While making some purchases at a wayside store, we had an insight into
the life of a wayside storekeeper. We found it, instead of monotonous,
full of interest. The business requires technical knowledge enough to
run a block of stores in a city.
He must be prepared to supply his customers with anything and everything
they may ask for; he must be at home in extolling the best points of a
plough, a gun, or a piece of calico; must know the market price of every
sort of produce the farmer is likely to bring in for sale or barter, and
be well informed in the current news of the day. He must possess an
unlimited knowledge, as well as stock of liquors; for the Boer, who is
abstemious, as a rule, always expects the man who supplies him with his
"voerchitz" and his coffee to provide him also with plenty of
stimulants. He must know where to place his hands on any article
wanted, and be as ready to buy your cart and horses, or span of oxen, as
to sell you a can of sardines or a yard of tape.
When a Boer comes into town, or visits the wayside "Negotic Winkel"
(store), he usually makes a day of it, sometimes accompanied by his wife
and daughters, who assume, in honour of the occasion, their purple and
fine linen in the shape of a "kappie" (sunbonnet), and the newest print
gown. They will come in at six in the morning and remain till dusk,
pricing articles whose value they always depreciate, now and then
buying, but more often not, eating the while a prodigious quantity of
candy "Lakkers," and assuming for the time an air of proprietorship in
the establishment. This is intensely annoying to the shopkeeper, who,
however, always seems to be possessed of an inexhaustible fund of good
humour, and to be ready at any time to exchange elephantine witticisms
with his Boer customers. In their wordy conflicts they are politic
enough to allow their opponent to get the best of it.
At dusk Dom Piet and Taute Meitje (every one is uncle or aunt) prepare
to leave.
There is much hand-shaking with everybody, acquaintance or stranger, who
are standing about at the time. The worthy couple then climb into their
Cape cart, or spring wagon, and drive off home, where they vegetate
until the low condition of the domestic stores compels them again to
visit the store, or until a Nachtmaal is announced at the nearest
church. The profits of such a store are very large, and, as a rule,
amply sufficient to compensate the proprietor, often a man who has
received his business training in a large wholesale house in England or
Germany, for his eight or nine years of exile. He has the opportunity,
living as he does in the midst of the farmers, of taking advantage of
the many speculations which the fluctuations in the market prices of
wool, skins, feathers, etc, offer.
The most successful of these shopkeepers are Jews; they seem to have a
happy knack of acquiring the jaw-breaking patois of the country, an
indispensable accomplishment to any one wishing to have successful
dealing with the Boers.
We were now nearing the end of our ox-wagon journey, but were not at all
glad it was so.
We had got fond of this careless, lazy life we had been leading so many
weeks; the very oxen we had come to know by their names of "Blesbok,"
"Witful," "Kafir," etc. As we neared Queenstown we found ourselves
getting anxious about their welfare, trekking slowly, and making
frequent and long outspans. When at last we found ourselves on a
common, close to Queenstown, it was with regret we said good-by to our
six weeks' life in an ox-wagon.