B.B.U.S.A. (Buying Back the United States of America) (22 page)

Chris had been shaken from the soldier’s body but had merely slid down, and firmly latched on to his right leg, and began biting the soldier’s upper thigh. As the man balanced himself on his free leg he prepared to kick Chris off with a knee to his small head. A split second before the full momentum of the soldier’s knee could connect with Chris, Traykie reacted. His foot shot out and connected with the man’s moving leg. The sudden stop to the forward momentum of the soldier’s leg caused it to overextend, almost breaking the man’s knee.

The wobbly soldier still stood on the leg Chris was clinging to. Chris had slid down a few more inches and was no longer biting, just hanging on for all he was worth. Traykie withdrew his leg as Leo had taught him and re-extended it, swiftly connecting with the man’s upper groin. Still balancing on his left leg, he kicked his right leg forward once again into the toppling man’s stomach. As he prepared for yet another kick, aimed for the man’s face, the target fell to the ground.

A small army of soldiers arrived at the entrance with guns raised. Traykie, still standing in a defensive fighting posture, realized that he was suddenly dramatically outnumbered. Besides, this time he had guns pointing at him. Another soldier had to physically remove the still fighting and biting Chris, who was the last one to surrender.

The older soldier viewed the two downed soldiers, the coughing store manager, and the evident fingerprints left on the side of Sarah’s glowing cheek. He cleared his throat and spoke in a strong British accent,. “Looks like a bloody bomb went off. Anyone care to enlighten me as to what happened here?”

Sarah and the boys were detained in the security office for over two hours. Formal charges were dropped as the last thing wanted by the South African Government was an international incident that sounded racial in nature. The soldier who uttered the derogatory terms would undoubtedly face his own consequences for the use of his unfortunate language choices. Sarah had to swallow her pride as well, as such an incident would certainly make a great news story and the whole point of going to Namibia was to stay out of the limelight. Not only was an election looming, but a world cup soccer championship was soon to be hosted in South Africa, and negative publicity would not be in the government’s best interest either. Sarah realized that she did not want her whereabouts to make international news, so both sides apologized for their lack of communication.

The older soldier in charge kidded Traykie by handing him enlistment papers for the South African military. The family was finally released and guided directly to the plane they were boarding. The two escorting soldiers did not leave the family’s side until they were safely seated on the plane. From the plane’s window the boys could see the soldiers still standing near the gate entrance until their plane moved and they lost sight of them.

Sarah was greatly relieved be aboard the plane and leave South Africa. She was so upset and nervous that she had made several escorted trips to the rest room in the twenty minutes they waited to board their flight. She was definitely shaken up and her cheek still stung. She realized how lucky they were that they had simply not been shot or sent to prison.

The kids, on the other hand, were so excited they couldn’t stop talking about the encounter and could hardly wait to tell Grandma all about it when they would meet her at the airport in Windhoek. Sarah kept looking over her shoulder, afraid it might be overheard by the wrong people, and still blow up. She tried vainly to quiet her sons but that seemed impossible with their adrenaline coursing and their parts in the drama becoming larger and larger as they retold each other every unsavory moment.

The flight from Pretoria to Windhoek seemed short after the long flight from the States and was mercifully uneventful. They arrived a full hour early. As usual, Traykie was hungry and dying to eat. They retrieved their bags and entered an upscale restaurant overlooking the runway. After ordering and receiving their food, Traykie asked the waiter for some ketchup, but was told they did not have any. He thought it would be hard to be stuck in a country so backwards that they didn’t even have ketchup. How would he survive?

Sarah explained that some chefs in American restaurants were insulted if diners wanted ketchup. They felt it was an insult to their cuisine if they wanted to cover it with ketchup. While he was digesting the information he saw the same waiter taking what looked like ketchup to some other patrons at a nearby table.

“Mom, that guy lied to me! He said they didn’t have ketchup.” In the next second he unexpectedly jumped up and rudely grabbed the bottle from the surprised neighboring patrons and confronted the waiter with it. “I thought you said that you didn’t have ketchup? What do you call this?”

The waiter burst out laughing. “That my Yankee friend is tomato sauce. Why would you call it ‘catch up’?”

Traykie looked at him skeptically, but could not come up with a good answer as to why Americans referred to tomato sauce as ketchup. He finally apologized to the surprised waiter and to the shocked patrons for his error. He shyly thanked the waiter when he later returned with another bottle of tomato sauce for their table. The boys had learned two good lessons that day about communication and cultural differences.

Americans were usually so lackadaisical, thinking that everything in the world was just the way it was in the United States; not realizing that most other countries did not share all the freedoms and luxuries of which Americans have become so accustomed. Perhaps Americans were not necessarily always right and things were not always as they appeared. Traykie felt like he needed to think about things a bit more in the future before reacting. The trio finished their meal and walked down to the lower lobby to wait for Joyce to arrive.

Joyce entered the terminal and immediately saw her family sitting at a bench near the entrance. She was in her late fifties with sun-bleached streaks of blondish hair mixing with her short brown cut. She looked good for her age. Sarah thought that she must have lost at least fifty pounds since she last saw her. Joyce was wearing her sunglasses on top of her head, partially holding her hair back from her face. She walked in with long strides but moved with grace and confidence. Her face opened to a huge smile when she saw her family and she quickly embraced the three in a giant bear hug.

“It’s about time you came to visit. I’m so glad to see you all!” she said between trying to plant kisses on both boys’ heads.

Chris was the first to get a word in. “Grandma, we got into a fight in Pretoria!”

“A fight? You mean with your brother?”

“No!” Traykie interjected. “With soldiers!”

