Antiphon Read online

  NTIPHON

  —PAYBACK—

  B. L. ROBERTS

  Copyright © 2017 Brian Lewis Roberts.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Balboa Press

  A Division of Hay House

  1663 Liberty Drive

  Bloomington, IN 47403

  www.balboapress.com.au

  1 (877) 407-4847

  Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

  Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

  Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

  ISBN: 978-1-5043-0746-8 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-5043-0747-5 (e)

  Balboa Press rev. date: 04/18/2017

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

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  24

  25

  26

  27

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  29

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  31

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  36

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  38

  39

  40

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  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  Epilogue

  1

  Viktor Sorensen stepped out of the trench, and stood back to get a better perspective. It was straight enough, and he was satisfied, as he called out to the young boy watching him work.

  “Frederik, hold this for a minute, will you?”

  The lad ran forward eagerly, to help. He grabbed the length of heavy black plastic tubing in both hands, and squeezed it tightly, while his father screwed a fitting on the end.

  “That’s got it, good lad.”

  The pipe lay snaked along the ground next to the trench, and now Sorensen dragged it across, and allowed it to drop to the bottom, then paused to wipe off perspiration streaming into his eyes.

  “Do you think we have time to do another one before lunch?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Hm, you would have to say that. Alright, you’re the boss.”

  Sorensen picked up the shovel, climbed back down into the trench, and started attacking its end. Fortunately, the soil was sandy and quickly yielded to the shovel, and he worked steadily for another half an hour, then again stopped. He dragged a further length of tubing from the wooden cart standing nearby, and again beckoned his son to help.

  Sorensen took another fitting from the metal bucket slung from a hook on the side of the cart, and the boy, anticipating what was required, picked up the end of the tube, and held it up for his father to attach the fitting. The extended tubing was dragged across, and into the trench. The furrow he had dug ran down the hill to a treed gully, where a bore, excavated by previous generations, its sides protected by rocks piled up to form a protective wall, was sunk into the ground.

  “That’ll do for now. buddy. Let’s get out of this hot, bloody sun, and have some lunch. You’ve been a great help Fred. I couldn’t do it without you.” Which was not quite true, but the lad beamed with pleasure at his father’s compliment, as he strutted alongside his tall idol.

  Father and son walked together from the work site, towards the village higher up the hill, and still almost fifty yards away, nestling against a swarth of green forest. As they approached the bamboo perimeter fence, the sounds of the village, muted at this time of day, began to be heard. Bleating goats plaintively complained to each other about the shortage of good grazing, a mother’s shrill tones castigated a small child for some offence, while a couple of children played noisily together in the village chopal, yelling instructions at each other for the game they were engaged in.

  The sounds of life were everywhere. The village was only truly silent at night, when sleep brought peace, and even through the heat of this fierce, summer, midday sun, its beating heart could be felt. Sorensen led his son to a small thatched hut on the edge of the village, and they pushed aside the mosquito netting stretched across the doorway, to enter.

  That a man, as successful and respected as Viktor Sorensen, chose to spend his vacations labouring in strange, out-of-the-way places, was often a topic of conversation whenever his name came up. Colleagues shook their heads, feeling sympathy for his wife and young son, who they thought were dragged along by Viktor, though, his friends had to admit, they had never heard them complain, not that Freja would ever complain about her husband. She loved him so completely, she would cheerfully endure anything Viktor undertook, if she thought it made him happy.

  No, endured was not the right word to describe how Freja felt about their forays into the back-blocks of some of the poorest places on the planet. She looked forward to them. They gave her more time to be with both her husband and son, even if much of that time meant hard physical work, and she enjoyed what their small family was doing for the villages they visited.

  Freja believed in fairness and equality, and although she might not have understood the implications of the description “feminist, she was one. She despised the laziness of so many of the village men, who sat about and talked, while their womenfolk were obliged to do much of the heavy manual work that the very survival of their tribe necessitated. The male attitude of superiority, and entitlement, made her bridle. She saw it for what it was, an excuse for laziness.

  She saw red at the bullying tactics of the men towards their womenfolk, and anything Viktor and she could do, to help the women of the village live better lives, was worthwhile. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

  One of the most onerous tasks in most villages, and the most essential, was obtaining water, and almost invariably it fell to the village women. It had to be done every day, and often more than once. The first time Freja attempted to heft the big earthenware jug, lapping with the turgid water from the borehole next to the trickling river bed, she gasped at its weight, yet these slender women were able to get it up onto their heads with seemingl
y relative ease, and carry it back up to the village. Making that task easier for them was what Viktor was about, and Freja was proud of her husband, and what he was doing. She was glad to help.

