Holding Up the Sky (32 page)

Almost two weeks into the trip I received a long awaited postcard:

I received another postcard from Fiona a few days later. It showed a black and white photo of a bride walking along a country road, suitcase in hand. On the road walking next to her is a cow. Fiona wrote: ‘Thought this could be you walking to the wedding with the meat'.

While Teboho was overseas, I made some time to take Heidi to Thembalihle as she had heard from Peter that it was one of the organisations we were working with. Heidi's parents had fostered children as long as Heidi could remember. She also had two adopted siblings from Vietnam who were now in their late teens. While I had seen the pragmatic side of Heidi that allowed her to run a busy preschool with an efficiency that would put the military to shame, what I saw when she entered Thembalihle was the response of someone who had been born to love the unwanted. We spent hours there together, taking time with each child we met, Heidi asking questions about their circumstances and hoping for an eventual adoption. While many children in African communities are informally adopted by their extended families and communities in the event of the death of their parents, formal adoption rates are extremely low if not non-existent. So Heidi was told that these children would most likely spend the rest of their childhood here at Thembalihle.

During the course of the afternoon, we met one little girl whom I had not seen before. Her name was Ayanda, which means ‘we are increased'. The details of her arrival at Thembalihle were sketchy, the staff simply thinking that her parents were dead. They were not even sure how old she was. Ayanda did not play with the other children; she simply sat. We did not see her stand or even crawl for the hour or so we played with her. She simply took one look at Heidi and held her arms out.

Two days later we were back, this time with Peter. Heidi hadn't slept and most likely neither had Peter, both of them finding it unbearable that Ayanda was wasting away in the orphanage. Heidi had convinced Peter, despite her own pregnancy, to investigate whether they could foster and then adopt Ayanda. Given Heidi's childhood experiences, this had been something they discussed when they were first married. While they hadn't anticipated it would happen so quickly, meeting Ayanda added a sense of urgency to their plans.

I had a quiet word to the principal who was delighted, but sceptical that something could be organised quickly–Heidi didn't want Ayanda to spend another night in the orphanage. While Peter and Heidi spent the next hour in discussions with the principal, I went off to find Ayanda. She was sitting exactly where we had found her two days before. I wondered, given she never complained and was therefore less trouble than the other children, if she was plonked down there in the mornings, fed and then placed in bed at night. The image of her was in sharp contrast to the colour and movement of the other children, noisy and never still. While I initially thought Heidi was acting too fast, I saw then that if this child was to be drawn out at all, it would need to be soon.

Somehow, it was four of us, not three, who came home that day as Ayanda found her place in her new family. We also discovered, after a number of visits to doctors, that Ayanda was actually two years old and chronically under-developed for her age. Since Peter and Heidi lived around the corner, I spent a great deal of time with Ayanda; I felt like something of a step-parent to her myself, having been there from the beginning. As Heidi's belly grew and Ayanda could no longer ft on her lap, it was into my lap that she crawled for consolation. When Heidi eventually gave birth, a long and horrendous experience, Ayanda needed extra attention which she got from a number of residents at Oxford Street.

Peter and Heidi did eventually adopt Ayanda, having to live in South Africa for four years and become South African residents to do so. By that time they had two sons, first Daniel and later Joel; when they finally returned to England, they were a family of five.

Teboho returned from France after three weeks that felt to me like three months. I managed to whisk him away from his homecoming celebrations at ETHOS for a quiet dinner at Oxford Street. Over the meal, he regaled us with stories of his adventures in France, making the most of all the cultural faux pas and linguistic confusion. As he already spoke ten of the eleven South African languages fluently, and had once lived in Venda for three months just to learn the eleventh, he had picked up French easily, returning with many colourful phrases.

With our bellies aching from a big meal and much laughter, we retired to my room to spend some much awaited time alone together. As he held me in his arms, I remember feeling like a sponge, wanting to soak him into muscle and bone so as not to be without the essence of him again. I had missed his optimism, his laughter, his shoulder and the sunshine of his love.

So I entered the second half of the year enjoying my new home and the growing community in which it was located, with both work and home groups providing stretch and purpose. Teboho and I were busy planning two weddings: one in early January in Sydney and the second in early February in Mohlakeng. All was well in my world as I celebrated my twenty-sixth birthday and I was very, very happy.

