South African and lives in Johannesburg and we were talking about books we had read, and she told me that she had just started a new novel and had had to put it down after the first few pages and was going to donate it to the library.
“What was so terrible about it?” I asked.
“Oh, it just annoyed me so much. The protagonist is described on Page 2 as sitting under a baobab tree on the banks of the Vaal River—everyone knows there are no baobab trees anywhere near the Vaal River—they don’t start appearing in the South African landscape until at least 200 miles further north. I just couldn’t read any more!”
This comment really struck a chord with me. If you are going to set a story in a certain place, your descriptions of that place need to be authentic. Maybe some readers wouldn’t know the geographic distribution of the mighty baobab tree, but if even one reader does, you are pretty well sunk as a novelist. So, I’m going to address the issue of the writer’s familiarity with a location and why, even though the story is fiction, authenticity matters. The reader has to believe and to feel that they are there, with the characters.
As to midges, anyone who has been to Scotland will know immediately that there ARE indeed midges in Glen Rosa—they’re often referred to as “the curse of Scotland”!
My talk today, therefore, is going to be about the sense of place in fiction and the significance of authenticity and how one achieves it.
PLACE DEFINED
“Place” has always been recognized as central to fiction writing: I say Yorkshire Moors and you’ll say Wuthering Heights; I say Bath, and you’ll say Northanger Abbey, I say Concord, Massachusetts and you’ll say Little Women.
However, the American author Eudora Welty, in her 1994 essay The Art of Fiction, argues, like other professional guides to writing, that place is one of the “lesser angels” and all the wing beating comes from character, plot, symbolic meaning and above all feeling.
But as we shall see, “place” means more than the physical setting, and a novel’s context or milieu permits character, plot, symbolism and feeling to take shape. To quote Amanda Curtin, the Scottish author now living in Australia:
“Place in fiction is not only about setting; it can also inform and be reflected in character, plot, theme, atmosphere, voice, language. A strong sense of place helps readers to make the imaginative leap into another world, whether that world is the past, present or future. Before you can create a sense of place on the page, you need to immerse yourself in the world you’re writing about so that it comes alive for you.”
Thus, I’m going to suggest that place, broadly defined and carefully executed, is what permits many of the nuances of character, plot, symbolism, and feelings, by giving them what we might call verisimilitude: plausibility, authenticity, credibility.
TWO BOOKS
I’m going to illustrate my talk about these issues with—yes, sorry, lots of my own photography—but more importantly with reference to two books.
One of these, published late last year, is my second novel, The Eye of Kuruman, set in Botswana and the Northern Cape in South Africa.
To explain The Eye, let me read how the central protagonist, Alexandra, first heard of it. She’s a little girl of 5 and has just been told a story by her Scottish grandfather, a high school teacher living in Buffalo New York. The story is about David Livingstone, who once lived in Kuruman, :
“I liked your story. Is Kuruman a real place?”
Her grandpa nodded.
“I like the word,” Alexandra went on. “Kuruman. Kuruman. One day I’m going to go there. I’ll take you with me.”
“Thanks, dearie, I’d like that. If you like the sound of the name, it doesn’t matter if it’s a real place or not. I think it’s quite a small place in the middle of nowhere, next to a very dry desert, the Kalahari Desert. But it has a famous spring, an underground fountain, a source of beautiful clear water, called The Eye. The Eye of Kuruman. Another Scotsman, who was a missionary, set up a church there because of the water from the Eye. Do you know what a missionary is, Alex?”
The second book I’m going to talk about, Highland Holiday, was written by my mother, Jean Evans, pen name Jane Shaw, 77 years ago—published in 1942. It was her third novel for girls, and one of 42 books she published in her lifetime. It is set on the Isle of Arran—a slight stretch to call that the “highlands”, but as Arran purports to be ‘Scotland in miniature’, I reckon she could get away with it.
