He calls it ‘contamination’. After an operation like the one in Swaziland or the one in which Japie Maponya was murdered, he would strip off his clothes before setting foot in his house. Sometimes, he would cut up and burn his work clothes, destroy everything but his Hi-Tec boots. Work clothes were never washed with his wife and children’s clothes – they were always kept separate. I wanted to know what he thought about in the middle of an operation. He explained that he could shut himself off completely from his surroundings and focus on the task at hand. He would answer a question without it registering, accept a beer he was offered robotically; he was not entirely present. His brain would ‘empty’; sometimes, he couldn’t even talk to the men around him. This feeling of isolation started before an operation and could last for up to two days after it. Then he would recall the events and replay them, over and over, in his mind’s eye, like a film. Frame by frame.
