INTRODUCING LOEMBEK AND
DARAKIE
Yesterday, for the first time, I mentioned
Loembek and Darakie on this site.
I did not expect the flood of queries regarding these
two that came pouring in.
Both Loembek and Darakie are real characters
that I knew a long time ago, but when I used their names
in yesterdays articles, it was as a generalisation for
similar characters, and there are many.
So let me tell you a bit about Loembek
and Darakie, so that next time I use their names you will
not be as confused as some of you were yesterday.
Darakie was already a gangster when he
was about five years old.
Darakie lived with his alcoholic parents in the backyard
of a shebeen known as The Mole People in Athlone.
The woman who ran the shebeen was a dwarf, and she catered
to the low end of the market and sold cheap wine and really
bad grass to the bergies – shall we call them mounties?
- that roamed the streets of Athlone.
About fifty of these mounties were homeless,
and they all ended up living on the property of The Mole
People.
Like flies around a tin of jam.
They lived in the house, they lived in the yard, they
lived on the front porch, and they lived in the toilet
in the backyard.
We were convinced that some of them slept in tunnels that
they burrowed underground on the property.
The Mole People.
In the seventies, when we were hippies, Darakie used to
ride around on a rusted old tricycle in Klipfontein Rd,
with a sweatband on his head.
All day, everyday.
He was five years old and he was already smoking weed
and drinking Lieberstein.
Darakie robbed little children that dared to venture into
Athlone unaccompanied.
He robbed toddlers of sweets, toys, lollipops, ice-creams
and whatever he could find.
I didn’t realise that this was such
a long story.
I’ll have to cut it short.
By age eleven, Darakie was a full force
member of the Young Americans.
Like all the Young Americans at that time, he dressed
like Jerry Lewis, complete with Triple Seven trousers,
Arrow Shirts, BVD sweaters, Pringle cardigans, eight-piece
Knox caps, Florsheim shoes and an Okapi Three Star pocket-knife
in each pocket.
By age eighteen he was serving 12 years
for murder.
When he was released six years later, Darakie suffered
from brain damage caused by vicious and repeated beatings
that were administered in prison by members of the gang
whose leader he had killed.
Now, in his forties, Darakie is on tik.
He can’t remember much, thinks he is still a teenager
and talks in two syllable sentences.
Like…’Is ja’, ‘For sure’,
‘Is it’ and ‘An me’.
I’ll have to introduce Loembek some
other time.
Kader Khan
Editor
info@yummie.co.za
