This is a short descriptive story I wrote last year in October, at a time when I was missing my home town Pretoria, and I decided to pay tribute to the famous nickname ‘Jacaranda City’. In case one is at a loss as to why I refer to October and spring in the same sentence: In the southern hemisphere, where South Africa is to be found on this globe, Christmas is celebrated in midsummer, and July is the coldest month of the year.
Foreword
In this essay there will be a few words and references that I feel compelled to explain, as only people that have been subjected to the exact same environment as I would understand. Below is a glossary of the necessary vocabulary that the reader would need to understand before delving into this tale:
Tasty maize = a brand of maize porridge
Unterhemd = vest (underwear)
Blazer = a formal jacket, usually with shoulder pads, pockets, and may be braided, ie trimmed with another colour. In art school, half colours would be a blue blazer with red trimming, full colours would be a red blazer with red and blue trimming.
Full colours = I think based on the British ideals of education, students who achieved an overall average of 80% and above in academics, or other specialist subjects (like art), were awarded full colours. Half colours would be awarded to students who achieved an overall average of 70% and above. It is a complex system that was laced with bias and bureaucracy, not anyone with good marks would be awarded this (you had to have a spotless record of good behaviour).
‘But only quite’= reference to a statement in a very amusing chapter in Virginia Woolf’s novel ‘Orlando’, where her writing style becomes very cheeky. It has become an inside joke between one of my friends and myself.
Matriculants= In South Africa, pupils in their last year of high school are referred to as matriculants, and they matriculate when they pass all their matric exams at the end of their matric year. Makes sense ‘ey?
‘Küssmädchen’= kiss girl, when I was a child in school, the kids used to play a silly game where a few bold girls would run after the boys trying to give them wet pecks on their cheeks. The boys were particularly appalled by the idea and always tried their best to escape. Seeing as they were only the tender age of 6 or 7, it is no wonder they could not fully appreciate it.
Ouma and Oupa = Afrikaans, Grandma and Grandpa.
Beskuit= Rusks, hard sweet bread like biscuits that are an essential part of the South African diet.
‘Wat die donner’ = Afrikaans: What the heck/h***?
It is that particular time of year that brings about me a sort of childish excitement. After having to endure the long hard winter for about three months, wrapped up in blankets and crouching in front of the radiator heaters, warming up each piece of clothing before putting it on, whilst hurriedly spooning down the maize porridge…or rather the molten brown sugar with a hint of ‘tasty maize’…one layer is pulled over the other. Unterhemd, poloneck, uniform shirt. Over that the pullover and the blazer, sporting the school’s crest, and numerous other badges and scrolls that show off my talents and abilities for which I have earned recognition, at the same time displaying my rank in the hierarchical system of my institute of education. I came to hate that fire coloured blazer of mine, and love it.
I hated it because It meant I had succumbed to the pressures of the system and had allowed myself to waste my talents on an unappreciative institute, and that I was now one of those who walked around making a display of their bragging. Others would just call it ’snobbery’. The other reason why I hated it was because I had only received recognition for half of my efforts. It was out of spite that the red blazer was awarded to me. And I felt soiled when I wore it because I was reminded of the bitter betrayal by my teacher to me.
I loved it also because I had worked hard for that colour, and had aspirations since a young girl of being a bearer of full colours.
As I pictured by means of the previous paragraph, I obviously had more loathing for the aforementioned clothing article than love, so I seldom wore it.
Now, for fear of having gone quite off topic (and hark, do I hear the echoing of ‘but only quite?’ from across the seas or was it just Madame Woolf who put those words into my mouth? however, my thoughts being read or, I have to admit I cannot leave that out)….BUT ONLY QUITE….
I was about to reminisce about the Jacaranda season.
And now I shall continue: I remember when I was a child, a rosy cheeked and naughty little sprite, patrolling the suburbs of Pretoria, the city of my birth, on my pink bicycle, it so happened during the month of October, when the city radiated of lilac and the streets were carpeted with lilac blossoms and the breezes would bring showers of lilac raindrops from great and twisted branches; My mother would happen to sigh and gesture in the direction of the university, which to my memory lay westward from our then residence. Her sighing would pertain to the fact that my brother, 16 years my senior, would be sitting exams. More particular, those arranged by the medical school; The reason of my mother’s pride and joy. She would sigh and with her whole being hope and pray that her son would not only pass, but do well and carry the family pride on his shoulders, a pride which has been handed down by generations of German physicians.
It was this time that had henceforth been associated with stress, hope, fear, books, nerves, ink stained hands, sleepless nights and cramming. Now is there is hardly any need to use the forbidding word ‘Exam’?
