SHOPPING WITH OUMA

Ouma Annie was a notable cook, like her sister Auntie Nellie. But unlike Auntie Nellie who had the produce of a farm at her disposal, Ouma had to shop.

I liked going to the shops with Ouma. She would put her hat on, skewering it to her hair, which she wore on top of her head, with a hatpin. On our way to the shops, I got to carry the basket. Ouma carried it back, when it was full.

We went to the local butcher, or sometimes to Suzman's the fishmonger. They both knew Ouma and told her what was good that day.

Then we went on to the grocer, called Ho Bew and Co. It was owned by a Chinese couple, known to their customers as Joe and Mrs Joe. Why people couldn't just have called them Mr and Mrs Ho, which was no doubt their name, I don't know. Ouma asked for half a pound of tea and a shilling's sugar or whatever, and it was weighed out and put in brown paper bags. Ouma would get me a ha'penny stick of barley sugar to suck. Barley sugar is made from glucose and is good for you, she said, as long as you brush your teeth afterwards.

What I really wanted was a niggerball. (Shock, horror! ... but fifty-odd years ago we knew no better, that was just its name. In fact, as an Afrikaans child I called them "niekerbôls" and had no clue what it meant other than a candy).

It was a round black confection nearly the size of a ping-pong ball: you had to yawn to get it into your mouth.  As you sucked it, the layers of colour changed from black to pink, green, yellow, mauve, and so on. Every now and then you could take it out of your mouth to check the current colour, or if you had a friend with you, you could clench it between your front teeth, draw your lips back and ask "Wha' cull ishhi' nah?"

Ouma would never buy me a niggerball (four for a penny), on the grounds that I would get my fingers sticky taking it out of my mouth, or it would slip down my throat and choke me, or both. My mother, to my annoyance, also subscribed to this theory. Such is the irony of life that in due course I, too, avoided letting my small daughter have what was by then more acceptably referred to as bull's eyes, (two cents each) in case she should choke or get her fingers sticky.

We did not have to shop for vegetables or milk - they were delivered. Ouma left a metal milk can out on a little table on the front stoep. It was scoured until it shone like a mirror. The milkman brought the milk in 2-pint glass bottles sealed with cardboard disks that fitted into a slot running round the edge. He had a metal skewer which he thrust through the cardboard, flipped the disks out and poured the milk into Ouma's milk can. Ouma took 4 pints of milk every day. The can was kept in the back yard cooler and the milk decanted into a milk jug covered by a crocheted doiley edged with blue glass beads, as needed.

Out in the back yard, under a tree, Ouma had the "cooler". It was a cabinet on four sturdy legs, with double walls of chicken wire, which were filled with coke. Not the sort you drink or sniff, this was black like pieces of coal. Air could flow freely between the pieces of coke.

The chicken wire was covered on both sides with hessian. On top of the cooler was a shallow metal tray, always kept topped up with water. The tray had small holes round the edges, so water dripped down and kept the hessian wet. The whole thing worked with evaporation and was very effective. Even in Kimberley’s very hot summers, it kept the butter firm and the milk from curdling.

The vegetables were brought twice a week by the Indian greengrocer, in a horse-drawn wagon with sides that flipped down like a counter. There were scales with weights, and a whole lot of small wicker baskets hanging on hooks at the top. The housewives came out to make their choice, which was placed in the baskets and carried into the house by the assistant. The baskets were suspended from a pole across his shoulders.

Most greengrocers were Indian and all were known as "Sammy". The name eventually became a generic term for greengrocer: Long after the Sammys with their wagons were no more, people would still refer to the local greengrocer in the shopping centre as "the Sammy."

We had a skipping rhyme:

Sammy, Sammy, what you got?

Missy, Missy, penny apricot.