The Monsters We Live With

When a monster is in the backyard you cannot promise your children that they will be safe in your home. You cannot assure them that if they lock the gate then the bad people will stay away. You can’t fool them into thinking that danger comes from a stranger.

I lived with an uncle who attempted to rape my mentally handicapped cousin. I have never forgotten how my cousin looked the day after the attack. Three of her teeth were missing, her lip was busted up and she was limping.

He had broken her window and attempted to rape her. Were it not for the physical strength I now believe she was given to defend herself from those who would hurt her because they believed she was helpless, he would have succeeded. As it was, she hurled an electric generator at him while he was stripping naked, (I once tried to pick up that generator and it was a mission), slammed the door on his fingers and yelled for help.

The only other person at home was my grandfather, my uncle’s father. He was an old man suffering from cancer of the oesophagus, he witness the image of his youngest son poised erect above a child the entire family had raised and protected from harm from the day she was born. It never escaped my notice that my grandfather died two weeks after my uncle was sentenced to five years in prison for attempted rape, his father’s testimony having been paramount in securing his conviction.

“I heard noises, Mimi was calling ‘mkhulu, mkhulu’ I arrived him was standing above her, shaking his left hand (which had been slammed into the door) and holding his erect penis while she whimpered and cried beneath him.”

These words, translated to English, sound infinitely better than they are in Xhosa, our language. With these words, a father acknowledged in a court of law that his son had been a monster, his desires and appetites that of a monster. He admitted to having raised a person who would turn out to be worthless, therefore capable of acts that would lead others to question their own self-worth. When he uttered to those words, I like to believe he found release, not only at having told the truth and fought to protect his grandchild but rather, also having freed himself of guilt, that it was his child who was now the family’s mortal enemy. He felt relief at knowing that with his end fast approaching, his final gift to his family was to remove the monster from the backyard.

Two years into his sentence my uncle was granted parole into the custody of his eldest sister. I begged her not to accept, to refuse him his second chance but blood is thick and she allowed him to come home. He promised he had changed. And for a year he worked and kept on the straight and narrow, he contributed to the household and faint rumblings of “he’s really changed” began to surface.

And then:

“I walked in to the kitchen to check on Mbali who I had sent to pick up pitcher of juice five minutes prior and who wasn’t answering my calls for her. We had been sitting far from the house under the shadow of some trees as it was a very hot day and the juice had been cooling in the fridge. When she didn’t return within a reasonable time I went to look for her, convinced that like any other child she had been distracted by something else, like the TV. I walked in and saw him, pinning her to the refrigerator, a hand clamped on her mouth while another roamed in between her thighs which had been forced apart by his knee. I broke a vase on his head and attacked him until the other arrived and we called the police. She was 13 years old.”

Monsters are not only the strangers we caution our children against. Sometimes, we invite them to share our lives with us.

In for a baby, in for a social grant

Early this year news reports cited “research” showing South African teens are deliberately falling pregnant in order to access social grants.

What utter bollocks.

I am not an advocate of teenage pregnancy; in fact I am vehemently against it as it interrupts a child’s life and interferes with her chances of a successful future. In rural areas (where the news reports claime there were 123 teen pregnant in one town in 2010 and 53 in Nkandla) children are faced with more challenges than those of children in urban areas. I’ll venture insofar as to say that if there are indeed children deliberately falling pregnant to access the social grant, it would likely be teens in urban areas more than those in rural areas.

The first challenge a rural teen faces is the traditional taboo attitude towards dating and socialising with boys that is common in rural areas. Parents zealously (sometimes enforcing their rules with a cane, a belt or sjambok) oppose their teenagers having boyfriends. These children are then forced to hide that they are dating because NOT dating is not an option. They’re teenagers for crying out loud!

Because of this skulking and hiding the teen is then alone in her relationship, often at the mercy of the advice of her friends and feels alienated from her parents who become Enemy No 1, it’s psychology 101, "a no-brainer" as the kids would say.

The second challenge these teens face is that while they are fully aware of contraceptives and condoms, they often do not use both. Kids I have spoken to would like to use contraceptives but the nurses in the clinics refuse them the service even though many of them go when they are 15 or 16 years old. The problem these teens face is that the nurses, instead of doing their jobs, are being proxy parents and deciding that if they give a teen contraception it is as good as cheering them on to have sex. A child who has decided to have sex will have sex, no matter the fear-mongering or beatings. And so they go without contraceptives.

