Holding Up the Sky (5 page)

Given the hectic pace of the last month, Steve gave us all five days off after the camp. Mary-Anne, Msizi and I decided to go down to Cape Town, giving Gary a lift to Grahamstown. Matt and Liz, Bee, Chook and Charlie had decided to take a trip in another direction before heading home to Australia. In four weeks time, I was flying out to Canada, where I had enrolled to study for the remainder of the year. I had no idea when I would see my Aussie friends again. But I knew I would miss their humour, friendship and the occasional shoulder to cry on.

You pass right by the township of Rini on your way into Grahamstown, so we dropped Msizi at his home first. We had planned to stay over in Grahamstown and continue our journey early the next morning. When we arrived at the tiny four-roomed house on a dusty piece of ground that Msizi called home, we all went inside to greet his mother. Jonga, his younger brother, told us she had gone to Port Elizabeth, not knowing we were coming as they had no phone. Msizi looked quite broken-hearted as he hadn't seen his mother for three months. As we drove off, I watched him walking down the dirt road in search of a friend.

We then drove to Jacques and Margie's house. They were good friends with Gary and Vicky as well as with Msizi, as they were active in community development in Grahamstown. Jacques had just become a minister and his church had projects in the township. Margie worked at a local art and craft co-operative that promoted the work of African artists and sold their artwork all over the country. It was my first meeting with this warm and endearing couple who were to become close friends in the years to come, sharing many of my life's milestones and pains.

Over coffee, Mary-Anne took me aside and told me she was so upset about Msizi not being able to see his mother that she wanted to suggest we drive through to Port Elizabeth and try to find her for him. I agreed, but tried not to look overly enthusiastic, given that we hadn't told Mary-Anne about our new relationship. Gary had his graduation ceremony the following night, so he wasn't coming with us to Cape Town. We said our goodbyes and went back to Rini. We were aware that two white women driving alone through the township could attract unwanted attention, so we hoped we found Msizi quickly. He was at the second house we tried, thanks to Jonga's fine directions. Msizi was grateful for the offer to see his mother, so we headed towards the coast. While it's only an hour to Port Elizabeth, it took us a few hours to find Msizi's mother at his uncle's house. His mother's brother was a policeman whom Msizi found little reason to visit, so he had trouble finding the house in the sprawling townships outside the windy city. There were many black policemen in the township, though it was not a popular job as they were often required to act against their own. People usually joined the police force as a way to feed the family. Someone like Msizi, who was often under the watchful eye of the police given his role as a local youth leader, could understand but not support his uncle's decision.

We were offered tea by Msizi's aunt and sat awkwardly around the small living room that was so crammed with furniture that our knees almost touched. It was wonderful to meet Msizi's mother. I watched her watch us and wondered if she could read her son's mind. If she didn't know already, I suspected she might before we came back in the morning. I was unsure what she would think about her son's strange choice. We left after almost an hour of African hospitality and drove through to the beachside suburb where Mary-Anne's brother lived. That evening, we rattled around in the large house overlooking the water and again I was struck by the contrasts that South Africa presented and how my choice of friends took me regularly from one extreme to the other.

We arrived in Cape Town later the next day and drove up the West Coast towards Porterville where Mary-Anne's mother and stepfather lived. He was the local GP and had his surgery in their sprawling colonial-style home. Over dinner, they quizzed us about the work we were doing in 'Maritzburg. I noticed that they were completely unfazed when Mary-Anne arrived with her two friends, without mentioning the colour of one of the guests they were to have in their home. I wondered if Mary-Anne had been surprising them in this way for years, so they had come to expect it, but I was still taken aback that a white couple of their generation was so open-minded. Aside from visiting her parents, Mary-Anne had also wanted to come and swap cars. Up until this point, she had been using one of the family cars, but it appeared to be causing some problems. She explained to her mother that it was the same colour as the yellow cars the police used in the townships and when she arrived to visit friends, she often found them climbing over the back fence to get away. Her mother also took this piece of information in her stride and offered her a respectable metallic green car instead.

