Moketedi:The witty centenarian

GREG KELEBONYE
Staff Writer | Monday December 13, 2010 00:00

 

A little muted obscenity about how useless people have become.  It is followed by a chuckle from the old woman and laughter from the small group around her comprising The Monitor scribes, a family friend of the old woman, her 73 year-old daughter, a 47year-old grandson and two six-generation great grand children.

At 101 years old, Mmakika (Mma Serufe) Mokotedi  still remembers most events of long ago as if they happened yesterday. Her mind though has become selective with certain dates. The old woman has lived through two world wars and most famines of the 20th century. Most of the community among which she lives today are descendants of her peers - some four to six generations apart.  Among these are five Bakgatla kings  - From great Lincwe I also known as Letlakana who begat Kgosi Molefhi Kgafela Pilane who begat Kgosi Kgafela Lincwe, II progenitor of current Bakgatla Kgosi Kgafela Kgafela - a total of four generations of Bakgatla Dikgosi.

'Nna ke fitlhetse Letlakana e le Kgosi [I found Letlakana as King, ' she says.

King Letlakana, ruled the Bakgatla from 1876 to 1924. He died and was buried in Mochudi.

A member of the Magata regiments, she doubts if there are any more Magata still alive today.

Grandmother MmaSerufe can write, having been a pupil at Lincwe Primary School. That was long ago and she cannot quite remember the year.

'I only went as far as standard three as I had to come back and help at home. My teacher was Kgosi Rebaatile Eli. The school moved to Phuthadikobo in 1921,' she says.

Until the beginning of this year she has been knitting shawls and hats for her great-great grandchildren. And she can still see quite well.

'While I am still able to see, my sight is not so good anymore and I decided to put away my knitting sticks,' she says. Knitting is a trade she learnt many years ago. In those days visiting the shops to buy clothes or even food was as rare an occurrence as the Heli's Commet.

'Shops were really for the whites  - the Johny's and their likes. We ate of the good of the land. We ploughed, harvested wild berries and tubers and life was just good. That is why we lived longer,' she says, closing her eyes, perhaps to savour that nostalgic moment. Meat and protein supplements then included mabera  - a black fatty beetle, and melon seeds, which they fried pretty much the same way you would fry groundnuts. Meat was however aplenty as the men would go out hunting and come back with enough meat to last several months.

'Those days the only dress you had was your one school uniform. Otherwise we wore makgabe (tussled skirts - usually short). We did not wear shoes'.  To keep the cold winter colds at bay, they wore sack and animal skins.Then, there were no standpipes or generator operated boreholes.

'We fetched water at the Ngotwane River where a number of wells had been dug. We carried the pots on our heads. We would go as many as three times to fetch water. I wonder if you or your kids would have survived that life,' she says with another chuckle, and throws an obscenity to describe the type of children there are today. The distance to the river, from where we are sitting, and where grandmother Mma Serufe grew up is just over four kilometres. Then, they used the heavy earthen pots common in those days.

The old woman cannot recall the date she got married to her loving husband. She does however recall missing him terribly after he went to the second-world war to fight on the side of the allies. However at the time she took comfort in the fact that there were many other women whose husbands were at war. It was a relief, when after many months he safely came back home. She still keeps pictures of her late husband in military wear, looking young and professional. We are looking at the picture of her husband when grandmother MmaSerufe breaks into a chuckle.

' I remember the day I was preparing for our wedding. As was tradition then, the bride was expected to prepare a reed-mat, which she would later sit on during her wedding. We had heard that we could get the reeds for making the mat from Tshwane, and believing it to be close-by, four of us set off on foot to go looking for it. Tshwane turned out to be a place far into South Africa. We took many days to reach the place and come back. Our legs were swollen for days after the trip.'

They had travelled past a terrain infested with dangerous wild animals and black-man hating Boers. She did get married and together with her husband, they had four children two boys and two girls, the first was born in 1932.

The three other children were born in 1934, 1937 and 1939. Her daughter Ditshala, an old woman herself, was born in 1937, and she is the one who now nurses her century-odd one old mother and ensures that the notorious Mochudi monkeys do not snatch food from her while she is eating.

' Now those are wretched creatures. I think they have realised that I am old and cannot do them harm and they will come here and wait when someone gives me food. If the person goes back into the house one of the animals will come and wrench the plate from me. What can I do? Even the monkeys know I can't go after them,' she says, almost resignedly.

And once the monkeys snatch any item, either from a child or an old woman like MmaSerufe, you are not supposed to bother them. Otherwise you will never recover the utensil.

'I used to pick stones and try to hit them in the hope that they would drop whatever they had stolen, say a sugar basin, but these things appear to think like us humans. I think as a way of punishing me for throwing stones, they would go away with the utensil and even damage it. However I realised after I stopped shouting and hurling stones at them that a monkey will normally eat whatever it has stolen and then gently put the utensil down,' chips in her daughter-nurse Ditshala. Naughty animals. But you dare not kill a monkey. It is the venerated Bakgatla totem.

In fact a story is told about how at one point the police in Mochudi received an alarming number of reports about stolen handbags from patients' and nurses bedsides and offices. The police sent a contingent to investigate.

Then they saw one of the culprits: A little grey monkey scaling the hospital walls with a handbag its size before perching at a nearby rock outcrop and ransacking the bag. The monkey was not looking for money as it soon became evident. It pulled out something and began to unwrap before gobbling it down. And so the mystery of the missing handbags was solved. The monkeys had realised that women often kept sweets, gum and fruits in their bags. The women would need to be more vigilant.

As the photographer flashes his camera at her a laughing Mma Serufe quips

'Motlapa o ke one o mphatlhang. O kile wa bona kae monna a nama maoto. Wena o ne o ka swa ka nako ya leuba. [So it's this lazy boy who is blinding me. Lazy as you are, you would have died during the famine.'  She does not recall the year of the famine except that it was a long time ago.

'We would go around picking animal skins. We would then cook the skins in some salt. That would become our meal, sometimes the only meal you would have in days.'

Miraculously none among her tribe died because of the famine, perhaps because they had beetles and other crawling insects and melon seeds to supplement their animal-skin diet.

Grandmother MmaSerufe decries lack of order in today's society.

'When I was growing up, there was order. The king's regiments ensured that people behaved appropriately.

Those who failed knew that they should expect a proper whipping,' she says. Somebody reminds her that Kgosi Kgafela has been in jail for doing something similar to that and she throws an obscenity at whoever is responsible and then chuckles. The reason why there is so much disorder is because Dikgosi have abdicated responsibility, she says, and Kgafela should be allowed to do his job. She shapes that mouth again, ready to throw another obscenity at her King's tormentor but stops halfway chuckling like an eleven-year old.

As we leave, she reminds us that we should bring her some sweets. She is happy with the packet of bananas and apples that we brought her, but would more than anything love some sweets. She would not mind a very well cooked meal with a bit of  'mainaraise' (mayonnaise).

'Kana bogologolo dilo tse di ne di seo, di jewa ke banyadi fela [In our time these were foods reserved for couples celebrating their weddings,' she says with another chuckle.

We must leave and she gets ready to crawl back to her room.

'You can see that these legs can no longer carry me. I hope you bring me a wheelchair next time you come,' she says, that naughty-before-obscenity look daring us to say something to the contrary. We promise to help however we can, even though we have no inkling where we can get a wheelchair. But we must make the promise if we are to escape that sharp shooting tongue.