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The sounds of silence
I
t never ceases to delight me that when townies come to visit
us on our plot they inevitably sigh and exclaim “it's so
peaceful here!”
This, of course is an absolute delusion. It's no more peaceful
here than it is in many a leafy suburb in town, and in fact at
times it seems a lot more frenetic. We have a fairly major road
on our boundary, that starts to carry the traffic of workerlemmings off to earn their crusts from five-thirty in the morning,
not to mention hundreds of roaring tipper trucks on their way
to and from the nearby sand-quarry.
Then, as the day begins there are the yellings of playing
children at the bottom of our road waiting for their bus to
school. Later in the morning there is an avalanche of breaking
glass as the neighbouring shebeen clears out its detritus of
empty beer bottles (followed shortly thereafter by the arrival of
a Breweries truck with a fresh consignment of beer).
All around us, the various businesses ~ legal and illegal ~ begin
their day from about seven thirty, with trucks coming and going
and machines starting up and general industrial banging and
clattering.
On weekends, when the businesses are supposedly quiet, a
neighbourly cacophony of sounds is provided by the next-door
shebeen in the form of booming music and drunken yelling
and, when the wind blows from the West, we get a further blast
of music from a shebeen a block away that has invested in a
powerful sound system. Kwela in stereo.
And inevitably on a Saturday night one family in the area or
another will crank up the volume of the sakkie-sakkie music
that it enjoys around its evening braai.
And at night time there are the periodic gun-shots of neighbours supposedly scaring off (if not actually killing) intruders.
Another constant sound in our area (under the flight-path to the
east out of OR Tambo International Airport) is the sound of lowflying aircraft approaching or leaving the runway.
Some years ago we would also enjoy the weekly roar ~ and I
mean ROAR ~ overhead of a low-flying SAAF Cheetah leaving
the Denel base at ORTIA on its way to, presumably Hoedspruit
or Pietersburg.
The urgency, frequency, regularity and low altitude of this flight
led me to be convinced that the flight was taking up an urgent
rum-ration to the base commander.
Another strain to the sound-track of life on a smallholding is the
roar or tractors, and the buzzing of chainsaws, brush-cutters,
water pumps and lawn mowers.
Note, of course, that the sound-track of our lives that I have
outlined has not yet included any livestock or bird-life. And of
that, too, there is plenty.
The neighbours' horses neigh loudly and lustily on occasion as
they talk to passing horses or those in fields on other plots. Our
sheep bleat plaintively, especially when lambs become disorientated and detached from their mothers, and this can be quite
distressing for townies
who don't understand that
bleating sheep are part of
the agricultural scene and
are the way in which
mothers and offspring reunite themselves. Having
said that, we have enjoyed
a bumper lambing season
this year, with no fewer
than 20 youngsters having
been born in a month, so
they can all be weaned in
one batch. I think I'd better
send round boxes of
chocolates and an explanatory note to my neighbours
or I am likely to have the
SPCA and the local constabulary paying me a visit the night I
start the weaning process.
Then, of course, there are our chickens. We have a small flock
of Koekoeks that free-range over the entire plot, headed by a
magnif