PINDILE - In Memoriam

Some stories are happy ones and some are sad. This is one of the very sad ones.
These boots have worked hard all their life.
They belonged to Pindile. 
Pindile was a Xhosa man born in the Transkei a former homeland under the Apartheid regime - a rural area in the region were I live.

For 15 years Pindile did the hardest work a man can do on earth - working in the gold mines up north underground. He lost two fingers while working in the deep and dark. One day he stood in front of my gate.
He said he could do everything gazing over my green, wild and neglected jungle that was once a beautiful garden and surrounds the house.

So true. 

He could do everything.
He told me, the moment he lost his job he decided to become a gardener because he needed the color green, he said.

A TRUE GREEN. 
In this moment I knew I needed him and he needed a true green of which I had a lot. 

I got scared watching him how he worked. Hard.
But he said: " It's nothing ", rolling his tobacco in newspaper.

He stayed for three years. 

Then died of a huge tumor in the spine - aged somewhere between 40 and 50.

His boots stayed with me and I have hung them up on my wall in memoriam of a very decent and great man.