Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
As if on a mission;
I raised my eyes and you were there;
A captivating vision;
I saw all that’s beautiful and rare!
Many years of heartache experience;
Have put me into captivity;
Moments of pure love indulgence;
Will transform my affectivity!
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear;
You’ll take me to another place;
I will embrace emotion and devotion;
The joy will be reflected on my face!
The fire of your love and desire;
Warms my heart and dries my tears;
A moment to remember;
All that’s beautiful and rare!
The strength of your love so clear;
As when I look into the mirror;
A reflection of true beauty and devotion;
Fills my heart with much love and emotion!
Today I smiled,
A moment to remember;
All the time we’ve shared;
Devotion and passion with my lover!
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Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
Awesome and true,
Yet often doubted,
Attraction at first sight,
Yet somewhat ignored!
He appeared with a bright smile,
A stranger that looked familiar,
He swept me off my feet,
With his gorgeous face!
I always find new strength
in his heartfelt smile
His eyes bring the joy
I’ve always imagined!
Every man I’ve met before,
I’ve compared to him,
It was always him
Who I wished they were!
If I’d understood
That he’d find me somehow,
He’d be the only one
To have shared my bed!
I’d have sailed the seas,
I’d have climbed the mountains,
To find him from another land,
If only I’d understood!
But, now I’m captivated
and somewhat robbed
With no right to ask him
to fill up my void!
A chance I will take,
And gamble with my heart,
Everything I will give,
To have him kiss my lips!
He’s given me more,
In such a little time,
I’ve taken much and given much,
To savour his touch!
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Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
Synopsis
Amanda Sokhulu is a young woman in the prime of her teenage years who lives with her divorced mother and her siblings in the village. She is still in high school, about to go to her twelfth grade. One evening, she is caught by her mother sneaking out of the house to her boyfriend Samuel Green. The punishment she receives when she returns the following morning causes her to run away from home to live with him. While living with her boyfriend his true colours surface and she does not like the man he has become. This discovery leads to several events that involve the police, violence and deception.
She realises that she has to break free from Samuel, and her only hope is to go back home after being away for six years. Her quest is to find a man she can love and marry. She vows never to make the same mistakes her mother and sisters made in their marriages because her greatest fear is to live alone and die alone. After many attempts, she finds the man she believes she can trust with her life and marries him even though he has not paid lobola. Then the thing she fears most comes upon her and she divorces her husband.
Amanda’s heart is bitter as she returns to her mother’s house again. The house she had vowed never again to live in. The book chronicles the numerous attempts of this strong-willed woman to find love and how she survives a broken engagement and a divorce. If you were to ask her what she thinks about marriage she would simply tell you, “Been there, done that, got the ring and pawned it”. In spite of her perils, she still maintains that she will marry again, when she meets that special man.
One
The village girl breaks free
_______________
It was almost eight thirty in the evening and everyone had already gone to bed as it was considered to be very late in the village that had become my home. Samuel was supposed to pick me up at nine so I had to find a way to get out of the house without waking my mother. I pushed the blankets away and double checked on the bed across the room if my little sister was really asleep or faking it like I had been for the past hour. I breathed a sigh of relief when I convinced myself that she was indeed asleep. I tiptoed across the room to the window, and silently opened it before climbing down carefully. Half-way down, I tried to close the window with one hand while holding on to the water tank with another. As soon as I let go of the window I felt myself fly down with an amazing speed. I landed on my head on the muddy surface close to the tank, missing the thick cement foundation of the tank by a few centimetres.
I felt an instant headache as I lay down with my eyes closed for a few seconds debating whether to clean myself up or wait for Samuel with my mud-soaked denim jeans. I decided on the latter and then I opened my eyes so I could get up and be on my way. I could not believe what I saw about five meters away. A silhouette of a person standing with folded arms facing my direction. I froze for a moment from fear and then I took another look at the figure without moving. At first it looked like mother but then I dismissed that thought. It was absurd; mother was fast asleep in her room. Then I became more afraid when I thought about the stories that had been told in the village about witches who travelled across the village on brooms to kidnap little girls in their sleep. Of course I never believed those stories since I had never heard anyone who had actually seen a witch riding a broom. But, all those stories came back to me and I wondered if the figure standing in our yard could be one of them.
