All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth

So recently I needed to visit a dentist. The gums around my back molar started swelling to such an extent that it was affecting my intake of food, which led to a loss of appetite which led to the fantastic realization that I might loose a few kilos. That was the upside of dealing with a throbbing jaw. The downside was I couldn’t pop down to the local Medi Cross Centre and flick through a 5 year old copy of Fair Lady missing the back page with smells of novacane wafting around the waiting room before a man in a white coat could cause more pain and take all my money.

I had three options. One; an overnight trip to East London to see a dentist who would probably take ex-rays and charge exorbitant fees for his services. Two; a trip to Butterworth to a Chinese dentist who the locals here recommended but who I had reservations about since I didn’t know what to expect. Three; a visit to the local igqirha (medicine woman) who I was told by a village teacher treated toothache by dripping juice of a certain bush down a smoking twig into the problematic tooth cavity. I didn’t have a whole lot of money for option 1 or an actual hole in my tooth to be filled the African homeotherapy style remedy so I settled on option 2.

The bike trip to Butterworth took my mind off my throbbing jaw and in fact my whole body shuddered so much I thought the trip might be fruitless as I feared the molar, which had slightly loosened over the past few days, would fall out of its own accord by the time we arrived. The combination of our old 550 XT Thumper which has seen better days and the gravel road to Centane which is deteriorating badly makes for a horribly bumpy ride. I can’t make the full 15 km’s without having to stop a couple of times and get off the now seemingly shockless bouncing back tire, stretch my aching semi metal knee, wipe the oil which leaks from the engine onto my shoe causing my foot to continually slide off the footpeg and finally realign my bifocal glasses and wedge them back into my helmet at the correct angle so that when I arrive at my destination I don’t have a headache from vision which alternates between near and far sightedness at the speed of the bikes piston, causing me to be more squint than usual.

From Centane to Butterworth the 17 km's of tar is smoother but by then the damage was done to my body so I sat on the back and tried not to think about the dentist visit which I dreaded. I focused on keeping my lower jaw stretched as far away from my top jaw as possible to give my teeth a rest from the hour of clamping they had been through which is a good way to prevent your tongue being bitten when your body vibrates at that speed but the enamel coating on my teeth is wearing thin. I also had to focus on not actually opening my mouth while doing this as I didn’t want to scare the dentist by presenting him with squashed bugs all over my pearlys.

We arrived at the Chinese dentist and I took a seat in the sparsely furnished waiting room with a dozen or so other patients while Theo went shopping. The friendly Xhosa women all chatted away around me and after 4 hours, I’d picked up the rhythm of how things worked at this dentist surgery. By then I’d poked my head into the room next door since there wasn’t a receptionist, where the friendly Dr Chang and his Chinese assistant, who was probably his wife, asked about the tooth and after a quick exchange of hand signs, their limited English and me trying to talk with my mouth open for him to see my swollen gum from the doorway, I returned to the waiting room for the long haul.

An old Xhosa man directed people from the surgery room to the bathroom at the back of the building where you rinsed your mouth but generally people seemed to know where to go. The patients seemed to be business people and chatted away except those who came out of the surgery room. They sat clutching tissues against their lower faces, waiting for the injection to kick in while the dentist peered into the next patient’s mouth in his surgery. My turn eventually arrived and the dentist told me that it was too late to save the tooth and that after pulling it, the huge abscess would drain by itself. I settled back in the waiting room for about 10 minutes after a quick trip to the back bathroom to rinse my mouth and squeezed past the generator for a quick pee. Just as the drool was about to run down my chin, escaping the provided tissue, I was called back in to have the job finished. The dentist had a lovely jaw side manner and put my mind at rest before the extraction which wasn’t half as bad as I’d expected. I’d once nearly punched a dentist who hurt me. It was an instinctive action as my clenched hand automatically shot out when he carelessly groped around in my mouth with his sharp tools. He was not a nice dentist at all. This guy was totally different and in fact afterwards we even tried chatting although it was really difficult since by then, we not only had a language barrier but my limp mouth made it impossible for me to articulate coherently. I paid my R100 and left, relieved and with a lopsided grin.

