Sometimes you hear something and you really don’t know if you’ve just heard what you think you’ve heard. Someone says something and you just simply don’t take it in. Like when I was walking down the streets of Dublin and chatting with another American. A passing woman heard our accents and exclaimed to us that a plane had just crashed into one of the twin towers. We stopped momentarily. I heard what she was saying but inside I could not help but suspect that she was just an incredibly gullible woman who’d just read a page too far of a local tabloid. After she moved on, my friend and I said nothing to each other and actually continued with our previous conversation as we walked away. Slowly the reality sunk in after as we saw it with our own eyes on the television. Yet somehow there remained this element of disbelief, because even though I was faced with the proof, it still seemed impossible somehow.
I heard what Noluthando said to me one morning, literally in passing, with no real time or space to react. I had only been volunteering at the Human Dignity Centre for a few days. It was a preschool and feeding program for impoverished children set just outside the local township. I was frustrated with the situation because instead of getting alongside the children and being a great help to the teachers, it seemed I was spending most of my time making sure my 15 month old daughter didn’t either run off, tear the place apart, or want to breastfeed the entire time. It was a new environment for us both having only just arrived in South Africa. Our church had sent us here for a year. My husband, now released like a captive animal from the nine to five prison of industry, was running into every opportunity to do good and make every moment of the year count with an energy and urgency I could not match. At this point I had actually drawn a line under a my previous five years of full time youth work and was looking forward to focusing mainly on what I viewed to be my first priority, my marriage and my daughter.
I had tentatively agreed to spend two mornings a week at the Human Dignity Centre and I was unsure how it was going to practically work itself out. We were a minority. The other volunteers spoke English but preferred obviously to chat and socialize in their own language so after the children’s lunch, while we watched the children play in the playground, I timidly sat among them and kept an eye on Iona while the Xhosa language washed over me. I felt incredibly self conscious, and to be honest, a bit unsure of what I was doing there. I was quietly resenting the fact that I was possibly only there because working in a preschool for impoverished post apartheid black children is what was expected of me as it’s what missions traditionally “looks like”.
One of the volunteers I worked with in the classroom was called Noluthando. She was short, wiry thin, and came across feisty and self assured. One morning I stumbled in to find the main teacher was off sick. Noluthandu put a ruler in my hand and simply told me “you can teach the class” with a bit of a cheeky smile on her face. When I protested she did the “you have to teach them because you are white” line which I simply found bewildering. While Iona ran around taking things apart, Noluthando giggled from the corner of the classroom as I trudged through the Xhosa names on the register, barely able to pronounce as single one. It was a long morning.
She did seem to make a point of thanking me for helping her after we were finished and I could see that maybe she wasn’t just out to make the white volunteer look foolish. Unsure of what to say, I asked her how long she’d been volunteering there at the centre.
Then, this girl I hardly knew, told me what she did and I was stunned. Tears welled up in my eyes and the room seemed to spin. She casually wandered off to do whatever it was she was doing, and as I turned towards the kitchen to collect a tray of sandwiches to pass out, I forgot about how self conscious I had been feeling. I was completely stunned out of my less than enthusiastic attitude and at that moment, I knew I why I was there. I needed to be her friend. I wanted to be her friend. It was not enough to know what had happened to her. I needed to know her.
Noluthando was born at home. Being a fan of home births, I warmed to this fact about her. Her mother gave birth to her in a traditional style round hut out in the countryside of the Eastern Cape, near the coast. She was born in 1982, ten years before apartheid would end. One of eleven children, her family laboured on one of the many pine and chicory farms in the area. When she was seven years old, they moved to the township in Bathurst, near the affluent costal town of Port Alfred where her mother took up domestic work.
She lived a very sheltered life in the country and hoped to be a teacher one day. She spent a few years living with her older sister outside Port Elizabeth who was working and could afford to send her to school when her parents were short of money but later moved back to Bathurst for high school, still hoping to be a teacher someday. Everything changed shortly before she was due to complete her final year of high school. Her father’s health started to fail and she was landed with the responsibility of caring for him. She started to miss school regularly. Her teachers understood and although she was hardly there, she passed year 11. Then just a few months before her final year of high school, her father died. With her mother out of work, and her father having been the main provider, that was it. There was no money. Her mother could not even afford to keep her and her siblings living with her, let alone pay for them to complete their education.
