You Give me Fever

It’s that wonderful time of year again here in the Garden Province. The mild winter is providing us with warm days and cool evenings. The mossies have abated somewhat as has the humidity; the clouds tower into the sky out on the horizon over the warm Mozambique current and Natalians stir themselves from their summer sloth and Natal Fever goes into remission.

This part of the world is known for its fevers. We have, or had, the usual afflictions that kept all but the bold at bay. Such nasties as malaria and that which felled my Grandfather and a goodly number of his brothers and sisters – enteric fever- or typhoid as it is now known. ‘Fever’ conjures up mental pictures of pallid, sweating, emaciated patients prostrate on their sick beds surrounded by anxious kinfolk watching a hapless doctor taking the pulse. Such was the subject of many Victorian paintings and posed photographs entitled ‘Fading Away’ or some such other melancholic caption.

But Fevers come in many forms. Being the unique place that this is some strange maladies stalk our fair corner of South Africa. These produce high passions rather than laying one low; for we are, at present, in the midst of all manner of Fevers.

We have just had ‘Comrades Fever’ where thousands of otherwise normal folk ran from Pietermaritzburg down to Durban; all 90 kilometres of it. When enquiring kindly as to why your office acquaintance is walking with a strange gait the invariable answer is ‘I did the Comrades on Thursday’. Etiquette then requires the usual enquiry ‘Did you finish and have a good run’ , ‘No…it was alright…came 10898 in under eleven hours’ (We South Africans start most affirmative answers with ‘No’ It's our little thing you know.)

Strangely the finish of the ‘Comrades’ rather resembles the results of the plague with pale, pallid etc…..sweating people in-extremis dropping like flies. I believe the last of the worst cases was released from hospital yesterday.

At the moment we are in the delirium of ‘Sardine Fever’. Huge shoals of the little silver fish gather off the shores of the Wild Coast and then make their way up past KwaZulu-Natal. Now we are not talking about shoals a few metres long but up to 35 kilometres long and a ‘free-bee’ of gigantic proportions – for all. All manner of game fish, birds, sharks and porpoises dine to their fill for days on end. Now this is understandable as the food-chain is part of nature’s way and the frenzy out at sea is normal. But if you want to see abnormal behaviour be on hand when a shoal ‘beaches’ and the humans get involved. All rational behaviour and decorum is set aside; nearby businesses are abandoned and even trains have been known to stop. People plunge into the surf with waste-paper baskets, sacks, cardboard boxes and buckets. Shirts, skirts, aprons and saris become instant fish catching devices. People who have never ever fished (let alone gutted one for cooking) carry off their booty in a state of high agitation and pride. A free hand-out from nature is taken very seriously in this part of the world.

The next fever to be visited upon us is ‘July Fever’. Yes the ‘sport of kings’; the annual running of the Durban July Handicap horse race at the Greyville Race Course. This particular event sadly no longer afflicts the general populace as it once did. We seem to have slipped into an Orwellian new age where TV, Cane and Coke and the Lotto suffice to keep the masses content and at bay. Once every office had a ‘July Sweepstake’ until this practice was banned by the Government on advice from the Dutch Reformed Church who said it was sinful and causing droughts in the Free State. So keen was interest that even if you were not at the race one had to listen to Ernie Duffield’s commentary on the wireless. Oh the suspense as they vanished behind the Drill Hall and the fast-talking Ernie had to pause for a moment or two.

Those who sought refuge from the endless ‘July’ talk, and the race itself, took themselves off to a Saturday afternoon bioscope to watch ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ or such like. Just as Howard Keel broke into ‘Bless your Beautiful Hide’ the race results would be flashed up onto the screen and superimposed over Mr Keel’s face and all. The subsequent babble of conversation would enrage the connoisseurs of the Hollywood Musical by reminding them that horses were doing things just across town other than taking the brothers a-courting to the next farm.

None-the-less the July is still a major event even though many at the course never actually see the race. The comforts of the hospitality tents where the champagne flows tends to distract many from the purpose of the day. The purpose of the day? Ah well I suppose that’s a moot point.

The ‘Winter Season’ will soon pass. Order will be restored as summer eventually returns and all true Natalians return to our time honoured existence of ‘looking lazy at the sea’. Let our special condition ‘Natal Fever’ apply its palliative balm to us all. After the current few months pestilence and plague of frenetic activity we need the rest.