As Alana worked at getting her living room curtains re-hung, her phone rang. Johnny’s friend shouted a panicky and garbled message about opening the gate. Alana hurried out to open it. When it timed out and closed without them coming, she asked Franz if he knew which direction the boys went.
Suspecting trouble with the Zama Zamas, they drove the combie toward the mines. Seeing the boys coming on the quad and no one chasing them, they turned around to return to The Pines. With the boys waving wildly at them, Franz and then Alana looked closer, shocked to see blood covering Johnny’s face. The quad had flipped on the tailings pile, with Darrin jumping clear but Johnny trapped on the machine as it rolled.
I’ll skip the intervening details and just tell you that Darrin is unhurt. Johnny is in the hospital, having been through surgery to stitch his nose in a few places as well as a cut by his eye, had his nose plastered back in the direction it should point, and had the three breaks in his arm straightened and encased in a plaster cast. He looks puffy but is as snappy and sassy as ever. Praise the Lord.
Now I want to take you down the road. Slightly later than planned due to the hospital expedition, Dave, Don and I drove into Thabong with Pastor Manaka. We saw the shabeen (black township bar) from which Michelle T. was rescued on the verge of death four years ago.
One compound houses children who used to be at The Pines, but a relative wanted to ‘care’ for them, which means the relative gets a stipend from the government and the children live without love, adequate food, and security. Their smiles have disappeared, again.
Several neighborhoods consisted of many ramshackle and rusted corrugated steel shacks. Some have electrical service. Whole neighborhoods had ‘long drop toilets’ in the back, which I presume to be a kind of outhouse. Scattered throughout were a few decent homes.
Large areas have two room houses built by the gold mines as miner residences. However, if a man wanted to live in a house rather than the crowded hostels he needed a wife and a marriage. Because his wife lived far away, he found himself another ‘wife’ and live there with her. This and prostitution, facilitated by mine management to keep men pacified in this artificial community, fed the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Men became infected and infected their wives when they went home. Children contracted the virus at birth.
Then, because no one knew the truth, rumors about the cause and the cure spread wildly and irrationally. One popular solution involved having relations with a young virgin to cure the disease. And so we have children being raped and infected and bearing children.
Skip past the uniformed students walking to school this lovely Saturday morning because they are so far behind, due to teacher strikes and school materials being delivered late. Let’s go to the edge of town. Just past a new settlement of shacks, with no electricity or water we join a parade of cars heading to the cemetery.
Saturday means adult funeral day. Several funeral directors likely each buried fifty bodies today, a growing number, accelerating at an alarming rate. Welkom is at the epicenter of the HIV/AIDS cataclysm. Burials first took place in this cemetery in 2000. People who were middle aged or older in the 1980s probably lived out a somewhat normal life span. Today in the township, Pastor Manaka’s forty years are considered old.
Be careful as you work your way through the cemetery traffic jam. Don’t be distracted by the tents scattered around the horizon, crowded with mourners singing and clapping. Ride with me beyond them, to the children’s cemetery where you will see rows and rows of tightly placed tiny graves, mounded with fresh dirt, marked by a small sign. Someone has carefully placed a soda bottle, filled with water, its lid with a tiny hole poked into it and turned into the soil of the grave, believing that water is needed by the child’s body.
Other graves have cans of powdered infant formula, or full medicine bottles, or an empty whisky bottle with some elixir in it. A toddler’s sippy cup, a shoe, maybe a cross or plastic flowers…
So, how does Johnny’s accident come together with an infant graveyard? Johnny’s family feared the consequences of his accident and thanked God for his limited injuries. The Mamas came to the yard to pray for him. His parents and sister spent a long day hovering over him.
In the Thabongs of South Africa, death at any age has become common place leaving people calloused to it. In their misery they have given up hope, living for the moment. They mourn at the graveside. Then, as they leave, within sight of the grave stones their music blares, they laugh and joke and try to ignore their own mortality.
Pray. People need the Lord.
Judy
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