Seas of South Africa (12 page)

“But . . . what about your sister?”

“I haven't seen her for almost a year.”

“That's too bad.”

“She understands. She lives with a nice family. She knows I will try to see her when I can.”

“Soweto sounds like a dangerous place to live.”

“It is not somewhere you should ever go if you are a stranger. If you do, you must know people there, and you must know where you are, which neighbourhood you are in. There are no police to help you if you get lost or fall into trouble.”

“Yah, that sounds dangerous.”

“It is. But it is also the most famous township in the world. Nelson Mandela has a house in Soweto. So does Desmond Tutu. Their houses are on the same street. It is the only street in the world where two people have both won the Nobel Peace Prize.”

“Cool. Are they rich houses?”

Los laughed. “No. The same as everybody else—plain houses. Mandela's house is a museum now.”

“Wow. Didn't Nelson Mandela go to prison?”

Los spoke with deep respect. “For twenty-seven years. Then, when he came out, he became president of our country.”

“That's amazing. That would never happen in Canada. A prisoner could never become the leader of the country. It would be impossible.”

“But you never had Apartheid in Canada. In Canada, everyone is equal, right?”

“More or less. We still have rich and poor.”

“Rich and poor is everywhere. Apartheid was inhumane and corrupt. Black people were treated like slaves, or worse, like animals. We couldn't leave our townships without special papers, or we would be beaten. We couldn't own good houses or have good jobs or go to good schools, or we would be beaten. We had no leadership in government, and no medical care. We had to live where the government told us to live, and take the worst jobs. And if we complained too much, we were beaten. The white leaders made sure we were always poor.

“But Nelson Mandela fought Apartheid to make South Africa free and equal for everyone. So, the leaders took him and threw him into jail, on Robben Island, where nobody can escape. But they could not stop him. Because you cannot kill the spirit of such a great man. It is impossible. And the rest of the world finally listened to Nelson Mandela, and they
said, no, this must not continue; and the jaw of Apartheid lost its teeth. When I was a young boy, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison.”

“He must be a brave man.”

“He is the greatest hero of Africa. He is my hero. He has always been my inspiration.”

“What about Desmond Tutu? What did he do?”

“He was the Archbishop of Cape Town. Now, he travels all over the world and fights poverty,
AIDS
and racism. He is a very great man, too. I am incredibly proud that the two most important people in Africa have houses where I was born.”

He paused and kicked at the water rushing by his feet. “There is only one time that I can go back to Soweto.”

“When?”

“When the national football comes to the big stadium.”

“Football? What difference does that make?”

“The government built a huge stadium in Soweto. When national football is played there, everybody goes. Then the streets of Soweto are empty. Anyone can walk into Soweto then, take anything, and not be afraid of getting caught. But it doesn't happen often. Maybe a couple of times a year.”

“It sounds kind of risky.”

“It isn't. Everyone watches the football.”

“Everyone?”

“Except for the oldest people.”

“It must be crowded at the stadium.”

“It is insanely crowded. There are so many people, you cannot breathe. The yelling will make you deaf for days. South
Africans love football more than anything else. Don't Canadians love football?”

“We like hockey more.”

There was a splash in the water on the port side. Then another. Then a few more. I knew what they were. I recognized the sound. Los stood up. “What was that?”

“Dolphins. They love to follow ships. You'd better sit down. They'll jump right over your head.”

Did they ever! And when they were in the air, we could see the light of the stars on their sides. I tried to count them, but there were too many. It was the biggest school of dolphins I had ever seen. There must have been hundreds. Los got excited. He started yelling loudly. “Weeeeeeeeeeeeooohhhhh! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeooohhhhh!” Then he tried to touch the dolphins as they went over his head.

“You'd better sit down, Los.”

“This is great!” He yelled at the top of his lungs as he tried to reach them. I ducked my head inside the portal to listen for the radar. I heard one dolphin splash very close to the sub. “Did you see that one, Los? . . . Los?” I raised my head, but he was gone. Oh boy. I jumped onto the hull, pulled on the rope, and helped him grab hold of a handle on the side. He was coughing up water.

“Los?”

“Yah.”

“You've got to learn how to swim, man.”

“Yah. I know.”

Chapter Fourteen

AFTER THE GENTLE
green shores of Mozambique, where people lived in thatched huts and children played on the beach, Richards Bay was a shock. It had a large, deep-sea harbour, and was home to the largest coal-exporting plant in the world! Giant mounds of coal turned the south side of the harbour into a world of sooty blackness. They reminded me of the pyramids in Egypt, except they were black.

There were also factories and industrial yards here for aluminum, titanium, iron ore, granite, woodchips, paper pulp, and phosphoric acid, which, according to my guidebook, was used in batteries, rust remover, and soda pop. Freighters lined
up in rows, like pack mules, waiting to carry the smelly stuff to factories all over the world. As we motored into the harbour at periscope depth, I had the feeling we were entering a hole in the earth, out of which all the materials of industry came. I couldn't help being fascinated, but Los wore a heavy frown. Coal was his enemy. Factories all over the world burned coal nonstop, spewing thousands of tons of carbon gasses into the atmosphere every day, heating up the planet and killing the oceans. And the biggest exporting plant for that coal was sitting right in front of us.

“I wish I could blow it up,” said Los.

I wondered if he really would. I didn't think so.