It’s a beautiful island. She set three of her books in Arran and this, the first one, is not considered one of her best. But at the age of thirty-one and in the year my older sister was born, she was just beginning to find her stride, and my reason for choosing it is that she knew the Isle of Arran incredibly well. Ever since she was a little girl her family, the Patrick’s, spent their summers on the Isle of Arran
Highland Holiday is set in the little village of Blackwaterfoot in the Shiskine valley, because it was in Blackwaterfoot specifically that the Patrick and Evans families spent joyous holidays, golfing, playing tennis, swimming and occasionally hiking in the gorgeous hills. Because we moved to South Africa as a child, I had never been there, but I’d heard so many stories of Arran (or ‘Arn’, as my dad called it) growing up that for most of my childhood, that is where I thought my parents were from!
My mother set all her books in places she knew well: Dulwich Village where they lived in London before going to South Africa; Bath, where she had some of her closest friends and I was born; Paris which she loved; Switzerland—specifically the Bernese Oberland–; and Brittany, a little seaside town called Binic—the places on the continent she had visited before she got married.
Women fans of Jane Shaw who had read her books as young girls and still enjoyed them as adults, have made pilgrimages to these locations and take great delight in finding all the places she mentioned or re-named.
One of these women is Alison Lindsay, who after my parents left South Africa and retired to the Isle of Arran, tracked my mother down and edited a marvelous book that is a tribute to her writing, a sort of Festschrift, containing a series of critical essays about her work—it is named after one of my mother’s most memorable teenage characters, Susan. One of the chapter authors, wrote, quote:
“Above all, Jane Shaw’s novels are illuminated by their sense of place. There are few novelists for children who could capture the physical landmarks, the people, the culture, and the thrill of exploring a new or familiar setting as well as she did. She made her readers want to go there themselves and, when we did, made us feel as we knew them already.”
But of all these places she knew and loved, it was the Isle of Arran that she knew and loved the best. Because Jane Shaw knew Arran so well, the physical descriptions are as accurate today as they were 77 years ago. She had a clever way of providing these descriptions through the excitement of the two girls central to the story, best friends, Sara and Caroline:
And then, very soon it seemed, the well-known outline of the island grew clearer, until they could distinguish the hills circling Brodick Bay, and the little white farmhouses dotted along the shore; and the steamer slid along by red rocks in towards the pier”…
“A car load of monkeys could not have been more restless. They hurled themselves from side to side, pointing out the old familiar landmarks as the car left Brodick behind and slowly climbed the String Road, the small white farms of Glen Sherraig lying far below them on the right. At the top of the String the usual argument started about the names of the peaks in the fierce and jagged range lying to their right.
“Then down they went, into the Shiskine valley and there was wild excitement when they first caught the sweet, sharp, reek of the peat—always the sign that they had really arrived: past Balmichael, past the bakery and post office, Blackwaterfoot’s only shops (there are now three) and over the narrow bridge spanning the Black Water and round the harbor and along the shore… ”
The danger of this precise level of detail is that one’s writing starts to sound like a travelogue, and in fact one reviewer of my book, The Eye of Kuruman, described it—slightly rudely, I thought–as quote:
“Part tourist guide book, character sketchbook, and nostalgic homecoming from an emigrant’s perspective…”
ALLOW THE CHARACTERS THEMSELVES TO DESCRIBE THE SCENE
Both Jane Shaw and I tried to overcome this travelogue trap by having the actions of the characters depict the scene, both in words and deeds.
There are two forms of this: one is when the characters are outsiders or visitors and so they get to describe the place and their feelings about it. The other is when the characters belong in the place and are an integral part of the physical location—these characters make the place real.
Let me give you an example from The Eye of characters being the ones describing the scene through their behavior. Little Alex is now all grown up, a 27-year-old public health nurse employed by the World Health Organization and stationed in Botswana. She has just met there a Dutch doctor, Johan de Jong, who works for medicine sans frontiers—doctors without borders, if my French accent isn’t up to the task! During her first date, she tells Johan that her great hero, David Livingstone, along with his wife, Mary Moffat, set up his mission near Gaborone at a place called Kolobeng, where he also tried to teach the locals the principles of irrigation by digging a ditch or small canal, that unfortunately failed. Anyway, Johan agrees to go with her to find Kolobeng (pages 90 and 94):
That weekend, Johan entered the name Kolobeng on his GPS. Nothing came up.
