On the road from Kimberley to Free State; Google Maps Street View
Izzy checked the address – such an English-looking cottage, with rambling roses over the porch; she knocked on the door.
“Aunt Bessy?” Her voice trembled, shocked to see a woman whose iron-grey hair was crisp as a person of colour. Yet none could deny her whiteness. “I’m Isabel. Jimmy’s daughter.”
“Jimmy…” the woman repeated. “South African Jimmy?”
Izzy nodded.
“Then best you come in. Is it a visit, or… a stay?”
“A visit. I wanted to meet Uncle Daniel before I settle in Southhampton.”
“I know you wrote that Jimmy’s dead but… is that a reason to leave? He married three times, has a score and a half of children. They can’t all be dead.”
“Fifteen. And they’re dead to me, taken from us in ’48. Sent to live in Orange Free State, across the border from Kimberley. You and Uncle Daniel are the only family I have now.”
148 words written for What Pegman Saw: Free State, South Africa
Based on the true events of a visit in 1966 (names changed). Isabel’s mother had been white, but Jimmy’s second and third wives were women of colour, and yet the women had been sisters. Isabel settled in Southampton with her English husband.
crispina kemp 
A tragic history. To have a family separated just because of their colour. So many stories like this the world over, sadly. Well told, Crispina
LikeLiked by 2 people
I grew up with this story. I was there were Isabel (not her real name) paid that visit. It was years before I really understood. It was just that image of a man not able to be with her children, a woman not able to be with her sisters and cousins. It haunted me. And I never could understand prejudice in any of its form, couldn’t understand racism. These are people, not parcels painted different colours.
Okay, now I’ve had my say.
LikeLiked by 3 people
And a good say indeed.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks 🙂
LikeLike
I can see why this made such an impression. Just a horrific, unthinkable way of thinking and yet it’s been so common, this separation of the races. It was still happening in Australasia in the 1970s, maybe later, and I’m sure there are late examples. Just a chilling way to view people
LikeLiked by 1 person
The separation was bad enough, yet that has happened with creeds… think of the Jewish ghettos… but to the Whites, the Blacks were considered animals. It’s that more than anything, I think, that has been behind the fight for recognition and equality. Same with women… feeble-minded creatures, unable to function without the direction of a man. But don’t get me started.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ha! Don’t get either of us started – budge up, I’ll share your soap box. The scary thing is that though legislation may have caught up with the times – at least in some countries – deep rooted beliefs remain. Look at the way African Americans are still treated in the US, all those young black men on death row. The fallout from a nation that was so entrenched in a slave holding mentality.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yea. I think we need a padded cells to park our brains to live in today’s society.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I just keep avoiding the news. And on bad days, I hide indoors 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have no tv, no radio, don’t have newspapers. If I want to keep up with the news, I hit the internet.
LikeLike
Probably why you get so much wiring done 😊
LikeLiked by 1 person
I always have music playing. I find that helps with the writing, though I’m not consciously listening. Only in the evening do I turn to YouTube to see what’s been happening, and what’s entertaining, and what’s interesting and informative. I have a huge pot of salt sitting beside me!
LikeLike
Haha! I can’t concentrate with music on but I have had rain, storms, even the sound of a glacier moving playing on my laptop as I’ve written. That’s been very atmospheric
LikeLiked by 1 person
Gosh, yes, for what you write, yes. For most of the period prepping The Spinner I was playing Neopagan folk, mostly not in English so the words wouldn’t distract. But yesterday I let the rock rip out!
LikeLike
Ah, that’s a good idea, to have non English lyrics. It’s be interesting to compile a track list of appropriate sound effects to write to, wouldn’t. With the current WIP is need lots of creaky floorboards, birdsong, wind and waves. And to somehow distil the sound of the early 1970s! What rock were you listening to?
