South Africa

 Life As A Boer: A Personal Narrative

“Vervloeken!” Pa exclaimed. His voice was clearly exasperated and I heard him give off a heavy sigh. “Those dwaas British want to unify South Africa!” As I heard him tell me this dreadful news in his harsh tone, I looked down at my worn out shoes. How could this happen again? I thought. I felt a cold chill of fear run down my back. The British seemed to always be the cause of our problems. I was not yet born when the great trek had begun, but I had heard the horrible stories of it from my Moeder. The long nights in our small covered wagons had frightened her so, and for weeks after she had had nightmares of the time. She would wake up in fear of the natives, and she could sometimes almost feel the piercing of their great spears into her back. All of this because of the British people and their decision to take our land. We, like many Afrikaners, were strict Calvinists, and we looked toward our faith for answers and help. But we could not stay in our beloved land of Cape Colony. Once she had arrived in the Orange Free State, she had felt many of her troubles melt off her back. She thought we were safe. At the news of the British trying to unify the area with the Transvaal, Natal, and Cape Colony, I felt anger boil inside of me.

I clenched my fist’s as Pa spoke of the inevitable war. War. The very word itself brought fear into  my heart. War was not a foreign word, but hearing made me imagine bodies upon bodies of brave Afrikaner men stacked one upon each other. I looked at my eldest brother, Diederick. I knew, that at his age of Seventeen, he would be in the war. It was certain. He was a boy who loved his land.  Then I looked at Mannes. He was only fifteen, but I knew he too would be in the war. He was a frail boy, and I knew that he would be a casualty. Yet his enduring spirit told me that he would fight.  We sat in silence as an unspoken sadness spread over our modest home. I knew that at the very least, one of my family members would perish. I heard a loud knocking coming on the door, and the noise began to play and ring in my ears, due to the sudden stress I was feeling.

I cracked open the door to see that it was our fellow Boer neighbor, Roosje. At her advanced age, Roosje had been an adult at the time of the great trek in 1845, when she had left,  and had seen the full effects of the hardship caused by the British. I saw tears forming at the base of her eyes, and her face was beginning to become the crimson shade of one of the Prickly Pears that Mannes and I would often pick for dinner. “ Have you heard! Have you heard?!” My Pa nodded his head in a solemn manner. Roosje’s grandson was, without a doubt, going to war. Pieter, her twenty year old grandson, was a brave young man who felt nothing but pride for his Afrikaner heritage and land of the Orange Free State. With nothing left to say, my Pa whispered “Totsiens” to Roosje, and she left to tell more families of the new war.