“Do you have the actual coordinates, by any chance?”
“Afraid not. Try Kolobeng River,” suggested Alex, but that drew a blank as well.
“Knowing this country, it’s probably a dry river,” Johan smirked.
“Try Kolobeng Mission. If that doesn’t work I’ll have to call Ruth, who seems to know everything, and ask her how to get there.”
Kolobeng Mission was in the system, however, probably because it was protected by the Botswana Ministry of the Environment. As it was only a few miles outside Gaborone, they were soon there. As they stared at the weed-covered foundations of what once might have been a house, and the indentations of what might have been a canal, Johan finally broke down and started to laugh. He sat on a rock, shaking and gasping for air.
“Ah, my dear Alexandra, let me take you to Amsterdam one day. I’ll show you a house that’s more than five hundred years old, and it looks like a house, not a collection of rubble. I’ll show you a magnificent canal that, strangely enough, is completely full of water. And there won’t be any emaciated goats, flies, sand or rocks.”
Alex tossed her head back and pretended to pout. “You’re a monster, not a doctor, making fun of a precious archeological site!”
She bent down and kissed him firmly on the lips. Johan was startled, but he kissed her back….
Johan took a couple of photos with his smartphone, focusing as much as possible on the driest spots of the sandy riverbed.
“I’m going to e-mail these to friends in Europe to show them the wonders of Scottish hydro-engineering.”
“You bastard!” yelled Alex, trying to snatch his phone, but he just ran backwards and took three or four pictures of her in rapid succession.
“And these I’ll send to my friends, to show them the mad American woman I met on the African veld, who attacked me with wild, wet, but very nice, kisses.”
Guides to fiction writing often pose the question of whether the writer must always have lived in or visited the milieu of the novel. I’m an ardent believer in first-hand knowledge, and I’ll give an example. I’ve been to Botswana, but a very long time ago, and never to Kolobeng. So, while my mother had years of knowledge of the subtlest details of the Isle of Arran, I only had Google, which, of course, is where this picture came from.
A further complication for me was that I needed two major settings. It would have been far too coincidental for Alex to have gone straight to Kuruman. The WHO sent her to Botswana first. The crucial plot features of this is that Botswana was once a British protectorate (Bechuanaland) but never a colony as such. Black-white race relations are less strained, and historically somewhat more equitable. Alexandra’s professional mission there is very successful, and she is accepted. South Africa’s history, especially the Northern Cape, which was once one of the Bantustans, is very different, and she had a much harder time. In desperation she calls on the support of a consultant, Fin Mtata, an African man with a PhD in organizational psychology, and they too have a romantic relationship. So, the story becomes a romantic triangle, and a serious cultural triangle as well.
When the action of the story moves to Kuruman, I still had the full resources of the Internet to tell me all about it. I’d long been fascinated by the existence of The Eye and like little Alex I thought “The Eye of Kuruman” sounded mysterious and romantic and a little bit otherworldly. Based on the pictures of The Eye in the guide books, I had already written most of the chapters in which this amazing underground spring is described.
And then I did what I think you must do: I went there. More precisely my wife Luanna along with Jen of the baobab fame, and her husband John, were all dragged there by me to see this amazingly beautiful oasis. And when I saw it, it meant I had to re-write it all!
Like me, Alex and Johan had a guide book, which she consulted on their drive to Kuruman from Gaborone:
“My grandpa told me, a very long time ago, about The Eye of Kuruman and why the missionaries set up their first mission station there. It was the water. Hey, let me read you some stuff from the guidebook.”
She paged past a series of dramatic photos of fish, waterlilies, and weeping willow trees.
“Gee, great pictures. It looks amazing, dear. I’ll show you later. Keep your snoopy eyes on the road ahead. OK, let me read,
“It says ‘it’s the largest underground spring in the southern hemisphere, able to supply the entire town. ‘Twenty thousand cubic meters of crystal clear drinking water a day.’ How much is that, Johan, in terms of something I can understand, like a half gallon of milk in an American supermarket?”…
They were in a good mood when they drove into Kuruman, which was fortunate, because a less prepossessing place would be hard to imagine. To the north was a ridge of low hills, and to the south, one of the flattest landscapes of yellow grass and low thorn trees imaginable. A large, colorful billboard depicting what looked like a tipped-over bucket of fried chicken pieces declared: ‘Follow your nose.’ They didn’t have much choice, as there was only one main street crowded with cars, pedestrians, road-side stalls, and junky looking stores.
