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My British Airways flight touched down at Johannesburg International Airport, where a driver was waiting to deliver my friends 4x4, which she kindly let me have use of whilst she was in Europe.

An African Farm

Cindy Dale
2006-04-02 22:10:51

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time. Now I sat looking out over the moon-lit Indian Ocean, listening to the sounds of an African night.

Moses approached with a tray. On the tray was a bottle of Brandy, a tumbler, and packet of rum pipe tobacco. “Madam Cindy, I thought the Madam would enjoy this. It’s been a long day for the Madam.” He produced an ornately carved wooden tobacco pipe out of his breast pocket and ceremoniously handed it to me. “My son, Philemon, he made this for the Madam when he heard the Madam she was a coming.”

“You read my mind Moses. Now go get yourself a glass.”

After feeble protests Moses soon reappeared with another tumbler and his own pipe. We sat quietly, each alone with their thoughts and pipe.

“The Madam Sandra, she wants to farm the land. She says to me that the Madam Cindy will fix the land to make it grow.”

“Correct. But Sandra only want to produce enough food to be self-sufficient and maybe a little more to sell in the villages; perhaps some chickens and sheep too. But I’ll need your guidance, Moses.”

We spoke of the revenue produced by the Macadamia plantation and other crops we should consider. Moses continued to explain how the civil war had affected the farming community. Landmines were prevalent and the only way he could see us succeeding was if we found all the buried mines before starting to plough the fields.

“Where do you think these mines are and how are we going to find them?”

“The mines they are somewhere there Madam”, he stated, waiving a hand vaguely at east Africa. “… and we will use the goats.”

“You are not serious? Are you? The goats will find the mines by stepping on them?” I asked with difficulty.

Moses nodded gravely.

“No way, absolutely not,” I said without having to think.

We spent the rest of the night thrashing out various plans of ridding the farm of landmines, ...