Maureen* was sixteen years old, with the profile of a Lesotho princess and the hands of an artist. Esther from next door had asked if Maureen - her sister - could be au pair to us for a few weeks so she could earn some money needed for her schooling. I was about ten and my brother was eight and a half. Although home money was tight Mom said yes in order to help out, and budgetted accordingly. She warned us to be on our best behaviour, and to do everything we were told. However, when we three went outside together into the garden, we struck our first hurdle; Maureen could not speak a word of English, and we spoke about three words of Sotho.She seemed very nervous of us. It was the first time she had ever left her mountain village, and been to a large town, never mind a mining town.
We started to communicate by sign language.Maureen went over to some ground in our garden, got water and started to dig. Somewhat under the surface she found a wonderful clay, the type that I now know is best used for pottery for the kiln. How she knew it was there amazed me. Esther could tell me afterwards that Maureen was well known in the village and in the surrounding villages as being the best pottery and sculpture maker they had.
Maureen began to work with her fingers in the clay, and very soon a most perfect little bees* sat on her hands. I was wide-eyed in wonder. I had never seen anything so perfect, and made so seemingly effortlessly. I was all afire to start. My brother who always had the soul and hands of an intuitive artist, scooped some clay up and made a beautiful bees with a totally different expression on its little face. Maureen smiled, and clapped her hands together to signify approval. Then she turned to me. I knew that I was going to make an exquisite little animal, and scooped the clay up.
Five minutes later, red in the face and with sweat starting to trickle down my face in the broiling Welkom sun, we stared at my little bees. It was a most misshapen little lump of clay, with four lump legs each a different size. The head wobbled on its axis, and as we stared at it, one of the little horns dropped off with a resounding plop on to my hand. The two stared at me in amazement, their little animals so alive on their hands that they seemed almost ready to move. And my poor little creation looked like nothing on earth but a piece of mud that had skidded off the back of a tyre in a thunderstorm to lie wilting on the roadside. And that did it. The next minute we were in peals of laughter, so much so that I had to beg them to stop, as the tears were pouring down my face and I had a stitch in my side.
That day I learned a valuable lesson; there is a wonderful universal language; the language of laughter.
*Name has been changed
*Bees is the Afrikaans word for ox
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