The trip going back wasn’t so bad as my body seemed to be more relaxed, from the adrenaline surge probably or maybe because I rode half the way with my leg stuck out straight but we still stopped just as many times for me to spit mouthfuls of blood out and to replace the surgical wad which I was biting down on with a fresh one tucked away in pocket which the dentist's wife had sent me home with.

That’s a dentist I don’t mind going back to but if I do get a cavity and the Igqirha is off duty, I’ll try a recently recommended option by a woman who said her parents treated their farm labourer's tooth aches by sticking a hair dryer nozzle into their mouth to dry it, followed by a blob of quick set Pratley putty pressed into the hole.

Hopefully I won’t need to look for my hair dryer stuck in a cupboard in the truck any time soon. My appetite is also back so the 2 kg's I thought I'd lost have found their way back to my middle again. Oh well.

GOT TO HAVE KAYA NOW

GOT TO HAVE KAYA NOW


Bubbling with excitement we hit the N2 and headed up towards Butterworth where we planned to turn towards the coast through Cantani and then explore a couple of villages which were nestled in the hills close to the sea, all as per John’s helpful directions. We reached the busting town of Butterworth about 100km’s later that day, we measure our days in distance not time, since we are not directed by time but rather by how much diesel we need to pump into our fuel guzzling truck. 5km’s to the litre isn’t bad but when you’ve clocked 1300 km’s and more to go with no bank account to continually replenish the trucks addiction to fuel, then every km counts. It was Saturday and everyone from far and wide was their doing their shopping at Shoprite, Lewis or Pep Stores. 50km’s further we arrived at Cantani and everyone who wasn’t in Butterworth was doing their shopping there. The main road was lined with little shack shops where people could buy mieliepap, get a haircut, buy airtime or chickens. We made a mental note that we could definitely stock up on vitals in Cantani since it would probably be the nearest town from us and there was a grocery shop. Taxi’s weaved across the roads, loaded with people and their heavy 50kg bags of pap and sugar. We grinned. It felt good. This was rural and we loved it. Viva Africa. I was relieved to see that the younger women in the villages and towns were wearing jeans and T-shirts. I had been a bit concerned that women were expected to dress conservatively and not wear shorts or long pants but only dresses or skirts as stipulated by the elders and I didn’t own a single such feminine article of clothing. We got directions for a place called Ngobla or Ngura or Ngani or something like that. Anyway it was a name which we clearly had trouble with cos when we hung out the truck window clicking away with our tongues, asking for directions, no-one seemed to know where we were headed. Eventually after getting cheek tied, we were told to follow a gravel road which looked more like a dirt track than anything else and we hoped it led somewhere. The road was as pock marked with embedded stones as a hormonal teenagers’ pimply face. We rattled on for about 30 km’s over hills and dales, passing goats, cows, the odd person and clusters of colourful homes, some were mud rondavels, others were hexagon shaped brick houses and many were painted bright blue or green. The Xhosa women which we saw had painted white circles around there eyes and coloured in cheeks and I assumed it must mean something but I wasn’t sure quite what. It definitely did not indicate a bride to be as these big mammas did not conjure up pictures of virginal youth as they surveyed us through a cloud of billowing dust left by the truck. I waved but they didn’t seem too enthusiastic to wave back. Tatomkhulu’s neatly dressed in their Sunday best, their crinkled faces tucked under their weather beaten hats didn’t hide their questioning eyes as we rattled past them down the bumpy narrow road. Here and there we saw children playing or working in vegetable gardens in front of houses which were closer to the roadside. They stopped to stare from big blank eyes concealing their thoughts as we passed.