Alex was stunned. Her romantic vision was rapidly evaporating in the fumes of a long row of minivan taxis parked in the center of town.
When we ourselves finally got to visit The Eye itself, we felt exactly the same disappointment as Alex and Johan, quote:
First of all, they expected a lovely open area as depicted in the guidebook, with ‘THE EYE’ in big bronze letters on one side of a large rock, and ‘DIE OOG’ in Afrikaans on the other side. Sadly, most of the letters had been stolen, prized off the rock. With only a T and a Y on one side, and an O on the other side, they missed the stone marker entirely.
Eventually, they found the entrance across the road from a series of craft stalls, painted in zebra stripes on the outside, and an Auto One car supply joint. There was an admission fee of fourteen rand, about one US dollar, which they didn’t mind at all, but the entire area was bleak and run-down. The brick pavements around the little lake had missing and irregular bricks, the lights were broken and smashed, and the perimeter was surrounded by an uninviting spikey metal fence.
“Well,” said Alex, trying her best to feel cheerful, “there’s a guy over there raking up leaves, so someone cares. And just look at the water. It is absolutely clear, you can even see down to the roots of the water lilies. Look at the fish, there’s gazillions of them, you can see their shadows on the bottom of the lake. Even I can understand the sign that says Visvang Verbode! This bench gives us a nice view, let’s sit here and have our lunch.”
LANGUAGE AND DIALOGUE IN HIGHLAND HOLIDAY
Turning now to the siting of the characters as being true to place, let’s briefly consider their language and dialogue. Jane Shaw had it a little easier because her visitors to Arran were Scots girls from Glasgow, so the only two style of speech she needed were city girls versus the locals.
While language and dialogue are important features for maintaining authenticity of place, you also have to be kind to your readers, and careful about not overdoing it and thus making is sound false. Jane Shaw slipped in Scottish words and expressions quite seamlessly:
“Wouldn’t this side do?” murmured Caroline, but Sara was already half over the dry-stane dyke. So was the dry-stane dyke.
“Oh blow,” said Sara, “I’ve knocked half the dyke down.”
“Makes it easier for me,” Caroline remarked, lumbering over. “But it also makes it easier for the cows to get out…”
Dry-stane dyke is a lovely term, and is what the locals there call a wall made of stones piled on top of each other without mortar.
Here are some other good Scottish words that crop up in conversation or actions:
Wheest
Och away
Luggie
girdle for pancakes not to wear
lassie
laird
Another nice example of a common expression my mother used all the time, that didn’t need to be explained, comes when the family is planning a picnic:
Then Sara stormed in with two bags of warm, floury baps. “We must have lots and lots of tomatoes” she announced. “I can never do a hill-climb without a lot of tomatoes. And you will remember a wee poke of salt for them, won’t you Mummy…”
In the story the families plan to climb Cir Mhor:
“Let’s go up Glen Rosa, bathe in the pool, and climb Cir Mhor,” said Sara promptly.
“What do you think, Jane?” [Jane is the third girl, but she’s an interloper, inevitably for teen “What do you think, Jane?” Sara’s mother said,” does the idea of Glen Rosa appeal? You needn’t climb the hill if you don’t want to—we’re going to wait by the pool till they come down again—if the midges will let us. They don’t usually”…..
Glen Rosa was looking its best, and they followed the burn upwards by grassy paths through heather until, round a great bend, they came on a clear view up to the head of the glen, with the sharp peaks guarding the Rosa’s source.
“That’s Goatfell on the right, “Caroline went painstakingly on, “and there’s Cir Mhor, the pointed one, and that’s the saddle joining them.”