LikeLike
Sounds that have been with me since forever. They range from Black Sabbath to Guns & Roses, from Beatles to Bowie, from The Who to Led Zeppelin, from Deep Purple to AC/DC… and not forgetting Pink Floyd, and Queen.
LikeLike
I can sing along to sweet child of mine to my throat’s so. Know a lot of Bowie, Queen and Beatles of course. Have to say, too Robert plant could rock a pair of button up flairs in his day 😊
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh wow, yes, now you’re talking. Iconic. You got me all excited there. 🙂
LikeLike
Haha! 😊
LikeLiked by 1 person
🙂
LikeLike
Oh, Crispina, I’m so sorry that you lived this story. Apartheid was iniquitous. Thank you for turning your own experience into a story to warn the rest of us where such policies lead.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I wouldn’t say I actually lived it. Yet my cousins did.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well written, Crispina. Such a horrible time…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yea. The barbarity of it, tearing families apart. But then, mixed race marriages had been against the law.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Crazy… Great timing to post this on MLK Day (in he States, anyway)
LikeLiked by 3 people
Coincidence. I always post Pegman on Mondays… not that I always bite on the prompt
LikeLiked by 1 person
I know… but still 😉
LikeLike
I thnk you, Dale … was rather well timed. I wasn’t going to do this week’s… any origin myth would be too general. But when I looked on the map and saw Kimberley just across the border, I knew I had the story.
LikeLiked by 2 people
And voila! I haven’t been inspired by Pegman, lately. I just don’t feel like doing the research and frankly the facilitator rarely acknowledges my efforts.
LikeLiked by 2 people
That’s rough.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nah. Got lots of other challenges that I love doing 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is true, you do do many 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not that many… Yours, Rochelle’s FF and Sammi’s WWP. Anything else, when there is, is mine 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ah, then I do more than you… Lo! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, you definitely do!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I do wonder how I fit them in, my schedule becomes ever more busy.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And take your walks, and write your books (OK, prepare them for publishing) and….
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yep. It has become a full-time job… unpaid 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m thinking you are enjoying this unpaid job…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Enormously. There’s not one part of it I do not like… though I might get stressed at times.
LikeLike
I love your description of Aunt Bessy. It reminds me of how some nigresses were described as “High Yellow” in the 1800s because they looked more white than black.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In fact, Aunt Bessy was white, English through and through. But that hair was a family trait; she had it, her sisters had it. My mother’s was the same… but red. But in South Africa such hair would have labelled her *coloured*.
LikeLike
It’s so horrible to think of how recently interracial marriages were illegal in our two countries, and how formally institutionalized that racism and all its horrors were. And yet here in the US, on MLK day, we are reminded that those days are not just distant memories, and that many of my fellow Americans would like nothing better than to return to those “great” days. Makes me so angry!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m not sure it was ever illegal in UK; my story concerns South Africa which was settled from Europe mostly by French and Dutch Huguenots… which is possibly how that branch of my family arrived there, for we definitely had family there before my grandfather’s brother went there, and the family were of Huguenot descent.
Anyway, I grew up not understanding the concept of racism… while I knew it existed, and its horrors, it’s reasons were and still are way beyond me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Interesting point: I just looked it up and can’t find mention of any anti-miscegenation laws in England or elsewhere in the UK, although several countries in Europe had them (mostly either about their colonies or dating back to fraternizing with the Romans). I suspect that you don’t get such laws until you have a sufficient proportion of people of different races (and social statuses) interacting in the same place, which the UK didn’t really have until recently.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Tis true… if you ignore our Medieval Jews (The story told in Ivanhoe reflects the truth of those times)
LikeLiked by 1 person
A complicated family history in a complicated and repressive time. Good story.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The story behind the story is yet more complicated.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh wow, what a tale. Even more interesting that it’s true!
LikeLiked by 1 person
*Based* on a true tale… in fact, the truth was more complicated
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh wow!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yea. I don’t usually write this kind of account, but the geography was right.
LikeLiked by 1 person