Meet Thembi

Thembi

Thembi is a typical rural girl and she wakes up at her usual time, at 3:30am – she has a lot to do before she can be off to school. She fumbles in the dark to try to find the matchbox so she can light the paraffin lamp to be able to see. There she found it, gosh!, there is only one matchstick left. She can’t use the last one, she must use it light the fire, and she systematically finds her way around the little hut and gets dressed and goes out. The moon is bright today so she can make out a shadow of her friend approaching; they are going to go to the well to fetch water together.

 

She takes all the empty buckets and gallons, taking care not to make any noise lest she wakes up the whole village. This she can’t afford, because there isn’t much water at the well during summer, so you have to get there first before it’s finished. If she got there too late, the alternative well was some kilometres away and she couldn’t possibly make in time for school.

 

After she has put all her things in a wheelbarrow, they take off. They don’t even so much as talk on the way, they are very quiet. They get to the well in time, it was still as quiet as night, so no one has been there. They quickly fill up and head back home, this time they are talking loudly; they have the water so it doesn’t really matter if they wake even the people in the next village. They meet some women who are only going to the well now and even in the dark they can feel their piercing glares, they know they won’t find much water. Thembi doesn’t care, they should stop being lazy and wake up earlier they will get the water, it’s a survival of the fittest situation. They continue pushing their wheelbarrows still chatting, only keeping quite long enough for the women to pass.

 

Thembi’s friend, Mavis is not very popular with the women, she is a very pretty girl and they usually complained that she was attracting the attention of their husbands. Mavis didn’t care; it’s just the way she was. Although she vehemently denied it, Thembi’s feeling was that she appreciated the attention. She said there was nothing she could do, it’s not like she invited the men therefore she couldn’t stop them. She and Thembi became friends quite by default, because it was just the two of them left in the village. All the girls their age had left, dropping out of school to look for jobs because they didn’t see the point of going to school anyway.

 

Thembi secretly hoped that her friend would not join the bandwagon; she didn’t think much of school either. They had never seen anyone who finished school and made something of their lives, everyone was suffering, and at least the girls who went to town to do some domestic work seemed to be making it. Just a few weeks ago, Lindiwe had come from the city, even though she now had an illegitimate child, she seemed to be doing fine. Rumour was that the father of the child was a married man, way older than her but he made sure she was comfortable. When she came to the village, he had organised a driver to bring her and she had a lot of groceries with her and she was talk of the village. But she had since gone back to the city, leaving the one-year-old child with her mother who was obviously excited about the idea because it meant now the man would be sending her money to take care of the child.

 

Those were the role models of society, get a man who had enough money to take care of you, he didn’t have to marry you as long as the money kept rolling in. This was what even the parents of these girls had been reduced to; all because they were too poor to take care of their own children. Thembi decided she wasn’t going to have too many kids, if she had any at all. It was disheartening to watch the cycle go on from generation to generation, now these girls were having babies in the hope of getting an income from the men who were poor themselves and probably married with a lot of kids all over the place.

 

It’s almost sunrise, Thembi and her siblings should be already on their way to school. School starts at 7:30am but they need about two hours to make it on time. All four of them are ready; they have bathed and had their porridge so it’s time to go. She is the oldest of the lot; her brother Ndumiso who will be 18 this year, had dropped out of school and went in search of gold in the mines. They tried to stop him but he was having none of it, he was too old to be wearing this tattered uniform. And him being taller than his peers made him an object of ridicule to the other students. He just didn’t fit in and to make matters worse Mother was sick, she couldn’t continue with her business selling tomatoes anymore. That is how she had kept the family going since the passing of their father five years ago, he had been sick for a long time and they had sold everything trying to find a cure for him.

 

They had gone to a lot of places in a bid to cure him of his ailment; they started at the local clinic, which referred him to the hospital in the city. They couldn’t afford it so his brothers, Thembi’s uncles, looked for alternatives, this ranged from prophets to traditional healers (sangomas). Each of them had a lot to say, some said he had been bewitched but they could help him in return for a small price, which was usually in the form of an animal, it was cattle at first as long as there was one left. Then they moved to the goats when the cattle were finished, then Mother started selling off the little furniture that she had to pay these people. Each one had a different ritual; Thembi remembered being really tired of the string of rituals meanwhile Father was wasting away anyway.

