Grandpa Danie Brand [2] Poem by Gert Strydom

After taking part
as a youngster of sixteen
in the second Anglo-Boer war
where he had to spend nights in the open veldt

fired so much on the British
that his hands were full of blisters
from the rifle
of which the barrel got white hot

he married Lenie Swanepoel in 1918,
was really in love with her
and from 1926 he farmed on the farm Welgemeen
near to Steekdoorns in the Vryburg district

where he himself build his own homestead
from Josef’s stone and put up fences
and turned the wild veldt
into a viable farm.

Grandpa Danie did not have time
to sit on the porch,
as it goes with farming,
work took his attention constantly

and before early morning light
he was already in the fields
or at the diary busy with the cows
but was held in high esteem by the labourers
although he was strict.

On a day grandpa Danie
visited another farmer
to buy Afrikaner cattle from him
and while they walked into the lounge
of the other farmer’s house

he lit his pipe
whereupon the other farmer said to him:
“Mister Brand, I do not allow anybody
to smoke in my house”
and it was a big embarrassment to him,

so much so that while he was riding home on his horse,
busy driving the cattle with his workers
he stopped at a big rock
that rose into the air

and knocked his pipe against it
causing it to break in two pieces
and it was also the last time
that grandpa Danie did smoke.

When he got appendicitis
and his appendix erupted
grandma Lenie took great care of him
nursing him back to health

but he continually got pain
when he ate maize
and his brother Frans
who lived in Johannesburg

convinced him
to have a appendectomy
whereupon dressed in his black coat
grandpa Danie left for the hospital in Vryburg

and at the hospital
grandpa Danie got inflammation
and died from the operation wound
that got septic,
in a time before antibiotics
was discovered.