I asked my Mama, in blissful playfulness, why the Jacaranda yielded such peculiar flowers. She, an academic through and through, answered in her academic way, that it bloomed for the sole purpose of warning prospective matriculants and any other students in university that it was time to cease frolicking, and to turn into a ‘fleißige Biene’ (diligent bee) to prepare for the end examinations, which would prove each and every contender whether they would be deemed worthy of continuing their course of drudgery or to finish their course of drudgery, and to receive a prize.
My First school, the German school of Pretoria had a motto boldly framing its crest ‘Ohne fleiß kein preis’ (meaning: Without diligence, no prize shall be awarded).This was something that runs deep in every true German’s veins. For me at that time though, the term ‘Exam’ was yet a foreign concept, and my little mind could not but put a huge frightening black hole to define it.
Our teacher, in third or fourth grade, I cannot recollect when precisely, showed off an exemplar of the said exam paper. It was a booklet of several pages, containing horrid questions that were far beyond our capability and knowledge that we could comply to answer. Perhaps the worst was the fact our teacher mentioned that the poor students were required to sit at the same desk for several hours on end, with the said paper in front of them, and if they failed to answer correctly, the consequences were dire….
But despite the slightly more serious and negative connotations that the beautiful jacaranda blooms brought, I truly loved that season.
Imagine, as described in the first paragraph, the harsh winter coming to an end. The first to usually announce the gay arrival of spring would be the invasive sweet aroma of jasmine flowers, followed promptly by the awakening of all other botanical life. The trees obey the rays of the sun and yield their green sprouts, the birds put on their feverish opera not unlike that portrayed in Bambi, and princesses drop their slippers when being pursued by their princes during their games of tag and ‘küssmädchen’. The kaleidoscope keeps turning faster and faster, that even the Oumas and Oupas whilst serenely looking on the young, send each other an occasional wink over the lustred rims of their antique teacups. Despite all this hubabaloo, there is one member in the landscape who oddly slumbers in continued defiance.
It is none other than the Jacaranda tree.
The twigs stay dry and bare. Not even a little hope of green is to protrude. The rest of the fauna and flora, too impatient to wait for the old arbour to claim its vitae, carries on in a splendid cabaret. Now before I continue throwing around metaphors and thus stumble pedantically around the image and tripping on my own shoelaces, lets skip ahead now a month or two, when the curve of pyrexia has past reached its momentum, and life is approaching more or less an equilibrium, and the Oumas are starting to sigh with relief that they can dunk their beskuit in peace and quiet whilst closing their eyes to the tranquil sonatas of Mozart and Bach…so in other words: At a time when least expected, the old tree already pardoned for its offence…
Yes! it was in my third year of school, I remember now quite clearly that my teacher, a charismatic, wonderful woman hushed us during break for we were playing near the halls where the matriculants were writing, it was the
same year that the triumphant new six colour flag was raised above the union buildings…
Oh pardon me, I spoilt the climax, I shall continue:
The Jacaranda, the clever old jester of my beloved city would play its pranks on the unsuspecting inhabitants. On a quite respectful morning, a quite respectful Oupa for instance would wake up at his usual hour to make himself a quite respectful cup of tea, and when gazing over the rim of the respectful cup onto the scenery displayed by his respectful garden just beyond the window, behold: ‘Wat-die-donner is that tree doing wearing a purple crown!’ This cannot be Priscilla, for we are not in the desert…
Yes, it is indeed quite true, but only quite so, for soon the streets lined with these outrageous trees become curtained with marvellous purple. The King of Persia himself would not have wished a more fitly dwelling than the parks and streets of my beloved city.
Quickly, the branches would become so heavy with their extravagant burden that by the slightest whisper of a breeze the flowers would travel along and descend onto the ground, contributing to the ever growing vivid mosaic carpet. Whether you look up or down, you see purple.
How strange is this phenomenon? Not one green leaf during this whole spectacle is brought forth during this fantastic era, only generous showers of beautiful gluttonous lilac for the eye to behold and feast on.
The tree is obstinate in that it will strictly follow its own time table, and will not be rushed on by the other floral bourgeois that let them selves be dictated by the rays of the sun. And I love the Jacaranda for precisely that reason.
Now I suppose I shall relinquish my poor keyboard and tendons (I had to stop several times while writing this because of the screeching pain in my wrists), and so let also the imagination of you, the reader carry on and complete the symphony, add the last strokes to the composition and continue your day with this pleasant image, or retire to bed with this pleasant dream (I shall opt for the latter option, as the clock has just struck 1am…) and I hope that I have kindled in my foreign readers a particular interest and desire to see this phenomenon for themselves and overcome their fears of crime and mosquitoes and board a plane with me one day, due south.
If this does not do justice to my Jacaranda city’s pride, then deservedly so, for nothing can ever truly describe in words what it is like.
I shall retire now to my soft covers and nostalgia.
Good night.
