A poem I wrote in May 2000 upon meeting a ‘prophet’ builder/labourer in Mahalapye village, Central Botswana, by the river Limpopo

He felt like going out with a stick
punishing these idle people
forcing them onto their knees
in supplication
a biblical assertion
made in His name.

But all he did
was mix cement.
He was building a square house
with a small square window
and he prayed as he sprayed
paint on the neatly bricked walls -
primrose yellow to make his world a brighter space,
grey prophet's beard to the fore and aft of his creation,
decayed incisors like fence posts slammed into a lower jaw
that knew no rest in the spreading of 'the word' outside.

He chuckled as he slid
the corrugated tin roof
into the right angle
for protection.
If only my flock
could see this shelter
raised in His name
under the protection
of Job the patient one.

'I build this place
this day
with the strength
of three men,' he thought.
'Only this ass helped,' he muttered,
'and that is most apt.'

A strong wind started blowing,
a twister developed.
The old man sheltered
under a banana palm,
he watched in horror
as the twister wreaked havoc
upon the small yellow house
that was his creation.
He slumped to his knees,
his badly scarred, teak tough hands
cupped a face that many sought
in times of pain
in times of love to sustain
through devotion to Him.

The old man beat the earth
with his fists, a curse almost
slipped from chapped lips,
the curtain brought down
by a final blast of wind, and
a tree was falling,
the old man beneath

falling  falling  falling

till with a start, the old man
awoke from inside the newly built shack.
A dream was all it had been
brought on by the hard toil
under a midday sun on this soil
where he'd served man and boy

a land he surveyed
wry smile upon his lips
'now when will I be paid?'
he mused between sips of Five Roses

The Old Man
and The Tea.....