Where There Is Smoke

One of the most traumatic events in my life happened when I was in my early teens. Every farmer (and his daughter) in Winterton know what a dangerous month August can be. It is a time when the grass becomes an ocean of swirling tinder, it has long lost is beautiful green hue of spring and the sun of summer has milked its stalks dry of moisture. By the time winter comes the landscape has become a bitter mass of grass, khaki bos and dead morning glory – it is a matted tapestry of untamed flora.

This dead terrain coupled with the unruly winds of August means high fire alert. Water tankers are filled, firefighting beaters are dragged out of farm sheds and the forestry sentinels are sent to their far off fortresses in the mountains to keep watch. It is a time of vigilance where a late night phone call from a neighbor results in hurriedly dressed farmers and their laborers disappearing into the night, following the ominous red glow. 

I have been witness to many a fire and have helped where I can, often assisting my dad in burning fire breaks across our farm in the hope of preventing fires from spreading. One year my dad had not got round to burning a fire break around our house and as murphy’s law would have it a petrifying fire swept along the landscape of our farm and began its descent down the valley towards our house. My sister and I were quickly taken to my aunt and uncle’s house down the road as it was not threatened. My mother then returned home with my older cousin and his friends to quickly pack up the valuables in our house before the fire hit. I remember standing on the balcony with Sarah, my sister, as we watched as the smoke from the fire began to engulf our home. The frightening thing about fire is the smoke, it plays a deadly game of camouflage and one is never quite sure what the fire beneath it is doing. We were hysterical, we could not see what was going on and our hearts lurched every time Steve Bolt and his airplane would swoop down into the smoke and fire to bomb the flames with water.

I was beside myself. We did not know whether our house had caught fire or if our parents were safe and all we could do was stand hopelessly by and watch. It was in that moment of panic and uncertainty that I realized that I am not the kind of person who can sit silently beside an unfolding tragedy and hope that the people in the situation are doing everything they can, I have to be one of the doers too.

Luckily by the grace of God and the grace of Steve Bolt’s amazing pyrotechnical abilities with his plane our house was saved and my parents were fine. It was after this incident that I told my mom that in any future events where the line is drawn between the people who flee and the people who stay I absolutely had to be in the party who stayed. I believe that keeping oneself in a state of ignorance will only make ones fall into reality all the more painful when one does finally fall. And everyone falls.

And so history repeated itself several years later with a fire a hundred times more powerful, with gale force winds where one could barely stand up properly and with a trail of devastation that left the entire Winterton area being declared a national disaster zone. One of the worst hit areas was our farm. Given the severity of the fire it was a promise made to her daughter many years before that allowed my mom to give me permission to go off with my dad onto the farm to try and prepare for the two runaway fires that were both headed directly to our farm. We tried to get the pivots going to get some moisture pumping out over the lands but the electricity wires were already burnt. We then tried to get our cattle to safety but people living on our farm had already illegally padlocked their cattle into the only place of safety on our farm – the stone kraal, an act which was very difficult to forgive. Our attempts were futile, I can still see what, for me, was an image of hell – neighbors running with new born calves trying to find places of safety for them; my elderly grandfather, walking stick in hand trying to fight his way through the wind shouting inane orders to no one; our horses galloping alongside a fence silhouetted against a wall of fire rapidly moving its way up from the river to the farmyard; cattle running to and fro, panicked and frightened; an old black woman collapsed in the dirt, screaming, her house had burnt down and she couldn’t find her grandchildren; a blind dog unable to find its way, stumbling and anxious, desperately trying to sniff its way through smoke and dust. It was only at the last minute that my mom came careering into the farm yard with all our beloved possessions in the car, including our dogs, that I finally gave up the fight and got into the car to follow my grandparents out of the carnage as the fire began its gluttonous eating of our farm and its animals.

We lost almost everything - infrastructure, buildings, machinery, animals. But there were miracles too, big miracles. And I would like to keep these miracle stories until my next entry. The point of my current story, however, was the fact that I could say I had done all I could, I did not run away. When the chips were down I saw the nightmare through and it made me a stronger person. We were also not the only people with severe loses, people died, a baby burnt to death on its mother’s back as she was fleeing the fire. People lost their homes and their livelihoods, they lost everything. It was the most devastating thing to ever happen to our little community. It was also the most amazing.

A day after the fire lorry loads of fodder from farmers in the Midlands started to arrive when they heard that thousands of cattle no longer had food, truck loads of clothing, food, blankets and toys arrived. The Winterton Farmers Hall was inundated with aid. Bear in mind that none of this came from the government, this came from people, human beings. I was helping out at the Farmers Hall one morning and a dry cleaner and his wife from Ladysmith arrived with an entire truck load of some of the most beautiful coats I have ever seen, they were coats that had never been collected and they had prayed about it and had decided to donate them all to the families in the township who had lost everything in the fire. Some families were ultimately better off after the fire than they were before. There are so many stories that still get told about this fire, they are of courage, of selflessness and of hope; of the indestructibility of a community in the light of tragedy and adversity. I consider this fire and its aftermath to be one of the most incredible experiences I have ever had.

Sometimes helping in a tragedy takes on a different form, sometimes there is actually nothing one can physically do but help in going through the motions. Sometimes all one can do is offer prayer, or a shoulder to cry on, a sympathetic ear or a cup of tea. I have had times in my life when the threat isn’t a great wall of fire; it has been an illness, or a depression or the loss of someone special. The damage has been emotional rather than physical. It has only been through the prayers of others that I have survived these things, of this I am sure. God connects us all, our prayers to Him on behalf of others shoot across the universe with a power far greater then we can imagine. Being spiritually connected through God is what defines me as a human being. Ironically I think it’s what defines all human beings (even atheists) – in feeling empathy for other human beings and in taking on their pain as our own we are learning to be Christlike.

A tragedy has hit Japan. A huge one. One that is almost too terrible to comprehend. An earthquake, a tsunami and a nuclear crisis. All in one week. We watch the news in stunned silence. Beyond the destruction on a scale that is almost too big to imagine emerges small miracles, dignity, compassion and spirit. We see a country that is stoic, broken and brave and we are inspired. We cannot do anything, we cannot fight their fires for them, we cannot offer them a cup of tea but we can pray from them and learn from the dignity with which they are facing this crisis. We learn so much through adversity and it is our responsibility as human beings not to let the courage of our fellow human beings go unnoticed, even if it makes us feel uncomfortable and sometimes extremely sad. Remember – we must love our neighbors as we do ourselves and part of that love comes with an acknowledgement of, and empathy, for the pain that others are experiencing.