I secretly hoped that the figure would be my mother. I started to tremble as I pulled myself together to gather enough strength so I could run. But, before I could move the figure began to slowly walk towards me. I froze on the spot and could not manage to run. Then I found myself standing face to face with my mother. She stood in front of me, blocking my way without saying a word. I was a little bit relieved and I was not sure if that was good or bad. All I knew was that it felt worse than her usual swearing and yelling. I could not stop the thoughts that went through my head. ‘Is it possible that my mother is a witch? Otherwise, how else could she have known about my sneaking out of the house? Perhaps my little sister had told on me or my mother was somehow at the wrong place at the wrong time. Is this a coincidence or is mother a witch?’. I could not speak because I was frightened, embarrassed and had a terrible headache from the fall. The last thing I needed was a lecture from mother which was surely going to be delivered in screams to wake the entire neighbourhood. What is it with mothers and yelling? Gosh, I just don’t know.
Tshotsho! Uwe kancinci. That means, it serves you right in isiXhosa. Before I could say anything she continued, actually I have no idea what I was going to say. Ucinga ukuba uyaphi? “Where do you think you are going?” I got caught alright and I had not anticipated the situation so I was unprepared. At that moment, I could hear Samuel’s car approaching from a distance and I began to panic. Mother did not approve of him or rather she did not approve of me having a boyfriend, period. I was eighteen and still had to sneak out of the house, what’s up with that? She still believed that I was a virgin but she sometimes called me a whore when she yelled at me which really confused me. She grabbed my arm and dragged me towards the house. “Get back inside, you are not going anywhere!” I was thinking there was something really wrong with mother, she was acting crazy. Sure she did not believe that I would all the stuff she wanted me to do.
The woman had a nerve and I wanted to prove to her that she could not overpower me. So I told her that I was going and that she was not going to stop me! I screamed at her, telling her how cruel she has always been with me since my father left. “So this is how you operate neh? You drove my father away and now you are doing the same thing to me”. It was as if my outbursts encouraged her, she started to pinch me and she pulled my hair but I was not going to give in to her controlling. We struggled as we tried to get into the door. “I forbid you from seeing that boy again, do you hear!” Now she was pointing her finger at me. “Mother you are so controlling, what do you mean I cannot see him again? How else am I going to find a husband if you don’t want me to go out with boys? Who do you think you are, God? You cannot forbid me to do anything, I am my own person mother and I am old enough to make my own decisions about who I want to see and when.” “As long as you still live under my roof and are dependent on me, you are not your own person, you are mine, mine! Do you hear me? And yes I am God as far as you are concerned. You will take the guidance I give you whether you like it or not!”
We got inside the house, she was fuming with anger and I was also angry in my own right but I was afraid that she could tie me up and call my brothers to beat me or something. I had to think fast and find a way to escape. “Make your own decisions, who the hell do you think you are? Your pathetic decisions almost got you killed tonight; you could have bumped your head on the concrete foundation.” I detected something that seemed like concern in her but I could not trust her, that woman was devious. She could just be luring me to lose focus on getting away that night. “But I did not bump my head on the concrete mother, did I? It is my life. Please let me live my life! All other eighteen year olds are either married, have children or living with their boyfriends in the city. I am stuck here with you, going to school everyday. What do you want from me?”
She looked at me in the eye, and I saw that look she always gave me when she thought I was being ungrateful for the sacrifices she had made for my education. I could hear that speech coming up again. So what if she had to sell chicken eggs to pay for my school fees? It is not like I was failing, I was always on top of my class, every year and in just another year I would be going to university. “If you dare leave this house Zanele, you are not coming back. You will not set your foot in this house again do you hear me?” At that moment, I thought I heard someone move inside the house. I had to get away fast before someone else got involved. I jumped up and got out of the house. Once I was outside the yard, I ran as fast as I could and found Samuel waiting for me. As if he already knew that I had not time to waste, he immediately took off and drove away.
Samuel Green was what we referred to in my village as coloured. His grandfather was white and his grandmother was black. His parents were coloured and so was he. He was sinfully gorgeous and was already working as a teacher in one of the private schools in town. He was the only person who understood how frustrated I was with the village life and he tried to make me forget about it whenever we were together. Naturally, I told him about the incident with my mother and how I almost got myself killed trying to sneak out of the house through the back window. As usual, my Sam showered me with love and tenderness. He told me that I had nothing to worry about; he would take care of me if mother was serious about throwing me out of the house.
The following morning when Sam went to work, I decided to take a bus and go home. I was not sure how the situation would be but I had to take that chance. I still had my identity documents and school reports in the house so there was no way that I would stay away from home. Mother would just have to go and jump in a lake if she wanted to. Besides, it was my father’s house that he built for all of us, not just for her. It was still my home and I was not about to let her drive me out like she did her husband. I walked very slowly from the bus stop, trying to think about what I was going to say or do if my mother’s threats turned out to be real.