Do we tempt the gods when our worlds are awash with joy? Perhaps. Suffice to say that Heidi's disquiet, long forgotten by the rest of us, would trigger a chain of events that was to tear the fabric of my world apart.

TEBOHO
CAME TO OXFORD STREET ONE DAY WITH SOME UNEXPECTED NEWS. ETHOS WAS A PROGRAM THAT WAS OPEN TO SINGLE STUDENTS ONLY AS THE HOUSE COULD NOT ACCOMMODATE COUPLES OR FAMILIES. OUR IMPENDING MARRIAGE HAD BEEN TAKEN TO THE BOARD TO DETERMINE WHETHER THIS WOULD LOCK HIM OUT OF THE PROGRAM AND THE SCHOLARSHIP THAT WENT WITH IT. THE GOOD NEWS WAS THAT THE BOARD WAS WILLING TO LET TEBOHO STAY ON AT ETHOS ON CONDITION THAT WE DIDN'T LIVE AT OXFORD STREET AS WE HAD PLANNED, BUT AGREED TO LIVE IN COMMUNITY AT ETHOS.

With his scholarship intact, Teboho was elated but I was forlorn at the thought of leaving my beloved new home. Teboho tried to console me with assurances that we would be given the largest room in the old house, with lovely wooden floors and views over the garden and towards the hills that surrounded the city. Yet I was angry with the ultimatum–take the offer or leave the program. The Board argued that living in community was a crucial part of the training and one they would not compromise on. I felt like a teenager who had been grounded, not a grown woman who was about to marry and make her own home with her new husband. I sulked and raged in turn for weeks until I finally gave in, knowing the decision was out of my control. ETHOS would not bend and if Teboho left, there was no money for him to finish the last two years of his studies.

I wrote to a friend back in Australia, struggling to find the middle ground: ‘Living with single students won't be easy but we'll try and make the best of it. At least it will be a stimulating environment as the community is constantly trying to stretch and apply its faith'.

Despite having many friends at ETHOS and loving the time I spent there, I knew from Jacques and Margie that living there as a married couple would be a challenge. They had bought a house down the street after Stephanie was born, as it had proven too hard to have both family and community in the same house. I was also aware that it wasn't an ideal way to begin our marriage but Teboho was confident we could make it work and I trusted him. He had a gift for carving out space in our busy lives so that it felt as though only the two of us existed, a space where I felt cherished and connected. I believed he could find a way to make it work for us at ETHOS.

Shortly after Teboho's news, Robbie came to Oxford Street with news of his own. Mr Khuzwayo, the principal of my favourite school, Smero, had been promoted to District Inspector, effective immediately. I suppose it was to be expected. Such talent doesn't go unnoticed and swiftly gets siphoned off, promoted up. Yet the school, its teachers, students and parents mourned Mr Khuzwayo's leaving as if it was a death in the family. In a way it was. The school would never be the same again, such was the effect of his gifted leadership. There was even some graffiti on one classroom wall that said, ‘We love our headmaster more than education'. As his promotion was effective immediately, the school was in disarray.

The worst of it was that it was only two months before the matriculation exams for the senior students and they were now without an English teacher as well as a principal. In desperation, they had sent Robbie to call me. While I had no formal teaching qualifications, only a Bachelor of Science degree, the staff reasoned that I was the only English-speaking person who had a relationship with the school; that put me at the top of their list. Steve and I immediately agreed that Sizwe would free me up to teach at Smero for three weeks until a replacement could be found. So for the rest of September, I was to teach three double periods of Senior English each day, as Mr Khuzwayo had done every day of his time there. How he had time to run such an amazing school on top of this class load, I do not know.

The school had twelve hundred students, fifteen classrooms, twenty-two teachers and me. A quick calculation revealed that I could be teaching up to eighty students at a time. I was terrified and excited in equal parts. I also knew how important this was to the matriculating students, with exams bearing down on them. Standing at the front of the room that first morning, I felt nervousness place a hand around my throat and squeeze. Those three weeks were a whirlwind of eager faces, crowded classrooms, late night preparation and marking. I saw how far behind many of the students were and realised there would be no chance they would pass their final exams. And yet I also saw a great many students who had been given such a gift by their years at this extraordinary school that they believed anything was possible.