One of the ways Jane Shaw was so immersed in the dialogue of the story was because she and my father noticed and talked about their childhood experiences all the time. For example, I was always told that the big debate when they went on a climb in the hills as teenagers and young adults, was whether to eat their picnic lunch before or after reaching the top and I’ve got old photos of them as maybe university students, making sure they were well rested and fed before a climb, and apparently once they reached the top. Quote:
Sara was in a sad quandary. “We must push on,” she said doubtfully, looking longingly at the parcels of food her mother was unloading. “But then we must eat.”
“It’s easier carried inside,” decided Caroline firmly.
Parenthetically, Luanna and I have carried our picnic lunch and a couple of beers to the top of Goatfell, with its spectacular views.
There are also some words and sentiments in the book that 77 years later we would probably want to change: fat ass, queer, Hottentot, and a few slightly disparaging things about tinkers and one peddler, who was Indian, but on the whole, I have to say that my mother didn’t have any serious racial prejudices, although she didn’t fancy the Irish very much.
What I think was so important in terms of capturing the rhythm of a place and making the characters, the dialogue, the plot and the scenery all coalesce was that wherever my mother and father went they were acute observers of manners and customs and oddities, and then they’d talk about them for years so that they became ingrained in the family lore.
DIALOGUE AND AUTHENTICITY IN SOUTH AFRICA
South Africans too have a rich slang, some of it based on African languages but mostly on Afrikaans. I used them sparingly. Alex and Johan are outsiders, so that’s no problem, but I wanted the dialogue of the locals to sound convincing but not to be incoherent. The further issue was that having left South Africa fifty years ago, I didn’t any longer know exactly which words were still in common usage. I listened carefully during visits, but of course I had no conversations with Afrikaans receptionists, African night-watchmen, third generation English-speaking South Africans in rural areas, or black journalism students—all characters who appear in the novel. But there are some words that are so common I did use them:
Jislaaik
Voetsek
Just now
Ag, shame
Braai or braaivleis
True’s Bob
Lekker
Dorp
Koppie
I ran an early draft of the novel past a loyal family member, first cousin once removed, Alastair, who manages a radio station in Johannesburg. The only error he found was when I had a character drinking what used to be my favourite South African beer: Lion Lager. He e-mailed me back and said, ‘Lion Lager hasn’t been brewed in South Africa for 20 years!’ Oh my god, nearly a baobab on the banks of the Vaal moment! Better change it to Castle beer. But I nevertheless left it in, in what I thought was a devilishly clever way of showing my deep insider knowledge:
Fin, the black industrial psychologist, had spent the afternoon listening to Alex’s cultural problems and lack of cooperation from the nursing staff at the hospital. He’s now on his way back to Johannesburg from Kuruman:
Just outside town, with dusk turning the flat bleak landscape a lonely purple, Fin switched on his headlights. He didn’t want to hit any wandering livestock. As he was about to speed up and cruise down the main road, the N 14, he noticed a small motel. It had a flashing neon sign proclaiming the wonders of Lion Lager, a row of neat looking cottages, some with cars parked outside, and at the far end a pink building declaring itself to be the RE_TAURANT. Without thinking Fin pulled off the road, parked in front of the ‘kantoor’, and before long was lying on a comfortable bed with three bottles of Castle beer sitting in an ice bucket. The neon sign, like the motel itself, was something of an anachronism.
He told himself it was too late for the long drive home, and it would be better to spend the night here and leave early in the morning. Deep down, he knew his impulsive reaction had nothing to do with the length of the drive. He knew the next morning he was going to go back to Kuruman, to the hospital, and find Alexandra. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, but she was attractive, engaging, and personable. She needed his help and his cultural skills—he rather fancied himself as a knight in shining armour. That wasn’t exactly it either. He had the hots for her.”
DETAILS
Professional guides to writing about place suggest that the author should offer specific details rather than generalities. I was greatly amused when re-reading Highland Holiday for some good examples, to discover that my mother and I had come up with exactly the same level of detail seventy-five years apart!
Jane Shaw wrote:
“Five to eleven!” Sara shouted. “And where are our elevenses? We must have our elevenses. I’ll nip up to the Shedog store and get some chocolate.”
“I want a dairy milk flake,” said Caroline. “What are you going to have Sara?”