  Viktor also tackled village hygiene. Unnecessary deaths of men, women and the children, dying from diseases brought on by that most fundamental necessity, proper hygiene, stared the Swedes in the face everywhere, and it was a problem that could be fixed. That problem, was the toilet and hand-washing arrangements of the village, or rather, lack of them. Hand in hand with the limited supply of water, went poor toileting habits, the latrine usually consisting of a hole, scratched in the ground, often without any covering, and habituated by innumerable flies. Hand washing was non-existent.

  “Hey you fellahs, look at all those flies around your shit! They carry that on their feet and put it on your food. You end up eating shit. You come and help me fix that.”

  Viktor would often get a sullen look of mild surprise, that such an unimportant thing as a few flies should be of any concern, but he would press on regardless. Starting by digging a decent sized pit, he persisted in inviting the men to help, and if he was lucky, some of them would respond and lend a hand with the digging. Once dug, a simple brush wall around the structure, and a thatched roof, served for privacy, but more importantly, kept the flies at bay.

  He had designed a simple septic toilet system, and after the pit was completed, would soon would have it operational. Freja, meanwhile, did her best to teach the women the need for washing hands. Their work paid dividends. Return visits to villages, saw marked improvements in general health and well being of the villagers.

  Travelling in remote parts of the world, seeing people of differing hues living completely different lives, was an adventure, and young Frederik relished the excitement his father’s vacation forays invariably brought. Hard work invariably came with the deal, and the boy did his best to keep up with his father, with simple tasks.

  A remote village in the Sudan, a small township in Bangladesh, another small village in Brazil, and now this one, a little cluster of huts nestled in the heart of the Punjab near Farikdot, in India’s monsoon belt, close to the Pakistani border, were his targets. None of these was a tourist destination, none had even one star accommodation, but they did have one thing in common. The villagers were dirt poor, struggling to feed themselves properly, running water a distant dream as yet unrealised, and their governments too poor, or disinterested, to care.

  Viktor was realistic. He understood that the help he brought to a village was minuscule in the greater scheme of things, but for the people of that village, the difference to their everyday lives was incredible, especially for the women. He brought them running water, and better health.

  Viktor’s large manufacturing company was recognised throughout Sweden, and indeed the world, for its excellent designs, quality and reliability. Viktor was an uncompromising taskmaster about quality. He would not tolerate sloppiness, or “near enough is good enough “ from his employees, and his products were sought after, by both governments, and private customers, alike. He was a brilliant design engineer, who had a knack of inventing ways to solve problems. Clients would bring a tricky issue to him to be resolved, and Viktor would sit down, study it, then come up with a solution. His company both designed the equipment, and then built it. It held many patents, and some of Viktor’s designs were emulated throughout the world.

  In the beginning, Viktor was the principal designer, but as his reputation grew, and the business expanded, he frustratingly found more and more of his time was needed at his desk. He resolved this problem by seeking out bright young graduates, male and female, looking for people with flair and ability to think outside the square, then he would train them to do his design work. His fledgling son saw how this worked.

  Getting away from the bustle and pressure, escaping to a remote place on the planet, and making a difference to people’s lives, was what renewed him. Viktor couldn’t leave behind his instinct for seeing and analysing problems, and looking for ways to resolve them. Freja understood this. When young Frederik asked if the family could spend holidays at a resort, with beach, sand, and boats, to be like his school friends, she would gently chide him.

  “And when it was over, this holiday of theirs, how different were these friends of yours, than before the holiday, eh? And what difference did their holiday make to other people’s lives, Frederik? Did your friends accomplish anything with their holiday? Did they come home better people? Did they leave other people better off?

  “Holidays are a break from what you usually do, giving yourself a change, but they need not be a waste of time. What your father does on his holidays, well, you can see for yourself what he does.

  He has a break, he gets away from the factory and his desk, he gets outside in the sun and fresh air, and he gets exercise. He enjoys himself, but he is doing something, Fred, that is good.”

  Frederik grumbled at first, but gave up protesting, eventually. As he had grown older, his respect for his parents deepened, and the holidays became more meaningful, and something to look forward to.

