Diamonds And Dust: 53 - Eighteen Pay Packets
Malcolm Bertoni recalls his record pay day.
To read earlier chapters of Malcolm's vivid account of diamond mining in Namibia please visit http://www.openwriting.com/archives/diamonds_and_dust/
To obtain a copy of his book click on http://www.equilibriumbooks.com/diamonds.htm
Life sometimes gets its own rhythm. That’s how it seemed to me at Affenrucken. You went to work, came back to the single quarters, did this for six days of the week and on the Sunday relaxed. On long weekends, if you didn’t go to Cape Town then you had Saturday as well as Sunday off to relax. Some guys went into town on the off weekends and stayed in the town single quarters and went to movies and so on. I must admit I didn’t do this too often and preferred to stay at Affenrucken.
The reader might ask what about clothes, toiletries and so on. I would go into town to buy work clothes when I needed them and casual clothes such as t shirts and shorts. I would do this once a year. I also got the foreman or cook to get me toiletries as I needed. I didn’t need much money as there was nothing to spend it on and I used to draw only R50 ($50) each month. This R50 often lasted me six months. We were monthly paid and the salary used to go directly into our bank account, but the company would have also have payslips that we could collect at the pay office whenever we managed to get into town during working hours.
So time went by. One day I had to go to the magazine in town to get some spares for the plant so drove in and did everything that I needed to do. Since I finished by lunch time, I had lunch in town and afterwards decided to go and pick up my pay packets, as I figured I hadn’t been to town for about six months. So I amble up to the pay office counter and asked for my pay packets from one the guys. He goes off and comes back with a rather strange expression on his face.
“Are you from Affenrucken?” he asks.
“Yes,” I reply.
At this all the other people stop and have a quick look at me. Us guys at Affenrucken seemed to have that affect on everyone.
“You haven’t been to town for a while.”
“No. I don’t think I’ve been in for about six months or so.”
“It’s a bit longer than that,” he replies, putting a stack of payslips on the counter.
I look at the pile.
“How many are there?”
“There are 18 pay packets there.”
“What!”
“Yep. Eighteen pay packets.”
“Jesus.”
I sign for the pay packets and leave to even more stares from the office staff. They probably can’t comprehend how anyone in his right mind could stay out at Affenerucken for 18 months without coming to town.
I didn’t realise that it had been so long!
