Playing in the Veld

As children my sisters and I mostly amused ourselves with whatever happened to be available at the time.  Horses to be caught, and saddled up for a ride, lambs to be fostered and fed, and calves after having been separated from their mothers, to be taught how to slurp milk from a bucket.  With all this interaction between us and the animals, we hardly missed the toys other children seemed to play with in the big cities.

We had a wonderful young girl by the name of Rosalina working for my mother.  When I was particularly lonely, my mother would ask her to play with me.  Together we would dig out large lumps of grey clay from the edge of the big dam behind the cowshed.  It took her no time at all to fashion broad-shouldered oxen with long curved horns.  Try as I might, the animals I made never looked remotely like hers. My horses resembled giraffes, and my cows had elongated bodies and short legs.  Sometimes I modeled the clay into little people who would in my imagination, ride my giraffe horses all around the farm.

At times we would forage for wild spinach which grew among the long grass surrounding the mealie fields, and occasionally we would come across a sort of mock sugar cane.  This would be a real treat for us, and we would contentedly chew our way through the sweet, juicy stalks.

Rosalina seemed to know a lot about the plants which grew in the veld.  We often went looking for roots.  One particular bulb grew deep down in the soil.  By using a pointed stick, we could scrape away the ground to expose the large bulbous tuber.  I can't remember if it was edible or not or whether it was used for medicinal purposes, but Rosaline would proudly carry her trophy back home with her.

I was introduced by her to a flat, knobbly looking plant, which when struck by a stone, would begin to weep a white, sticky substance.  Once it got onto your hands or feet, it was almost impossible to get rid of without soap and water.  It would cling to you like latex.  If you happened to touch the ground or the grass, this too would most surely become embedded in the sticky goo.  Nonetheless, hunting among the rocks and stones for these hard little knobbly patches was addictive.  I never ceased to be fascinated by the white liquid oozing out of them.

Life on the farm was really lonely once my sisters went to boarding school, but wonderful people like Rosalina, helped to quell the long hours of boredom, as well as teach me a lot about the veld with all it's wonderful treasures.