“I’ll see what they’ve got, but what I want is a Peppermint Crisp.”
I wrote:
Fin’s car was looking a real mess. There was a film of red dirt covering the back bumper, and the areas of the window the rear wiper couldn’t reach. Inside, the back of the car was littered with empty bags once containing biltong, and an apple core or two Alex was saving for the next scraggy goat they passed. She was always thinking about nutrition. There were some candy bar wrappers as well. Alex had acquired a taste for Peppermint Crisps. “We don’t get these in America,” she had explained once, opening her third of the morning.
I think it is inevitable that just like my mother and father noticed things when they travelled, my wife and I notice odd things too, especially in a part of South Africa where we’d never travelled before. And if we noticed them, or were bemused by them, so were Alex and Fin
Here are two examples that I made use of:
I was very keen to visit the Moffat mission, as we only had a day and a half in Kuruman. But when we got there it was closed and all we could do was peer through the gate. Quote:
“When Fin arrived at the Moffat Mission there wasn’t a soul around. That wasn’t surprising as the darn place was all closed up. It was surrounded by a high chain-link fence and a gate with a chain around it, and a big padlock. The sign outside said KURUMAN MOFFAT MISSSION UPGRADATION PROJECT. Upgradation didn’t seem the right word. Fin was sure it wasn’t a valid word in English…”
Something else we’d never seen in this part of the country were giant nests built by sociable weavers. Quote:
Some of the telephone poles had enormous nests constructed by little birds—sociable weavers. Alex had marveled at these massive nests the first time she had seen them, but now remarked on them only if one had collapsed under its own weight and was lying derelict on the bare veld. Nothing quite symbolized failure as vividly as the collapsed mass of a weaver bird colony. She pitied the displaced residents, and particularly the one weaver bird who had brought back one piece of straw too many.
Writers’ guides usually stress trying to allow description of place to affect atmosphere, or to foreshadow the character.
So when I wrote, matter of factly, that the health clinic Alex and Fin were visiting had heavy bars over the windows, I hoped to creates a slight sense of threat, being under siege rather than welcoming. Or when Alex and Johan are planning their summer trip to Cape Town, and Alex suggests they visit a wine farm rather than Johan’s suggestion of Robben Island where Mandela was imprisoned, you sense the difference between the serious Hollander and slightly more hedonistic Alex who was very keen to get away from always having to tip-toe through the cultural minefield, or agonize over historical injustices and the politics of the past.
POLITICS, SYMBOLISM AND CULTURE
Culture, politics, and past injustices, however, are central to the novel. One of the trickiest themes in South Africa is dealing with the impact of apartheid. Fortunately there are other aspects of being in a place and noticing things which can provide subtle but important props or cues for tricky issues. Consider the following:
When my friends and I visited The Eye, we discovered two commemorative plaques embedded in the rocks. Neither are in the guide books and you can’t find them on Google. But Alex sees the first of them and calls over Johan, who’s Dutch, to translate it for her, and they work out it is the centennial celebration of the Battle of Blood River, in which three thousand Zulu warriors were killed by the voortrekkers. The plaque “pledges our ongoing trust in the faith and the ideals of our voortrekker fathers.” Because it is nearly 80 years old Alex excuses these very much less than admirable sentiments and says you can’t judge something by contemporary standards. But then they come across the second plaque, a historical marker, also entirely in Afrikaans, commemorating a visit by the prime minister B. J. Vorster:
“even I can read this one,” Alex said. “‘this memorial stone was unveiled by Prime Minister B. J. Vorster in 1971.’ That’s way more recent. I wonder who he was? A goodie or a baddie?”
Johan reached for his cellphone and Googled B. J. Vorster. He read silently before looking up with a deadpan expression:
“Let’s never judge by contemporary standards, my dear. Lots of people were pro-Nazi and vigorously promoting apartheid. It was all the rage, and as minister of justice he oversaw the Rivonia trial and imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. But hey, you have to be tough with terrorists.”
Alex tried to grab the phone. “You’re a truly bad man yourself, Dr de Jong, using irony and sarcasm to bully a poor young nurse just trying to see both sides of a picture.”