There were nice areas of the harbour, too, with sailboats, deep-sea fishing boats, and even a pier of rescue vessels. That suggested there might be a real police force here, which was a welcome thought. But the harbour was enormous, and with so many corners and canals and piers, we spent most of the first day just looking for a suitable place to moor, and couldn't find one! Everything was too open and exposed. There was one channel that might have been a decent place to hide, but it was lined with sailboats, and had houses and condominiums right on the water. And it was only twenty feet deep. Someone was likely to see us sneaking in, like a snake in a drain pipe.

On the south side of the harbour, right in front of the monstrous coal mounds, were a few tiny coves that might be okay for hiding the sub at night, or for a few hours in the day,
but I wouldn't feel safe leaving it there longer than that. If I did go with Los to Ladysmith, I had to expect to be gone for as long as a week. I couldn't leave the sub where someone might see it, even if the chances were slim.

We took turns steering around the harbour and staring through the periscope. Los wanted to practise diving and surfacing. But I had to stand next to him when he was pumping air into the tanks because, brilliant as he was, he was not very patient, and he brought us right up on top of the surface in the middle of the harbour, with a big show of bubbles and waves. I hit the dive switch immediately, and we went back down. Luckily, it was almost dark, and we could hope that nobody saw us. But by now, we were tired and hungry, and the crew was anxious to get out.

“There's got to be
somewhere
we can leave it, Alfred?”

“I don't know, maybe for now we should leave it in one of the coves in front of the coal.”

Los frowned again.

“At least then we can get out and walk, and maybe find a pizza.”

“Pizza?”

“Yah. That's the thing I miss the most at sea.”

“Why don't you just make pancakes?”

“No way. I can eat pancakes whenever I like. I want pizza. And Hollie needs exercise. Just a minute.” I went into the stern, dug out the South African money from underneath the potatoes, and brought it back. “Here's the money I took from
the pirates. See how dirty it is? We have to wash it before we can spend it. Do you think there would be a laundromat here?”

Los' eyes opened wide when he saw the money. “That's a lot of money.”

“I know. And it stinks, doesn't it?”

He covered his nose and nodded.

“But maybe we can buy a car with it. We have to clean it first, though. See the blood stains?”

He looked more closely. His face changed. He looked a little horrified. “People died for this.”

“I know. I met one of them. Believe me, he wasn't very nice. Here. Let's wrap it in a towel and carry it in a bag. We'll take Hollie with us. Little Laura will have to stay behind.”

I steered into one of the tiny coves and surfaced until the hatch was only two inches above the surface, just enough to climb out and not let water in. It took a lot of patience, care, and practice to surface so precisely, and I hoped Los was paying attention. It didn't look like it. His mind was somewhere else. I think he figured he knew how to submerge and surface now, and that was enough. It wasn't. Ziegfried would not have been impressed. He would probably have made Los practise surfacing every day for two weeks. And I knew what he would say to Los. “You can't go to sea in a submarine if you don't have patience.” And he was right.

We slithered out onto the hull, up to our chests in water, and reached for the bank. I helped Los across. It was just five
feet. Hollie swam it. Seaweed went up in the air. We climbed up the bank, stepped onto the railway tracks, and headed towards town. Our clothes dried along the way.

It was a warm and pleasant night. It was always warm and pleasant in Africa. We soon left the tracks for a road that led into the centre of town. The road took us through the woods, along the foot of the harbour, and past factories and industrial yards. There were
a lot
of industrial yards. Neighbourhoods had grown up around them. With so many smells to investigate, Hollie was thrilled with the hike, although he turned his nose up at some of the industrial smells. When we reached an area with streets and shops, and saw people on a corner, we stopped and asked if they could tell us where to find a pizzeria and a laundromat. Within half an hour, we were sitting at a counter, stuffing ourselves with pizza. Life was good.

The laundromat was harder to find. And Hollie was tired now. I had to carry him for a couple of miles. The laundromat was in a row of shops not well marked, but the people on the streets were friendly and gave us directions. There were two ladies inside the shop, waiting for their clothes to dry. They looked up when we came in and stared the whole time, which made it awkward to put the money inside the machine without them seeing it. They seemed awfully curious, probably because we were trying so hard to hide what we were washing. Our conversation likely didn't help, either.

“Won't this ruin it?” said Los.

“No. Not as long as we don't wash it for too long. I've washed some before by accident and it came out okay. And I've found some that had been in water for a long time, and it was fine once it dried. The thing is to use a gentle cycle on the machine. It will come out all yucky, but when we dry it, it will be like new.”

“But won't the blood stain it? Blood stains clothing.”

I glanced at the ladies and saw that they were listening to every word. Los didn't care. He didn't care two cents what other people thought.

“I don't know. I guess we'll find out. Oh. Shoot! We need coins. These machines don't take bills.” I looked over at the ladies. Suddenly they turned away. I flipped through the money in the bag. Half of it was in one hundred rand bills; the other half was in two hundred rand bills. I was guessing there was about eight thousand dollars worth all together. We didn't know for sure. We didn't want to count it until it was clean. I pulled the cleanest one hundred rand bill I could find from the pile, walked over, and stood in front of the ladies. I waited for them to look up. They didn't want to, but eventually one of them did. “Do you think you could make change for us so we can do a wash?”

Both of them frowned. But one answered. “What do you want to wash?” I think they didn't have anything better to do than be nosy.

“Uhhh . . . a bunch of towels,” I said.

The lady looked at Hollie, and she looked at the bill in my hand. She didn't believe me. “It's dirty.”

I looked at the bill. At least it didn't have any blood on it. “I'm sorry. It's all that we have.”