We spent two full and fabulous days in the magical city of Cape Town before heading back to Grahamstown. We had dropped Msizi off in Rini before heading into town to fetch Gary. After enjoying Jacques and Margie's hospitality over lunch, we drove back out to Rini to find Msizi. After waiting outside the empty house for about twenty minutes, we decided to fill up with petrol to save some time. As we turned out of the township onto the road into town, an army personnel transport, known as a kasper, spotted us and chased us into town. They hauled us out of the car and questioned us about our business in the township. They doubted our story of fetching a friend, not a common scenario in such a divided country, and warned us of the violent nature of townships and how we were putting our lives at risk. We thanked them for their concern, filled up and headed right back to Rini. They tailed us all the way, with two soldiers carrying automatic weapons perched on the top of the tank-like vehicle. Thankfully, Msizi was home by this time, so he threw his things into the car and we left, waving to his mother as we did.

I would return to Cape Town many times, but only this once would I be here with Msizi. As we had done throughout the trip, Msizi and I snatched moments to talk and be together, enjoying the time away from our busy lives at the Nonsuch Road.

Back at the centre, we continued to keep our relationship to ourselves though finding time together was difficult, living in a community as we did. I was also struggling with the way Msizi treated me in public. In private he was tender and appreciative; however, in public he was distant and would at times run me down with his teasing. I oscillated between thinking I needed to get a thicker skin and wondering whether he enjoyed the arrangement, turning his emotions off and on. In hindsight, the secrecy itself became the higher calling to which everything else, including my sense of wellbeing, was sacrificed. However, in an effort to ft in, I went along with it without question, something I would do many times in the future.

This emerging habit of accommodation would not serve me well. My desire to cause no further injury to those who had been badly injured meant that I opened myself up to being taken for granted and, sometimes, used, whether purposefully or not. As this was the first time I had compromised my own needs, even in a small way, I could not yet see what it would cost me. But I think this is where it began.

One of the masks Msizi wore when he was in the mood for teasing was that of male chauvinist. He knew that Mary-Anne and I, and many others, would get our hackles up when he started to push gender roles, demanding we bring the men food and wash their clothes like proper African women. He took great pleasure in telling us that in traditional homes, the wife would bring the husband's food to him on her knees and then she and the children would eat only after he had eaten his fill. While I knew he was winding us up, the nostalgic look on his face had me a little worried. I later learnt that he and his brothers had done all the work in his home, with both his parents being absent most of the time, so it was not a nostalgia for what he had experienced, but perhaps the one that all men have for the good old days when men were men and women were women. I, however, had no longing for such a time, so Msizi would need to get his own food from the kitchen.

Meanwhile, preparations were well under way for a ten-day mission in Eshowe, a small rural town up the north coast from Durban. The mission was run by a full team this time, not just the trainees as it had been at Brettonwood. We would hold rallies in the community hall, services each night in a large marquee on the football oval in the centre of town, bible studies, prayer meetings and youth meetings. We would be working with a coalition of local churches to host the mission, as they would be responsible for the follow up once it was over. Our organisation ran many such events across southern Africa on a regular basis and had been preparing for this event for almost a year. It was very exciting for me to be part of it, especially with David, the centre's founder, being the keynote speaker. He was currently dividing his time between peace talks in Pietermaritzburg, the Eshowe mission and his many other speaking commitments across the country.

Mary-Anne and I took a break from preparations to visit friends at a local technical high school called Plessislaer, which was located on the edge of Edendale, adjacent to the city's industrial area. Surrounded by high brick walls topped with razor wire, the school looked more like a prison than an institute of learning. We pulled up at the steel gates and went to speak to security. To my surprise, the process felt strangely familiar, somewhat like a border post, as we filled in copious forms to allow us entry to the school. The official stamped memorandum read:

Visit by:

1. Miss M.A van Heerden

2. Miss S. Blackburn

Please allow SCM member D.S Sithole–ID 2862 to meet and accompany them to the meeting in C-28.

