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Published: November 24th 2006
When the structures of society seek to steal away our common experience, we must intentionally create new structures that defy those separations. After these months of continual conflict with myself, of daily frustrated attempts at seeing the truth of this place which is South Africa, I decided to drastically alter the structure of my life. I arranged to work at a children’s home at the village of Umzinyathi in the Kwa-Zulu Natal province. Why not dive head-first into this thing called reality?
Umzinyathi is about an hour’s drive outside the city of Durban. This small Zulu village consists of rolling hills of green traced with dirt roads and dotted with concrete houses. All day long taxis zip up and down the main stretch honking and signaling the code for their destination. One finger for Durban, two for Verulam, and a weaving gesture for The Crossroads. The drivers are diligent, arising long before their passengers and shuttling late into the night. Constant honking and blaring music mingles with the rooster crows that invade my early morning dreams, warning that five o’clock is drawing near.
Silhawukelwe Lauren Children’s Home consists of little more than a couple cement buildings, a church hall, one drum of running water and two portable toilets supplied by metro, and a dirt drive. It is hard to believe this little place is official enough to have its own website.
I was dropped off on a Friday afternoon and greeted by the beaming, beautiful smile of a young girl who eagerly took my bags and lead me into the house. Zama is fourteen years old, a feisty girl ready to offer me an aggressive welcome. Her innocent face didn’t fool me for long as she had me running around playing games and falling flat on my face in no time. Zama is one of thirteen orphans that live at the house. The children all have family in Umzinyathi, and any day of the week they venture home to visit. But the weight of poverty keeps them living at the home for want of food and shelter. Zulus, as most African people, understand family quite differently than us Europeans. They make no distinction between immediate and extended family. For these children, a cousin is a sister, auntie is mother.
The home is run more like a big family than an organized orphanage. Gogo (which means granny is Zulu) and Mama Purity live and work as sisters. Gogo sleeps with the girls, Mama Purity with the boys. Each day begins at five o’clock, boiling water for baths and making breakfast. I did my best to help with chores; washing dishes, sweeping floors, doing laundry. The two ladies have worked out a kind of tag-team system, one rests or heads to town, church, or a funeral while the other stays to keep things in order. Many of the chores seem perpetual. Always more dirty dishes and dusty floors. Laundry is no exception, but I found it to be the most enjoyable and communal task. Many late mornings we sat in the sun scrubbing and chatting.
As in any village, the activities of the day revolve around food. Thethe, a family member who lived with her new baby boy just next door, was eager to teach me the art of Zulu cooking and was shocked to discover my lack of knowledge of African dishes. From samp and beans and beef curry to steamed bread called JQ, she was determined to impart her kitchen wisdom. I would watch intently chopping and stirring as ordered. After each such meal the ladies would praise me for the preparing such a splendid meal and brag to visitors that I have a talent for cooking Zulu dishes. I just smiled in agreement, struggling even to pronounce the food I had “cooked” so well.
The second night, the boys and I sat on beds coloring and overwhelming one another with questions and stories. One of the other boys kept referring to me as emhlope, which simply means white. Zakhele, a sharp eleven year old, asked why white people are called white when clearly, I am not white: “Notebook paper is white, but you are not. You’re tan.” I told him I guess it was for the same stupid reason people call him black when clearly he is brown. We decided we were both brown, just different shades.
One night I saw commotion up in the kitchen. I ran to see what was going on and I heard some beats going. The kids had found an audio tape and were well into a dance party. They laughed at my failed attempts at moving to the beats of Kwaito (Zulu hip-hop). Let me tell you, these kids can shake some ass, and I was thoroughly entertained by their smooth, lively dance moves. Most nights as we sang before prayer and the kids would sometimes take turns performing traditional Zulu dance while the rest of us offered rhythm. These beautiful melodies and movements vibrate within even the youngest children, who perform these difficult dances effortlessly.
My heart was especially weak for little Lwazi. At age seven, she is the youngest of the children. She was content to play by herself, and her affectionate attachment to me had me hooked from the first day. She slept in the bed with me every night. As night time was the only time I had to let my thoughts go, I would lie in bed staring at Lwazi as she slept, rubbing her stomach, scratching her head, and letting my reflections of the day unravel. Most nights I woke up three or four times with an elbow in my face or a knee in my side.
These anecdotes filled the hours of my days and were exchanges of love and sparks of unity. Yet these moments must be placed in their proper context, set against the backdrop of a horror story which is the reality of rural South Africa. Truly, the air is heavy with the burden of death, with the threat of an epidemic that has broken into every house, snatching away human beings, leaving only skeletons. AIDS is an evil that silences the laughter of youth and seeks to destroy the flame of human life and hope.
Listen closely and you can hear the steady whisper of unending eulogies. Funeral processions stretch on and on and on over the rolling green hills, out into the horizon the train of caskets continue. Floods of tears wash the soil away and cover the living with mud. Mourning souls crash together in violent unison, thundering a desperate cry for mercy.
One afternoon I came home from town to find Zama’s smile hidden behind a stormy, detached expression. She straightaway informed me that her cousin, her sister, had died that day. She was twenty-two years old. Later that evening I learned that Zama’s mother had died just the year before.
I was jolted awake with the reality of this plague. These children are AIDS orphans. This is not a summer camp getaway or a weekend retreat. And they too, may have inherited this disease from their mothers, born victims to this killer. I began to see the children within this reality, recognizing how this suffering is the source of their grown-up strength and independence, a sign of shattered innocence. I began to see it in the ladies too. The pain spoke in their silence, exhausted expressions, nighttime prayers. It surrounded me on all sides.
Here in South Africa, an estimated 5.5 million people are HIV positive, and 10.8 percent of the entire population of this country is infected. Across this land, AIDS kills more than 800 people every day. They die in silence. The reality of AIDS in South Africa is not a mere tragedy. It is a systematic evil, senseless death on a mass scale, an ultimate injustice. While this plague has affected people of all walks of life, most victims are the most vulnerable in this society, those without a voice.
While I was in the village, I visited an AIDS hospice, I entered hell on earth. I approached the bedside of one young woman so weak she could only whisper, her bones merely draped with skin. As soon as our eyes met she pushed the covers away and reached her arms to embrace me. As she rested her head on my chest I physically felt something inside of me crumble. Fighting despair and fear, I pushed back the tears as I wrapped my arms around her.
Another young girl led us in song, her voice pierced the still suffering of the room, threatening to fight and overcome this evil that had diminished her body but could not defeat the hope that radiated in this melody. She was twenty-one years old. My age. What if I had been born in Umzinyathi? This question haunts me even now.
This epidemic, as any injustice, is fueled by silence. It continues because those who live unaffected by the atrocity—those with the power and resources to reverse it—do not have to see it. In our ignorance and apathy we deny the responsibility to act in defense of our brothers and sisters. How long will we shelter ourselves within the towering walls of luxury before we recognize the lie? Our humanity is rooted in fellow human beings. Only acts of compassion can fill our lives with meaning.
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autrey
non-member comment
i love you
i can't wait until the 21st. i printed this off and everyone i know will read it. you are amazing.