I don’t like children.
I love my own, but if I’m totally honest, I find all humans between the ages of two and twelve terribly dull. They are too short, they know very little and they cost a fortune.
And so, armed with these philosophies and bias, for no reason any logical person can fathom, I became a Sunday school teacher a decade or so ago.
I dreaded Sunday mornings but bravely endured my suffering and taught a class of terrifying tweens for a year or so. I could write a horror blog about this (and I’m sure the kids themselves are all still in therapy), but today I’m just sharing this with you so you can understand how I met Mthobeli.
Every Sunday morning Mthobeli was brought to the class by his mom, Noma. Mthobeli was the dutiful older brother and had to look after his younger siblings in my class. They clung to him like little koala bears and refused to go to their own classes. Mthobeli was quiet, but when he spoke his intelligence intrigued me. He had milk chocolate skin, a humongous Afro and a gentle soft voice. Once I stopped teaching, I still saw him from time to time. I knew which high school he went to and read about his achievements winning a saxophone competition while writing his final matric exams last year.
Just before Christmas, I received a phone call from Noma. I could not quite make out her dilemma. She was crying a lot and our line was bad. I finally figured out that she just had just arrived in the Eastern Cape after driving through the night with her younger children. Her mother was dying. Mthobeli was at home, but his father had thrown him out and he had nowhere to go. We have a spare room. The maths was easy, so Mthobeli arrived on my doorstep a few hours later.
He was still the same gentle boy, but had grown into a man, still sporting that familiar Afro. I hated seeing him like this. He was humiliated and ashamed, but still spoke softly and deeply respectful. Over coffee, I coaxed the story out of him. Mthobeli’s father, a proud Xhosa man from royal descent, sent invitations out to celebrate Mthobeli’s initiation. His dad wanted him to go off to the mountains, go through the month-long traditional initiation (known as Ulwaluko) and get circumcised. But there was a snag… Mthobeli had no intention of going right now.
Mthobeli grew up in Sandton. He just got a job at a restaurant and wanted to save up some money before entering university to do a BSc. He did not say he would never go through with Ulwaluko, but he was not ready now.
His father was furious. It escalated quickly and the elders were called in. They arrived from the Eastern cape and an indaba was arranged. The elders sided with Mthobeli. The tradition is for the young man to decide when he is ready to attend initiation. The father’s role is to spend the son’s boyhood preparing him for this. It seemed to the elders that the father had failed to do this, and thus his anger only intensified.
Once Noma left to tend to her dying mom, the dad changed the locks of the house. He told the security to call the police if Mthobeli tried to get in. Noma pleaded Mthobeli’s case, but this stubborn Xhosa patriarch told her that the only news he is interested in is that either his son is at Ulwaluko … or dead. Nothing else matters.
For the next three weeks, Mthobeli stayed with us. He got his excellent matric results with none of his family to celebrate with him. He was quiet and withdrawn, incredibly grateful, helpful and kind. He was humiliated by what his dad had done, but never once did he regret standing up to his father. I did tease him endlessly though that his father got what he deserved. He named him Mthobeli, which means “obedient one.” (Let’s be honest, life is just too ironic for this. Have you ever met a beautiful Beauty or a patient Patience?).
Mthobeli’s dilemma made me think about how difficult life is when we are forced to live in two worlds. He spent his life in the richest city in Africa, exposed to a melting pot of cultures, received one of the best educations money can buy, had access to knowledge, technology, luxuries and comfort, but yet, always has to have one foot in the rural hills of the Eastern Cape. Being born Xhosa means you have to hold on to some beautiful traditions, but maybe also some that have not kept up with the times.
Watching Mthobile over his time with us, suspended between boyhood and manhood, belonging and in exile, I realised how familiar we all at the Lodges are with this limbo-state. We constantly have to navigate different worlds: the world of the living, and the world of the dying, the world that was designed for and celebrates healthy bodies, and the frustrating world of broken and disabled bodies, the starkly contrasted worlds of being a caregiver, and the vulnerable world of the one receiving the care, the world of quick fixes and western medicine and the one of lifestyle and disciplined choices, and our physical world of what we see and understand and the mystical one in a different realm.
We live between the silent, lonely world of grief and the busy, familiar world of life-carries-on-regardless, the cruel world of before and after -before the diagnosis and the very different one on the other side of it. We dangle between the world of youth, hope and excitement and the quieter world of the elderly filled with wisdom, memories, regrets sometimes, and of course an array of aches and pains.
We also see the different worlds of healers: the world of the critical care doctors with their furious commitment to save lives at all costs, and that of the gentler pace of the palliative teams where acute care is traded for comfort and dignity.
We must cross the chasm between world class medical care and equipment and enter the landscape of government facilities limping along despite years of neglect and audacious pillage.
As South Africans, we are forced to move back and forth between the country’s poorest of the poor living in temporary shacks, unwelcome wherever they squat, and the high walls of suburbia where we hide with our compulsive online shopping and sickening abundance. We must juggle the differences of our cultures and colours and languages and traditions all the time.
At the Lodges, we see the harsh contrasts between denial, and brutal truth. We see people torn between the medical truths they are told, but wanting to believe the friends that say God is faithful and will provide healing.
An end-of-life patient, Rashnee, was told repeatedly by her husband that she would not die. He had a statue of every Hindu god known to man in her room, incense was burnt night and day and sacred rituals were performed. The family had prayer vigils and meditated and fasted. Rashnee died anyway, just as the doctors predicted she would, but no goodbyes could be said, or peace could be made because they could not bring themselves to face reality and move from one world to another. They deprived her, and themselves, the rest she needed and the gentle exit every human deserves.
I hope Mthobeli can keep those Xhosa practices that give him roots. I hope that he is allowed to loosen the grip on the ones that wound him. His mom Noma is back in Johannesburg. They are living in an AirBnb. I’m meeting him later this week for coffee. Life, somehow, is carrying on.
I hope he and his father find their way back to each other, and I hope, as we all falter between our many worlds, old and new, city and village, hospital and home, faith and fact, that we will choose grace over judgement, that we will leave room for doubt, for timing, for tenderness, and that when the locks are changed, we will still offer one another a place to sleep.