The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo by Peter Orner Page B

MAGISTRATE
    KARIBIB
    12 DECEMBER 1930
    RE: FARM GOAS
    With reference to your minute No. 2/4/2/4 of the 8th instant, I shall be glad if you will kindly inform Mr. Dupreez that it
     is regretted that the administration is not at this time prepared to entertain his generous offer.
    SECRETARY FOR SOUTHWEST AFRICA
    F. P. COURTNEY CLARK
    WINDHOEK
    Thus, Dupreez’s proposal (i.e., this farm is so useless you may as well give it back to the natives) failed. He did, however,
     establish a precedent of unrequitement that would reign at Goas for the next sixty years: a great urge to leave, matched only
     by total practical impossibility. Eleven more years Dupreez hung on in the wind and sand. In March of 1941, he died of gout.
     His bloated corpse was buried between his long dead wife and his (still unmarried) daughter, Grieta, who had died of consumption
     the year before. Moss doesn’t grow on graves in the desert. At Goas they are known as the Voortrekker graves, in honor of
     the great trek the Boers took to reach this paradise of their dreams. In his will, S.J. bequeathed the farm to the only one
     who couldn’t refuse it, God, through his fiduciary on earth, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Windhoek. There are two ways
     of seeing this at Goas. One is that he may have thought he’d get a place in heaven for this bestowal. In which case, the line
     went, he burns in hell for trying to stiff the Almighty. The other: He knew exactly what he was doing. As a Dutch Calvinist,
     he wanted to stick it to the Catholics.
    The diocese didn’t know what to do with Goas. There was an idea of turning it into a leper colony, but apparently they couldn’t
     find enough Catholic lepers. Finally, the bishop sent two German monks, Brother Sebastian and Brother Gerhard, out there to
     raise karakul sheep. Even at that time those two monks were well into their last years. But the diocese needed cash, and karakul
     was where the money was. Either way you looked at it, a win-win proposition. If the brothers made good and raised capital,
     praise be. If they dropped dead out there, God’s will. The plan failed on both counts. The sheep died and Brother Sebastian
     and Brother Gerhard didn’t.
    In ’42, their inaugural year, drought wiped out half the herd. In ’43, the rains came, but so did blue tongue. In ’45, more
     drought. In ’46, they held on. In ’48, they had too much rain. The Swakop River swelled and another third of the sheep drowned.
     And yet the two monks lived on—and on—thereby establishing another tenet of Goas: Its misery is hearty. The lashing wind and
     the frigid mornings and the eyeball-melting afternoons eventually become what your life was always supposed to amount to.
     Two monks, exiled in the wind. Raising karakul even under the best of conditions—they are a finicky, wimpy breed—was an enterprise
     born of love and despair. Year follows year and Brother Sebastian and Brother Gerhard don’t die. Their nights are long. The
     bleat of the parched lambs keeps them awake. They aren’t exactly missionaries. There are no native heathens here to preach
     to. The monks carry God’s Word to a veld that never even sends back an echo. Weren’t there days when they wondered whether
     they were still alive, when it occurred to them that they might no longer be living, breathing men, holding sheep shears and
     praying?
    The fifties were as hot and desiccated as the forties. And yet because of a year like ’53, they endured. In ’53 there was
     enough rain. The sheep got fat. The shearing went on into the night for weeks. The sort of year that makes all the suffering
     worth it, until the next drought comes and all that’s left is to tell stories of ’53.
    You recall ’53, Brother Sebastian?
    Oh, happy times, Brother Gerhard. Happy times.
    Then one afternoon Brother Gerhard didn’t come home from a walk in the veld, and Brother Sebastian went out and searched for
     him. He’s still searching. Of all the ghosts