Joyce looked at Sarah for some input to make sense out of what she was hearing. “It’s true. We’ll tell you all about it in the car.”

“Well then, let’s grab your stuff and follow me.” Joyce reached down and picked up one of the larger suitcases that Traykie had been carrying for his mother. He was surprised at the ease in which his Grandma lifted and carried the heavy suitcase. She did not look her age, nor show any signs of aging or weakness. He was impressed at his grandmother’s strength.

Joyce was a big woman, at least five-foot-eight, and had always carried some extra weight. She never let it get her down though. She was the first to go on long hikes or go camping, fishing, swimming or dancing. She was well proportioned and could have modeled mature clothing, as she always said, for ‘full-sized people’ instead of all those itsy bitsy half-sized people that most magazines cater to.

It was hot outside the terminal. Sarah liked it that way. It was a dry heat, which made it more bearable than that of Austin, Texas. Joyce stopped at a four-door brown car called a Hillman Vogue. Sarah opened the trunk and neatly stacked the luggage in order to get it to fit.

“Good job. I was sure that the boys would have to ride with at least one suitcase on their laps.” Joyce praised her.

“Mom’s good at packing,” Traykie said. “She always arranges the suitcases in the trunk cause when Dad does it we do end up having stuff in the back seat.” Sarah nodded in agreement.

Joyce laughed. She well understood Leo’s packing abilities. Once inside the hot car Sarah welcomed the air conditioner, as she could feel little beads of sweat forming at the base of her hairline.

“When last did everybody eat?”

Traykie spoke first: “It’s been a while now.”

Chris and his mother spoke at the same time, “Liar!”

Sarah looked at Joyce and said, “Mom, he’s telling tall tales! We just barely finished eating at the airport dining room when we met you in the lobby.”

Joyce looked at Traykie in the rear view mirror and shook her finger in the air at him. “Naughty boy. I suppose you have a hollow leg now?”

Sarah confirmed it. “He eats like a horse, and then some.”

Windhoek was a lovely town set in the foothills in a generally desert like terrain. It had beautiful, blooming jacaranda trees, which Sarah thought looked a lot like the Lilacs she knew. The flowering bougainvillea gave it a certain European elegance enhanced by its distinctive German architecture. Windhoek was the capital of Namibia and also the largest city in the country, although it still seemed very small compared to American standards. It had about the same population as Boise, Idaho.

They drove down Kaiserstrasse in near silence, just observing all the unique buildings. Joyce told them that what they were seeing looked much like some places in old Germany before World War II, but could scarcely be found in Germany any more. After the war, much of Germany had been demolished and was modernized when it was rebuilt. Many people had left Germany after both of the great wars, and some of them had come to make their homes in what was then called German South-West Africa. The country had been a protectorate of Germany after World War I. Since it wasn’t directly involved in the devastation of World War II, the architecture brought with the German people nearly a hundred years earlier, still remained. German was one of the three official languages along with Afrikaans and English.

Once they cleared Windhoek and started out on the road to Omaruru, the bush veldt started to look dry and uninteresting, and Sarah embarrassingly began to explain what had taken place at the airport in Pretoria. Looking back, she felt responsible for what had happened. It was she who took for granted the American way of going about your business. She had never once thought that the security, especially at the airport, might be beefed up during elections and that people would be stopped entering a shop and that it was expected to have their bags inspected.

Joyce did not pass judgment on Sarah or the boys, merely listened to their story in awe. She wasn’t greatly surprised that Sarah might have been mistaken for a South African. She explained that the color code was crossed every day by lighter-skinned people and some people from one family might be considered colored and another white. It was a tremendously silly system anyway. Things were changing and it wasn’t as important as it had once been. Different children from the same parents might be considered white, colored, or black depending on the hue or degree of pigment apparent in their skin. What a ridiculous idea. People were just people no matter what they looked like. On this issue Joyce had strong opinions and voiced them freely. She also had a few choice words for the behavior of the soldier that might have approached Sarah in a more civil manner and avoided the whole thing. That, too, made her angry, because in her opinion a soldier should be just as respectful to one person as to another.

Ordinarily, Joyce would have found their story a little exaggerated, for it seemed hard to believe, but since Sarah was the one telling it and both boys were confirming it, she had to believe it was completely accurate.

“When you get back home perhaps you should write the story down and submit it to the Reader’s Digest. Maybe you could prevent other naïve Americans from landing in big trouble when traveling. In a similar predicament, it could have ended much worse. You and the children could have been shot or simply disappeared and no one would have ever known.” Knowing all too well the history of South African police, Joyce was shaken by their experience.

Sarah, Traykie and Grandma were wholeheartedly visiting, making up for lost time while Chris, who was now tired and bored, complained about the heat, the lack of space, the dry terrain, being thirsty, feeling sick, and having nothing to do. The other three tried to ignore his complaints. Finally he succumbed to sleep, much to the relief of his companions.

Sarah was fascinated with the countryside they were passing through. Joyce took on the role of tour guide, pointing out the different vegetation; the ‘Vet Boom’ or fat tree, and the ancient Welwitschia with its long, seemingly dried-up, curled leaves that resembled strips of rubber from old tires. She explained that the Welwitschia plants had been living on earth before Christ was born. Many of them were over two thousand years old and could be some of the oldest living plants on earth. Traykie couldn’t believe that the clumps of vegetation he saw occasionally could have lived for so long. He wasn’t sure if Grandma was pulling his leg or not.

As Joyce eased off the gas to negotiate a corner, Chris suddenly awakened with a start and blurted, “Great. I suppose we have a flat tire now. I’m not changing it, Traykie can.”

Sarah glared at her youngest son with a stare that meant “Better knock it off, or I will!”