 

One day when the only thing left for Mother to sell was the bed and Father had practically become a skeleton, he couldn’t even move anymore. Mother called all the kids to the hut where he was lying, she had not allowed any of them in there before, probably so that they didn’t see just how bad Father was. But Thembi used to peep through the window when she wasn’t watching and each time she would see him lying there, he didn’t look like him at all. She would feel this pain inside her heart, sometimes it felt like she would suffocate from it, and then she would go off and cry somewhere. But Mother was strong, she didn’t cry but there was a change in her, she wasn’t herself anymore, she hardly laughed or smiled or even left that room where Father was. She would sometimes tell the kids to tell the neighbours visiting that she was not at home, probably because they had been saying some bad stuff about Father’s sickness like they always did – poking their nose into other people’s business.

 

This day she called them in, Thembi was scared, she didn’t know what to expect but she started to have that pain in her heart and she was having difficulty breathing, but she kept quiet and went in after everyone had gone in. Ndumiso being the first-born was about 13 years old at the time sat in the corner of the room. Father lay there on the bed, covered in a blanket up to his eyes. He was looking at them but there was no life in his eyes, it was almost like he wasn’t aware of anything going on, he was still.

 

Mother spoke in a low voice, she said ‘I called you so you can see your father, I don’t think he is pain anymore but you see his body is tired. I am not going to try to cure him anymore, we have tried it hasn’t worked. He is going to go to a place where he will rest and where he will never have to be in pain anymore. Although we won’t see him again, that place will be good for him, he has suffered enough he wanted to see you before he goes, that’s why I called you here’. Father made a noise, and then his hand moved, he pulled the blanket off his face, Thembi looked away. He had wasted away, when she looked back at him, he was looking at her and there was a hint of a smile in his eyes. He just said, ‘You’ll be fine, take care of each other and your mother. Ndumiso, you are a man now, take care of them’. He attempted to sit up but gave up trying and then Mother beckoned for them to leave but not before saying they can see him anytime now.

 

The following few days, there were some changes in Mother’s attitude, she was almost her old self again, she started coming out more to be with the kids and she was cooking well and she would even let them have supper together with Father. He was getting stronger, he could sit up now and Mother would help him with his food. He didn’t talk much but sometimes he would share a joke and even laugh. Things weren’t so bad anymore and they had started a new routine – they would pray everyday before bed. They never used to do that but Mother said it was a good thing to do, she said after a long time she was finally at peace with the situation. It appeared at that time she was done mourning for him, she was happier and Father was getting stronger and she always made sure he was bathed and smart early in the morning in case he got some visitors which was very rare now. The neighbours didn’t come so often, his sickness was probably old news by now, and there was nothing new to talk about.

 

Thembi was at ease now, she hadn’t felt the pain her heart for the past three weeks and Father was getting strong. The local Priest would come by from time to time and pray with them, he always made them all feel that everything was going to be fine. But this Wednesday morning, before dawn Mother came knocking at the kids’ door, she said they must go and call the Priest immediately. Thembi and Ndumiso got up and ran off in the darkness to the Priest’s home, he came with them without delay. All the time the pain in Thembi’s heart was creeping back, she didn’t know why but she was in a complete state of panic, she couldn’t breathe again. When they arrived home with the Priest, Mother was standing outside with the paraffin lamp in her hand; she rushed towards the Priest and told him Father had stopped breathing.

 

They went into the hut together for a few minutes and when they came out, Mother said they must go and call Mavis’s mother. In a matter of minutes, there were so many people that had come; Thembi figured maybe Father had gone to where he was supposed to go. The rest of the day was a daze, there was so much activity, they hardly saw Mother and there were a lot of tears. The siblings were taken to Mavis’s house and when they got there she told them that Father had died and they were burying him that’s why they told Thembi and her siblings to leave. Later on the day, Thembi ran off and hid behind some bushes where she was able to see the whole burial, it was awful. They put him in the hole they had dug and put sand on him until it became a mountain, how lonely he must have been. Thembi was still watching when someone found her and gently told her to go, she shouldn’t be there.