There was no other option but to try and make a way for herself on her own. So she found herself three hours away in Walmer Township, Port Elizabeth. It was a classic case of country girl meets the big city. She was incredibly naïve and totally overwhelmed. Walmer township is an area of one square mile with a population of 60,000 people. There is a huge unemployment problem not to mention the 40% HIV statistic.
Desperate for friendship she got in with a group of older women who encouraged her to drink and party with them. With her natural sense of humour and animated personality, she quickly became popular. This lead her to getting involved with an older married man. Her friends encouraged her saying how he would be able to buy her things and spoil her. I think she even referred to him once as her “sugar daddy” Within the space of a few years, her life had changed. She had been living in the country with her mother, nearly finished with high school, with great hopes of perusing a career in teaching, and now she was in the centre of township life, falling into patterns of self destruction. As her self worth slowly eroded away, she began to believe the lie that she had to sacrifice her self respect, and use manipulation to survive. Her worth was not measured by who she was, but how much stuff she could accumulate and what she could get her boyfriend to buy her. Having had a faith as a child, it was far from her mind now. She was now just one of the many faces one sees behind the tills and counters of the South Africa service industry. Partying at the weekends and holidays and living in the moment with no real purpose or direction.
Then get got pregnant. It wasn’t really a surprise, but it happened. As her boyfriend was already married, it was complicated. Suddenly the fun was over. Women who previously encouraged her promiscuous lifestyle now pointed the finger at her. Slowly the shame started to creep in.
Once when we were talking about pregnancy and childbirth, she told me how she used to sulk at her boyfriend in order to get what she wanted. He would visit her and attempt to look after her bringing her some groceries from time to time but if she was craving chocolate cake or KFC, she would refuse to speak to him until he brought it! I smile as I can totally imagine her doing this. Perhaps her pregnancy was starting to help her regain some of the self respect she had lost in the pervious years. She knew she could achieve a better life than the she now found herself living. However it was complicated.
Her daughter, Annatie, was born on the 13th of June 2005. She went home to Bathhurst to her mother the last few months of her pregnancy and gave birth in the local hospital there. During her pregnancy jealous women used to torment her telling her she was most likely HIV positive and going to die. If women are HIV positive, they usually find out when they are pregnant and the tell tale sign of an HIV mother is that she is bottle feeding. Breastfeeding did not come easy to her but she was determined to succeed at it, and proudly breastfed her daughter in front of everyone as proof that she was not HIV!
Her bond with her daughter was strong. Although she had to work full time she managed to continue feeding her well into toddlerhood. They lived together in a small little shack and slept in the same bed. Often Annatie would be wide awake after Noluthando came back from work, exhausted. She would lay on the bed and slowly fall asleep while Annatie played with her hair and talked to her. Her boyfriend was in and out of her life randomly as was expected. He seemed to want to do right by the situation and extended Noluthando’s shack a bit further out to include a future room for Annatie, (even though most African children co-sleep well into adulthood!). Noluthando was working hard in the kitchen of a local pizza place, often doing double shifts. She was determined to have enough money to raise her daughter right and be able to provide for her.
One afternoon, when Annatie was about two and a half years old, Noluthando went to take her to relatives to be looked after for the evening. Annatie was whining a bit and protesting that she did not want to go there. However Nolutando had no choice as she needed to be at work.
It was 11:00 that night when Noluthando got a phone call. “Your daughter is missing, we can’t find her” In a blur she managed to get back home only to find her daughter had been missing since 5:00 that evening and they had only just rang her when they did. She was in shock. Apparently, an old granny had taken her for a walk, and neither of them had returned. The police were brought in eventually and a search was made, even including a helicopter search over the surrounding bush, but there was absolutely no trace of Annatie or the old granny.
So that was it. Her daughter was missing.
This is what she told me that day, very matter of factly. “I had a daughter, but she is missing, and I have no idea what happened. I can’t even have a funeral for her because I don’t know if she is dead or not”
This had happened five months ago and now she was here volunteering at the Human Dignity Centre. She was unable to return to work after everything happened. Her family urged her to come back to Bathurst so they could take care of her but she refused to leave the spot where her daughter had been swallowed up. She found out about the Human Dignity Centre and asked if she could volunteer as a way of keeping her mind off things and getting some support.