I had two brothers and three sisters. Both my elder sisters were divorced and my mother was divorced. My brothers were not yet married. I believed that there must be something that mother and my sisters did to their husbands to end up alone. Whatever it was that they did I was determined not to allow it to happen to me. I vowed that I would never divorce once I get married and I detested those women who left their husbands to go back to their mothers’ houses. I was certain that both my elder sisters would be at home waiting for me to arrive. Mother had all the time to tell them her side of the story and they surely believed her every word. I had to be ready for the confrontation with them. There was no way I was going to let them walk all over me.
I did not go all the way home but instead I went into our neighbour’s house. I was greeted warmly by the old crippled woman who walked with crutches. Her name was Makati. That old woman had a way of making you feel loved and cared for. She had no judgment in her eyes or her voice. Her house was peaceful and I would have given anything to trade her with mother. Unfortunately she had no children and she lived alone. I was one of the neighbourhood kids that were really nice to her and did not refuse her when she sent me to the store or to fetch water from the river for her.
She immediately saw that I was troubled so she asked me to sit down while she poured us both a cup of rooibos tea with a lot of milk and no sugar. It tasted like milk and tea with no water. I really liked it. As we sipped our tea from the saucers, she asked me if I had anything I wanted to ask her. I related to her what had happened stressing the fact that I was old enough to live my life and that mother should mind her own business. She listened attentively, without interrupting me. Her grey eyes focused on mine as if she could read my thoughts as I spoke.
I regarded Makati as my grandmother in a way, partly because it was the village’s custom but mostly because she was a wise woman. I valued her advice and always followed it without regrets. She tried to explain to me how much mother loved and cared for me. She told me that mother did all the things she did because she was afraid for me. Mother was afraid that I would make the same mistakes she and my sisters had made. That mistake was to get married before obtaining a decent education. I tried to absorb what she said but I had convinced myself that mother really hated me more than anything in this world. If only mother had treated me the way Makati did: with respect.
I left Makati’s house an hour later having cleaned her kitchen and poured her bath water into her washing basin. I left with words she promised me would never fail, no matter how angry mother could be. She told me that I should get home to mother and apologise because I was wrong to disrespect her the way I had the previous night. I got home, opened the gate and walked to the house through the kitchen door. As I looked through the kitchen window, I saw my uncle’s horse tied on the guava tree behind the house then I started to panic. I could hear voices in the sitting room and I had to go through the sitting room in order to get to our room. I had to think fast. My number one priority was to get my identity documents and school papers in my purse before anything else. I walked to the sitting room without greeting my uncle; I continued to walk past my sister straight to our room. I closed the door behind me and quickly grabbed my papers and put them in the purse.
There was a knock on the door, just after I put my papers in the purse. It was my younger brother, Sanele coming to fetch me to the meeting in the sitting room. I followed him and I was ready to apologise, accept any kind of punishment from mother but I was not ready to be attacked by my sisters. The worst thing happened. They did not allow me to sit down before they yelled at me. Calling me names and exclaiming at my lack of respect for the elderly. I kept telling myself in my head that I was none of the things they called me but outwardly I responded with my own insults. Some of them were unfounded. I remember I even mentioned that my elder sister Tumeka’s husband had left her for a younger woman, my age. I had no proof of that and I had not even heard rumours about it. It was a story I created in my mind at that moment. All the good intentions and Makati’s good advice flew out of the window. I was behaving like a spoilt brat who had no regard for anyone, least of all the people in that room.
My big brother, Sandile grabbed me before I could find a chance to run and he pulled out the switches they had picked that morning for my punishment. He gave the bunch of switches to mother who gave half to my uncle. My sisters were laughing as they cleared the room. I started to cry before I was beaten but my cries came into deaf ears. It was mother that started to beat me all over my body and after several lashes; my uncle came over and asked me to open the palms of my hands. He beat me on my hands like they did at school before the new law against corporal punishment was passed. I got tired of screaming so I began to sob quietly as my uncle beat me lash after lash on my hands. He must have gotten tired because I did not see any sign of mercy on his face when he said I should go outside. The switches were broken all over the sitting room as I grabbed my purse and went outside.
One thing I liked about being beaten was that when I cried after the beating, nobody cared where I went and if I stayed away long enough my brothers and sisters would come looking for me having prepared food for me. Mother would give me a banana or an apple she had saved in her room and apologise for the beating. That day I did not care about any of those things, I knew exactly what I needed to do. I had plenty of time to get to the bus stop and go back to Sam’s house. When I left my home with just the clothes I was wearing and my purse, nobody could tell that I was running away and so nobody bothered me. I went past Makati’s house without even waving goodbye.