Despite my involvement in the teacher exchanges and my many years of running youth programs, I found facing a classroom of seventy, three times a day, gave me a new appreciation for teachers and what they do. More than once, I arrived ready with a lesson prepared for 10A only to be met by the smiling faces of 10B who had done that same work that morning and were now looking forward to what came next. It taught me how to think on my feet and never lose my confidence, knowing that teenagers could smell fear from forty metres. I also learnt how to teach in a large classroom with only my voice and a piece of chalk as my tools.

It was both a fabulous and sobering experience. I was constantly comparing it to my own high school experience at North Sydney Girls High, a selective government school where no effort was spared to push and challenge the students. At the time, I didn't think of us as a well-resourced school, squashed as we were into a small block on the edge of the city with no space to move, but I knew we had extraordinary teachers who got to know what we were capable of and set the bar just out of our reach to stretch us. Smero shared that same spirit of believing in its students and wanting them to succeed. But the comparison ended there, as that was all they had to offer. And yet–it was amazing what could be done with school spirit and a blackboard.

When I went back to work at Sizwe, I was completely spent. Thankfully, I had two weeks before the next dialogue program in the middle of October, which would be followed by another teacher exchange. In the converted office that I shared with Lee and Robbie, something felt a bit different. Lee, who was always a quiet person, seemed even more reserved yet also a little agitated. I asked Robbie about it but as Lee had not volunteered any information, we decided to let her talk when she was ready.

On the weekend, I popped in to see Heidi, Peter and Ayanda and their new baby Joel. Heidi's mum had recently visited to meet the baby and Heidi told me about a strange conversation they had during her stay. The gist of it was that Heidi's father's encounters with Steve in England had not always been harmonious and that perhaps this accounted for the absence of Steve and Beth's renowned hospitality.

I spent the rest of the weekend trying to make sense of what Heidi had told me. I had nothing but respect for Steve and had been in some pretty tight situations with him where he had always acted with courage and honour. He was one of the few people who had shown me how to live in a society that constantly asks individuals to state what they stand for. He never shied away from the complexities of South Africa, the moral dilemmas that faced us because we knew those on all sides of the conflict did things that were indefensible. He met it face-on and still found a way to do what was right. So it wasn't just his actions I admired but his intellectual rigour when he posed the questions that most people were afraid to ask.

I also knew that Steve had been brought up in a series of foster homes, his mother dead and his father unable to cope with the tribe of young sons. I understood that growing up poor and unwanted leaves people with a lifetime of baggage and it takes someone extraordinary to set it down and move on. And while I believed Steve to be extraordinary, to the extent that I had more or less put him on a pedestal, the conversation with Heidi left me feeling unsettled.

The following week was a blur of preparations for the program weekends that followed, yet Lee still seemed distracted and withdrawn. By Friday, I could no longer wait and in my usual forward style, asked her what was going on. With some encouragement, she told Robbie and me that she was concerned something was not quite right with the Trust. She refused to say anything more as she wanted to be completely sure of her facts before she discussed her concerns with Steve. I said nothing, but my small seed of uncertainty began to take root.

After a weekend of preparation, Lee went to Steve. I watched her walk up the driveway towards the house and Steve's office. I listened to the gravel crunch beneath her feet.

Robbie and I waited as the minutes ticked by, sitting in silence, pretending to work. After an hour, I could no longer stand the heaviness and I told Robbie about my conversation with Heidi. I couldn't tell if the knot in my stomach was anger or fear. I watched Robbie's face as he tossed the information around in his mind. He felt the same way as I did about Steve. Some of the political prisoners he was with in detention had teased him for going to work in an organisation run by a white priest, claiming it would be liberal and ineffectual. He had stood his ground then and since, defending Sizwe in general and Steve in particular. I watched the emotions ficker across his boyish face, disbelief changing to confusion.

