There was a time when he roamed the narrow village
walkways, a vacant look in his eyes, and often a grin on his blackened mouth.
Though clearly harmless, people would give him wide berth as he approached,
unsure what he might do. Children were
cautioned; “do not provoke him,
uyasangana”.*
But at 15, he was just a boy under the influence of
drugs. Yes he became a menace, stealing whatever he could, from where ever he
could. He was an enemy; of his own self, of his family, of the community which
has raised him. He needed to be saved.
And so his journey began, his mother’s grief and fear of
losing a son led her to them; The Saviours. Others had sang their praises;
mothers whose sons had been reclaimed from the jaws of Satan, fathers whose
daughters has roamed the streets plying that age-old trade in exchange for a
sip or two of the Devil’s Juice; others a ringing testament of a support system
that rivalled no other. Do not tell us miracles do not happen on Earth they
shouted, for we are living proof that with prayer, anything can be overcome.
When he disappeared from the village none mourned his
absence. For indeed it had been a long time since one could rest easy they
forgot to fasten the back window. He would not be lying in wait for those he
saw depart their homes, poised to ransack personal space for a trinket or two
to sell. What did it matter where his mother had taken him? He was gone, let us
rejoice the community agreed.
His Hell began. Spread beneath the crushing weight of one
who had pledged to exorcise him of his drug addiction, he lost his
innocence. Every night the man would
come, unheeding of pleas of pain and loss of anal control, he would take his
pleasure of the boy and toss him aside with a promise of death should any ever
hear of what happened. And when the boy dare soil himself during the
ministrations, the man had a had whip to see him right. How dare he fear that
which was duty?
There, in the place where many had avowed would save him
he learnt important lessons about life. When you erred, when you were a boy who
shamed your parents and paid no heed to the warnings of your teachers, you were
punished. You were punished cruelly.
When his mother came to visit him, he told her. Mama, he
calls me his wife, he makes me do things to him, things I do not want to do.
Please take me home, I am afraid. His mother listened with narrowed eyes and a
look of fury clouded her eyes. Before he could blink a stinging slap had
cracked his cheek and he was left gaping as she stormed away; leaving him in the
nightmare. You see they had warned the mother; the drugs would make her boy
lie, she ought not to believe a word he said.
He escaped of course. He would not submit any longer.
Living in a hovel whereupon others, bound by chains and ropes, others convulsing
in startling shudders, had defecated where they lay. He could not stay. Not
when sometimes, the kindly reverend’s wife he had always seen at church would
bring their meagre rations of food half cooked. They were savages, she would
waste no electricity cooking their meals through; they would eat what they were
given; half starved, they would swallow the food, not daring to refuse it. Of
all the things that had happened there, she was his biggest betrayal - a woman
who cooed over babies and fed the hungry by day, so cruel under cloak of night.
He went home but his mother took him back. And this time
he joined those who were in chains. He learnt that in order to be treated
marginally better he had to pretend. Pretend to repent, pretend to be cured of
his addiction, and pretend to love his mother. Pretend.
Because he could not be trusted to keep on the
illuminated path, his mother sent him to live there. By the grace of a God who
could not possibly be the same as that which his captors praised he passed
Matric, perhaps the first miracle to ever come to that dark place. Rejoicing,
he saw his freedom approach, who could hold him now, when he had the passage to
a future?
The first night home, he says because freedom is a heady
drug and he wanted to celebrate it, he smoked his first joint in three years
and plunged back to the hole he had pretended to climb out of for three years.
His mind undone, a neighbour took him to the hospital where he quite amusingly
smashed all he came across, believe inanimate objects to be alive. The doctors
agreed he would have to be taken to a mental institution for proper care.
Like a thief, his mother stole him from the only road
that could have saved him. Back to The Saviours he would go. Hadn’t he been
clean for three years? Was that not PROOF that The Saviours were the angels of
God? No hospital would ever cure him she wagered and to the lions she fed his
addled carcass.
I came across him wondering along the road, a chain
dragging behind him. After a week of no drugs his mind had returned and again
he had escaped his prison. He showed me the marks on his back where a whip had
lain into him. He showed me the padlock on his chains. He begged me; please
help me.
*he is crazy