We arrived at the Kei river mouth and decided to stay right there for a day or two while Theo tried to catch a fish. Palm trees grew up to the beach front which was abundant with 100’s of oyster shells the size of rocks big enough to knock a tent peg into the ground. Across the water we could see a hill, sprinkled with white peoples’ holiday houses and a resort, all nestled in pockets of sub tropical forest. This side, a few Xhosa people stood around, laughing and jabbering loudly, waiting for the pontoon to carry them across the river. They were still returning from their days’ shopping it seemed and had a lot of exciting things to discuss. Some were on foot and others squeezed into their bakkies together with their groceries, babies, children and a bunch more people in the back. A couple of holiday makers from EL in their 4 x 4’s crossed the river and a few local Xhosa mammas, selling beads and beautifully woven baskets, comfortably sitting flat on their bums, legs spread out straight in front of them, feet neatly pointing upwards, in that customary way which seems to come naturally for them but which I, as a white person, just can’t do, well not without some kind of back support.

Monday morning we left the waterside and headed up the hill to explore the next village. The truck struggled up the hill, and much to my dismay, didn’t make it to the top. We panicked for a minute and thought we were gonna slide back down but luckily Theo was able to back down the truck successfully although the clutch smelt funny. We tried again in a lower gear and whew, relieved, the colour returned back to my face, fingernails digging chunks out of the seat and Theo probably needed to change his underwear but we reached the summit. Now that’s one way to get your adrenalin pumping on a Monday morning. Who needs peak hour traffic! We headed off to Qolora village, sometimes referred to as Trennery, named after the old colonial hotel established there in 1908. We arrived in the village with a good feeling about the place. There was construction road works happening on the way in, which was most unexpected and we passed a cluster of deserted, some dilapidated rondawels with Qolora B & B, KITCHEN and SHOP written in big letters across the bright orange painted walls. We stopped to find out whats what. Imagine if we could park our truck there, re-establish the veggie garden, maybe get a cultural craft thing going with the local mammas or sell local food or or or….. The potential was endless as we let our minds run away at a pace fast enough to try out for the Olympics. We needed a place to park the truck and check out this village which had definitely peeked our interest. A road took us up a hill to the coolest, deserted braai picnic area, surrounded by dense tropical forest pockets with winding pathways to follow to yet another river mouth and a strip of beach which stretched as far as we would see. We decided to park the truck right there.

Once we were settled in and after exploring our immediate surrounding area, we visited the hotel and met the friendly couple who either ran or owned the place. Its not a hotel in the true sense but much quainter, very colonial style cute little bungalows tucked under cool date trees and other thick vegetation, and I half expected to find guests playing crocket on the perfect lawns shaded by more tropical trees or drinking tea and eating cucumber sandwiches in the pretty garden. I could almost taste the history of the place.

The next day we put clean clothes on, Theo even shaved and we rode the bike down to the village school to meet the principal and find out if they needed our help. Maria, the principal was very enthusiastic and pleased and called a quick meeting with the other 6 or so teachers, and it was settled. We would start the next day. WOW! We crapped ourselves. This was really happening. Now we needed to meet the headman and ask him if we could stay somewhere for free. We did suggest the rondavels but anywhere would work so long as we had access to running water and be able to plant a veggie garden so we could grow some of our own food. The idea of eating fish wasn’t panning out quite yet since Theo hadn’t had any luck so it looked like he would become a vegetarian after all. Yeah right! Anyway, a nervous little 6 year old boy walked us towards the sub headman’s house and shyly pointed us to his door. The old man’s English and our Xhosa was not good enough to communicate so the 3 of us walked back to the school for the principal to help translate our requests. The 2nd in charge told us that he would take it to the meeting and that he was very happy to have us.

We were ecstatic and nervous about our first lesson. We realized we better start working on a lesson plan for the next day since it looked like we were jumping right in feet first and would have a roomful of Xhosa children to teach. Yeehaa!