Of A Generation
Intro : Mildred
“These kids will be the death of me. Buka lo, did she have to look so much like her father,” Mildred thinks to herself. Mthandeki, tall and with matte coconut skin, has her fathers face. If you look like your father, people joke and say that it’s like he was trying to deny you. Mthandeki is the oldest of four children. But, because she is a girl child, her brother Bafana, the second born, is considered the first born. When they visit their father in Gauteng, people recognise her instantly. They begin to call her by her clan names – MaKhoza; Msuthu, Mkhathini, Mabona, Nomageja. She would bask in the praise while her brother stands by awkwardly next to her. Taller than Mthandeki and shades lighter, Bafana is the splitting image of his mother. There is no saying in our culture for when a child looks like their mother. Still, people always marvel when children look like their parents.
It’s Sunday morning and Mthandeki is herding her two youngest siblings around the house as they get ready for church. Her mother is in the kitchen finishing up with the Sunday lunch. Bafana is there with her. He eats his bread by the first full and gets a scolding for nearly choking on it. He finishes and leaves the house in a rush to church for choir practice. Cooking before church is a promise Mildred made to herself years ago when Sebenzile was born. “Remember, cooking after a four hour church service when you have a new born and two young children is asking for a visit to hell,” she’d say to herself every Sunday morning. Then she’d get up and start cooking.
She was in the first taxi out of Johannesburg when the nausea began. A day she’ll never forget. She was traveling with Bafana and Mthandeki who were five and six at the time. It had been nearly four years since her husbands last visited home. She had never been to the Gauteng so she was a little scared but her resolve to go find her husband was stronger. By the time they got back home, she knew in her mind that she was pregnant with Sebenzile.
When the baby was two months old, Mildred sent messages to her husband. She promised to give the new born to any one of the neighbours traveling to Gauteng. “She’ll learn how to walk lapho egoli if you don’t come back by the time she starts crawling,” she said in her latest message. Six months later Walter returned home. He brought with him all the things that were on Mildreds list. That was also the summer that Fikile was conceived.
Noma the writer 