Overriding politics per se are the two fundamental themes to my novel. One is about cultural awareness and responsiveness which makes up much of the tension and depth of the story itself, and the other is the metaphor of water in such a dry land with erratic rainfall and chronic water shortages, which is an extended symbol that pervades the story.
Let me give one example of the water symbolism.
Robert Moffat, who was born in Ormiston, East Lothian, and his wife Mary, were appointed by the London Missionary Society. They set up their mission in Kuruman in the early 1820s because of the beautiful clear water of The Eye. But as the area developed and was settled by whites, they managed to control the water, making it harder for black farmers to develop farms beyond their traditional nomadic style. The Eye symbolizes exploitation of natural resources by colonial settlers, which an elderly white woman explained to Fin
Jesus once sat next to the Fountain of Jacob and asked the Samarian woman there for a drink. Jesus told her whoever drank the water He was offering would never be thirsty. The missionaries would have known that and probably stuck it unwisely in their sermons. Fountains of water symbolizing the truth of the Word of God—then the London Missionary Society kept the real water for themselves. Throughout the Bible, thirst, which everyone would have experienced, symbolizes the need for a spiritual life, for God. In Isaiah it is written: ‘And they thirsted not when he led them through the deserts, he caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them, he clave the rock also, and the waters gushed out.’ That was Moses of course—he must have wandered through Kuruman back in the day.”
But it is the cultural challenges and how Alex negotiates them that represent the key theme of the novel. She is influenced by both her lovers—the fact that she has two lovers at the same time raises the tension, but their different approaches to cultural issues bewilders Alex at first—Johan, the medical scientist believes there is only a right way and wrong way to do things; Fin, the social scientist is keen to prioritize local indigenous knowledge. Some resolution is achieved when Alex finds her own confidence to rely on her culturally sensitive instincts, her training in the best preventative principles of public health, and her basic decency. As the youngest in a very bright family of scholars she has never been taken seriously and often feels inadequate as a result, but through her efforts she learns to overcome her insecurities and doubts:
“When I was trying to please others,” Alex explained, “and not feeling comfortable with my own identity, I accepted there was a correct way of doing things, my family’s way, my professors’ way. I didn’t have to think for myself. But now I’m free to make my own mistakes—it’s up to me.”
“You’re over analyzing again.” Johan assured her. “Your work is terrific. You’re doing a great job. I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks, dad!” Alex said, with more than a hint of sarcasm. “I knew you wouldn’t fully understand. But I love you anyway—you’re just a man and you can’t help it. Know this, Johan dear, from now on I’m free. I’m an independent adult. Watch out, Africa!”
Before she fell asleep that night, Alex ran over the discussion in her head. She was clear about who she was, and she was clear about her work. She was clear there was no escaping the need for more data—the visits to the villages were critical. She was good at them, the people accepted her, they told her stuff. Fin’s presence helped, but for the first time she didn’t need him. He was the chauffeur; he announced her entry to the village community. She didn’t need Johan, either, and she didn’t need her family.
She accepted and loved them all, but she was no longer beholden to any of them.
FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS RELATED TO PLACE
But this comment leads me to the final point I want to make about place and that is how the author’s emotions regarding the “place” begin to frame or permeate the style and mood of the story. I accept—thinking of my reviewer’s comments– that I often feel nostalgic, when I go back to South Africa and experience the pulse and vibrancy of Africa again, and see the vast display of stars at night out in the veld—all experiences that crop up in the story.
With respect to my mother’s writing. You might have noticed the date of publication—slap bang in the middle of World War 2, and the year my sister was born. My parents were living in London by this stage and had survived the blitz. And I tend to think that Jane Shaw badly needed to write a book for girls that was innocent, escapist, safe, and comforting. Yes, the villain turns out to be a German spy, but that is largely tangential, and the war gets no other mention, not even of shortages, of rations, of difficulty getting petrol, and all the other realities of life in 1941—presumably the year she was writing Highland Holiday. So, when critics describe it as all a little sugary and overdrawn, I’m quite sure that the act of writing it was a real solace for life in war-time London. She works into her plot in great detail places that were so familiar to her, rich in positive memories
“Sara walked up by the edge of the High Field and over the grass and heather until she was on the Doon, far above the Kings Cave. She found a little grassy hollow which just fitted her and was sheltered from the wind. She took out her pencil and began to chew it. ‘What am I going to write about?’ she wondered…. And the sun dipped over towards the Kintyre coast, and the sea and the golf course and the hills became bathed in the rich glow of late afternoon, and the effect of the chocolate had worn off long ago, Sara rose and went home for her supper.”
