Last Goodbyes
I was in the first year of school when my father, who was a teacher, died. I knew he was sick, but not what the problem was. I have one very strong memory of that time. On the day he died, he asked my mother: 'Please cook me a meal that I won't forget. Ask my daughter to come in from her playing and share my meal with me.
' She cooked him a full meal with chicken and vegetables from the garden - potatoes, carrots and cabbage. When his plate was in front of him, my mother called me in. My father took one spoon and I had another, and we shared his meal from his plate. It was only a few hours later that he passed away.
Now that I'm an old woman, I realise what he was doing that day. He was saying his last goodbyes to me. After he died, I used to come home from school and fetch my dollies, then go to the graveyard and play with them on his grave. In a strange way, the way of a child, I was very happy there. 'My comfort bed', I called the place, and I would stay there for hours.
I even sometimes fell asleep there, on the ground. At the time I didn't know what I was doing, but now I realise I felt better being in the place where I was close to him.
A Xhosa Tradition
My behaviour at my father’s gravesite hurt my mother. Maybe it brought up too much sadness inside her. Also, she worried about me. After that year had gone by and I had passed my first year of school, she sent me off to live with my grandmother in Tsolo village in the Eastern Cape.
In any case, my mother was a domestic worker and was finding it hard to look after me during the day. In our Xhosa culture, this is how things often work — when the mother is working, she sends the children to the grandparents, who bring them up. So I went to my granny in Tsolo, and I shone at school there.
This is where I learnt to be a praise singer — the one, in our oral tradition, who dresses up and sings and dances praise to a great chief or the ancestors. At GAPA, I am often the praise singer for all the grannies, singing, roaring, stomping my feet with the power of a young man. Everyone is amazed when they see it.
Happy School Days
My school teacher in Tsolo, Agnes Kenu, would often act and sing and dance as she told stories to our class. I would light up with excitement watching her, and she began to suspect I might have the same talent. She started to call me up to the front of the class and made me do these things with her.
I thrived under all her attention and felt proud because I saw that I was learning so quickly and easily compared to the other children. I wasn't an angel; I would also get up to mischief during those years. I remember that once, when my teacher was out of the classroom, I went to sit on her desk full of self-importance and naughtiness.
'Right, now we're going to do arithmetic,' I told the class, and started writing on the board. They laughed. And just then, she walked back in. 'Oh, I'm so sorry — sorry, sorry, I won't do it again,' I said meekly, backing off to my desk. I may have been naughty but I was never rude, and my teacher carried on loving me.
By Jo-Anne Smetherham