As for condoms, the teens, raised in predominantly patriarchal households where their father’s word is law, even if the father is working in the city and is not home, are susceptible to their boyfriends’ will. The mantra of many black men is that a “real man” doesn’t wear a condom. They protest with a litany of excuses, including:
* The condom is too small (a problem that only seem to befall black men, *snort*)
* The condom smells funny,therby making sex nuaseating (as if it wasn't already ;))
* They are allergic to the lubricant
* Only a girl who knows they have AIDS would want to use a condom
* If you love/trust me you won’t use a condom

When the girl feebly raises the issue of pregnancy, he assures her that he will “pull out” in time. She believes him and takes her chance. The ploys used by black men in order to avoid using a condom are the same ploys that adult women fall for, what are the chances that a teen will be able to resist? How come women in their 30s aren’t condemned for unsafe sexual practices? Despite the arguments to the contrary, mature unemployed, unmarried, women also fall pregnant without planning to should be subject to the same scrutiny teens are in terms of whether or not they are opportunistically falling pregnant because they would also like to milk the state coffers dry, much like the leaders who condemn them for it do.

Although state clinics ought to provide the “morning after” pill I have yet to come across one that stocks it. If clinics do stock the pills the nursing staff of Harding and its surrounds has taken it upon itself to not provide them. So much so that teens stopped asking for it.

When a teen seeks to correct her “stupidly falling pregnant” circumstance by requesting a termination of pregnancy from a state hospital as she is legally allowed to the nurses refuse her the service because of their personal beliefs. I know of a child who was closeted in a room by seven nurses, all about the age of her mother and severely berated for even thinking about an abortion. I myself have an experience in which a doctor in a public hospital refused a cousin on mine an abortion merely because she disagreed with the reasons given for wanting one.

So there is a teen in a rural area, stuck with a pregnancy and without an out, why should she not make use of the state provided social grant in order to help raise this child? Sometimes the teen is still a recipient of a social grant herself. I would like to meet a person who has raised a child on R250 a month in this day and age - only that person can convince me gettting its possible to fall pregnant merely to secure R250 for 18 years of a child's life.

Does this research conclude that the teens then use the money for their personal needs, like maybe a sexy top to seduce old men in? Because that is the implication of the allegation that teens are falling pregnant on purpose. Who then provides for this new infant? Certainly not the poor family a rural teen often comes from. The teen’s schooling is interrupted and sometimes she may never go back to school because there is no one to take care of the baby. Is this research suggesting that teens are choosing this path for themselves? Is this research saying that teens would rather earn R250 per child for the rest of their lives? Is that the best that this country has created for children to aspire to?

Hello 2011 - Letting go

As I type this I am thinking of the long road I have travelled in order to come into my own skin and live in it in perfect harmony with my flaws and my triumphs.

Today I relinquish my story.

Everyone has a painful story, a story they have developed over time, a story that defines them and a story often holds them hostage.

I, too, have my story; a story of loss, of being symbolically castrated by my vices and blinded by my shortcomings. It is a story that has excused my mistakes and forgiven me my wrongs. It’s a story I relished telling because it is a story that blamed others for my pain and left me free to bask in their pity and sympathy of those who heard it.

But my story was my bondage, forever pinning me down and holding me back. What if I left the warm cocoon of self pity and self indulgence, ventured out into a world of risking my strength and testing my feet? If I fell and didn’t have my story to cushion my blow, would I be OK? When I am asked to account for mistakes I make in the clear light of day and find myself bare of excuses and without cover would I stand firm and would I humbly submit to learning form my mistakes?

When I examine myself and allowed the mirror of truth to speak to me without the muffling of my story would I listen? Would my personal yardstick be longer than that which I hold against those I judge so harshly and so freely? Would I allow myself to stand firm in my beliefs and the pursuit of my destiny?

My story has walked with me, weighing upon my step, making my mark upon whatever I stepped on indelible and destructive. My story has held me back, jealous of the power of my triumph over it’s emotions. My story has not helped me. It has not changed anyone else’s life, it has been fear-mongering and often alienating of others. My story has been a wall between me and my future, a cloud above the present, forever casting a shadow of gloom on the achievements of today.

I don’t start anew, I simple start with a lighter load. A chapter, of hope and dreams.

PS: Forgive any typos

A woman wept

On hills of misery,
The salty rivers flow.
Glistening dunes don't stem the flow.
On wobbly tips,
Rests a pool of of pity,
A woman wept.

A guttural moan,
No man has known,
Of wounded animals,
Memories her cries invoke.
A cloud so low, a fearful cower,
A woman wept.

No ash, no phoenix.
Fairytales forgotten, hope abandoned
No glass slipper,
No prince to kiss her awake
She wept.

In hopes, in dreams,
This hurt would end.
But in life so real,
Her will depleted,
She fell,
And slept.

Welcome back everyone. :-) And by that I mean me.

Break's over

This blog will resume activity after the holiday hiatus.

Looking forward to getting back into the mix.