The game was to stand still and watch the bees hovering around the creeper.
The creeper was flowering. Its flowers were trumpets of red-orange-purple and they had deep throats of yellow. Sometimes a bee would settle on the petals and make its way into the flower’s tunnel to do its work.
We’d act quickly. Pinch the tube just under the petals and pluck the flower. We’d hold the tube up to our ears and listen to the trapped bee buzzing inside. Then we’d let the flower go and the bee would zoom out and continue its pollen mission.
Nothing about the game seemed wrong until Esther’s seldom-seen grandmother emerged, in a kaftan, from the room she stayed in behind the garage and shouted at us to stop being naughty.
I was trying to capture bees again yesterday – but on my camera – as they flew their little zeds around the tiny tubes of an aloe flower. Esther and the game with the bees came into my mind. I went upstairs and phoned my mother.
‘What do you remember about Amper Dokter?’
That’s what we called Esther’s family: Amper Dokter. It means ‘Almost Doctor’.