And we waited. It was almost another hour before I heard the crunching of the gravel announcing someone's approach. But it wasn't Lee, it was Steve. He sat down and told us that he had some difficult news to share. He said he had been concerned for some time that Lee, who had worked with him for so many years, was no longer happy; that they had talked at length but were unable to resolve their differences and that, sadly, Lee was leaving. I had an unwelcome vision of Lee in his office, sitting with her face in her hands. I didn't know what to think and was close to tears. Robbie was silent, his face masked so that it could not be read.

Steve left and went back up to the house. After a few minutes we heard footsteps again. Lee walked straight past the office, got into her car and drove off. Moments later, Mama Jenny's voice rang out, calling us all for lunch up on the stoep. ‘I can't eat right now', I said to Robbie. ‘Let's go and find Themba.' Themba was running a tin craft workshop in Edendale and would be unaware of the events of the last few hours. So we grabbed the bakkie keys and left without a word to anyone.

As we drove down Sweetwaters Road, I found it hard to think straight. I wanted to believe the best of people–I had chosen to live that way. I had been with both Steve and Lee since the beginning and could not imagine my life in South Africa without either of them. Part of me didn't want to address the situation at all because I knew that with this splitting of the original team things would not be the same, no matter what happened from here. As we reached the bottom of the hill and arrived in Caluza, the almost hypnotic tempo of the township reached me, calm, soothing and regular like a heartbeat.

After finding Themba and leaving him as shocked and confused as we were, we drove into town and went looking for Lee. Her car was parked outside her house. She opened the door, seeming unsurprised to see us. We sat in her small living room and she told us what had transpired with Steve. She said that when she presented him with her concerns, he simply turned to her and suggested it might be best if she packed her belongings and left. They argued briefly, but Lee was prepared for this: she had been mulling things over and making notes for weeks now and had kept them with her in a file at home. Lee talked us through the details, but I could no longer hear her. I felt as if I might throw up. I felt as though all my efforts, all my hard work had been built on shaky foundations; that my world had splintered into a thousand pieces and I was watching it all blow away.

Lee told us she was going to go to the Trustees to discuss the situation. Robbie and I thought we should talk to Mdu as he was on our management committee and connected to many of the Trustees. We agreed that we needed to move quickly. As we made plans, the part of each of us who had been through so many crises–the Table Mountain refugee camp, the Seven Day War–clicked into place and we were resolute about what needed to be done.

We found Mdu at his offlce just as he was about to leave for the day. We described the chain of events in detail. Mdu was silent for a time and then simply said, ‘OK'. I watched the burden of disappointment climb onto his shoulders, causing them to droop a little. Like Robbie, he had gone out on a limb with his political associates when he joined the management team of Sizwe. We agreed to talk some more over the course of the week.

As we left the Council of Churches, I could hold it in no more and asked Robbie to take me to ETHOS. We made the short drive to the University where Robbie dropped me off in the driveway. I watched him leave and then turned towards the house. I climbed slowly up the stairs to the open door, my body like lead, making each step an effort. From the stairs, I heard Teboho's laughter echoing through the house and it spilled outside like a flock of parrots taking fight. My tears were close to the surface now. I followed the sound of laughter to the hallway and up to the first floor where I found Teboho and Alice recounting the events of the day in his room. I ran across the room, heaving great sobs of despair, and he stood to catch me in his arms.

After a time, the three of us sat on his bed and the chain of events came tumbling out through my tears. I found it hard to express the depths of disappointment and despair I felt at that point–morally, personally, spiritually. My faith in the organisation was deeply shaken. I had thrown my whole being into our work and I was not sure who I could be in this country without it.

‘You will be my wife', Teboho assured me, ‘and you will be with me. I need you. My family needs you and my community needs you.' Robbie and I went to see Steve on the Wednesday after spending Tuesday working in the township, keeping ourselves a safe distance from Phezulu. We had decided to resign. With unresolved doubt in our minds, we could no longer be part of Sizwe. I was leaving for our wedding in Australia in four weeks. Robbie was confident he could find something else. We both felt guilty for letting down the groups that were coming that weekend and the next, expecting Robbie and I to run programs for them. Perhaps Themba would take over and see that it didn't fall apart. Although he understood our decisions, Themba was not in a position to consider resigning as he was financially responsible not only for himself but also for his family back in Stanger. He would have to weather the storm for now.