So this is how our paths crossed. I had no idea where to begin but I knew now that I had a purpose for being here. We started to chat more often and I was never sure really what to say. On the outside you would never know the kind of horror story she was living with. She laughed and joked around with the other volunteers and simply got on with her life.
Our friendship started to progress when Jon decided to invite her and her niece (who I was also starting to befriend) to an event at church. They came over early and had dinner with us. I could see from the start that they were very nervous to suddenly be “in our world” having dinner in our home at our table. It’s shocking that such a small thing was bridging such a massive gap in their minds. They spent the night that night and the better part of the next day with us. It was slightly awkward, but the ice had been broken. When Jon went away for a few weeks on a mission trip to Malawi, I invited them over several times to spend the night and watch movies with me, mainly keeping me company! We had a lot of fun and late at night Noluthando started to talk and open op and little by little I learned more about her.
I noticed sometimes she seemed to be overwhelmed by food. Like a large pie from the local takeaway or a plate of homemade cookies we were sharing. I noticed once she got a quarter of the way through a pie and then she looked like she was going to be sick. At first I thought it was because she was not used to having so much food to eat. However, as poor as the townships of South Africa are, and as nutritionally deficient many of the people are, most of them are not what you would call, starving. They don’t eat the best foods, but generally, there is usually something to eat.
Late one night after offering her a second homemade chocolate chip cookie, she refused, and explained that she only allowed herself to eat what Annatie would be able to eat. It was her way of not letting herself forget about her daughter and of trying to reach out and connect with her. She then told me how guilty she felt that she had been with a married man and almost feared that Annatie’s disappearance was some sort of punishment.
She seemed to vacillate between hope and despair. The use of fortune tellers and witch dr’s is very prevalent among the Xhosa culture and she was continually being dragged to see them by concerned family and friends. They would demand a fee and assure her that if she performed certain rituals, Annatie would magically return to her. She was starting to become disillusioned with this the truth was, she was desperate and would always end up trying whatever they advised.
During this time, she started to come to church with us. I started to introduce her to people and shared her story with some of them. For the most part I found people were shocked but like me, felt at a bit of loss as there was so little that could actually be done for her.
One evening I invited her to a women’s dinner at our church. It was a typical women’s event. The hall was decorated beautifully and there was lovely music and gorgeous food served. I sat quietly with her at a table full of women I didn’t know too well. The conversations washed over me and I heard bits and pieces of the well worn topics of children off to university, holiday destinations previous and future, and family pets. Inside I was cringing slightly. I almost felt bad for bringing her with me as I could only imagine how uncomfortable she must have felt. The speaker spoke an encouraging message and although I could apply bits of it my own life, I could not imagine what Noluthando was getting out of it. It was just worlds away from where she was at. At the end she encouraged the women to pray in pairs with each other. I typically do not feel comfortable with this in the best of situations so I was feeling completely at a loss. As other women paired up with each other and started to pray, I sat in silence next to Noluthando. Finally, I spoke. I asked her if she felt positive about the future. She had recently been on a short course relating to her work at the Human Dignity centre and was full of ideas and excitement about it. She said “yes, yes, I am” not looking at me in the eye. Then I started to well up. I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I started to cry as I asked her “I just don’t know how you cope!! You must be sitting her and listening to all this and thinking that we just don’t have a clue!!!” ironically she reached out and put her hand on my shoulder as I continued to cry and say how I don’t know what I would do if I ever lost Iona and how I could not even begin to understand how she was feeling. Then I felt compelled to share a verse with her that I had felt for a long time was for her but never had the chance to share. It was that “Nothing will ever separate you from the Love of God” The whole time I’d known her, I’d never seen her cry, in fact, others had told me she hardly cried at all about the situation, but as soon as those words of scripture were out of my mouth, her own tears started to flow. Besides her own grief at losing her daughter, she was carrying around a tremendous amount of guilt and shame regarding the whole situation. She needed to know that it wasn’t her fault, that this wasn’t some sort of punishment and that she was loved no matter what. We sat together for the next while, saying nothing, just being together. As horrible as it was, I have never felt more honoured to share in someone’s pain. The moment passed and we didn’t speak of it specifically again.