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Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
The ocean! So still and calm, she watched it for hours as she admired its tranquillity and its enormous strength. The kind of strength she searched for as memories of the previous night went through her mind over and over again. As if she were watching a rerun of the previous night’s events, Nolitha assessed the situation and wondered if she had not missed an opportunity to cry for help or an opportunity to run away from Thozamile’s merciless hands. She remembered that she could not scream; she could not even speak. Her voice was caught by a cold grip of fear and helplessness that made her shiver as she stood there watching the stillness of the ocean.
She wondered what secrets lay beneath the ocean and for how long the secrets will remain buried under it, but there were no telltales. The ocean appeared as a true reflection of tranquillity, peaceful and calm as she stood there still and motionless. Only from a distance Nolitha could see the white foam of the waves as they reached the shore, but she stood there as motionless as the ocean as she thought deeply about ending her own life by taking a fatal jump to the deep end of the ocean and disappear forever.
She thought of how wonderful her life could be from the dreams she had from many years back. She thought of the previous night whose aftermath was not just threatening to steal those dreams she had hung onto over the years but was the reason why she wanted to end her life. She weighed the events that had happened in her life from her early years against her dreams, as she would sift the bubbles from uMqomboti (Homemade African Beer). It was evident that her life was not meant to be an easy one from the beginning.
Taking a few steps closer to the edge of the rock on which she was standing, she bowed down, as a sign of reverence to bid the ocean farewell. She had seen the depth of the ocean that has no end and wondered how far deep the ocean could take her as she believed that was where she belonged, in the deep end. She would disappear and nobody would ever know what had happened to her the previous night. She was too scared and too ashamed to even write it on a piece of paper. She reached for her bag and took out the writing pad and pencil before she positioned herself on the rock so she could sit comfortably to be able to write a note to her parents.
Her mind went blank but her pencil kept on writing effortlessly. She continued to write as she cried until her reservoirs were dried up. Then she felt the lump inside her heart melt into the blue sea; she felt her pain disappear as she inhaled the smell of the salty water. She allowed herself to be enveloped into the majestic embrace of the ocean. She drifted away into the tranquillity of the ocean and her senses were tantalised by the soft breeze as she allowed her grief to disappear into the blue sea.
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Tuesday, November 20th, 2007
Here & Now is a story of a woman’s strengths, frailties, defeats and triumphs. Nolitha Zantsi, born in a small town of Port St John’s in the Eastern Cape, is a gentle and courageous young woman who believes in her inner strengths and abilities to take her to the better life she dreams of and her belief is confirmed after many struggles and many tears. She suffers many losses and abuse for such a young woman but she finds the courage to face life head on without reservations.
At a young age she experiences the painful realization that she is responsible for her beloved father leaving them to remarry and has to battle to prove herself worthy of her mother’s love and the forgiveness of her siblings. Throughout her childhood, she is torn between her loyalty to her mother and her love for her father, and approaches teenage life with her love for her father turning into hatred and her loyalty to her mother being an obligation.
She is raped by her half-brother-in-law who manages to convince her that nobody will believe her. She attempts to commit suicide to run away from the trauma of having to face what lay ahead on her own. She positions herself on top of the big rock overlooking the deep blue ocean that hungrily waits for her to jump to her untimely death. She weighs the previous night’s event against her dreams, as she would sift the bubbles from uMqomboti and her dreams seem more important than anything else.
She falls in love with a man who soon becomes possessive of her and starts abusing her to an extent that she is left with a broken jaw and stripped of her dignity as she is constantly humiliated and beaten in public. She tries to break free but finds herself being held hostage at hand-grenade point by her fiancé. Determined to be free she walks away from the scene and the relationship despite her fear from his threats. She chooses to rather die than to live a meaningless life.
It takes her ten years before she opens herself to another man. This time she is sure everything will be alright. She marries a reverend, convinced that abuse of any kind is a thing of the past. It is hardly three months after the big wedding day that she is called the devil, abused emotionally, physically and spiritually by her husband. Having been failed by the church to handle the situation she files for divorce, despite her Christian & societal values.
After the divorce Nolitha still finds it difficult to trust another man but she believes that men are not all the same. She has forgiven the men that entered her life and left it scarred, she loves and admires the man she is yet to meet who will repay a debt he does not owe. She loves the baby she is yet to conceive and the boy she is yet to mother because in her experiences she learns that what really matters in life is here and now.
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