  “Fred, what do you think about this?” Viktor drew the young lad to his side to display the sheet of paper he had scrawled over. It would be their first, or maybe second day since arriving at the village, and Frederik was still adjusting. His cosy bedroom, with snug bed and heavy pile carpet, had become a pile of rushes stacked against the wall of the hut they had been given, covered with a rough, thick, ex-army grey blanket, that chafed his skin. His feet collected dust whenever he walked barefoot on the packed earth floor, and the walls smelled of the cow dung with which they had been lined.

  The bed talked to him, at least, at first Frederik thought so. Every time he moved, it would whisper something, soft creaking rustling murmurs into his ear, as the dried reeds crushed and reshaped under his small body. He got used to it, and in a strange way, it was comforting. His family would share this one room hut for their stay in the village, mostly for sleeping, and sometimes eating, if the mosquitoes were too bad outside. The small smokey fire of dried burning cow dung, would help keep the biting nuisances out of the hut. Viktor saw his family as a team, to be included in the work.

  “What do you think that is?”

  Viktor pointed to a cross marked on the sheet, with lines drawn to a number of other crosses.

  “If these are the huts of the village, what would this would be?”

  Viktor liked stimulating his young son to think.

  Fred slid his finger over the bunch of crosses, then along the line to the single cross.

  “That’s the water hole.”

  The village drew its water from a bore. A cow-hide bucket with a mud brick in its bottom, lowered into the bore, was pulled up by a scratchy rope, and emptied into a carrying jug, which the women would hoist onto their heads, to begin the slow, painful, walk, up the hill to the village. One family had managed to scrounge two abandoned old metal buckets from somewhere, and these, tied at each end of a pole and carried across bowed shoulders, cut down the number of trips to the borehole, but were heavy. Sometimes, not often, the husband would be coerced to take the buckets and fetch the water. This did not happen very often. Usually, the laborious task of fetching water, fell to the woman.

  “Got it in one, you are the clever one.”

  The boy swelled.

  “Now, all we have to do is figure out the best way to get the water up that hill. How would you do it?”

  Fred knew the answer, they had carried out this procedure before. His dad would use one of the pump contraptions he had prefabricated back home, and brought with them.

  “The bicycle?”

  “Perfect! Good boy. Those pipes we joined together will do it, to carry the water up . We’ll get started on the footings for the pump, as soon as we finish the pipe line.”

  Viktor had designed a simple generator, spun by a one-wheel bicycle
device he had designed, which powered a small submersible electric pump which would be lowered into the bore. Peddling hard spun the bike’s heavy fly wheel substituted for the rear wheel, and this in turn drove the generator. Enough electric power was generated to spin the pump, and send water up the pipeline, to the village.

  In larger villages he might use a solar array, which was more expensive, but the bike-driven pump did the job for a small settlement. Villagers made a game of sharing the peddling, which was a doddle for them after carrying the heavy water jugs. They soon worked out, that the harder they peddled, the more water went up the pipeline, and it became something of a challenge. The men also became involved in the peddling. Viktor made a point of equating their manhood, with their ability to move more water than the womenfolk. They fell for this.

  Viktor had designed the machine robustly to make it last, with oversize bearings in both crank and peddles. He showed the villagers how to grease the bearings when they started to become noisy. The whole apparatus, packed into a wooden crate, was compact enough for easy transportation to the village.

  Frederik was strong enough in the legs, to wind up the fly wheel, and was immensely proud when Viktor gave him the honour of being the first to pump water into the village. The delight of the villagers was Viktor’s reward, and young Fred shared their joy.

  Freja recognised how she could also contribute to the village. She spent her time with the womenfolk, showing them how to operate a foot peddled sewing machine she had brought along. Freja scrounged these old machines, which back home were mostly discarded, enlisting the aid of her friends to chase them out, and rarely having to pay for them. They often sat, abandoned, unused, and forgotten, at the bottom of cupboards, and most owners were happy to give up their old relics when they knew where the machines would end up.

  Selecting the smartest younger women, Freja would have them sufficiently proficient to make simple clothing by the time her family left the village. She also supplied bolts of cloth and reels of cotton, mostly donated, a few purchased, to give them something to go on with. Her ambition was to empower the womenfolk to make marketable items for sale or trade, and provide a small cash flow for the village.