A Mentor Of Mine : Oom Kurt

In my country, any male ten years or more older than you are is called Oom or Uncle. This is the story of one such Oom. One that helped me to change my life.
As a rising young executive, I had to spend a year at the company's coal mine. I was given a grand title, Assistant Resident Engineer, and certain responsibilities above and below ground.
One of my surface duties was to visit the huge workshop and make sure that everything was in order and that all commitments were being met. On some of these occasions, I would see a man, a stranger to me, working on equipment at the back of the workshop. One day walked over to him to try and find out what he was doing.

As I began with my "excuse me but..." he stood up and looked me with eyes that seem to bore into me. Although his face was smeared with oil, his hands were greasy and his finger nails were black with dirt, he stood there with the very straight back of a cavalry officer. I somehow felt most impressed by this man who appeared to be about sixtyish.
He told me that he was the prospecting borehole driller for the company and was usually in the field. After we had spoken for a while, I had become interested in him and so invited him to come over to my office and have some tea.

We spoke for a long time that morning and then many many times again after that. I discovered that he was a Count whose family lived in a village in Poland. I learned as well that one day, out of the blue, the most beautiful and most desirable girl in the village had proposed to him. Yes, she had proposed to him and not the other way around. Mystified but overjoyed, he had agreed. The quiet marriage took place and minutes after the papers were signed, a car pulled up, the new bride jumped in and was taken away to some unknown place. All that the girl had wanted was his name on a wedding certificate. Incidentally, years later, I wrote a novel "Riding With Kismet" based on this incident.

Totally disillusioned, he had packed up and left for some obscure place somewhere in South Africa. There the Count became a borehole driller.

Over that first cup of tea, I became aware that I was in the company of a very special kind of person. A person who was very informed. There was not a subject that found him wanting. Somehow we got to speaking about art. I mentioned the impressionists and I even mentioned that great but unknown Russian artist Ilya Repin. Oom Kurt was able to discuss them all with me. As our conversation continued, I discovered that he had left Poland with only a pocketful of money. Nevertheless, through an elaborate program of bartering he had acquired a full set of Fleur de Lis dining cutlery and the largest dining room table in Natal. His bartering had begun with the swapping of two old tractor tyres for some engine parts and then for an old threshing machine and so on. He had added value to his assets with every swop.

Somehow the conversation switched over to sports and he mentioned that he was a fencer. When he demonstrated the postures and the grips I knew that there was more to him that what I had first noticed.
The next time he came to the workshop, he invited me to spend the weekend with him and his wife Helen. When I asked him if I would be able to see the 15 foot long table, he laughed and told me that I would indeed see it and that we would dine on it and that we would use his fine cutlery.

That Friday night, I arrived at his farm and I met Helen. Almost immediately I entered another world. After we had gone through a few formalities and a few obligatory questions and answers, we began to talk. Well, really he began to talk and Helen and I merely stoked his fire with a question here and there. Sometimes he would stop and look with great interest at me. He would then ask me to explain my views on certain matters. So through a form of dialogue we covered history, the arts, great books, views through the ages on the strength of character, music, ancient and modern philosophy and spirituality.

We sat at that long table. Oh yes we did. For hours. Helen sat at one end, I sat at the other and he in the middle. We savoured tasty morsels at odd intervals and drank many cups of coffee. On that first night we spoke until 3 in the morning and that set the pattern for all the nights that I spent there.

She told me how they had met through an advert that she had placed. She had decided to visit him at his caravan and, as luck would have it, when she first saw him, he was fixing his car and was as usual covered in oil. He was in any case not a very handsome man in her eyes. She wanted to turn around and go home immediately but it was already getting dark. She decided to stay the night. As they spoke she became aware of his inner qualities and his innate charm and soon made the decision that he was, believe it or not, the man for her.
In the morning we met again for brunch at about eleven and Oom Kurt challenged me on what I had said on the previous night. And so we would open old subjects again and again all the time xploring the subjects to greater depths. He had the most amazing gift of making everything that Helen or I said seem of utmost importance.

We spoke about world literature from the Epic of Gilgamesh, documents found by the Knights Templar to modern works. We discussed poetry and the reasons why man had from the earliest days had been passionate about speaking and singing in verse. Sometimes when he or I recited a poem, we had to speak with a loud voice because of the length of the table.
We spoke of the nature of love from animal lust to the kind of love that involved all of the body and soul. We spoke about the nature of spirituality and the magical powers of faith. We spoke about how deeds, words and objects of true beauty never faded while unworthy and pretentious poems disappeared from memory with indecent haste.
He was obviously a man of good breeding. He seemed to be highly educated, he was apparently an excellent rider and he was at home to all forms of courtly behaviour. In an amusing moment he taught me how to click my heels and give just enough of a nod when being introduced to someone.

But above all, he taught me how to let my soul fly. Once I had known him, I could never be the same again. There in the heart of the Natal bushveld, I learned to be what I am today. Inside everyone there is small area where we keep the strengths and powers that God gave us. Through centuries of doubt and repression we have learned to hide those qualities. To compress them into the tiniest spaces in our hearts.
Through an earlier mentor and then Oom Kurt, I had learned that a toss of the head, the smile that knows no fear and a certainty of your inner powers would allow you to succeed in whatever endeavour that you undertook. He dramatically confirmed what I had always suspected. The only factor that ever stopped one's progress and one's in any venture was merely the inability to define one's desires or objectives.

Just before the time came for me to leave the mine, the most grand social occasion of the year, the Mine Manager's dance, drew near. Acting on an impulse, I invited Oom Kurt and Helen to be my guests. This caused some eyebrows to be raised because no one knew Oom Kurt. He was not one of the upper set, He was what? A borehole driller? As this became generally known, many questions were asked of me but I merely tossed my head and wore the smile that knows no fear.

When we arrived at the Mine Manager's mansion on the big occasion and we were met by a butler, I noticed in the corners of my eyes that Oom Kurt had not managed to scrub all of the oil from under his finger nails. I needn't have worried about any loss of face because as the music began, he immediately rose to his feet and looking very elegant, strode confidently over to and asked the most important lady, the Mine Manager's wife, to dance.
I remember her Face as if it was yesterday. She wore a magnificent evening dress. Her jewellery sparkled in the lights and her hair was tinted blue.She looked up, was initially startled but was then held in the grip of his eyes. Mesmerised, she rose to her feet and they began to dance.
Their movements were so elegant and even exciting that every one, showing a respect for two artists, sat down and admired the couple on the floor.
Then the unbelievable happened. The lady of the mine asked us to join her at their table.

The sad day when we said adieu and as he was holding my hand, he said "stay with your lack of complication. Remember that, in its essence, life and love are simple but be prepared for the world out there. Remember that what really counts is faith, hope and love.
Stay simple. As Shakespeare so wisely said ‘to thine own self be true'. Face all rejections and misunderstandings as they come but know that at times you will experience delights that the others with their complexities and their emptiness's never will. "

That was my Oom Kurt. A great man. As part of his greatness he had taken me under his care and had given me a wealth of wisdom and style without any hesitation. He was big enough to give and give and I was just wise enough to learn at his feet.
He had said "to thine own self be true" and that became my guide line. What was left for me to do was to remain true to this guide line through all the trials that I knew lay ahead.

Because of what he had given me and how freely he gave it to me, I'm ready today to pass on whatever I've learned from him to anyone that I find who is ready to learn.