It’s hard bridging the cultural gap in South Africa. It’s not that everyone is still vehemently racist. It’s just, awkward. The different races share little in common with each other and often it’s just a easier to keep relationships superficial and avoid having to speak to each other. Many maids share a positive report with the families they work with, and many labourers joke around with their bosses and many of the underprivileged benefit from flashes of generosity from time to time, but you still do not commonly see blacks and whites just out having coffee together, eating at each other’s tables, or hanging out. It’s not that it’s seen as wrong, it’s just…a little awkward. I often invited Noluthando to our home for various socials we would have, and I hated how awkward it felt. I knew she was happy to be there but at the same time she was shy and nervous. It even felt that way bringing her to church. People were always friendly, but it was just….awkward. I worried about what would happen when we left. I wanted her to connect more with the people there, but I knew I couldn’t orchestrate or force anything. These things have to be organic really. However, the church had a well developed counselling ministry and it suddenly occurred to me one day that Noluthando could definitely use some sort of grief counselling. In our conversations we had only really scratched the surface of what she was feeling and I often felt very out of my depth.
When I presented the idea to her she was surprisingly very up for it. We put her in touch with a young qualified clinical psychologist from the church and they started to meet up together. I was so relieved and happy for her to be having another source of input and friendship. I purposefully kept my distance from these sessions as I wanted her to have space but at the last one, she wanted me there as they were designing a sort of memorial poster for Annatie as part of her journey of healing. She seemed to feel these sessions helped her tremendously. She had been developing a bond with Iona over our times together and it was interesting that she apparently found being with Iona therepeudic and healing as opposed to painful.
I remember on the anniversary of Annatie’s disappearance she was in the middle of her counselling sessions, and her counsellor thought it would be a good idea if I could just keep her with me that day. She came back to my house. We didn’t speak of it really. I thought it might be nice for her to spend some time at Annie’s playschool next door as it was a warm day and Annie’s back garden always feels therapeutic. We hung out there most of the morning and she chatted to Annie’s maid, and played with the children there. It was a lovely distraction. However, we didn’t speak of the issue.
Our time in South Africa was fast coming to a close. We continued to meet up and hang out as usual. She was starting to feel ready and eager to get back to full time work and we did what we could to help her find a job. It was discouraging in some ways as it was clear just how insecure and afraid she still was as a person. She really did not have the confidence or belief in herself that it takes to sell herself well to prospective employers. She let other people’s negativity fill her with fear at times and she let herself down on a few occasions and that was frustrating for me as there it would have been nice for me to leave her knowing she was all sorted out with a job somewhere.
However, I never set out to be her fairy godmother, or her saviour, swooping in to save the day or solve all her problems. I was just her friend. I was able to relate with her as a mother, and learn from her about the realities of post apartheid township life, more than I could have ever learned from a book. I was able to point her in the direction of a church and other people who could have a positive influence on her, and encourage her to keep pursuing her dreams.
Once she asked me why I helped her so much and I was a bit embarrassed. I told her that she was my friend and that I was helping her the way I’d hope to help any friend that I had. Throughout our time together I felt compelled to keep that point central because it is so easy to slip into the hierarchal stereotypical roles of maid vs. mistress, missionary vs. native, beneficiary vs. benefactor. Once she babysat for us and I figured I’d be a good excuse to give her a little bit of cash. Seeing as she was managing to survive on the equivalent of £15 a month, I figured she’d be only happy to take payment for her services. After all I paid the white teenagers who babysat from time to time so I didn’t see it as a big deal. She utterly refused the money. She was so insistent it surprised me until she said “we’re friends, you do so much for me and I hardly get to do anything for you in return. In our culture we watch each other kids all the time and we don’t pay each other, so don’t think of paying me”
It would have been so easy for her to take the money from me, and I would never have thought anything of it, but at that moment, I realized it was important to her that I knew that I was her friend not just a generous white person she saw as a source of income.
We had an emotional goodbye at the airport. I am convinced I’ll see her again someday. She does not have access to the internet but I send her the occasional text just to let her know I haven’t forgotten her or her precious daughter.
I hate that our friendship was for such a short season. Her story is far from over and I wish I could be a part of it as it continues. She is still in my heart though and she will always be one of the most incredible mothers I have ever met.