In that short paragraph we not only have place as a geographical entity described with physical richness as the light changes colour, but we also have a sense of security: a grassy hollow which just fitted her as well as an action that would be familiar to children at the time—today less so: Took out her pencil and began to chew on it. And then she inserts a little joke that is also about internal physical comforts that lead to action: the effect of the chocolate had worn off long ago. Eudora Welty finally admits that:
“The moment the place in which the novel happens is accepted as true, through it will begin to glow the feeling and thought in the author’s head and which animated the whole of her work.” (P. 7)
Unlike The Eye, there is no sex in Highland Holiday and the only boys are annoying little brothers. There is no swearing or blaspheming. There are no cultural conflicts and the local people are all kind and accepting of the summer visitors—maybe they genuinely were. Sara plays golf, goes swimming, writes a play, does some amateur sleuthing, and fights to protect her friendship with Caroline from the unwelcomed intrusion of another girl, Jane. You could probably do all of these things almost anywhere, but a critical and disparaging attitude about a newcomer in the place the two girls knew so well, gives them a strong feeling of belonging:
Jane! a stranger in their very midst, who had to have everybody and everything explained to her, who didn’t know the ways of the place, unalterable as the law of the Medes and Persians, and who didn’t show any signs of appreciating that you were less than the dust unless you have been coming to Blackwaterfoot for at least 10 years.
Is there comparable emotion and nostalgia in my writing in The Eye of Kuruman? I have to admit there is quite a bit of it, particularly in the way wild-life is depicted. Because the game reserves are still one of our greatest pleasures in South Africa, I’ll end with some photos that illustrate a conversation at the very end of the book:
The morning of Alex’s departure, all was bustling in the Reese household. John had promised to take the big [carved] giraffe to a packaging and mailing agency in Sandton for her. He was amused by his own observation that Lexi was shipping back a wooden giraffe, when she was probably the only American to have spent almost two years in southern Africa and not actually seen a giraffe. Or any other big game. It was a travesty, John said, to have been in Botswana and not managed to get to the Okavango, Chobe, or the Victoria Falls, especially given her love for Livingstone.
“I was too busy,” Alex had replied defensively. “Anyway, I saw lots of springbok, a couple of ostriches, a family of warthogs, and there was a pair of lazy jackals hanging around my apartment complex in Gaborone, raiding the trash cans. I did make it to Upington and saw the Orange River and even saw the backs of a couple of hippos. I photographed them in honor of my grandpa.”
When reading a good novel, you are quite unconsciously exposed to many new places and situations that one day may have a faintly familiar ring. Highland Holiday may have been therapeutic for Jane Shaw in London during the war, but it would surely have been therapeutic for the many little girls who could escape to a peaceful, charming friendly world that nevertheless had the ring of realism, of authenticity, being set in an ancient and enduring place. There’s no violence in Highland Holiday and even the German spy turns out to be Austrian and pretty harmless.
There are no villains in The Eye, either—I may have had more in common with my mother than love of Peppermint Crisps!
The tension in my novel comes from recognizing the good and bad sides of being a modern “missionary’—in the cultural sense rather than the religious. David Livingstone made only one Christian convert, but he greatly respected the acquired wisdom of the native people who had adapted to living in such a dry environment that their word for rain, blessings (hoorah!), and their currency is all the same: “pula.”
But finding pleasure in the story, or learning about the history, or gaining an insight into traditional versus scientific knowledge or seeing different cultural perspectives as all equally valid, depends entirely on one thing:
Making sure there are no baobabs on the banks of the Vaal River and that there are plenty of midges in Glen Rosa.