16/03/2015
As A Child I Was Treated Like A Parcel
By: Nontsasa Nyovane
This brave little girl was born in the Eastern Cape. Her biological mother left her with her grandmother, saying she was going to look for a job to support her child. The father of the child had run away: he didn’t want to support his child.
From the time that the mother of the child left, she never even wrote a letter saying she had arrived safely or that she had a job.
The grandmother was a widower who was unemployed and dependent on a government grant which she used to feed five people. Remember that at that time in the 1970s the government grant was very little. The grandmother used to make some extra money through selling mealies.
The grandmother took care of the little girl. There was no money for baby food but she grew up healthy, drinking cows’ milk and eating mealie-meal. Her grandmother gave her love, care and spiritual support and taught her manners, like how to show respect for elderly people. She also taught her that the key to
life is education.
She said to her granddaughter, “Forget about your mother and not knowing who your father is out there. You are only a child without a father. When your mother is ready, she will come home and our house will still be here.”
The grandmother had four of her own children. The little girl’s two aunts and two uncles never liked her. They were always telling her, “This is not your home.” They treated her very badly, as if she was not a human being. The little girl was so tiny. There was only one aunt who was a little better than the others.
The girl could not go and play with the other children. Every day she would have to go to fetch water from the river. The aunts and uncles never bought her even one pair of shoes. At Christmas, she would get clothes that her grandmother had sewn for her.
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When she was a teenager, the girl was involved with school activities, like music and sports. She loved to go to church. But whenever she was away from the home, she would worry about the household duties. She was like a housemaid.
The grandmother had to attend funerals and community meetings and when she was not at home, things got worse. On the weekends there was not time for the girl to play with her cousins or other children. She had to do the washing, clean the house, sweep the yard and cook for Sunday. When her grandmother
arrived back at the house, the girl would cry and tell her of the abuse.
Her grandmother always said, “Don’t worry, my child. God will wipe your tears one day and that broken heart of yours will be healed. God is going to put you where you belong and fulfil all your dreams. You must take from this for when you have a family and your own children. As a mother, you must always support
them, no matter what.”
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When the girl reached high school, her grandmother decided she must go and stay at the boarding school so that she could be away from the abuse. The fees were not very expensive. Her aunts and uncles were angry with her grandmother for taking their slave from the house. Remember that the grandmother was also scared of her own children because they were the ones who paid for the groceries.
They asked who was now going to do the washing, cleaning and cooking. But the grandmother answered by saying, “Everyone in this house has two hands and two feet. I never gave birth to disabled children. I will only do washing and cooking for my great-grandchild.”
While she was in high school, the girl fell pregnant. Her grandmother was so disappointed. But even while the aunts and uncles were laughing at her, the grandmother said, “Because I want my grandchild to be something in the future, I will look after this child. My grand daughter must go back to school.”
That caused a lot of fighting in the family because the vulnerable girl had brought another child into the family.
After some years, the girl’s biological mother died. She did not feel any pain because she didn’t know her mother very well. The grand daughter finished high school but the grandmother did not have money for her to go to university. She decided to go and look for a job in order to say thank you to her grandmother.
All this time her cousins were failing at school, repeating their grades two or three times.
The grandchild gave the first wages that she earned – R2000 – to her grandmother.
The grandmother said it was too much and that none of her children had ever given her so much money. Her grandmother wrote to her, saying, “My loving daughter, I have always prayed for you, for God to protect you and your child and for Him to fulfil all your dreams.” She renovated her grandmother’s house and bought new furniture for her.
Bad things happened. Two of the grandmother’s children died and there was no money to bury them. Her grandmother asked her grandchild for help. So she sent money for the preparations and went down for the funeral. Everyone was so happy, forgetting how they had treated her like a package and as if she was not a member of the family.
Her grandmother got very sick. She said to her granddaughter, “You are the only child that I always watched over and worried about. You have a good heart: you don’t hold a grudge against my children. When they asked you for money, you gave it to them without saying a word.” The grandchild answered by saying, “Grandmother, all that I am doing is because of the journey you
have walked to raise me and my child, supporting me all the way.”
Before the grandmother died, she bought her granddaughter a big plot in the Eastern Cape. She said it was for her granddaughter to build her own home “because you don’t belong here in this home. One day when I die, my children will chase you away.”
Everything went as planned. Her grandmother died and left a will behind, instructing her granddaughter, “When you come, if you want to bury me the next day, you can. No-one should stop you. You mustn’t wait for my own children because I know them: they won’t have a cent to bury me. You were the only child that God blessed me with. Keep on doing your good work. Don’t
forget to look after my house.”
After the funeral, the granddaughter decided to start working with abused children. She wanted to support them, give love to those who had never had love and stand up for their rights, like her grandmother had done for her.
After some years, she moved to work with orphans, child-headed households and other vulnerable children. The reason she made this move was that she could see a gap in the community for children who didn’t have a mother like her grandmother, who had given up her own children to care for her grandchild,
an abandoned and neglected orphan.
The granddaughter learnt a lot from her grandmother. She learnt that even if children are treated badly, it is still possible to make them very strong, so strong that they can be the rocks of tomorrow: the leaders of tomorrow.
Today the granddaughter is a rock, a developer and a carer to everyone’s children.
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