Signed P. Zondi

We were required to keep this document on us at all times. Our friends told us that the security was designed to keep the township violence out. Many parents had sent their sons to the school from rural areas and were very aware of the violence in the city, and in Pietermaritzburg in particular; the security was seen as a necessary precaution. My cynical mind wondered whether such measures also kept these young men in, so they could not be influenced by local community groups that were powerfully lobbying against the apartheid government. What I was beginning to learn was that within the black community in South Africa there was not one homogeneous view of the world and how best to live in it. There were diverse views, depending on where you lived, what church you went to and whose company you kept. What was also interesting was that, despite the white community's insistence that there were substantial tribal divides, I was yet to get a sense of that. The divisions seemed to be elsewhere.

In the week before the mission, I took some time out to meet with other local organisations, including World Vision, to explore work options in South Africa. While I was still interested in Tanzania, South Africa continued to grow as a possibility in my mind. As unlikely as this seemed, it had little to do with Msizi. My drive to do something meaningful was powerful, as was my desire to do it in a community or a team. South Africa was appealing simply because I now had a growing network of people that I knew I could work with. In comparison, Tanzania was an unknown entity where I had only corresponded with as yet faceless individuals. My personal drivers of meaning and relationships seemed to be shifting my intention towards continuing where I had begun. My discussions with World Vision were very positive, so yet another avenue was opening up for me to return.

The mission to Eshowe was both exhilarating and exhausting. We were asked to run many of the programs we had offered at Brettonwood and so were often performing in front of large audiences. When we weren't on, we attended other events that different members of the larger team were running. It was a great opportunity for me to hear others speak or run programs. However, one of the strongest memories of that mission was staying with Tshidi and her family, as she was from Eshowe. She lived in the same type of four-roomed house I had seen in every township and she and I shared a mattress on the floor in what was her parents' living room during the day. We were often out late at night with mission events and Msizi would walk us home, the significance of which I suspect was not lost on my host and resident matchmaker. Msizi mentioned that Mary-Anne had also been questioning him about us, and though he felt bad about putting her off, he didn't feel like sharing our relationship with anyone.

During my stay, Tshidi also taught me a very important skill–to wash out of a plastic basin. Millions of black South Africans wash this way each day, but it was the first time I had stayed in a house without running water. Tshidi heated some water on the stove and brought it through in two plastic basins. To my surprise, she then stripped naked and prepared to wash with me in the room. While I had grown up in a household where we were relaxed about seeing each other naked from time to time, this candour did not extend outside the family. For Tshidi, there was no issue. She stood in one bowl and, using a small cloth, soaped her whole body. Next, she rinsed off the soap using the water in the bowl she was standing in. She also took the opportunity to wash her underwear while she had hot soapy water to hand. Next, she stepped into the basin of clean water which she used for a final rinse. She finished by brushing her teeth, spitting the water into the bowl. Lastly, she used a small hand towel to wipe off the remaining water and then dressed, ready for the day. Once dressed, she took the two basins outside and watered the garden with the grey water. I would wash this way numerous times in following years, always remembering my teacher when I did.

After the mission, there were only a few days before I left for Canada. The whole team was having a short break before the next event, so it gave me a bit more time to be with Msizi, and despite the fact that our relationship was still a secret, we somehow managed to be together without a food of questions. There was little else to talk about other than my imminent departure and what that meant for us. Despite the intensity of our feelings for each other, there was no real place for the relationship to go. I had options to return, but no solid plans. And even if I did return, we did not see how our relationship could continue outside the relative haven of the centre, where people were kind and interracial friendships were given the space to be normal. Once Msizi returned to Grahamstown, there would be little hope for any kind of normality. My brief visit to his township had taught me that. So we went for long walks, listened to our favourite music, anything just to be in each other's presence a little longer before the bubble burst.